[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
MARTIN HELLMAN: Well, thank
you, Andre, and thank you
all for coming.
Let's see, you're on
this side, Dorothie.
That's your notes.
So I want to thank Google
for hosting the talk,
and also for the $1 million,
that was no small thing either.
Andre actually had checks
that we got at the ACM Awards
banquet last June.
And as some of you may
know, Dorothie and I quickly
agreed that we were
going to devote
my half of the $1 million
prize to furthering our work
to build a more peaceful,
sustainable planet
with the initial focus being
on this new approach, which
is this book.
Now, eight years ago,
I gave a talk at Google
on soaring cryptography
and nuclear weapons.
I always like to do things that
kind of get people wondering.
And my work then-- and
it still continues--
has been on bringing
risk analysis to bear
on the question of
nuclear deterrence.
How risky is it to threaten
to destroy civilization
in an effort to
preserve the peace?
Well, my research has convinced
me it's a horrendous risk,
and that talk weight out
why, and this book also
helps to explain that.
But even though that talk--
you put it on YouTube--
got roughly 10,000 views--
which is quite a lot
for an hour-long talk--
almost no one is interested
in nuclear weapons.
Almost no one is interested
in war and peace,
even though their lives depend
on it, and they don't know it.
And so about three years
ago, Dorothie and I
decided that we were going to
take a new approach-- actually
it's an old approach.
Because 35 years ago
when I shifted my work
from information security to
international security, what
got both of us interested in
this international security
wasn't wanting to save
the world initially,
it was wanting to
save our marriage.
Now by the way, we just
celebrated our 50th anniversary
on Friday.
[APPLAUSE]
But we almost didn't make it.
Not in recent years, but
35 years ago, the marriage
was in some trouble.
And I was so busy I
didn't even know it,
but Dorothie fortunately
was watching out
and started a process that
we talk about in the book,
and we'll talk about today.
And so many more people
are interested in improving
their relationships than
are interested in improving
international relationships or
dealing with nuclear weapons.
But as we explain in this
talk, and as the book
explains in more detail, the
two are intimately connected.
And so that's why
our books subtitle
is "Creating True Love at
Home and Peace on the Planet".
Now, unless you're very unusual,
you sometimes have painful
disagreements with a
spouse, a partner, in-laws--
they'll come up in this talk--
co-workers.
And how would you like to never
be in that kind of pain again?
Think about it for a minute.
Never be in that pain again.
Well, this talk will outline
how you can accomplish that.
And it describes how
we accomplish that
at least in our marriage.
And it also will show
how doing that allowed
us to make a much larger
contribution to world peace
than we ever would
have thought possible.
So the theme of this talk--
we had to narrow it down
to one sentence.
Here it is.
Your learning to compassionately
resolve personal conflicts
will help determine whether
or not civilization survives.
That's big.
Think about it.
Your impact can be that big.
Plus, you'll be happier.
Now, this is a short talk
and would take a whole book
to explain that.
But fortunately, we've
written that book,
and Google very generously
bought a bunch from Books Inc.
and has made them
available to people here.
And at the end of the talk, I'll
mention how everyone else can
get a free copy of the book.
But I'll leave that for then.
So where does the title, "A
New Map for Relationships"
come from?
That's the main title.
Well, the first story in
the book is all about that,
and Dorothie is the
star of that story,
so she's going to tell you.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: We were going
to San Francisco to an event.
It was a Friday afternoon.
The sun was shining
in San Francisco,
and it was just beautiful.
So we thought we'd
drive up to Twin Peaks
and enjoy the
beauty of the city.
And we were sitting in the
car getting ready to go,
and I pulled out the map.
It was a paper map.
It was that long ago.
MARTIN HELLMAN: No Google Maps.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN:
And I was trying
to figure out how we were
going to get from Twin Peaks
to our event.
And Marty, without asking,
took the map out of my hands.
And one of my pet peeves
was him doing that.
He knew it would bother me.
So I was furious.
And so I got out of the
door, and I slammed the door,
and I got out of the
car, and I huffed off.
And I was just sitting there
like, I couldn't believe
he did that to me again.
MARTIN HELLMAN: And
of course, I actually
had forgotten that
that was her pet peeve,
or I wouldn't have done it.
But I actually didn't know
what I had done at first.
And so I was sitting in the
car wondering what to do.
I have to admit, I was
tempted to drive off.
She'd stomped off like
she was never coming back.
I should drive off.
It felt really stupid to just
sit there waiting for her.
It felt like she
was the princess,
and she would calm down, and
I was literally her attendant
in waiting.
And when she came to her senses,
I would drive her someplace.
But fortunately, I
did not drive off.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: So
that was very fortunate.
So I got back in the car,
and Marty's reading the map
like this.
He's ignoring me and
pretending like I'm not there.
So this makes me even madder.
So now I'm really furious.
So without thinking about it,
actually I grab the map out
of Marty's hands, and
I start shredding it.
I'm tearing it
into little pieces,
and I'm throwing it
all over the car.
And Marty's looking at me like,
I don't know what to do next.
But luckily, he
started laughing.
So he's laughing hysterically,
I'm shredding the map,
and then I start
laughing hysterically.
So then at that point
what we need to do
is we need to take all
the pieces of the map
and put it back together so
we can figure out where to go.
So you can see
just a little shift
like that, Marty deciding to
laugh instead of get deeper
in the garbage of our silly
argument, changed everything.
So just a small shift can
change everything, and that's
the power of compassion,
which we're really
talking about today.
And as we wrote our
book, we realized
that this tearing up the map was
a metaphor for the whole book,
that we each brought unconscious
maps to our relationship,
and it kept helping
us drive off cliffs.
And that it was scary
to leave the old map,
because we knew that
map, but we decided
we weren't going to
keep driving off cliffs,
so we had to stop and make new
maps and go new directions.
MARTIN HELLMAN: It's
amazing how much
we like holding
onto those old maps,
even though they keep
taking us bad places.
And the same is true
internationally.
And in this talk, we have time
for just one piece of evidence,
and that will be the United
States national security.
In 1945, at the end
of World War II,
we had not been touched
by the devastation.
Europe had been devastated,
but the United States
had been inviolate during
World War II, our homeland.
And in the intervening
72 years, we've
spent literally trillions
upon trillions of dollars
to improve our
national security.
We've put some of our best
minds to work to maximize
the value of that investment.
And let's look at where
the old map has taken us.
1945, we could not be touched.
2017, we can be destroyed
in under an hour by Russia,
by China, and if North Korea
keeps doing what it's doing
and we keep doing what we're
doing with North Korea--
which I'll get to in
about 10 minutes--
North Korea might be able
to take out San Francisco.
Maybe the old map is
not working so well
internationally as well.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: So
the first key step
is to believe that peace is
possible, internationally
and personally.
If we don't believe that peace
is possible, it won't happen.
And if it never happens, society
will never see it happen,
and we'll just never get there.
Changes in society
depend on just a few
courageous individuals
making shifts
when societal beliefs
are mistaken or wrong
or misunderstood.
My grandmother was born around
1900 and when she was born,
women were not allowed to
vote in the United States.
Now, because of that, I've
never missed an election.
And if the suffragettes hadn't
done something around 1900,
I still might not
be able to vote.
Mark Twain said it very well.
He said, they didn't know it
was impossible, so they did it.
Marty and I know that
peace is possible,
because we transformed
a 35-year-old--
because we transformed a
turbulent marriage that
was almost on the
rocks 35 years ago
into one where we haven't
had an argument in 15 years.
A marriage like that seemed
impossible from where
we stood there, just as
many people now believe
that world peace is impossible.
The lessons we had to
learn in our marriage
were the same lessons we have
to learn internationally.
If we keep getting
into wars, one of them
will escalate into
nuclear threats,
and therefore into nuclear war.
We just can't afford it.
That's why the key
takeaway from this talk
is Your Learning to
Compassionately Resolve
Personal Conflicts Will Help
Determine Whether Civilization
Survives.
I hope you're
starting to see why
this is not an overstatement.
MARTIN HELLMAN: Well,
even though it's not
an overstatement, many people
have told me-- actually,
several people have
told me before they
read the book they
were very skeptical,
but after reading it,
we'd made a good case.
Since most of you have
not read the book,
I'm going to give you two
appraisals of the book that
come from authoritative
individuals that
help to deal with this question
of how creating true love home
actually carries over to
creating peace on the planet.
The first is a former Secretary
of Defense, Bill Perry.
He's a colleague of
mine at Stanford now.
He was Secretary of
Defense under Bill Clinton.
And he calls the book truly
unique, and recommends quote,
"That it should be read by
couples seeking peace at home
as well as by diplomats
seeking peace in the world."
Karl Eikenberry, who
was a three-star general
in Afghanistan, led
the coalition troops,
and then later under President
Obama was our ambassador
to Afghanistan--
also now a colleague of mine
at Stanford-- read the book
and calls it quote, "The
most thoughtful, unique,
and fascinating
book I've ever read
on personal and
international diplomacy."
So skepticism is
understandable, but I
hope quotes like that will help
you get over the skepticism,
or at least get you
to read it on your own
and form your own opinion.
I'm just going to move these
over just a little bit.
Now, how we respond to
conflict at the personal level
determines how we
as a nation respond
to conflict on the
international stage.
How can anyone be at
war with their spouse,
with colleagues at work,
and say with a straight face
that peace is
possible in the world?
It just doesn't work.
It's much easier to
call for world peace--
I want world peace--
than it is to create
peace at home.
I know that from
personal experience.
It's also the most
rewarding thing I ever did,
so it was worth
all that hard work.
For anyone who wants
to improve the world,
personal relationships
are the testing ground
for that larger vision.
Conversely, because we have
transformed our marriage from--
I sometimes say we
fought all the time,
and Dorothie would object.
So we changed it,
frequent fights.
Is that OK?
Frequent fights, to one where
as Dorothie has pointed out,
fights are now a
nightmare of the past.
I didn't think
that was possible,
and I have to give her full
credit for that vision,
and of dragging me
through this process,
at times kicking and screaming.
And now I'm really grateful.
I didn't think a marriage where
you don't fight was possible.
We still disagree, by the
way, about a lot of things.
We learn a lot from each
other because we disagree.
But what's the
point in fighting?
When did yelling at her
ever get me what I wanted?
And yet in the old map,
that's what I kept doing.
That's one of the cliffs
that we kept driving off.
Our marriage became a laboratory
in which we carried out
repeated experiments
for learning
how adversaries might
solve what appear
to be insoluble conflicts.
So having achieved true peace
in what had been an extremely
turbulent marriage, we
can say with conviction
that peace is possible
at the world level,
because we as Dorothie said,
it was inconceivable to us--
or at least to
me-- that we could
have this kind of
relationship, just as it's
inconceivable to
most people today
that we could have peace
at the world of level.
They didn't know it was
impossible, so they did it.
So now, you're going to
tell them about my parents.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: I'm going
to tell a story about how just
one person can make a shift.
There's always the
question, OK, if there are
two of you working, it's good.
But how about if
there's only one?
Well, I'm going to tell you
a story about my in-laws.
Marty comes from a Jewish
family, and I don't.
And his parents
were very concerned
about him marrying
outside the faith.
So I know I had this problem.
So when I met his parents,
they were pretty nice to me.
But the day after
I met his father,
we were talking in
the kitchen, and he
said, Dorothie, you
remind me of my mother.
And I said, why,
thank you very much.
And he said, I never
liked my mother.
We didn't get along.
So now I've got a problem.
So this continued, and
it was so painful for me
that I tried different things.
I tried taking Valium,
that didn't work.
Somebody at one of
these talks suggested
that I should have given them
Valium, that didn't work.
So eventually I
stopped going, just
because it wrecked the whole--
my children should have a good
visit with their grandchildren.
So what I decided
to do was I decided
to go with total compassion.
And I was going to
visit, and my whole goal
was to make them feel loved.
And nothing they said had
anything to do with me.
It was totally irrelevant.
And it totally worked.
They felt totally loved by me.
They felt that I made
this huge change,
and they felt that all the
problems in our relationship
had shifted.
And even the Jewish
part went away.
So compassion is a power tool.
That's what I'd say about that.
And if you think about
it, in the old map,
Dorothie taking
full responsibility
and not worrying about
what my parents said
and deciding that the visit was
a success if my parents felt
loved by her no matter
what they said or did,
she'd be seen as a
wimp in the old map.
And yet you can see
from the results
that she was far from a wimp.
Compassion gave her
tremendous power.
So the old map and the new map
are really totally different,
and it's hard to understand
the new map until you
start experimenting with it.
I know that was true for me.
I now do things that would
have seemed crazy to me
35 years ago, and they
work out wonderfully.
So what about
internationally, though?
OK, we've just seen
how sometimes it
only takes one party to
a conflict to resolve
an interpersonal one.
But what about internationally?
How can the United
States resolve
the conflict we have with
nations like North Korea, Iran,
Russia?
I mean, those seem impossible.
They have to change, don't they?
Well, in the book we have seven
international case studies,
including those three nations.
There are four other
nations that are dealt with.
In this talk, we just
have time for one.
So I'm going to
take what's probably
the hardest one, North Korea.
North Korea probably wouldn't
have any nuclear weapons today
if President Bush hadn't
torn up a nuclear agreement
that we had with them in 2002.
That agreement kept them
from extracting plutonium.
It protected their
plutonium stockpile.
It was under international
lock and key.
When he tore it up, they
kicked the inspectors out,
and they started
extracting plutonium.
And four years later,
they did their first test.
Now, this is so contrary to
what you read in the media,
that when you read that
section of the book,
you notice lots of
little numbered endnotes.
They were kind of
unobtrusive that way.
But if you want to see the
source documents that back this
up, you go to the end of the
book, and you can find them.
And in fact, if you go online to
the book's website anewmap.com
and then you add slash
notes, all of those notes
are repeated online
with clickable links
where appropriate.
And so if you want to see some
of these top secret Documents
with the top secret crossed
out, now declassified,
you can see that.
But in this talk, I'll
just mention something
as backup for that statement.
I'll read from a paper written
by a former director of Los
Alamos Nuclear
Weapons Laboratory.
Not a peacenik.
He's now a colleague of
mine, Dr. Siegfried Hecker.
And he's visited North
Korea seven times
on what are known as track
two diplomatic missions.
So he has firsthand
information on this country,
as well as knowing nuclear
weapons really well.
In fact, the joke
about Sieg is he
hasn't met a phase of
plutonium he doesn't like.
He's a chemical
engineer by training,
and plutonium is his specialty.
And plutonium is
really interesting,
he's explained a
bit of it to me.
But here's what he wrote to
back up what I just said.
"Our nuclear agreement
with North Korea
was opposed immediately by
many in Congress who believed
that it rewarded bad behavior."
if that sounds like what's
going on now with Iran,
that's a good reason for it.
"Congress failed to
appropriate funds
for key provisions of the
pact, causing the United States
to fall behind in
its commitments
almost from the beginning."
You don't read about
that very much.
"In 2002, the Bush
administration
killed the agreed framework for
domestic political reasons."
End of quote from
Hecker's paper.
But the end note has a
link to the entire paper,
if you want to read it.
So as I said, in
response, North Korea
kicked out the inspectors who
were guarding their plutonium
stockpile, and they did
their first nuclear test
four years later.
Now, our book section
on North Korea
goes further and explains why
North Korea would probably
have over 100 nuclear
weapons today if it
hadn't been for that agreement.
Even though Bush abrogated
the agreement in 2002,
it was enforced for
eight years, and it
had some really
beneficial effects for us.
Again, you don't read
about that in the media.
And so the reason they'd have
probably 100 nuclear warheads
or more, in 1994 when that
agreement went into effect,
they were a year or two away
from completing a large nuclear
reactor that would have
made enough plutonium--
and very good
plutonium, by the way--
enough plutonium for
about 10 bombs a year.
So let's say it's finished in
1996, 21 years have elapsed.
They'd have enough
plutonium for 210 warheads.
Instead, they just have
a very small plutonium
stockpile from a much smaller
reactor 1/10 the size of that.
And in fact, not only did
they stop construction
of that larger reactor
under the nuclear agreement
that we had with
them, but it started
to rust so badly from exposure
to the elements in the eight
years that the agreement
was in force that--
Hecker was there in
his last visit in 2010,
he told me he saw cranes that
were having to dismantle it,
because it was
going to fall down
from exposure to the elements.
And so when he gave
a guest lecture
in a seminar around a
nuclear weapons risk and hope
at Stanford, on
North Korea he made
a column A, what we got
from nuclear diplomacy
with North Korea, and
column B, what they got.
And if you look at
the two columns,
we got more from nuclear
diplomacy with North Korea
than they did.
And again, that's very
contrary to the impression
you get from reading the media.
And so it's important to go
back and get at the facts
and avoid the fake news.
So internationally, as
well as interpersonally,
it's often possible
for us to make progress
on resolving a conflict when
it seems like the other side's
not interested.
I mean, that same thing happened
here in our relationship.
So many times, I felt
like I was doing all--
I mean, earlier.
Not the last 10,
15, even 20 years.
But 25 years ago, I
remember I was so mad at her
at times, because I was
doing all this hard work.
I was committed to doing it, and
she wasn't doing a damn thing.
Guess how she felt?
The mirror image.
It felt to her like she
was doing all of it,
because you don't realize
when the other person is
doing the hard work.
They're just doing what
they should be doing.
But the same is true
internationally in many cases.
There's another example of one
party to a conflict starting
a process of reconciliation.
And this one is
particularly nice for here
at Google, because it
involves cryptography.
And it's also nice, because
I was one of the parties
to the conflict,
but I wasn't the one
who initiated the resolution.
It was the director of NSA at
the time, Admiral Bobby Inman.
This was 1978.
So as some of you know--
but background for
the rest of you--
in the 1970s, I was
at war with NSA.
There were a number of
reasons, but I'll focus here
on publishing my papers
on cryptography, including
the one which was cited
in the Turing Award--
"New Directions
in Cryptography",
which appeared in November 1976.
NSA took the position that
research in cryptography
was born classified,
meaning that even though I
had no benefit of
classified information,
nor did Whit Diffie
in writing that paper,
the NSA had the right
to stop its publication.
And I was in
violation of the law,
and could be prosecuted
and even thrown in jail
for publishing it in
international journals,
because it was then
being exported.
Well, I fought back.
I'm from the Bronx,
and I fought back.
Dorothie was very grateful when
it became big news, because she
said, now if something
happens to you,
there will be an investigation.
But we never talked directly.
We were fighting it
out in the press.
And of course we
didn't get very far.
Until 1978-- so several
years into the fight--
I get a call at my
office at Stanford,
and it's from the
director's office at NSA,
and they tell me that the
director Admiral Bobby Inman is
going to be in California
in a couple of weeks,
and would I be willing
to meet with him?
Well, I jumped at
the opportunity.
I mean, him and I were
fighting it out in the press.
And a couple of weeks later,
Inman shows up at my office,
and he told me that
he was meeting with me
against the advice of all
the other senior people
at the agency.
And these are the
key words, he said,
but I don't see the
harm in talking.
Now, what's our position
with North Korea today?
We're not going to talk to
them unless it's about their
getting rid of their weapons.
What's the harm in talking?
But coming back to Inman,
he told me another thing.
He looked over at
me and he said,
nice to see you
don't have horns.
That's how I was being
portrayed at NSA.
And I can understand why
they saw it that way.
And I looked back at him
and I said, same here.
Because I had been portraying--
I'd been demonizing
nSA I mean, they
were threatening to
throw me in jail.
Some people told me my wife
might even be in danger.
Maybe not from them, but from
their foreign equivalents.
And it was nice to
really see a human being
and stop the
demonization process.
And from that initial meeting,
which was very cautious,
our relationship
grew to the point
that we now regard
each other as friends.
And that relationship,
that friendship,
played a role and
maybe even a key role,
in liberalizing the export
regime for encryption,
so that today products that
we use on our smartphones,
on our computers, can have
relatively strong encryption
that was impossible in 1978.
And so there was a really
positive outcome from what's
the harm in talking.
And I think we need to take that
to heart both internationally
like with North Korea, and
certainly it played a big role
in this relationship.
Well, there's a lot
more that could be said,
but that's why we have the book.
We don't have 10
hours for the talk,
so we hope you'll read the book.
There are copies in
the back of the room,
and we thank Google for making
them available free of charge
to those of you here.
The rest of you out there,
gee, how do we get free books?
Well, it's really easy.
You go to the book's
website, anewmap.com.
So that's the first
three words of the title,
a new map, run
together, dot com.
Go to the Get The Book tab,
and there's a link there
for getting a free PDF.
We can't give everybody
free hardcopies,
but you can download a free PDF.
And it also has links to
Amazon and Barnes Noble
so you can order it that way.
Let's end by returning
to the key takeaway
that we want you to
get from this talk.
Your Learning o Compassionately
Resolve Personal Conflicts
Will Help Determine Whether
Civilization Survives.
And here I'm going to go to
former Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor,
the first woman
to serve on the Supreme Court.
It turns out she and Dorothie
and I share a common mentor,
a common teacher.
His name was professor
Harry Rathbun.
He was born in the
1890s, died in the 1980s.
So he was into his own 90s.
He lived to I think
93, 94 years of age.
And Justice O'Connor
knew him around 1950
when she was an
undergraduate at Stanford.
Dorothie and I knew
Harry in the 1980s
toward the end of his life.
And here's what
Justice O'Connor wrote
in a letter encouraging
Stanford students to work
with me on a related project,
because we both had learned so
much from Harry she
was willing to write
this letter encouraging
them to work on a project.
And here's the quote
from the letter.
"When I was an undergraduate
at Stanford University,
Professor Harry Rathbun
repeatedly emphasized to me
that a single caring
individual could
make a difference
in this huge world,
and might even help determine
the course of events."
You can see that relating to
the takeaway from this talk.
"I had not heard that before,
but he put it forward so
persuasively, that
many of us came
to believe it might be true,
and to take seriously the notion
that we could make a difference.
I can now say unequivocally
that he was right."
End of quote from
Justice O'Connor.
So Dorothie and I
fully agree, and we're
going to end this
part of the talk
with one of Harry's pearls of
wisdom that I'll never forget.
And he summarized it by,
"Why not assume the nobler
hypothesis?"
Well, in this situation,
there are two hypotheses.
The nobler hypothesis
is that we human beings
are capable of radical
change so that we
can have true love
in our relationships
even 50 years into them,
and we can bring peace
to the planet, as impossible
as that might seem.
That's the nobler hypothesis.
The less noble hypothesis,
which is prevalent in society,
is that that's impossible.
Well, Harry pointed out,
if we accept the less noble
hypothesis, we're doomed,
even if we were capable
of radical change, because
we won't be motivated,
we won't think we can
make a difference.
They knew it was impossible,
they didn't do it.
And we're going to go down in
a nuclear war at some point
in time, because it's
only a matter of time
before one of these needless
wars escalates out of control.
The nobler hypothesis
is that we are
capable of that radical change.
And the worst that happens if
we accept the nobler hypothesis
is that we go down fighting.
And we might.
In fact, more than might.
I think we have a good
chance of actually making it
as a civilization.
So I can still see
Harry telling me
this toward the end of his
life with a twinkle in his eye.
He said, "Why not assume
that nobler hypothesis?"
Indeed, why not?
So let's see, there's
one more thing.
That's really the end
of the call to action.
But now if you agree and want to
do something, what can you do?
So I've got a small list here,
but I need to turn the page.
Well, read the book.
That would be a great start.
Or at least start
to read the book.
If you don't like it,
give it to someone else.
If you like it, read the thing.
If you like it, get
another copy and give it
to friends or family.
Oh, we also have cards that
we'll put out on the table
up here.
They're very inexpensive.
They cost a couple
of cents each,
with the name of the book, the
website, and an email address.
If you want to take
five or 10 of them,
if you have five or 10 friends
that you'd recommend the book
to.
And recommend they
download the PDF,
and the website will
allow them to do that.
If you'd like to
continue this discussion,
if you want to play
a more direct role,
email us at the email
address on that card and say,
hey, I want to get involved.
What can I do?
And we'll figure something out.
If you do those
things, you'll not only
help to make the
world a better place,
your life will get
better as well.
So we hope you'll join us.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
So now we go to questions.
AUDIENCE: One can gain
tremendous satisfaction
from telling other people
that they're wrong,
and this sort of
pursuit of truth
is something that's
counterproductive I think
in a lot of heated
discussions in a relationship
or political disagreement.
Is there any way to
have that satisfaction
of proving the facts
and still reconcile
with the opposing party?
MARTIN HELLMAN: Tell
them about the card
you put on our bedroom door.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: You can either
be right or you can be happy.
MARTIN HELLMAN: There's another
thing that I would add to that.
She actually had a card.
She saw it, found
it in the store,
and bought it, and taped it
to the door to our bedroom.
Every time I walked in and
out, I had to see that.
And as a Stanford professor,
I used to want to be right.
Now I'd rather be happy.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: What's
really important is
to understand the joy of coming
to an understanding together
of something that works
right for everybody.
That joy is so much more
than the joy of being right,
for everybody to be right.
So that's what I'd
say about that.
AUDIENCE: I was wondering with
the Republican and Democratic
parties, you know, labeling
everything as fake news.
There seems to be no path
towards reconciliation
under what's
currently happening.
What do you think would be best
to move that situation forward?
DOROTHIE HELLMAN:
What are you doing?
MARTIN HELLMAN: I just
happened to bring a copy
of "Time Magazine" with me.
The fake news is
primarily being--
well, let's see, depending
which side you're on.
I mean, it all surrounds
President Trump
and whether he's got fake news
or whether the news about him
is fake.
It's important to recognize that
most of the news you're reading
internationally is fake news.
I'll give you an example.
This is I think the current
issue of "Time Magazine",
and it's got five essays
on North Korea in it.
And one of them says--
this is written by a former
Undersecretary of State
for Political Affairs
and another person.
"Successive US administrations
have tried various strategies
to thwart the
dangerous trajectory
of the North Korean regime.
Some have made progress, only
to be set back by North Korean
perfidy by changes
in policy directions
and by cautious partners
and allies in the region."
Now notice, while they
do say several things,
the one you remember is
North Korea's bad behavior.
And yet go back, the
other ones are actually
more important from
our point of view,
because that's
where we have power.
And I mean, the
basic impression I
get from reading about
North Korea in the media,
including "The New
York Times" and "Time
Magazine" and the
more progressive side
is that it's a waste of time
doing new diplomacy with North
Korea.
They delay, all
the time cheating,
even if there's no
cheating to be done,
and then when you
have an agreement,
they cheat, and
then they blackmail.
Well, compare that with
what I told you today,
and which you can
verify on your own.
And if you find that
I'm wrong in any way
or have any questions, email me.
And I'll be happy to
find out about that.
But I think you'll
find that it's right.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: There
is something else.
It's a mess, but when Trump
comes up with something
true, like we're not
so good after all,
everybody jumps all over him and
says, how could you say that?
So we're not ready
for Prime Time.
MARTIN HELLMAN: Right,
that was when he was saying
something positive about Putin.
I think it was Fox News, even.
The interviewer said,
but Putin is a murderer.
And he said, well, we're
not so innocent either.
And both left and right
jumped on him about that.
The only place we
can really stop
the needless
killing in the world
is where we're
responsible for it.
That's where we
have direct control.
And there's been
a lot of needless
killing that we've done.
But yet, as Dorothie said,
he gets jumped on for that.
Other?
AUDIENCE: The world seems
to be in some conflict
with the natural world as well.
Does your set of principles
apply to the nonhuman
organisms on this planet?
MARTIN HELLMAN: Sure,
things like global warming,
environmental degradation?
Yeah, the group that we
got involved with back
in 1980-- which by the
way, doesn't exist anymore,
so we're not trying to
recruit for that group.
Plus we left it.
Dorothie left in '87
and I left in '88--
started with
environmental issues.
That was 1980.
1981, Reagan became president
and brought the nuclear threat
into sharp focus for us,
just as Trump is doing that
for many people today.
So that's another positive
to the Trump presidency.
The world was
dangerous under Carter,
the world was dangerous under
Obama, but only under Trump,
only under Reagan did it
become clear to the public.
And we realized that the
greatest environmental threat
of all was a nuclear war.
And that's where we
shifted our energy
from environmental
degradation in general
to nuclear war in particular.
And as we researched
nuclear war,
we concluded you couldn't deal
with nuclear war in isolation.
You had to deal with
the whole war system,
that North Korea, for example,
thought nuclear weapons, partly
because it feared conventional
attack by the United States,
which was much more powerful.
And so it definitely applies
to those other issues as well.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: And
the same principle
is needed too to
get away from war.
The same principles we need
to address global warming
and all global issues.
MARTIN HELLMAN: And
so we didn't have time
to go into-- we talked
about compassion.
The other approach to looking
at is holistic thinking.
We had to seek solutions
that worked for both of us.
We need as a nation
to seek solutions
that work for the whole world.
And just as we found
out that giving up
what we thought we
wanted and seeking
those holistic solutions
usually produced things
that were better for me and
better for her than what
we thought we wanted
going into it,
the same would be true for the
United States internationally.
AUDIENCE: So I'm
trying to put together
the take home from this talk.
And I could sort of see
it with relationships,
you know, assume my wife is
well-meaning and understanding
and she wants the best and I
do, and we can work it out.
But I'm having trouble with that
same idea with al-Qaeda, North
Korea, et cetera.
Are there people who are
evil and want our demise?
Are you saying yes,
maybe there are,
but we should talk to them
anyway, and it'll work out?
But practically speaking,
what is the take
home with difficult situations
where people don't have
our best interest at heart.
MARTIN HELLMAN: Good question.
Well, we've already dealt with
North Korea, to some extent.
AUDIENCE: All I've heard
is that we should talk
to them, practically speaking.
MARTIN HELLMAN: And we should
recognize mistakes we've made.
Instead of accepting the--
the societal belief
in America is
that it's all North
Korea's fault.
And if you read the North Korean
section of the book, which
would take you
five to 10 minutes,
you'll come away with a
very different picture.
And then go to the
sources and see
if I'm wrong about anything.
But let's take al-Qaeda,
which is harder--
I mean, to the
extent that al-Qaeda
seems largely responsible
for September 11, what
a horrible, horrible thing.
Well, it helps to try to
understand their perspective.
You don't necessarily
agree with it.
But it helps to understand
the perspective,
and we'll be able to combat
them more effectively if we do,
rather than just
demonizing them.
Turns out, Osama bin Laden
felt that the United States
was responsible for 4 million
Muslim deaths, including
many children.
He blames both us directly for
the Iraq war and the sanctions
that followed, but also
our support for Israel
and how that has affected.
He may be wrong on
the numbers, but he
does have a legitimate
point there,
that we have not been adequately
concerned with Muslim deaths.
And he then goes to an
eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth, which
I disagree with.
But if we would understand
instead of just demonizing him,
if we would try to understand
where he came from,
it might help us to realize
where we could pull back
in the world, where we're
caught we're actually
creating more jihadists.
It's often said when we
have a drone strike that
kills innocent civilians, you
may take out one jihadist,
but you create 10 more.
We need to look at that.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN:
The other thing
that we really don't consider is
that they really want to be OK.
They want to survive.
We've taken out a lot of
what we call bad actors.
We've killed a lot of
leaders because they
didn't follow our rules.
And I think that if you
look at North Korea,
they're not very happy
to be playing with us,
because we don't play
by very good rules.
And so I think you need
to consider that when
you think that they're willing
to deal with us at all.
Yeah, I think we
need to talk to them
and treat them as if they
have a right to do their thing
their way.
MARTIN HELLMAN: Not
here, but over there.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: Right.
And I don't think we do that.
Do you?
MARTIN HELLMAN: Well,
one of the things
we say in the book is we're
out for regime change in North
Korea.
I mean, we don't often
put it that bluntly,
but if you think
about it, and you
look at how we've done
regime change in Iraq,
regime change in Libya, and
we're trying to do it in Syria,
you can see where the
North Koreans would
believe that we're out
for regime change there.
And if you study it, you'll
see that we really want it,
and the sanctions
are partly intended
to cripple the regime
economically and produce
a revolution.
Now, regime change
in North Korea,
let's imagine Kim Jong Un.
What does regime change going
to mean for you personally
in your life?
You're going to die.
So as long as we're
out for regime change,
the only way you can counter
us is with nuclear weapons
and ballistic missiles.
Now, I don't like the
regime over there,
but we have a decision to make.
Are we going to give up on
regime change in North Korea
and then have some hope of
reigning in their programs,
or are we going to keep going
for regime change, in which
case there's no
way they're going
to give up their programs?
And we made it
harder, by the way.
And this is in the North
Korea section of the book.
In 2003, Gaddafi gave up
his nuclear weapons program.
President Bush, in a speech
that's on the State Department
website-- so you don't have
to take my word for it--
welcomed him into
the family of nations
and said his good
behavior will be rewarded.
In 2011, when we helped
get the guy murdered,
North Korea put out a press
release that said, yeah,
we've learned our lesson.
That's how you
reward good behavior.
So it's not to
overlook the danger
that these people post to us.
It's not to become
some Pollyanna.
But it's to start getting
beyond our fears, our anger,
and our hatred, and dealing
with it more objectively.
And by the way, the other
thing you have to worry about,
this new map is not
going to take over
the nation all at once.
And so even if we
were Pollyannas,
you wouldn't have to worry about
things changing immediately.
And as it started
to gain traction,
then you could see whether
we need to pull back.
Another question in the back.
AUDIENCE: How do you maintain
peace in your marriage now,
and do you have a daily
or weekly practice that
helps to maintain that?
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: We practice
positive, unconditional regard.
We know that the other person
has their best intent for us,
and we practice compassion.
And we spend a lot of
time telling each other
how much we love each other.
We spend little moments with
each other when we're away.
We call each other
and remind each other
that we love each other, and
we're grateful for each other.
Would you add anything?
MARTIN HELLMAN: Yeah.
So one of the short
takeaways in the book
is get curious, not furious.
It used to be when she did
things that I didn't like,
I'd get angry at her.
I'd yell at her, which
then started a cycle
of psychological violence.
Now, when she's doing something
that seems strange or crazy
to me, I ask her questions.
And there's a story in
the book about a new car
2 and 1/2 years ago.
Our two cars at that
point were three years old
and six years old,
and we typically
keep the cars for 10, 15 years.
And so this crazy woman
is looking at new cars.
And the only thing--
I mean, that's how it seemed.
I mean, I knew she wasn't crazy.
But I couldn't get past the
feeling that what she was doing
was crazy.
And so I went to her and
I said, what are you doing
feels crazy to me, but
I know you're not crazy.
What am I missing?
I got curious
instead of furious.
She then explained that a newer
car-- the three-year-old car
had a backup camera
and blind spot
detection that the
six-year-old car did not have.
Those safety features made her
much more comfortable driving.
And the new car
she was looking at
had even more safety features,
like collision avoidance
for rear-end collision.
And at our age, and especially
with the medication she's on,
it would give her
more independence.
All of a sudden,
what had seemed crazy
was brilliant, not only
for her, but for me.
It's made my driving a
lot more comfortable.
In fact, every time we drive
that car on a road trip,
I thank her for doing this
thing that seemed crazy to me.
The other thing I'd add--
and it kind of relates
with what Dorothie said--
every relationship has a
bank account of goodwill.
When we first met and
we were madly in love,
we got married nine
months after we met.
You only took
seven, I know, Tim.
But we were quickly
madly in love.
The bank account
was overflowing.
Anything she wanted, I wanted
to do for her, and vice versa.
But then life set in,
two kids, a mortgage,
financial questions,
and the bank account
went from positive
to zero, and was
headed for what's called
marriage bankruptcy.
And it took us years to
rebuild the bank account.
But now the bank
account is so positive
that we can have that
unconditional positive regard.
And a small thing that
feels like a slight wrong,
like her looking at
the cars, does not
become the big issue it
would have 30 years ago.
AUDIENCE: With regard to
international issues--
America, al-Qaeda, whatever--
I'm wondering how these
principles can help there.
Because at the end of
the day, you can only
control your own actions.
You can't really control
what al-Qaeda, whoever's
on the other side, or maybe
even your spouse is going to do.
And I'm wondering what kind
of actual practical advice
you might have that might
help the world become a better
place.
Because it's only we who
can control our actions,
and we can't control
what other people do.
MARTIN HELLMAN: There's
a story in there
where I have this
epiphany, which relates
very much to what you say.
We had a huge fight.
Must have been 30
years ago, maybe more.
And I cool down enough to
think through, and I realized,
now which would I
rather was true,
that my current
perception was correct,
that was all this
crazy woman's fault--
which is how I saw
her at that moment--
in which case, I was
powerless to get out
of the pain I was in,
or would I rather that I
was missing something, and I
had played a part in this fight?
In which case, I could apologize
for that, which would give me
power to start a process
that might get me out
of the pain I was in.
With that motivation,
I found the role
I had played in the fight,
I apologized to her,
she apologized for what she had
done, and the argument ended.
And in the same way--
I'm not saying al-Qaeda
will respond that way.
But all we can do is look
for where we've made mistakes
and correct those.
And fortunately, there
are a huge number
of mistakes that we've made as
a nation that we could correct.
I also would recommend
that we don't
start with al-Qaeda or with the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In fact, we had a
section on Israel
in an early draft of
the book that we pulled.
AUDIENCE: No, I
totally buy all this.
I'm just wondering from a
practical standpoint how much--
MARTIN HELLMAN:
Practical standpoint?
Well, we also should go
for the low-hanging fruit.
So just like Israel-Palestine
is not the low hanging fruit,
Russia-US is the
low-hanging fruit.
What conflicts do we
have with Russia, really?
Ukraine?
Not that big a deal.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN:
So maybe you need
to talk to your congressman
and those kinds of things.
MARTIN HELLMAN:
Oh, you're asking
what can we do as individuals?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
MARTIN HELLMAN: Oh,
a couple of things.
First of all, the most
effective thing you can do
is to bring greater
and greater peace
to your personal relationships,
because that will motivate
you to continue
the process, and it
will make you a
convincing advocate
for these seemingly
impossible changes
at the international level.
If you really want to
play a role, contact us,
we'll talk through our
email address on the cards.
And we'd love to talk with you
about what role you might play.
I contribute to a number of
congressional candidates.
And the way I choose them
is when they call me--
and once you give to a few, a
whole bunch start calling you.
[LAUGHTER]
I have this huge
target painted on me.
I always discuss with them these
issues, North Korea, Russia,
and whether they're
interested in informing a more
objective based foreign
policy, instead of based
on the demonization of Russia
that we have, and so on.
And I'm actually working
with some of them
to see whether we might
get that information out
to other people within Congress.
But if you don't give
money to congressmen,
you can always write
letters to your congressmen,
your senators.
And you might wonder
living in California
what difference that makes.
Because for example
Senator Feinstein
is going to vote the
way I would want her to
on most of these issues.
But someone pointed out to me
who really knows how Washington
works that lobbying Feinstein is
very important on these issues,
because she has great
political capital in DC.
People on both sides of
the aisle respect her.
But how she spends
that political capital
depends on what she
sees as important.
And getting her to move
these issues up in her agenda
will cause her to do more.
DOROTHIE HELLMAN: There is one
other thing that's important.
We don't know how these
changes are going to occur.
Just like in 1900,
we didn't know
how we were going to get
to women voting in 1920.
But we knew that the more
people talked about this,
the more they acted on
it, the more it spread.
It was going to happen.
So we don't know the magic
that happens out there
to get something
like this started.
All we know is that
we can do our part.
We can talk to people about it.
We can behave it.
We can do what we can.
But we can't see from
here to there to know.
We can only do our part.
Get a group of friends
together to all read the book
and discuss each chapter and
then tear it apart, and see
whether you agree or disagree.
That creates a small group.
But that's how all
these things work.
ANDRE: Thank you very
much, Martin and Dorothie,
for coming.
And let's give them
a round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
