Episode 24 – Eric Talbot Jensen (Cyberwarfare)

This podcast audio has been transcribed by an automatic transcriber.

Fred Rocafort 0:08
Global law and global business go hand in hand but never seem to keep pace with each other, BRICS and other developing and developed nations wax and wane and their importance on the global stage. While consumption and interconnectedness both increase, laws and regulations change incessantly requiring businesses to stay nimble. How do we make sense of it all? Welcome to Global Law and Business posted by Harris Sliwoski International Business attorneys. I’m Fred Rocafort,

Jonathan Bench 0:34
and I’m Jonathan Bench. Every Thursday, we take a bite sized look at legal and economic developments and locales around the world as we try to decipher global trends in law and business with the help of our international guests. We cover continents, countries, regimes, governance, finances, legal developments, and whatever is trending on Twitter. We cover the important the seemingly unimportant, the relatively simple and the complex.

Fred Rocafort 0:59
We hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. Please connect with us via email on social media to comment and suggest future topics and guests.

Jonathan Bench 1:17
Today we are joined by Eric Talbot Jensen professor of law at Brigham Young University Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of public international law, criminal law, the law of armed conflict, international criminal law, cyber law and national security law. Professor Jensen is a co author on a law school case book on the law of armed conflict and a student treatise on national security law for Aspen publishing, as well as a co author of an Oxford University text analyzing application of the laws of war to the war on terror. He was a member of the group of experts that produced the both the talent manual on the international law applicable to cyber warfare, and the recently released talent manual 2.0 on the international law applicable to cyber operations. Professor Jensen recently returned to BYU law school after serving for one year as the special counsel to the Department of Defense General Counsel. Prior to joining the BYU Law Faculty in 2011, he spent two years teaching at Fordham Law School in New York City, and 20 years in the United States Army as both a cavalry officer and as a Judge Advocate. During his time as a Judge Advocate, Professor Jensen served in various positions, including as the chief of the Army’s international law branch, Deputy legal advisor for Task Force, Baghdad, Professor of International and operational law at the Judge Advocate General’s legal center and school legal advisor to the US contingent of UN forces deployed to Macedonia as part of UNPREDEP and legal advisor in Bosnia in support of Operation joint endeavor guard. Eric, thank you for being with us today.

Eric Talbot Jensen 2:51
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Fred Rocafort 2:52
Eric, always a pleasure to have a fellow graduate of Notre Dame law school on the show.

Eric Talbot Jensen 2:58
Go Irish!

Fred Rocafort 3:00
Go Irish. So public international law is not really law in the traditional way that we think about when we are thinking about the operation of law within a sovereign country’s borders. Tell us a bit about how international public international laws develop and are enforced?

Eric Talbot Jensen 3:22
Well, it is a bit different with domestic law you most countries have a legislator legislature that makes the laws, some kind of president or prime minister that runs an executive branch that enforces the laws, and the judiciary that then rules on the laws, whether they’re constitutional or not. That’s certainly the pattern we have in the United States. But international law is indeed very different. The foundation of international law is the sovereignty of countries and their sovereign agency. And fundamental to public international law is the ability for nations to decide what rules will and will not bind them. And underlying all of that is a principle of international law that says that states can basically do what they want unless they’re specifically prohibited from doing so. So after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, this system emerges where states are sovereign, and they kind of run the international community. And they set up the system so that they have complete free will unless they decide to limit themselves through consensus. And that really becomes a key aspect of international law that is vastly different than most domestic law systems. So people say, Well, how is it law, there’s no checks and balances, those checks and balances exist between states. So the fact that a group of states is angry that one state takes an action, that’s the check and balance and they could respond to that state either through things like force, they could invade, or they could stop trading with them or they could have diplomatic engagement with them. So enforcement doesn’t look like a policeman pulling you over. But states do have ways to enforce this in the way that they interact with each other.

Jonathan Bench 4:56
I picture this as a bunch of kids at the playground around a sandbox policing each other, right? That’s how I think about public international laws is there’s no, there’s no oversight from the principal or the teacher, right? They’re often some corner of the schoolyard. And everybody has to play nice with each other. And if they don’t, it’s everybody else’s responsibility to kind of enforce whatever those mutual norms are. I don’t know if it’s ever been described like that. But that’s what I pictured when you talk when you describe it that way.

Eric Talbot Jensen 5:25
Well, I think that’s, that’s an adequate way to describe it. And a lot of people view it that way, then that, that makes this idea of might makes right seem like it’s the governing principle. But I would counter that argument just by saying, you know, even though the United States is the most powerful nation in the world, they still we still feel constrained by what our allies think, by what our frenemies think, and certainly by the actions that our adversaries might take. So it doesn’t boil down just to might makes right it’s not just the playground, because there are lots of actors who have ways both strong ways and soft ways to encourage states to come into compliance with what’s the norm, and what’s accepted. Now, as we’ll probably talk more on this, on the show that that doesn’t always work. But in most cases, that acts as a pretty good restraint.

Jonathan Bench 6:13
So let’s talk about the law of war, then how, what is the law of war, as international public laws replace the law of war? And how does cyber warfare fit into the traditional warfare model?

Eric Talbot Jensen 6:23
Well, the law of war is a system of laws and norms that has existed for a very long time ever since really, since communities began to war with each other. And it’s developed mostly as rules by warriors to protect or or to govern warriors. In the 19th century, and certainly the 20th century, the law of war began to take on this idea of it’s not just about those who are fighting, but it’s also about the victims of armed conflict, the civilians who get rolled up somehow in armed conflict, all the people who don’t intend to be involved in conflict, but somehow are affected by it. And that law of war has has developed again, over over millennia, I would say and, and acts as a good regulation, a good system of regulation on states actions in armed conflict. Now, you have to be in armed conflict for that to trigger. But once you’re in armed conflict, that law of war is pretty precise and fairly detailed on what you can and can’t do with respect to the use of armed force. It fits into international law in the sense that it is a subset of international law and is binding on states and states. By states, I mean, nations, these nations have to agree to comply or then of course, you get back to the question of enforcement.

Jonathan Bench 7:37
But these laws, are these norms written by military? Is this something that that our, our military and other militaries do internally? Or is this as placed on the military by some external lawmaking force?

Eric Talbot Jensen 7:49
Well, it’s it’s more more made by militaries in history, and maybe less. So now, let me give you some examples. In 1899, in 1907, nations sent delegations to The Hague in the Netherlands, and came up with these the set of rules, we call them the Hague declarations. And when you look at the composition of the delegations that were sent, they were almost all military composition, that there was almost all military people who were there. When you look at recent negotiations, those negotiations have kind of transitioned in most countries from this department of defense or Ministry of Defense, to the department or Ministry of State. So now when we send negotiators to, for example, the certain conventional weapons convention that meets in Geneva, we don’t send only military folks. In fact, in some cases, we don’t send military folks, we send State Department folks who then negotiate on behalf of the government, with the input of the military, of course, but that transition certainly has occurred, and and I think, has at least subtle impact on the rules and as they’re promulgated.

Jonathan Bench 8:50
And so then how does cyber fit into this?

Eric Talbot Jensen 8:52
So cyber, cyber operations and cyber activities, of course, are a fairly new area of technology, and, of course, a new area of warfare. And the as when cyber tools started being used by countries against each other, lots of people started asking the question will how do we govern this? What is what does this mean with respect to international law? Do? Does a cyber activity automatically fall under the law of armed conflict and is governed by the law of armed conflict? Some even asked whether international law as a whole applies to cyber activities. So over the last couple of decades, that’s been a real discussion amongst academics amongst practitioners and certainly amongst governments, as to how do the rules of international law and specifically the law of armed conflict apply to cyber activities in cyber operations?

Fred Rocafort 9:42
Eric, looking at it from the standpoint both of traditional warfare and cyber warfare. Could you share with us your general impressions about the current state of the world and what are some of the potential hotspots potential problems that that we should be keeping an eye on?

Eric Talbot Jensen 10:04
Well, I think that this last question rolls right into this question, as states have started to have this discussion about what rules apply to cyber activities, there’s been lots of discussion about that in lots of different views. States have just made their ideas known, just kind of arbitrarily stating this is what we think. And states have led together to try and come up with common rules and ideas about how the law would apply to cyber activities. One really good example of that is a what we call a group of government experts that was formulated within the United Nations. Their higher mandate is telecommunication systems as a whole, but they’ve really focused over the last 10 years on cyber operations. And there have been basically five Well, the seven groups seven times when these nations have gotten together to try and agree to how the rules would apply. But really five that have resulted in some codified norm or some codified statement about how these rules would apply. And there has been some agreement on key issues, and there’s been some disagreement. Now I’ll just highlight a couple to show that to show kind of the the course the discussions are going, it didn’t take long for the states who are in this group of government experts to agree that international law applied generally to cyber operations. But then when you started to get into the details of that, though, that’s where consensus started to break down, for example, China and Russia are unwilling to commit to the view that the law of armed conflict specifically applies to cyber operations. The United States has advocated strongly for that. There’s some real discussion about how cyber operations are impacted by the principle of state sovereignty, with with states taking very different views. And the United States currently taking a pretty aggressive view about what cyber operations they can do on other nations territory and in other nations cyber infrastructure. So these are some of the key points. How does cyber Ark How do cyber operations affect sovereignty? How will they play out? And and how will states decide to agree or disagree on the application of the law to cyber operations?

Jonathan Bench 12:11
And so do you feel like in terms of general warfare, I mean, we’ve we’ve had Afghanistan heat up and somewhat cool off, we’ve had iraq heat up and cool off. There’s a lot going on in the Middle East, you know, North Korea is always a potential hotspot. Do you see that? Is warfare, transitioning much more to a cyber? Is cyber really the first thing to go if there’s going to be some kind of conflict initiated? Or is it depend on the sophistication of the state? Right? I mean, I’d say there’s, you know, hackers in Iran would be much more likely to Iran would be much more likely to deploy attackers, instead of send its Armed Forces somewhere, right? I mean, how does? How is this cyber component changing the way that warfare plays out? Right now,

Eric Talbot Jensen 12:56
there are a couple of really interesting key aspects to cyber operations did cause kind of paradigmatic change with respect to conflict. One is, you know, normally, if you see a tank or an aircraft carrier or an airplane, you can pretty much discern that that belongs to some state actor, some government, usually people don’t have tanks parked in their driveway in their neighborhoods, those usually government entities, those forceful or those destructive forces, usually government entities. But that’s not true as cyber tools. Cyber tools can be are they’re pretty free, they’re pretty open, you can buy pretty impactful cyber tools off the internet. In fact, I spent some time talking with hackers, and they routinely update me on how much it would cost for me to take down various cyber various organizations such as my own university, I would never do that, of course, but but as as a measure of what is out there and available on the internet. That’s a pretty good tool to judge and, and cyber tools, including very powerful cyber tools are widespread, easily accessible and can be had by anyone. So this change from usually only state level violence being held by states, to now anybody can control state level violence through cyber tools is a real change for states view of their own national security. And then this that another aspect of this is the reach of your tools. So if you’re going to use a kinetic tool to blow up a building, or to do some damage, or to try and kill somebody, there if you’re using a kinetic tool, such as a missile or a bullet or something like that, your ability to reach them and to reach targets is is limited basically to line of sight or to what you can get through a kinetic parabolic arc, etc. But if you’re now looking at what cyber tools can reach, they can reach deep into infrastructures and into places that otherwise you could not go and they can impact public opinion and public will in ways that you that are subtle and that you couldn’t necessarily do with a bomb or a drone or something like that. And so the expanded target list that is brought about By cyber operations, also as a paradigmatic change to how we view warfare. And and these things have changed the way states interact with each other and the way states have to approach national security because the threat is so much more opaque, but so much more broad.

Jonathan Bench 15:16
So where are the best hackers? Let’s rank them around the country. I’m really, really curious now. Right?

Eric Talbot Jensen 15:24
Well, so around the world, I would say the best hackers, certainly the US, the US, I think, you know, people have statistics on this. And you can look at various sites but but the US and Israel and China and North Korea and Iran and Russia, those countries are always the ones that are ranked in the top in some order, in terms of the ability to do some real cyber damage.

Jonathan Bench 15:45
And speaking about China and Russia have an interesting position because they they utilize international law and China, I would say China is getting very savvy, I mean, Russia, Russia has been integrated, I would say with with the world sooner, but China has made a bigger impression over the last two decades. And so I’m curious how, what your thoughts are on the way China and Russia use international law to their advantage in their statecraft in what they’re doing. And that could include cyber components, because we certainly know that they’re there. hackers are very active.

Eric Talbot Jensen 16:19
Indeed. So this is overbroad, a really overbroad generalization, but you might think of Russia as kind of the bull in the china shop. And you would think of China as a very savvy, careful operator in the cyber world. China is much more likely to even in the non cyber world to take actions that are very blatant and very out front and very, you know, here we are. And China is much more likely to be very subtle about what they do to take the long view, to work carefully to engage others to try and manipulate the system. And that is absolutely true in the cyber realm as well. So for example, we know about China’s Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections, and and that was exposed and Russia was unapologetic. In the current up in the kind of the, the preparation for the upcoming elections. We know that North Korea, North Korea, and Iran and China and Russia are all again engaged. But if you look at what the intelligence community is telling us about their engagement, again, China and is much more subtle about what they’re trying to do and how they’re trying to influence us opinion. And, and US public opinion with respect to the election and those people who are involved in the election. So if I was categorizing those two countries, that’s kind of how I would do it. I think that they’re both very effective, much more effective probably than the United States in terms of influencing public opinion and bringing about what they want to do in cyber in cyber ways. But the US, of course, is on the defensive, because I think the US just as a matter of policy takes a less offensive view to the use of cyber tools.

Fred Rocafort 17:56
So sticking with China, the US and its allies, seem to view China more than ever as the major peer competitor, when it comes to national security issues. This was confirmed by the UK government as recently as last week. What aspects of your areas of expertise, international law and national security law, either confirm or rebut that that premise? And, uh, how should we think about China’s rampant IP theft in this particular context?

Eric Talbot Jensen 18:27
Well, I think your example of China’s rampant IP theft is exactly one of the ways that China is demonstrating itself as the major peer competitor. You know, the estimates are wide and varied, but at least hundreds of billions of dollars are lost to to intellectual property theft, but originating from China, either from Chinese government or Chinese government encouraged institutions. And this is, of course, the US says this is in violation of international law, and China shouldn’t be doing this. But China views really, I think, international law as a tool rather than as a constraint. When you talk to people, certainly lawyers, the United States, we say, oh, law, well, you can’t violate law. That’s it, you got to stop where law starts. And I think the Chinese view is, well, we’ll use the law to accomplish what we want. And when the law doesn’t quite give us the authority we want, then we’ll try and move around or work on the edges or manipulate that law. And and I’m not trying to make a normative statement. I’m just saying that that’s my perception of how the different governments perceive that and, and that, I think, is a difficult notion for the United States to deal with as a matter of national security. It makes China a little bit less predictable in the sense that those that those laws that that the West recognizes as constraints don’t necessarily constrain China in the same way. And so I think that certainly in the cyber realm that confirms this idea that China The major peer competitor, and that keeping keep the West keeping their eye on what China is doing is a really good idea that the what’s going on in the South China Sea, I think is a really good example of that China has slowly over time and their patient slowly over time, move themselves to a position where both physically where they’ve occupied the South China Sea and diplomatically where they have convinced their neighbors either through threats or through carrots to side with them. And slowly public opinion, at least in that region is is turning because China is encouraging demanding that, that its close relations, or at least geographic relations change their view on this. That’s, I think, a very good example. Now you compare that with, for example, the Russians in Crimea, that was a much more bold and, and immediate, you know, again, back to the bull in the china shop. But that was not true of China, China has taken a long time to get to the South China Sea position, you know, it’s been 50 years, 60 years, they’ve been working on this. And I think that that their patience, and their ability to manipulate the law is what is one of the most worrisome aspects for the United States policymakers.

Jonathan Bench 21:08
Can you comment for a second on the US has been indicting Chinese hackers with quite a bit of regularity over the past two months, three months, you know, groups as they have identified them and formally filed indictments. How does that play out on international stage? I mean, if we’re, we’re inviting them under our laws in the US. Does international law play a role in that and how that might turn out?

Eric Talbot Jensen 21:36
Well, it’s interesting that the United Nations are sorry that the United States has chosen to approach this by indictments, right through the application of domestic law, the chances of the United States ever prosecuting any of those Chinese members of the PLA, who are who are engaged in this IP theft, or who are doing other cyber hacks is minimal, maybe even non existent. But the US has taken the approach of we’re going to openly identify these people who are doing it, we’re gonna openly identify them with the PLA, the People’s Liberation Army. And we’re going to then through court proceedings, indict them so that we can level the evidence in a public way to show what these agents of China are doing. So it’s certainly not in a way that they think they’re going to prosecute them. It’s really the US has chosen approach to try and discourage name and shame, if you will, China from continuing to take these actions. And this is especially interesting after President Xi’s visit here with President Obama, where they signed this agreement to say, okay, we’re going to not do this anymore, which I think most commentators will say app for a time after that meeting between President Xi and President Obama. It did, in fact, stop the Chinese hacks didn’t stop or at least decrease or their targets changed. But I think most commentators would again, say that we’re right back where we started, you know, at least before that time.

Jonathan Bench 23:01
So earlier, you mentioned to the effect of these hacking activities that are especially prevalent in election years. So we’re in the US election season, you know, we have six weeks until we vote. And all our favorite state actors, especially Russia, and China, are involved in swaying public opinion, one way or another. what is really going on at the state level? And will this year be any different than 2016? Do you see that? That? I mean, is there more at risk? Is there less at risk? And how successful were they back in 2016?

Eric Talbot Jensen 23:36
Well, let me first say that I feel like, in some sense, the United States is talking out of both sides of its mouth, in that the United States has certainly been in the business of trying to impact the outcome of politics and other countries for decades, if not centuries, right. I mean, this is nothing new. In fact, I think as citizens of the United States, we would think that our government wasn’t doing what it should do if it wasn’t trying to influence the politics of other countries to be more friendly to us. The thing that is difficult about this is that is that it was is the new way the new methods in which it was done. And again, this is an example of cyber tools, increasing the target set that countries can look to. So the use of social media platforms in such a broad and impactful way, I think, is really what kind of caught everybody by surprise. Now, do I think that that the events that took place in 2016 are going to repeat themselves in 2020? I don’t because I think the United States has become much more aggressive along those lines. In 2016. I feel like the United States government, particularly Department of Defense didn’t feel like they had appropriate authorities to be as as engaged in the fight against what is going on against the malign influence from other countries. But as we know from statements by the International by the intelligence community of the United States, in 2018, similar vents were taken in the United States Department of fence through cybercom. And through the NSA were able to defeat those attempts. And since then Congress has specifically in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, given the Department of Defense, some significant powers, there’s also a presidential memorandum that gives the Department of Defense some more powers to be more aggressive, much more aggressive in protecting us interests, particularly with respect to elections. So do I personally envisage that it will happen the same in 2020? I don’t, although you do see Russia still taking active part in elections in Europe. I think, though, that that they will try, but I think the US is in a position now to fight back against that much more effectively, and to shut that down before it happens.

Fred Rocafort 25:45
So Eric, looking ahead at our post election future, assuming we have one, I’m looking at, looking at the looking at the two candidates. Can you perhaps offer some some very general scenarios of how things might look on there a second Trump administration, and Biden, Harris administration, in terms of these major, I don’t want to call them threats. But But China, Russia, of course, they’re there. They’re always they’re always in our mind. Right. So So in terms of our potential for conflict, let’s say with with Russia, China, perhaps Iran, again, in broad strokes, you know, how do you see each of those potential administrations dealing with the more serious or more troubling scenarios that might be out there?

Eric Talbot Jensen 26:48
Well, so in answering that question, I will assume that because candidate Biden was the vice president under President Obama, that he will take a similar approach that he candidate, Vice President Harris would do the same. So let me just reflect on history to try and answer that question. President Trump has clearly shown an aggressive nature, particularly towards cyber operations, he and the current Congress, at his behest, have authorized, as I mentioned, certain elements of the government to take a much more aggressive stand, particularly with respect to Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, on these issues. And that was not the case during President Obama’s administration. And it’s not that it’s not that the Department of Defense wasn’t asking those questions. During that time, the Department of Defense certainly was trying to get advanced authorities. But the Obama administration didn’t feel like that was the right move to make at the time, President Trump since being elected has been much more aggressive. Now. So I would say that as a general statement, I would guess that if President Trump is elected again, he will continue to to allow the elements of the government to take a more aggressive cyber approach. On the other hand, of course, President Trump seems to have a blind eye to some international actors and the things that the intelligence community has alleged that they have done. And so it might be more aggressive, but only with respect to certain actors. Russia, I think is a good example, President Trump doesn’t seem to point the finger at Russia very often, despite the intelligence community saying it was Russia was Russia. Candidate Biden has been very clear that he will not take that same blind eye toward Russia, but has been less clear, at least from my reading as to what exactly that means and what exactly he would do. Another aspect to look at that is that President Obama and I assume candidate Biden would be much more interested in taking collective action with our enemies and our sorry, with our allies, and maybe even our frenemies. Whereas President Trump is much more likely to take individual action and just to authorize the US government to take actions on their own. So I think those are two pretty clear differences to their approach with respect to armed conflict generally, but certainly cyber armed conflict between those two potential post election options.

Jonathan Bench 29:16
Eric, we’ve absolutely enjoyed having you with us on the show today. We hope that at some point we can have you back and get an update on on world events and especially cyber and and law, cyber and traditional warfare activities, although we hope that generally the conflicts those hot conflicts Stay, stay cool. We haven’t had we haven’t had a lot to deal with last few years and that’s that’s been nice. Although we we certainly do have plenty of things going on around the world that we should be concerned about. If we’re trying to be good global citizens. We always like to end the podcast with the asking you for some recommendations on it can be relevant to the topic we discussed today or it can be something else, something that you’ve read or Listen to lately are watched. We’d love to hear anything you’ve got to recommend for us in our listeners today,

Eric Talbot Jensen 30:06
Well, so for me, cyber is really just the first step in what I believe will be kind of a landslide of technologies that will change our lives and, and be weaponized and change warfare as well. There are so many things nanotechnology, human enhancement, automation, robotics, etc, that have the potential artificial intelligence to significantly change, not only the way we live our lives with the way we conduct warfare and the way we conduct statecraft. And one of the most interesting books I’ve read about that recently is the Army of None by Paul Scharre. He was deeply engaged in working with the government to write some of the policies with respect to some of these emerging technologies. And his book is an excellent kind of encapsulation and capitalization of the questions and some of the answers that we ought to be thinking about. And then for kind of a more up to date approach to those same kind of emerging technology questions. The articles of war blog that is produced by the Lieber Institute for lawn land warfare out of West Point, recently started and they have they’re they’re starting to post now a number of, of blog posts on these same topics that I have found to be fascinating. And that I think, would be great for your listeners if they want to stay on top of what’s going on in that area of the law.

Jonathan Bench 31:30
Excellent, great. Thanks for those recommendations. Fred, what do you have for us?

Fred Rocafort 31:35
I recently started listening to a podcast called intelligence matters. And just to clarify, intelligence as in as an espionage, not mental intelligence, just to just to make that clear, the host of the podcast is the former Acting Director of the CIA, Michael Morel, and in part because of the fact that he’s the host, he’s he’s able to, to bring in some, some fascinating guests. I recently listened to an episode that focused on what the CIA was doing, around the time of the Tiananmen protests, that and that was that was really, really fascinating. And then the show touched upon analytical work at the CIA more broadly, as well. So that’s just one example of the kind of guests they they have and the kind of topics they they cover. So again, intelligence matters. And, you know, you can you can put that on your playlist and listen to it after after you listen to our podcast.

Jonathan Bench 32:51
And for my recommendation I lately I’ve been, I love cartoons. I’ve been reading cartoons since I was a kid, you know, I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes and the far side. I recently came across a set of political cartoons by counterpoint, you can find these a counterpoint.com. And between now and the election, they they’re letting you subscribe for free. I think normally they charge. I don’t know, it’s, it’s a novel and it might be 50 or $60 a year to get on the subscription. But what I like about counterpoint is they have political cartoonists from both the right and the left, self proclaimed right and left. And so every day when I get this email, and you can you can see these on Twitter as well. It’ll the header will say, you know, political cartoons for representing the right and then there’ll be something, you know, lambasting Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or whatever else is going on. And then and then from the left, it’ll be something lambasting President Trump. And so I’m the kind of person who likes to get viewpoints from all around to try and figure out what’s really going on. And so if you enjoy cartoons and and you’re up to date with what’s going on in the world, the cartoons will make sense and, and they are quite funny. Doesn’t matter which part of the spectrum you’re on front center, left, right or middle. So that’s what I’m recommending for everyone this week. Eric, we want to thank you again for being with us today. We’ve we’ve really enjoyed having you and wish you well in your in your academic work, and we look forward to following you and catching up with you again in the future.

Eric Talbot Jensen 34:24
Thanks, I really enjoyed being here.

Fred Rocafort 34:25
Thank you, Eric. Really appreciate it.

Jonathan Bench 34:30
We hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. We look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else you want to find us until next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai