Ryan Graves: UFOs, Fighter Jets, and Aliens

Lex Fridman (01:13.820)

And now, dear friends, here's Ryan Graves.

Lex Fridman (01:18.220)

What did you think of the new Top Gun movie?

Lex Fridman (01:20.460)

How accurate was it?

Ryan Graves (01:21.740)

Let's start there.

Lex Fridman (01:22.940)

I thought the flying was really accurate.

Ryan Graves (01:25.660)

I thought the type of flying they did

Lex Fridman (01:28.260)

and how they approached the actual mission,

Ryan Graves (01:31.340)

of course, had a lot of liberties.

Lex Fridman (01:33.380)

But one thing that seems to be hard to capture

Ryan Graves (01:35.500)

on these types of things are the chess game that's going on

Lex Fridman (01:38.340)

while that type of flying is happening.

Ryan Graves (01:40.380)

The chess game between, like in a dog fight,

Lex Fridman (01:42.900)

between the pilots and the enemy,

Lex Fridman (01:45.540)

or between the different pilots?

Lex Fridman (01:47.460)

I'll even speak to just that particular mission.

Ryan Graves (01:49.500)

They flew there.

Lex Fridman (01:50.340)

And for that particular mission,

Ryan Graves (01:52.220)

it's kind of a chess game with yourself

Lex Fridman (01:54.980)

to get everything in place.

Lex Fridman (01:56.460)

So what kind of flight they flew

Lex Fridman (01:59.060)

is called a high threat scenario,

Ryan Graves (02:00.820)

which means they have to ingress low

Lex Fridman (02:02.900)

due to the surface to air threats,

Ryan Graves (02:05.100)

the integrated air defense systems that are nearby.

Lex Fridman (02:08.020)

And they have to ingress low and pop up

Ryan Graves (02:09.700)

like we see in the movie.

Lex Fridman (02:11.300)

And in that particular movie,

Ryan Graves (02:12.460)

that was a preplanned strike.

Lex Fridman (02:13.900)

They knew exactly where they were going.

Lex Fridman (02:15.620)

But there's a scenario where we have to operate

Lex Fridman (02:17.660)

in that type of environment,

Lex Fridman (02:18.640)

and we don't know exactly where we're going to strike

Lex Fridman (02:20.720)

or we're going to be adapting to real time targets.

Lex Fridman (02:23.400)

And so in that scenario, you would have

Lex Fridman (02:25.100)

one of those fighters down low like that

Ryan Graves (02:26.900)

operating as a mission commander,

Lex Fridman (02:28.780)

as a forward air controller.

Lex Fridman (02:30.340)

And he's out there calling shots,

Lex Fridman (02:32.160)

joining on those other players

Ryan Graves (02:33.540)

in order to ensure they're pointed at the right target.

Lex Fridman (02:35.660)

So that's a bit of the chess game that he'll be playing.

Lex Fridman (02:38.780)

Can you actually describe for people

Lex Fridman (02:40.180)

who haven't seen the movie what the mission actually is?

Ryan Graves (02:43.460)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (02:44.280)

What's involved in the mission?

Lex Fridman (02:45.140)

So in this particular mission,

Lex Fridman (02:47.260)

it's kind of what we would call a preplanned strike.

Lex Fridman (02:49.520)

So there's a known location

Lex Fridman (02:51.000)

that's in a heavily defended area.

Lex Fridman (02:53.380)

And the air crew, in this case,

Lex Fridman (02:55.540)

I believe it was four F18s on the initial package,

Ryan Graves (02:59.540)

their job was to ingress very low down a canyon

Lex Fridman (03:02.580)

to stay out of the radar window of the surface

Ryan Graves (03:05.020)

to air threats.

Lex Fridman (03:06.220)

What does ingress mean?

Ryan Graves (03:07.740)

Ingress means that they're going to be pushing

Lex Fridman (03:09.740)

from a start location towards the target or the objective.

Lex Fridman (03:13.040)

So there's an ingress portion of the mission

Lex Fridman (03:15.060)

and an egress portion of the mission.

Ryan Graves (03:16.500)

Oh, okay.

Lex Fridman (03:18.860)

Like the entrance and the exit type of thing.

Ryan Graves (03:21.180)

Got it.

Lex Fridman (03:22.020)

But it changes our mindset tactically quite a bit, right?

Ryan Graves (03:24.540)

Cause when we're entering someplace,

Lex Fridman (03:26.020)

we have the option to enter.

Lex Fridman (03:27.900)

But when we go drop a bomb on location, we're exiting.

Lex Fridman (03:31.340)

We don't have that luxury.

Ryan Graves (03:32.820)

We don't have that option.

Lex Fridman (03:33.780)

So it actually changes our tactics and our aggression level.

Ryan Graves (03:37.420)

Got it.

Lex Fridman (03:38.260)

And so they were flying low to the ground

Lex Fridman (03:40.340)

and then there's a surface to air missiles

Lex Fridman (03:43.840)

that forced them to have to fly low.

Lex Fridman (03:47.140)

Is that a realistic thing?

Lex Fridman (03:48.580)

It is realistic.

Lex Fridman (03:49.740)

So driving those aircraft in the clutter,

Lex Fridman (03:52.220)

you know, all radar systems or most I should say

Ryan Graves (03:54.900)

are essentially line of sight.

Lex Fridman (03:57.260)

And so they're going to be limited by the horizon

Ryan Graves (03:59.140)

or any clutter out there.

Lex Fridman (04:00.660)

And even a number of radars, if they are located up high

Lex Fridman (04:03.840)

and looking down towards that aircraft,

Lex Fridman (04:06.660)

the clutter or all the objects such as trees and canyons

Ryan Graves (04:11.460)

can have effect on radar systems.

Lex Fridman (04:13.500)

And so it can be a type of camouflage.

Lex Fridman (04:16.260)

So that's a camouflage for the radar,

Lex Fridman (04:17.860)

but what about the surface to air missile?

Ryan Graves (04:21.220)

Is that a legitimate way to avoid missiles flies so low,

Lex Fridman (04:25.780)

like fly I guess below their level?

Ryan Graves (04:31.060)

As far as I know, you know,

Lex Fridman (04:32.340)

you can fly under any radar right now.

Ryan Graves (04:34.500)

We don't have necessarily radars

Lex Fridman (04:36.200)

that can look through anything.

Lex Fridman (04:37.940)

So there is always going to be the ability to mask yourself,

Lex Fridman (04:41.660)

but with a larger number of assets

Lex Fridman (04:43.460)

and distributed communication networks,

Lex Fridman (04:45.740)

where those radars are looking,

Ryan Graves (04:47.540)

it makes all the difference.

Lex Fridman (04:48.500)

And I said, they're ingressing past an IAS

Lex Fridman (04:51.020)

and that's an integrated air defense system.

Lex Fridman (04:52.980)

And that linking of air defense systems

Ryan Graves (04:55.600)

is what makes it so hard, so complicated

Lex Fridman (04:58.980)

is that the sensors and the weapons

Ryan Graves (05:00.600)

are disassociated from each other.

Lex Fridman (05:02.420)

So that if you took out the target that was shooting at you,

Ryan Graves (05:06.100)

it still has ability to intercept you

Lex Fridman (05:09.160)

from another radar location.

Lex Fridman (05:11.500)

So it's distributed and it's stronger that way.

Lex Fridman (05:14.960)

You mean the surface to air missiles,

Ryan Graves (05:18.420)

like it's a distributed system

Lex Fridman (05:20.820)

in that if you take out one,

Ryan Graves (05:22.660)

they're still able to sort of integrate information

Lex Fridman (05:26.060)

about your location and strike at you.

Ryan Graves (05:28.260)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (05:29.100)

And there's a lot of complication that can go,

Ryan Graves (05:30.840)

you know, once we start thinking about

Lex Fridman (05:32.100)

distributed systems like that

Lex Fridman (05:33.460)

and the ability to self heal and repair

Lex Fridman (05:35.500)

and adapt to losses, it's an interesting area.

Ryan Graves (05:39.900)

Are you responsible for thinking about that

Lex Fridman (05:41.860)

when you're flying an airplane?

Ryan Graves (05:43.460)

To some degree, when we ingress to an area like that,

Lex Fridman (05:47.060)

we're presented with information about targets,

Ryan Graves (05:50.060)

air to air or air to surface,

Lex Fridman (05:52.080)

or surface to air, I should say.

Lex Fridman (05:54.060)

And we can essentially see where essentially

Lex Fridman (05:57.700)

the danger zone, if you will, is located.

Lex Fridman (06:00.420)

And so essentially we would stay out of that.

Lex Fridman (06:02.340)

And so having a full picture of the environment

Ryan Graves (06:05.860)

is extremely important because, you know,

Lex Fridman (06:07.940)

at the end of the day, if we go in that circle,

Ryan Graves (06:09.300)

we can die pretty quickly.

Lex Fridman (06:10.480)

So it's absolutely crucial.

Lex Fridman (06:12.740)

So there's regions that have higher and lower danger

Lex Fridman (06:16.300)

based on your understanding of the actual,

Ryan Graves (06:17.940)

whatever the surface to air missiles systems are.

Lex Fridman (06:22.060)

So you can kind of know.

Ryan Graves (06:24.220)

That's interesting.

Lex Fridman (06:25.100)

I wonder how automated that could be too,

Ryan Graves (06:26.940)

especially when you don't know.

Lex Fridman (06:29.380)

It seems like in the movie they knew

Ryan Graves (06:30.820)

the location of everything.

Lex Fridman (06:33.060)

I imagine that's less known in most cases.

Lex Fridman (06:37.460)

And also, a lot of those systems

Lex Fridman (06:39.760)

might be a little bit more ghetto

Ryan Graves (06:41.820)

if I can use that technical term.

Lex Fridman (06:43.580)

Like I've gotten, ad hoc maybe is the,

Ryan Graves (06:47.180)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (06:49.340)

But having just recently visited Ukraine

Lex Fridman (06:52.340)

and seen a lot of aspects of the way that war is fought,

Lex Fridman (06:55.340)

there's a lot of improvised type of systems.

Lex Fridman (06:58.100)

So you take high tech, like advanced technology,

Lex Fridman (07:01.900)

but the way you deploy it and the way you organize it

Ryan Graves (07:04.260)

is very improvised and ad hoc and is responding

Lex Fridman (07:08.620)

to the uncertainty and the dynamic environment.

Lex Fridman (07:11.260)

And so from an enemy perspective

Lex Fridman (07:13.860)

or whoever's trying to deal with that kind of system,

Ryan Graves (07:16.740)

it's hard to figure it out.

Lex Fridman (07:17.840)

Because it's like me, I played tennis for a long time

Lex Fridman (07:22.060)

and it's always easier to play,

Lex Fridman (07:24.060)

this is true for all sports,

Ryan Graves (07:25.820)

play tennis against a good tennis player

Lex Fridman (07:27.380)

versus a crappy tennis player.

Ryan Graves (07:29.220)

Because the crappy tennis player is full of uncertainty.

Lex Fridman (07:32.500)

And that's really difficult to deal with.

Ryan Graves (07:34.340)

It seemed like in the movie the systems

Lex Fridman (07:36.060)

were really well organized.

Lex Fridman (07:38.980)

And so you could plan.

Lex Fridman (07:40.900)

And there's a very nice ravine

Ryan Graves (07:41.940)

that went right down the middle of them.

Lex Fridman (07:43.380)

That's how movies work, isn't it?

Ryan Graves (07:44.820)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (07:45.660)

But no, I absolutely agree.

Lex Fridman (07:47.320)

So what you say is a very good point.

Lex Fridman (07:50.580)

And if we were to take a chunk of airspace

Lex Fridman (07:54.540)

and break it up into little bits,

Lex Fridman (07:56.360)

there'd be places that are better to fly

Ryan Graves (07:58.060)

or less good to fly.

Lex Fridman (08:00.260)

And we are seeing that now

Ryan Graves (08:02.620)

with what they call manned unmanned teaming.

Lex Fridman (08:05.300)

We see tactical aircraft or some type of aircraft

Ryan Graves (08:08.520)

or platform that's being automated.

Lex Fridman (08:11.140)

And it's not being automated in traditional sense

Ryan Graves (08:13.580)

where people think aircrew are flying them around

Lex Fridman (08:15.540)

to conduct missions.

Lex Fridman (08:16.360)

But it's very high level objective orientated

Lex Fridman (08:20.220)

mission planning that allows the aircrew

Ryan Graves (08:22.620)

to act more as a mission planner,

Lex Fridman (08:25.660)

mission commander versus having to just pick

Ryan Graves (08:27.820)

the right assets or fly them around

Lex Fridman (08:29.700)

or manipulate them somewhat physically.

Lex Fridman (08:34.020)

So actually going back to the chess thing,

Lex Fridman (08:36.020)

can you elaborate on what you mean

Lex Fridman (08:37.500)

by playing a game of chess with yourself?

Lex Fridman (08:40.260)

What's, when you're flying that mission,

Lex Fridman (08:42.380)

what exactly do you mean by that?

Lex Fridman (08:43.780)

Well, there's a few people you're usually fighting against

Ryan Graves (08:46.100)

in the air, you know, there's the bad guys

Lex Fridman (08:48.180)

and then there's physics and mother nature, right?

Lex Fridman (08:52.340)

So when we're down at about 100 feet,

Lex Fridman (08:56.500)

it's a chess game to stay alive for the pilot

Lex Fridman (08:58.660)

and it's a chess game for the whizzo

Lex Fridman (09:00.220)

to process the information he needs

Lex Fridman (09:02.660)

and then communicate it to all those other aircraft

Lex Fridman (09:04.880)

that were flying around to ensure

Ryan Graves (09:06.460)

that they're putting their weapons on the right target.

Lex Fridman (09:08.420)

What's the whizzo?

Ryan Graves (09:09.580)

Wizzo is a weapons systems officer.

Lex Fridman (09:11.380)

He's a backseater who is not a pilot,

Lex Fridman (09:13.600)

but they're responsible for radar manipulation

Lex Fridman (09:16.020)

and communications and weapons appointments

Ryan Graves (09:19.100)

of certain natures.

Lex Fridman (09:19.940)

So the chess game is against physics,

Ryan Graves (09:22.140)

against the enemy.

Lex Fridman (09:24.520)

Time.

Lex Fridman (09:25.760)

Time, what about your own psychology, fear, uncertainty?

Lex Fridman (09:31.180)

No.

Ryan Graves (09:32.020)

No, there's no time for that type of self reflection

Lex Fridman (09:35.340)

while we're flying.

Ryan Graves (09:36.740)

I want to get to that, but I don't want to forget

Lex Fridman (09:41.100)

the point that you made about increased randomness

Ryan Graves (09:43.180)

being a tactical advantage.

Lex Fridman (09:45.500)

You know, as we, as you mentioned, you know,

Ryan Graves (09:47.920)

you can introduce autonomy into there

Lex Fridman (09:49.780)

and when you bring autonomy in there

Lex Fridman (09:51.940)

and my expectation would be as we bring different abilities

Lex Fridman (09:55.180)

and machine learning, as we gather more data,

Ryan Graves (09:57.540)

we're going to be able to bring the tactical environment

Lex Fridman (10:00.700)

around that jet, the war space that it goes into

Ryan Graves (10:03.100)

will almost be at a stochastic level from the enemy's

Lex Fridman (10:05.540)

perspective, where it'll almost seem like

Ryan Graves (10:08.100)

every tactical environment they go in will be random

Lex Fridman (10:10.720)

and yet very deadly because the system is providing

Ryan Graves (10:13.980)

a new tactical solution essentially

Lex Fridman (10:17.620)

for that particular scenario.

Ryan Graves (10:18.980)

Instead of just training to particular tactics

Lex Fridman (10:21.900)

that have to be repeatable and trainable and lethal, right?

Lex Fridman (10:24.900)

But not necessarily the most lethal

Lex Fridman (10:26.300)

because they have to be trainable.

Lex Fridman (10:28.260)

But if we can introduce AI into that

Lex Fridman (10:29.900)

and to have a level of randomness

Ryan Graves (10:32.800)

or at least appearance of randomness due to complexity,

Lex Fridman (10:35.980)

you know, I would consider it like a stochastic

Ryan Graves (10:38.260)

tactical advantage because even our own blue fighters

Lex Fridman (10:40.580)

won't be able to engage in that fight

Ryan Graves (10:41.960)

because it would be unsafe essentially for anything else.

Lex Fridman (10:45.660)

And I think that's where we have to drive to

Ryan Graves (10:47.560)

because otherwise it's always this chicken and mouse

Lex Fridman (10:49.380)

cat game about who's tactics and who knows what.

Lex Fridman (10:51.940)

But if knowledge is no longer a factor,

Lex Fridman (10:54.700)

it's going to make things a lot different.

Ryan Graves (10:56.480)

That's really interesting.

Lex Fridman (10:57.320)

So out of the many things that are part of your expertise,

Ryan Graves (11:03.140)

your journey, you're also working on autonomous

Lex Fridman (11:06.780)

and semi autonomous systems, the use of AI

Lex Fridman (11:08.980)

and machine learning and manned on man team

Lex Fridman (11:11.460)

and all that kind of stuff.

Ryan Graves (11:12.300)

We'll talk about it.

Lex Fridman (11:14.020)

But you're saying sort of when people think about

Ryan Graves (11:17.120)

the use of AI in war, in military systems,

Lex Fridman (11:20.580)

they think about like computer vision for perception

Ryan Graves (11:23.980)

or processing of sensor information

Lex Fridman (11:26.740)

in order to extract from it actionable knowledge

Ryan Graves (11:29.700)

kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (11:30.540)

But you're saying you could also use it to generate

Ryan Graves (11:33.860)

randomness that's difficult to work with

Lex Fridman (11:37.740)

in like a game theoretic way.

Ryan Graves (11:39.880)

Like it's difficult for human operators to respond to.

Lex Fridman (11:43.540)

Exactly.

Ryan Graves (11:44.460)

That's really interesting.

Lex Fridman (11:45.460)

Okay, so back to Tom Cruise and Tom Gunn.

Lex Fridman (11:49.740)

What about the dog fighting?

Lex Fridman (11:51.420)

What aspects of that were accurate?

Lex Fridman (11:53.660)

So dog fighting is kind of an interesting conversation

Lex Fridman (11:58.140)

because it's not the most tactically relevant skill set

Ryan Graves (12:00.980)

nowadays by traditional standards

Lex Fridman (12:03.660)

because the ranges with which we engage

Lex Fridman (12:06.060)

and play weapons are very significant.

Lex Fridman (12:09.460)

And so if we're in a scenario where we're in a dog fight

Lex Fridman (12:11.940)

like that, a lot of things have probably gone wrong, right?

Lex Fridman (12:15.580)

And that's kind of how this mission was set up, right?

Ryan Graves (12:17.860)

It was a no win type scenario, most likely.

Lex Fridman (12:21.660)

And so for a dog fight, the aircraft size

Lex Fridman (12:24.020)

and the ranges and the turn radiuses

Lex Fridman (12:25.620)

make it so it's not very theatrical, right?

Ryan Graves (12:27.980)

The aircraft looks small.

Lex Fridman (12:29.300)

And while it's intense with the systems I have

Lex Fridman (12:31.580)

and the sensors and what I'm feeling and all that,

Lex Fridman (12:34.480)

if I, you know, we've done it and we've done it, right?

Ryan Graves (12:36.440)

We take video of that and it's just like a blue sky

Lex Fridman (12:38.700)

and you see a little dot out there.

Lex Fridman (12:39.760)

So not very interesting.

Lex Fridman (12:40.740)

And so anytime it really looks interesting

Ryan Graves (12:42.920)

in dog fight arena, that's most likely a fiction

Lex Fridman (12:46.540)

because we really only get close for a millisecond

Ryan Graves (12:49.100)

as we're dipping past each other at the merge.

Lex Fridman (12:50.900)

You're breaking my heart, right?

Ryan Graves (12:52.100)

I know, I'm sorry.

Lex Fridman (12:52.940)

You're breaking my heart.

Ryan Graves (12:54.260)

No, I understand.

Lex Fridman (12:55.100)

In a dog fight, you can go and have fun,

Lex Fridman (12:56.440)

but you know, in a dog fight specifically.

Lex Fridman (12:58.340)

Maybe that was more common in the earlier wars,

Ryan Graves (13:00.660)

the World War II and before that,

Lex Fridman (13:02.720)

where the, is it due to the sort of the range

Lex Fridman (13:06.660)

and the effectiveness of the weapon systems involved?

Lex Fridman (13:09.220)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (13:10.060)

And the accuracy of the targeting systems at range.

Lex Fridman (13:12.700)

But there's also a train of thought

Ryan Graves (13:15.280)

that hasn't actually been tested out yet,

Lex Fridman (13:16.960)

which is with the advent of advanced electronic warfare,

Ryan Graves (13:21.580)

EW and or unmanned assets,

Lex Fridman (13:25.060)

the battle space may get so complex

Lex Fridman (13:27.300)

and missiles may essentially just get dropped out of the sky

Lex Fridman (13:31.380)

or wasted such that you're gonna be in close

Ryan Graves (13:34.340)

with either IR missiles or guns,

Lex Fridman (13:36.460)

if it's a no kidding, you know, must defend type scenario.

Lex Fridman (13:40.860)

First of all, what's electronic warfare?

Lex Fridman (13:42.840)

You know, it's basically trying to get control

Ryan Graves (13:44.460)

of electromagnetic spectrum for the interest

Lex Fridman (13:47.540)

of whatever operation is going on.

Lex Fridman (13:49.940)

So in the tactical environment,

Lex Fridman (13:51.460)

a lot of that is trying to deceive the radar

Ryan Graves (13:53.580)

or can we deceive the missiles or just, you know,

Lex Fridman (13:55.860)

stop their guide and things of that nature.

Ryan Graves (13:58.820)

Man, it's a battle in the space of information,

Lex Fridman (14:01.780)

of digital information.

Lex Fridman (14:03.900)

Yeah, well F22 and F35, right?

Lex Fridman (14:05.860)

F22 is a big expensive aircraft

Lex Fridman (14:07.660)

and it was made to be a great fighter.

Lex Fridman (14:10.060)

But the F35 is not as great of a fighter,

Lex Fridman (14:12.300)

but it's an electronic warfare

Lex Fridman (14:14.840)

and mission commander platform of the future

Ryan Graves (14:18.560)

where information is what's gonna win the war

Lex Fridman (14:20.780)

instead of the best dog fighter.

Lex Fridman (14:22.140)

And so it's interesting dichotomy there.

Lex Fridman (14:24.020)

What's the best airplane ever made, fighter jet ever made?

Ryan Graves (14:27.400)

I know the aviators in the audience are gonna hate my answer

Lex Fridman (14:31.100)

because they're gonna want that sexy, you know,

Ryan Graves (14:33.180)

muscly F14 Tomcat type fighter

Lex Fridman (14:36.260)

or maybe P51 type aircraft.

Lex Fridman (14:39.060)

But the F35 is maybe not the best dog fighter,

Lex Fridman (14:43.580)

but it doesn't have to get in a dog fight, right?

Ryan Graves (14:45.940)

It's like how you'd be the best knife fighters,

Lex Fridman (14:47.540)

not getting a knife fight sometimes.

Ryan Graves (14:49.340)

Lockheed Martin F35 Lightning II, it looks pretty sexy.

Lex Fridman (14:53.860)

There's two real strengths you can have as a fighter.

Ryan Graves (14:55.700)

You can have the ability to kind of out muscle your fighter,

Lex Fridman (14:59.260)

your opponent and beat them on Gs and power

Lex Fridman (15:02.500)

and raid around on them.

Lex Fridman (15:03.860)

And then there's the other side of that,

Ryan Graves (15:05.660)

which is you can be overly maneuverable.

Lex Fridman (15:09.020)

You can bleed energy quickly.

Lex Fridman (15:10.860)

And that's what the F18 was good at

Lex Fridman (15:12.900)

because it had to be heavier to land on aircraft carrier.

Ryan Graves (15:15.580)

We had to give it extra bulk,

Lex Fridman (15:17.500)

but it also needs a special mechanism

Ryan Graves (15:19.300)

to slow down enough to land on aircraft carrier.

Lex Fridman (15:21.220)

And so it made it very maneuverable.

Lex Fridman (15:22.820)

And what that leads to a lot of times

Lex Fridman (15:24.420)

is the ability to get maybe the first shot in a fight,

Ryan Graves (15:28.260)

which is very good, but if you do make that sharp turn,

Lex Fridman (15:30.380)

you're gonna bleed a lot of your energy away

Lex Fridman (15:31.980)

and be more susceptible for follow on shots

Lex Fridman (15:33.940)

if that one's less susceptible.

Lex Fridman (15:35.420)

And so there's just kind of aggression,

Lex Fridman (15:37.060)

nonaggression game you can play depending on

Ryan Graves (15:39.340)

the type of aircraft you're fighting.

Lex Fridman (15:40.940)

Where does the F35 land on that spectrum?

Ryan Graves (15:43.580)

The F35 lands somewhere behind the F22s.

Lex Fridman (15:46.660)

So there'll probably be a row of F22s or F18s

Lex Fridman (15:49.580)

and F35 will be out back,

Lex Fridman (15:50.980)

but it'll be enabling a lot of the warfare

Ryan Graves (15:52.620)

that's happening in front of you.

Lex Fridman (15:53.460)

Is it one of the more expensive planes

Lex Fridman (15:55.740)

because of all the stuff on it?

Lex Fridman (15:57.340)

It certainly is, yeah.

Ryan Graves (16:00.140)

In the movie, they have Tom Cruise fly it over Mach 10.

Lex Fridman (16:03.820)

So maybe can you say what are the different speeds,

Lex Fridman (16:08.100)

accelerations feel like, Mach 1, 2, 3, or hypersonic?

Lex Fridman (16:12.380)

Have you ever flown hypersonic?

Ryan Graves (16:14.420)

No.

Lex Fridman (16:16.580)

How tough does it get?

Ryan Graves (16:18.180)

I'm just gonna call out the BS of ejecting at Mach 10

Lex Fridman (16:21.100)

just for the record, because in the movie,

Ryan Graves (16:23.460)

there's been I think at least one ejection

Lex Fridman (16:25.780)

that was supersonic, and I'll just say it was not pretty,

Lex Fridman (16:29.040)

but he survived.

Lex Fridman (16:30.380)

So there would have to be some interesting mechanisms

Ryan Graves (16:32.580)

to eject successfully at Mach 10,

Lex Fridman (16:34.300)

but I'll digress on that for the moment.

Ryan Graves (16:36.100)

Yeah, that seemed very strange.

Lex Fridman (16:37.460)

And he just walked away from it, but anyway, so.

Ryan Graves (16:40.220)

He seemed disheveled.

Lex Fridman (16:44.060)

Okay, it's Tom Cruise.

Ryan Graves (16:46.180)

It's like Chuck Norris or something.

Lex Fridman (16:47.820)

Indestructible, yeah.

Ryan Graves (16:48.660)

Indestructible.

Lex Fridman (16:49.480)

He also doesn't age.

Lex Fridman (16:50.900)

But anyway, so what's interesting to say

Lex Fridman (16:54.880)

about the experience as you go up?

Lex Fridman (16:58.380)

Does it get more and more difficult?

Lex Fridman (17:00.520)

In the end of the day, crossing the sound barrier

Ryan Graves (17:02.220)

is much like crossing the speed limit on the highway.

Lex Fridman (17:04.460)

You don't really notice anything.

Ryan Graves (17:07.120)

To cross that, at least in F18,

Lex Fridman (17:08.940)

because we have a lot more weight than most fighters,

Ryan Graves (17:11.060)

typically we'll do that in a descent.

Lex Fridman (17:13.380)

We'll do that full afterburner,

Ryan Graves (17:15.380)

just dumping gas into the engine.

Lex Fridman (17:18.060)

And so that'll get us over the fastest

Ryan Graves (17:19.820)

I think I've gone with about 1.28.

Lex Fridman (17:22.220)

But what's interesting, people realize,

Ryan Graves (17:23.580)

is that if I take that throttle in an afterburner

Lex Fridman (17:26.540)

and I just bring it back, just bring it back to mil,

Ryan Graves (17:29.100)

which is full power, just not afterburner,

Lex Fridman (17:31.660)

the deacceleration is so strong due to the air friction

Ryan Graves (17:34.700)

that it'll throw you forward in your straps.

Lex Fridman (17:36.660)

Almost, I would say, maybe like 70% as strong almost

Ryan Graves (17:40.580)

as trapping on the boat, it's pretty strong.

Lex Fridman (17:43.620)

So it's almost like a reverse car crash

Ryan Graves (17:44.940)

just for the deacceleration.

Lex Fridman (17:45.980)

So the acceleration is usually kind of slow

Lex Fridman (17:48.420)

and you don't feel anything, of course,

Lex Fridman (17:49.580)

when you're crossing through it,

Lex Fridman (17:50.820)

but the deacceleration's pretty violent.

Lex Fridman (17:53.900)

The deacceleration's violent, huh, okay.

Lex Fridman (17:57.020)

But is there a fundamental difference

Lex Fridman (17:59.500)

between mach one and hypersonic, mach five and so on?

Lex Fridman (18:03.420)

Does it require super special training?

Lex Fridman (18:06.020)

And is that something that's used often in warfare

Lex Fridman (18:09.740)

or is it not really that necessary?

Lex Fridman (18:10.740)

No, so hypersonic human flight, if it exists,

Ryan Graves (18:13.980)

is not something that's employed tactically

Lex Fridman (18:16.280)

in any sense right now that I'm aware of.

Lex Fridman (18:19.040)

So I think of hypersonic technology,

Lex Fridman (18:23.300)

I think of missiles and weapons systems

Lex Fridman (18:26.020)

and delivery platform, I don't think of fighter aircraft

Lex Fridman (18:28.900)

necessarily, I can think of bomber

Ryan Graves (18:31.180)

or reconnaissance aircraft perhaps,

Lex Fridman (18:33.660)

but those would be more efficient, very long range.

Lex Fridman (18:37.020)

So I imagine acceleration would be kind of gentle, honestly.

Lex Fridman (18:40.340)

The thing you experience is the acceleration,

Ryan Graves (18:42.380)

not the actual speed.

Lex Fridman (18:44.780)

There's been just a small tangent,

Ryan Graves (18:46.540)

a lot of discussion about hypersonic nuclear weapons,

Lex Fridman (18:49.480)

like missiles from Russia bragging about that.

Ryan Graves (18:54.300)

Is this something that's a significant concern

Lex Fridman (18:56.740)

or is it just a way to flex

Lex Fridman (18:57.900)

about different kinds of weapons systems?

Lex Fridman (19:00.740)

Hypersonics, I do think pose a challenge

Ryan Graves (19:03.540)

for our detection systems because there are,

Lex Fridman (19:08.260)

you know, there are design considerations

Lex Fridman (19:10.180)

in these sensor systems as always, right?

Lex Fridman (19:12.100)

And when you build them and the technology progresses

Ryan Graves (19:14.520)

to a point where maybe it's not feasible

Lex Fridman (19:16.080)

to use that technology, you know, there's a problem.

Lex Fridman (19:18.020)

But with the all domain and kind of cross domain

Lex Fridman (19:22.300)

data linking capabilities we have,

Ryan Graves (19:24.220)

it's less of, you know, it's more of an integrated picture,

Lex Fridman (19:29.340)

I'll say.

Lex Fridman (19:30.260)

And so the hypersonics are really,

Lex Fridman (19:34.340)

what it is is how fast can we detect and destroy a problem?

Ryan Graves (19:36.980)

You're just shortening the time available to do that.

Lex Fridman (19:39.080)

We call something like that the kill chain, right?

Ryan Graves (19:40.920)

It's from locating a target and identifying it

Lex Fridman (19:45.000)

and, you know, essentially authorizing its destruction

Ryan Graves (19:48.260)

by whatever means, employing,

Lex Fridman (19:50.500)

and then actually following up to ensure

Ryan Graves (19:52.340)

that you did what you said you were going to do

Lex Fridman (19:54.300)

in some sense, right?

Ryan Graves (19:55.140)

Does it need another reattacks, something of that nature.

Lex Fridman (19:57.340)

And so there's an old dog fighting framework

Ryan Graves (1:00:00.480)

when I was catching planes land.

Lex Fridman (1:00:01.920)

I would, they would trap and it'd be nighttime.

Lex Fridman (1:00:05.100)

And it's just all this chaos in the middle of the ocean

Lex Fridman (1:00:07.160)

and nothing.

Lex Fridman (1:00:07.980)

And I would have these moments where I'd be like,

Lex Fridman (1:00:09.320)

how the hell did I end up here?

Ryan Graves (1:00:11.200)

You know, there's one moment in time next to an aircraft

Lex Fridman (1:00:13.760)

landing on a boat in the middle of the ocean, you know,

Ryan Graves (1:00:16.400)

where did my life, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:00:17.880)

how did my life go to end up here?

Lex Fridman (1:00:19.120)

How interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:00:20.520)

But what I did start to enjoy was the night vision goggles

Lex Fridman (1:00:24.240)

and putting those on and looking up at the stars

Lex Fridman (1:00:26.800)

flying around, especially over the ocean.

Lex Fridman (1:00:29.800)

What do they look like?

Lex Fridman (1:00:30.640)

And there's just so many, there's just so many stars

Ryan Graves (1:00:33.320)

that, you know, you normally can't see.

Lex Fridman (1:00:34.920)

They're shooting stars all the time.

Ryan Graves (1:00:36.600)

Almost every flight you'd see them with the goggles on.

Lex Fridman (1:00:39.360)

And so it was a great pleasure to take advantage

Ryan Graves (1:00:42.120)

of the lack of light pollution in some cases,

Lex Fridman (1:00:44.520)

especially on deployment to go grab some goggles at night,

Ryan Graves (1:00:47.440)

go out some quiet spot in the ship that no one can see me

Lex Fridman (1:00:51.000)

and just kind of look around, you know.

Ryan Graves (1:00:52.900)

Yeah, it's humbling.

Lex Fridman (1:00:55.800)

Quick break, bathroom break?

Ryan Graves (1:00:57.200)

Yeah, wouldn't mind a quick stretch of legs.

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.840)

You got a few cool patches.

Ryan Graves (1:01:00.960)

I do, so this is a VFA 11 Red Rippers patch.

Lex Fridman (1:01:05.880)

Typically going actually on our arm.

Lex Fridman (1:01:09.400)

So this is actually what we call the Boar's Head or Arnold.

Lex Fridman (1:01:12.760)

So this is actually the Boar's Head

Ryan Graves (1:01:15.640)

from the Gordon's Gin bottle.

Lex Fridman (1:01:18.440)

In 1918, we were in London or the UK somewhere

Lex Fridman (1:01:22.120)

and we apparently partied with the owner and founder

Lex Fridman (1:01:25.700)

of Gordon's Gin and we had a great time

Lex Fridman (1:01:27.920)

and there's a signed letter in our ready room

Lex Fridman (1:01:29.840)

that says we can use the logo in perpetuity.

Ryan Graves (1:01:32.160)

Oh, nice.

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.000)

And yeah, so I'd like to give you that patch.

Ryan Graves (1:01:36.400)

I drank quite a bit of gourd, so this is good.

Lex Fridman (1:01:39.540)

And I'd like to give you that coin from our squadron.

Ryan Graves (1:01:44.760)

The Red Rippers, that's a badass name.

Lex Fridman (1:01:48.720)

Thank you, brother.

Ryan Graves (1:01:49.560)

You're welcome.

Lex Fridman (1:01:50.380)

So let's jump around a little bit,

Lex Fridman (1:01:51.640)

but let me ask you about this one set of experiences

Lex Fridman (1:01:56.600)

that you had and people in your squadron had.

Lex Fridman (1:01:59.040)

So you and a few people in the squadron

Lex Fridman (1:02:00.720)

either detected UFOs on your instruments

Ryan Graves (1:02:03.360)

or saw them directly.

Lex Fridman (1:02:05.120)

Tell me the full story of these UFO sightings

Lex Fridman (1:02:07.960)

and to the smallest technical details,

Lex Fridman (1:02:10.720)

because I love those.

Ryan Graves (1:02:12.460)

I'll do my best.

Lex Fridman (1:02:13.800)

So we returned from, and when I say we,

Ryan Graves (1:02:17.120)

I mean, not my squadron, but VFA 11, the Red Rippers.

Lex Fridman (1:02:21.240)

I was a somewhat junior pilot at the time.

Ryan Graves (1:02:24.460)

I joined them on deployment in 2012,

Lex Fridman (1:02:27.540)

where they had been already out there

Ryan Graves (1:02:29.400)

for about six months or so,

Lex Fridman (1:02:32.560)

operating in the vicinity of Afghanistan.

Ryan Graves (1:02:35.200)

I joined them and then we flew back

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.360)

and still as a relatively new guy,

Ryan Graves (1:02:39.080)

we came back and we entered

Lex Fridman (1:02:40.640)

what's considered a maintenance phase

Ryan Graves (1:02:42.000)

where we slow down the tactical flying a bit,

Lex Fridman (1:02:45.440)

kind of recuperate, do some maintenance on the aircraft.

Lex Fridman (1:02:48.340)

And our particular model of the F18, the lot number,

Lex Fridman (1:02:53.600)

was plumbed for the particular things

Ryan Graves (1:02:57.640)

that were needed to upgrade the radar

Lex Fridman (1:02:59.480)

from what's known as the ABG 73 to the ABG 79.

Lex Fridman (1:03:04.320)

And the ABG 73 is a mechanically scanned array radar.

Lex Fridman (1:03:10.600)

It's a perfectly fine radar,

Lex Fridman (1:03:12.760)

but the AESA radar is kind of a magnitude jump

Lex Fridman (1:03:16.280)

in capability, kind of an analog digital kind of mindset.

Lex Fridman (1:03:20.200)

So it's a leap to digital.

Lex Fridman (1:03:23.120)

ABG 73, so I mean, are these things on a carrier?

Lex Fridman (1:03:26.760)

Like what are we talking about here?

Lex Fridman (1:03:28.000)

How big is the radar?

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.920)

So this is actually the radars in the F18 itself.

Lex Fridman (1:03:32.760)

Okay, so when you say they were chosen,

Ryan Graves (1:03:35.000)

this is to test the upgrade to the new, the 79, ABG 79.

Lex Fridman (1:03:40.320)

Less of a test and more of just,

Ryan Graves (1:03:42.040)

hey, it's your turn to get the upgrade.

Lex Fridman (1:03:43.420)

Like we're all going to these better radars.

Ryan Graves (1:03:46.080)

They were building ones off the line with the new radar,

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.480)

but we were this weird transitionary squadron

Ryan Graves (1:03:51.560)

in the middle that transitioned

Lex Fridman (1:03:52.720)

from the older ones to the new ones.

Lex Fridman (1:03:55.080)

But it's not particularly rare to fly with different types

Lex Fridman (1:03:57.280)

of radar because in the,

Lex Fridman (1:03:59.280)

and we call the fleet replacement squadron,

Lex Fridman (1:04:01.240)

essentially the training ground for the F18,

Ryan Graves (1:04:03.700)

you have all sorts of F18s with different radar.

Lex Fridman (1:04:06.120)

So you are used to having multiple ones,

Lex Fridman (1:04:09.440)

but in the actual deployable combat squadron, we upgraded.

Lex Fridman (1:04:14.840)

And when we upgraded, we saw that there were objects

Ryan Graves (1:04:17.680)

on the radar that we were seeing the next day

Lex Fridman (1:04:19.760)

with this new radar that weren't there with the old radar.

Lex Fridman (1:04:23.760)

And these were sometimes the same day.

Lex Fridman (1:04:25.440)

You might go on two flights.

Ryan Graves (1:04:27.000)

The one in the morning might be with the older radar,

Lex Fridman (1:04:29.040)

the one in the evening with the new radar.

Lex Fridman (1:04:31.560)

And you'd see the objects with the new radar.

Lex Fridman (1:04:34.560)

And that's not overly surprising in some sense.

Ryan Graves (1:04:37.360)

They are more sensitive.

Lex Fridman (1:04:39.120)

Perhaps they're not filtering out everything

Ryan Graves (1:04:41.240)

they should be yet,

Lex Fridman (1:04:42.080)

or perhaps there's some other type of error.

Ryan Graves (1:04:45.520)

Maybe it needs to be calibrated, whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:04:47.880)

It was relatively new and we were somewhat used

Ryan Graves (1:04:50.400)

to there being software problems

Lex Fridman (1:04:52.320)

with these types of things occasionally,

Ryan Graves (1:04:53.760)

just like anything else.

Lex Fridman (1:04:55.280)

And so, okay, maybe this is a radar software malfunction.

Ryan Graves (1:04:58.960)

We're getting some false tracks, as we call them.

Lex Fridman (1:05:02.800)

What were you seeing?

Lex Fridman (1:05:04.320)

And so what we would see are representations of the objects.

Lex Fridman (1:05:08.520)

So this is off of our radar.

Ryan Graves (1:05:09.680)

We're not seeing a visual image here.

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.080)

This is kind of like what's being displayed to us

Lex Fridman (1:05:13.440)

almost like in a gaming fashion, right?

Lex Fridman (1:05:15.120)

Like the icon, right?

Lex Fridman (1:05:16.440)

So the icon is showing us, hey, something is there.

Lex Fridman (1:05:19.500)

And here's the parameters I can understand about it.

Lex Fridman (1:05:21.600)

So this is in the cockpit.

Lex Fridman (1:05:22.560)

There's a display that's showing some visualization

Ryan Graves (1:05:26.680)

with the radars detecting.

Lex Fridman (1:05:27.920)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (1:05:29.240)

And there's two different ways to do that.

Lex Fridman (1:05:30.720)

The first one is like the actual data,

Ryan Graves (1:05:32.640)

like the radar where I am,

Lex Fridman (1:05:37.240)

it's showing me the data kind of as if it's in front of me

Lex Fridman (1:05:39.820)

and I'm selecting those contacts.

Lex Fridman (1:05:41.720)

And there's another screen

Ryan Graves (1:05:42.560)

called the situational awareness page.

Lex Fridman (1:05:43.960)

And that's kind of a God's eye view

Ryan Graves (1:05:45.940)

that brings all that data into one spot.

Lex Fridman (1:05:48.560)

And so I'm gonna talk about this from the SA page,

Ryan Graves (1:05:51.840)

from the situational awareness page

Lex Fridman (1:05:53.040)

versus the individual radar ones,

Ryan Graves (1:05:54.320)

because it's easier, but.

Lex Fridman (1:05:55.880)

Can you, sorry to linger on that.

Lex Fridman (1:05:57.400)

So the individual displays are like first person

Lex Fridman (1:06:01.040)

and then SA is,

Ryan Graves (1:06:04.280)

when you say God's eye view, it's like from the top,

Lex Fridman (1:06:06.920)

the integration of all that information

Ryan Graves (1:06:09.020)

as if it's looking down onto the earth.

Lex Fridman (1:06:11.720)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.560)

Is that a good way to summarize it?

Lex Fridman (1:06:13.400)

It is, but for the aviator, it's slightly different

Ryan Graves (1:06:15.200)

because those two radar displays I talked about

Lex Fridman (1:06:17.520)

are at the bottom of that display

Ryan Graves (1:06:20.200)

is kind of representative of where I am.

Lex Fridman (1:06:22.420)

And so I see what's in front of me.

Ryan Graves (1:06:24.440)

Whereas the situational awareness page,

Lex Fridman (1:06:26.860)

the aircraft is located in the center of that.

Lex Fridman (1:06:29.300)

And then all around me, based off of the data link

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.200)

and wherever I'm getting information from,

Ryan Graves (1:06:35.560)

I can see that whole awareness page.

Lex Fridman (1:06:37.760)

I can see all the situation.

Lex Fridman (1:06:38.840)

So I'm gonna kind of talk about this

Lex Fridman (1:06:41.460)

from the situational awareness page,

Ryan Graves (1:06:43.520)

which is a top down view, just to kind of frame our minds

Lex Fridman (1:06:46.360)

instead of jumping around.

Lex Fridman (1:06:47.960)

And so what we would see out there

Lex Fridman (1:06:49.200)

is we'd see these indications

Ryan Graves (1:06:50.840)

that something would be there

Lex Fridman (1:06:51.680)

and they would have a track file.

Ryan Graves (1:06:53.560)

That track file, that thing that represents the object

Lex Fridman (1:06:56.080)

has a line coming out of it.

Lex Fridman (1:06:57.280)

And that represents,

Lex Fridman (1:06:58.420)

it's called the target aspect indicator.

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.640)

So there's some tracking from the radar.

Lex Fridman (1:07:03.480)

Correct, so it's showing you where the object's going.

Ryan Graves (1:07:05.360)

This is all pretty cool that the radar can do all this.

Lex Fridman (1:07:07.320)

So radar locks in on different objects

Lex Fridman (1:07:10.480)

and it tracks them over time.

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.800)

Correct.

Ryan Graves (1:07:12.640)

That's coming from the radar.

Lex Fridman (1:07:13.480)

That's like a built in feature.

Ryan Graves (1:07:15.400)

Okay, cool.

Lex Fridman (1:07:16.240)

So out there we're seeing it.

Ryan Graves (1:07:17.400)

We don't have to necessarily pull things

Lex Fridman (1:07:18.920)

into our tracker in some sense, right?

Ryan Graves (1:07:22.120)

It's all out there

Lex Fridman (1:07:22.960)

and then we can kind of choose to highlight on stuff

Ryan Graves (1:07:24.840)

or to kind of focus in on it more so.

Lex Fridman (1:07:27.520)

But the information should all be out there.

Lex Fridman (1:07:30.000)

And so we'd see that that target aspect indicator,

Lex Fridman (1:07:32.080)

that line on a typical aircraft,

Ryan Graves (1:07:34.760)

it would kind of look like this.

Lex Fridman (1:07:35.720)

It would be coming out and it would go steady

Lex Fridman (1:07:37.000)

and if they turned, it would be like boop, boop, boop,

Lex Fridman (1:07:39.800)

and you see them turn, right?

Ryan Graves (1:07:41.080)

It's not magic.

Lex Fridman (1:07:42.160)

But this object, the target aspect

Ryan Graves (1:07:44.280)

would kind of be like all over the place,

Lex Fridman (1:07:46.600)

like kind of randomly in the 360 degrees

Ryan Graves (1:07:49.480)

from that top down view, that line would be in any place.

Lex Fridman (1:07:52.760)

So kind of, is it unable to determine the target aspect?

Lex Fridman (1:07:56.600)

Is it stationary?

Lex Fridman (1:07:58.160)

And that's just how it puts it out

Lex Fridman (1:07:59.240)

and it's not used to seeing it.

Lex Fridman (1:08:00.280)

So I'm not saying that's necessarily super weird,

Lex Fridman (1:08:02.480)

but it was different than what we were used to seeing

Lex Fridman (1:08:04.520)

because we weren't used to seeing stationary objects

Ryan Graves (1:08:06.440)

out there very much.

Lex Fridman (1:08:08.440)

And what was also interesting is that

Lex Fridman (1:08:09.720)

these weren't just stationary on a zero wind day, right?

Lex Fridman (1:08:13.400)

These are stationary at 20,000 feet, 15,000 feet,

Lex Fridman (1:08:17.080)

500 feet with the wind blowing, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:08:21.160)

And so much like the sea, when we're up there fighting,

Ryan Graves (1:08:23.760)

it affects everything.

Lex Fridman (1:08:24.600)

We consider the wind when we're shooting missiles,

Ryan Graves (1:08:27.720)

when we're flying or fuel considerations,

Lex Fridman (1:08:29.600)

it's like operating in that volume of air,

Ryan Graves (1:08:31.600)

like the ocean, everything's going with the current.

Lex Fridman (1:08:34.040)

And so anything that doesn't go with the current

Ryan Graves (1:08:36.400)

is immediately kind of identifiable and strange

Lex Fridman (1:08:38.920)

and that's why these were initially strangers

Ryan Graves (1:08:40.480)

because they would be stationary against the wind.

Lex Fridman (1:08:42.480)

So if you had something like a good drone

Lex Fridman (1:08:45.360)

in a windy conditions, what would that look like?

Lex Fridman (1:08:47.800)

Would it not come off as stationary?

Lex Fridman (1:08:50.380)

Would it sort of float about kind of thing?

Lex Fridman (1:08:53.280)

No, I think with the drone technology we have today,

Ryan Graves (1:08:55.160)

they could stay within a pretty tight location.

Lex Fridman (1:08:57.520)

Well, I meant like DJI drone,

Ryan Graves (1:09:00.480)

I'm saying like generically speaking,

Lex Fridman (1:09:03.040)

not a military drone.

Ryan Graves (1:09:03.880)

No, I have a DJI drone myself even,

Lex Fridman (1:09:05.840)

and you know, maybe not a hundred knots,

Lex Fridman (1:09:07.960)

but if that thing's in 30 or 40 and not winds,

Lex Fridman (1:09:11.120)

the amount of distance it's going to be kind of

Ryan Graves (1:09:15.360)

doing one of these, like that change

Lex Fridman (1:09:16.960)

is not something I'm gonna detect from maybe many miles away.

Ryan Graves (1:09:19.680)

Interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:09:20.520)

So it could look very stationary,

Lex Fridman (1:09:22.560)

but that wasn't necessarily,

Lex Fridman (1:09:24.160)

and what's interesting about this story

Lex Fridman (1:09:26.080)

is that there's not like the one smoking gun, right?

Lex Fridman (1:09:28.200)

You have to kind of look at everything.

Lex Fridman (1:09:29.920)

And that's what I don't like about the Department of Defense

Lex Fridman (1:09:34.260)

and just generally people's take on this

Ryan Graves (1:09:36.840)

is that everything is kind of based around a single image,

Lex Fridman (1:09:39.680)

you know, or that one case,

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.540)

but a lot of the interestingness comes from the duration

Lex Fridman (1:09:44.600)

or the time it's been out there,

Lex Fridman (1:09:45.600)

how they're interacting relative to other objects out there.

Lex Fridman (1:09:48.080)

And you don't get that information

Lex Fridman (1:09:49.520)

when you just look at a frame for a second, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:09:52.360)

Everyone kind of bites off on the shiny object, but.

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.800)

So you yourself, from your particular slice

Lex Fridman (1:09:57.360)

of things you've experienced and seen directly

Ryan Graves (1:09:59.600)

or indirectly, you've kind of built up an intuition

Lex Fridman (1:10:02.360)

about what are the things that were being seen.

Ryan Graves (1:10:04.960)

I wouldn't go that far.

Lex Fridman (1:10:05.880)

I've just been able to eliminate some variables

Ryan Graves (1:10:10.440)

because of how long I've observed it.

Lex Fridman (1:10:12.500)

So like you said, yes, can a drone stay

Lex Fridman (1:10:14.720)

in a particular position against the wind like that?

Lex Fridman (1:10:16.320)

Certainly, but I don't think it can do that

Lex Fridman (1:10:18.640)

and then go 0.8 Mach for four hours after that, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:10:21.520)

And so when you look at outside of that one,

Ryan Graves (1:10:24.700)

that moment in time, then it eliminates

Lex Fridman (1:10:27.800)

a lot of the potential things it could be,

Ryan Graves (1:10:29.440)

at least from my perspective.

Lex Fridman (1:10:30.720)

So what kind of stuff did you see in the instruments?

Ryan Graves (1:10:33.560)

We'd see them flying in patterns,

Lex Fridman (1:10:36.560)

kind of racetrack patterns or circular patterns

Ryan Graves (1:10:38.560)

or just going kind of straight east.

Lex Fridman (1:10:42.200)

Occasionally see them supersonic, 1.1, 1.2 Mach,

Lex Fridman (1:10:46.120)

but typically 0.6 to 0.8 Mach,

Lex Fridman (1:10:48.060)

just for extremely extended periods of time,

Ryan Graves (1:10:51.040)

essentially all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:10:53.460)

And this is airspace where there's not supposed

Ryan Graves (1:10:55.160)

to be anything else at all.

Lex Fridman (1:10:57.480)

And it's pretty far out there.

Ryan Graves (1:10:58.760)

It starts 10 miles off the coast, goes like 300 miles.

Lex Fridman (1:11:01.460)

Can you say the location that we're talking about?

Ryan Graves (1:11:03.860)

Off the coast of Virginia Beach.

Lex Fridman (1:11:05.680)

Got it, and so nobody's supposed to be out there?

Ryan Graves (1:11:09.320)

It's possible for people to be there.

Lex Fridman (1:11:10.520)

It's not necessarily restricted,

Lex Fridman (1:11:12.160)

but it's well monitored and we're out there

Lex Fridman (1:11:14.520)

every day, all day.

Lex Fridman (1:11:15.480)

And so people know to stay clear.

Lex Fridman (1:11:17.280)

If a Cessna goes bumbling in there,

Ryan Graves (1:11:18.640)

everyone's gonna know about it.

Lex Fridman (1:11:19.840)

FAA is gonna call them out, gonna tell us about it.

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.180)

So incursions happen, not a big deal,

Lex Fridman (1:11:27.040)

but they're pretty rare, honestly,

Ryan Graves (1:11:29.060)

because everyone knows the area

Lex Fridman (1:11:30.000)

and we've been operating there for decades.

Lex Fridman (1:11:32.120)

And what are the trajectories at 0.6 to 0.8 Mach

Lex Fridman (1:11:35.960)

that these objects were taking?

Ryan Graves (1:11:38.720)

Typically, they would be in some type of circular pattern

Lex Fridman (1:11:42.160)

or kind of racetrack pattern when they were at those speeds,

Ryan Graves (1:11:44.760)

or I just see them kind of,

Lex Fridman (1:11:46.440)

and it wasn't always like a mechanical flight description.

Lex Fridman (1:11:50.160)

And when I say that, I mean like an autopilot

Lex Fridman (1:11:52.240)

is gonna be just very precise, right?

Ryan Graves (1:11:54.560)

It's gonna be locked on straight.

Lex Fridman (1:11:56.520)

Whereas I could see an airplane,

Lex Fridman (1:11:57.760)

I could tell if the pilot's flying it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:11:59.280)

Because it's not gonna be perfect.

Ryan Graves (1:12:01.000)

The computer's not controlling it.

Lex Fridman (1:12:02.320)

And these seemed more like that.

Ryan Graves (1:12:03.760)

Not that they were imprecise,

Lex Fridman (1:12:05.340)

but that they were even much more erratic than that.

Lex Fridman (1:12:07.840)

So like, it wasn't like a straight line in a turn.

Lex Fridman (1:12:10.080)

It was just kind of like a weird drift like that

Ryan Graves (1:12:13.200)

in that direction.

Lex Fridman (1:12:14.520)

So it wasn't controlled by a dumb computer,

Ryan Graves (1:12:17.360)

or not disrespect to computers.

Lex Fridman (1:12:20.120)

So it wasn't controlled by autopilot kind of technology.

Ryan Graves (1:12:23.000)

That's not the sense that I got.

Lex Fridman (1:12:25.560)

So how many people have seen them in the squadron?

Lex Fridman (1:12:28.880)

Sort of how many times were they seen?

Lex Fridman (1:12:31.800)

How many were there times when there's multiple objects?

Ryan Graves (1:12:36.400)

Once we started seeing them on the radar enough,

Lex Fridman (1:12:38.320)

and we would get close enough,

Ryan Graves (1:12:39.200)

we'd actually see them on our FLIR as well.

Lex Fridman (1:12:40.860)

So our advanced targeting pod.

Ryan Graves (1:12:45.080)

It's essentially a infrared camera

Lex Fridman (1:12:47.320)

that we use for targeting,

Ryan Graves (1:12:48.500)

mostly in the air to surface environment.

Lex Fridman (1:12:51.040)

We don't use it in the air to air arena.

Ryan Graves (1:12:52.880)

It's just not that good of a tool, frankly.

Lex Fridman (1:12:56.120)

But we would see IR energy emitting from that location

Ryan Graves (1:13:00.480)

where the radar was dropping us off.

Lex Fridman (1:13:01.780)

So the radar, we'd lock onto the object

Lex Fridman (1:13:03.960)

and our sensors would all look there.

Lex Fridman (1:13:05.520)

And so then we could see that it's looking

Ryan Graves (1:13:06.960)

at that right piece of sky,

Lex Fridman (1:13:08.040)

but there's energy actually coming from there.

Lex Fridman (1:13:11.080)

So now we started thinking that, okay,

Lex Fridman (1:13:12.460)

maybe not radar malfunctions, maybe more,

Ryan Graves (1:13:14.680)

maybe something is physically here, of course.

Lex Fridman (1:13:16.680)

And then people started to try to fly by it and see it.

Lex Fridman (1:13:19.080)

And at this point, I would say maybe 80 to 90%

Lex Fridman (1:13:22.400)

of our squadron had probably seen one of these

Ryan Graves (1:13:23.760)

on the radar at this point.

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.720)

Everyone was aware of it.

Ryan Graves (1:13:26.320)

There was small communication, I think,

Lex Fridman (1:13:28.200)

between squadrons of the same area that had the same radar.

Lex Fridman (1:13:31.600)

So I knew it wasn't just our squadron

Lex Fridman (1:13:33.120)

for whatever strange reason,

Ryan Graves (1:13:35.120)

because other squadrons would be out there

Lex Fridman (1:13:36.720)

and we would talk to them,

Ryan Graves (1:13:37.560)

like, hey, careful, there's an object.

Lex Fridman (1:13:39.560)

Are you aware of that?

Lex Fridman (1:13:40.480)

So they would be aware of it.

Lex Fridman (1:13:42.760)

And then, of course, people would want to go see

Lex Fridman (1:13:44.440)

what they look like, right?

Lex Fridman (1:13:45.320)

So people would try to fly by it.

Ryan Graves (1:13:46.840)

I try to fly by it.

Lex Fridman (1:13:48.240)

I like how that's an of course.

Ryan Graves (1:13:50.280)

Of course.

Lex Fridman (1:13:51.200)

Of course you don't want to fly by it.

Ryan Graves (1:13:53.000)

There's an argument against that kind of perspective

Lex Fridman (1:13:57.880)

that maybe the thing is dangerous, so maybe we don't.

Lex Fridman (1:14:00.600)

But perhaps that's part of the reason

Lex Fridman (1:14:02.400)

you want to fly by it,

Ryan Graves (1:14:03.240)

is to understand better what it is if it's a threat.

Lex Fridman (1:14:05.760)

We have a lot of context now that we didn't back then.

Lex Fridman (1:14:08.120)

So it was still, hey, is this a balloon?

Lex Fridman (1:14:10.320)

Is this a drone at a certain point?

Lex Fridman (1:14:12.360)

And we're also aware of potential intelligence gathering

Lex Fridman (1:14:14.800)

operations that could be going on.

Ryan Graves (1:14:17.000)

We're up there flying our tactics.

Lex Fridman (1:14:18.560)

We're emitting.

Ryan Graves (1:14:20.080)

We're practicing our EW.

Lex Fridman (1:14:22.960)

We're turning at particular times.

Ryan Graves (1:14:24.560)

There's stuff that can be learned.

Lex Fridman (1:14:25.640)

It's not a secret.

Lex Fridman (1:14:26.480)

And countries keep different fishing vessels and whatnot

Lex Fridman (1:14:29.800)

in international waters off there.

Lex Fridman (1:14:31.200)

So it's not exactly a secret

Lex Fridman (1:14:32.720)

that we're being observed out there.

Lex Fridman (1:14:35.360)

So to think that a foreign nation would want to

Lex Fridman (1:14:40.240)

somehow intercept information,

Ryan Graves (1:14:42.120)

whether that's our radar signals or jamming capabilities

Lex Fridman (1:14:46.720)

to try to break that down or understand it better,

Ryan Graves (1:14:49.920)

be ready for that next fight, I mean,

Lex Fridman (1:14:53.240)

that's what scares me about this scenario

Ryan Graves (1:14:55.720)

because we didn't jump right to aliens or UFOs.

Lex Fridman (1:14:59.000)

We thought, this is a radar malfunction

Ryan Graves (1:15:01.480)

we need to be aware of.

Lex Fridman (1:15:02.320)

It's a safety issue.

Lex Fridman (1:15:03.160)

And then this could be a tactical problem right here

Lex Fridman (1:15:06.320)

because everything we do is based off a crypto

Lex Fridman (1:15:09.920)

and locations, everything's classified we do out there.

Lex Fridman (1:15:13.600)

And so over time, if you gather enough data

Ryan Graves (1:15:15.560)

about those fights and just monitor them forever,

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.840)

just like some nations do with other

Ryan Graves (1:15:21.480)

piece of technology or software,

Lex Fridman (1:15:24.360)

they could probably learn a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:15:25.520)

So we have to be cognizant of the fact

Lex Fridman (1:15:27.080)

and defend against it.

Lex Fridman (1:15:29.080)

So what can you say about the other characteristics

Lex Fridman (1:15:32.600)

of these objects like shape, size,

Lex Fridman (1:15:38.440)

texture, luminosity, how else do you describe object?

Lex Fridman (1:15:43.320)

Is there something that could be said?

Lex Fridman (1:15:45.160)

So you said like this is a tech town radar step one.

Lex Fridman (1:15:47.920)

Now you have FLIR images that can give you a sense

Ryan Graves (1:15:50.960)

that that's actually a physical object.

Lex Fridman (1:15:52.920)

What else can be said about those physical objects?

Lex Fridman (1:15:55.680)

So eventually someone did see one with their own eyeballs,

Lex Fridman (1:15:59.400)

multiple people and they saw it

Ryan Graves (1:16:02.200)

in a somewhat interesting way.

Lex Fridman (1:16:04.720)

The object presented itself at the exact altitude

Lex Fridman (1:16:08.720)

and geographic location of the entry points

Lex Fridman (1:16:11.360)

into our working areas.

Lex Fridman (1:16:13.200)

So we enter at a very specific point at a certain altitude

Lex Fridman (1:16:16.200)

and people leave the areas at the same point

Ryan Graves (1:16:18.080)

at a lower altitude.

Lex Fridman (1:16:19.640)

Probably one of the busiest pieces of sky

Ryan Graves (1:16:21.520)

on the eastern seaboard.

Lex Fridman (1:16:23.000)

So two jets from my squadron went out

Lex Fridman (1:16:24.720)

and they went flying and they entered the area

Lex Fridman (1:16:26.520)

and one of these objects went right between the aircraft.

Lex Fridman (1:16:28.520)

So they're flying in formation

Lex Fridman (1:16:30.240)

and the object went between the aircraft.

Ryan Graves (1:16:32.320)

They went between the object I think.

Lex Fridman (1:16:33.680)

I don't think that the object was moving.

Ryan Graves (1:16:35.720)

I don't think it aggressively went at them.

Lex Fridman (1:16:37.320)

I think it was located still there

Lex Fridman (1:16:39.440)

and then they flew through it.

Lex Fridman (1:16:41.000)

But they didn't have it on their radar.

Lex Fridman (1:16:43.600)

And I think the radar might have been malfunctioning.

Lex Fridman (1:16:48.040)

I don't know that for sure.

Ryan Graves (1:16:48.960)

I would like to look into it

Lex Fridman (1:16:50.280)

but my supposition is that if their radar was malfunctioning

Ryan Graves (1:16:53.520)

it would make sense that they wouldn't avoid the object

Lex Fridman (1:16:55.600)

that was there

Ryan Graves (1:16:56.440)

because they knew these were physical at that point.

Lex Fridman (1:16:59.120)

And we would go up to these objects all the time

Lex Fridman (1:17:02.040)

and try to see them and couldn't see them.

Lex Fridman (1:17:03.760)

And we didn't know what it was.

Lex Fridman (1:17:05.320)

Was it, were they just not there or being fooled?

Lex Fridman (1:17:07.640)

Was something happening?

Lex Fridman (1:17:08.600)

Were they moving, dropping altitude at the last minute?

Lex Fridman (1:17:11.880)

We're going by pretty quick so it's difficult to tell.

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.560)

But perhaps if his radar wasn't working

Lex Fridman (1:17:16.960)

it wasn't receiving energy from the jet.

Lex Fridman (1:17:19.440)

And the jet of course didn't know that it was there.

Lex Fridman (1:17:21.640)

And so whatever the case was, they flew right by

Lex Fridman (1:17:24.120)

and they described it just as a dark gray or black cube

Lex Fridman (1:17:29.240)

inside a clear translucent sphere.

Lex Fridman (1:17:31.760)

And the kind of the apex of the cube

Lex Fridman (1:17:33.400)

or touching the inside of that sphere.

Ryan Graves (1:17:35.240)

That's an image that's haunting.

Lex Fridman (1:17:39.520)

So what do they think it is?

Lex Fridman (1:17:41.040)

What did they think at that moment?

Lex Fridman (1:17:43.680)

That they, is it just this kind of cloud of uncertainty

Lex Fridman (1:17:47.080)

that they're just describing a geometric object?

Lex Fridman (1:17:51.440)

It's not on radar so it's unclear what it is.

Ryan Graves (1:17:55.280)

Yeah, what was the, any kind of other description

Lex Fridman (1:18:00.000)

they've had of it in terms of the intuition

Lex Fridman (1:18:02.600)

from a pilot's perspective?

Lex Fridman (1:18:03.880)

You have to kind of identify what a thing is.

Ryan Graves (1:18:07.560)

To answer the first part,

Lex Fridman (1:18:08.400)

they actually canceled the flight and came back

Ryan Graves (1:18:10.360)

because they were, it's like if there's one of these

Lex Fridman (1:18:12.800)

out here and we're almost hitting them

Lex Fridman (1:18:14.000)

and it's right there, then perhaps we need

Lex Fridman (1:18:16.680)

to get a different jet with better radar.

Lex Fridman (1:18:18.920)

So they came back and they're in their gear

Lex Fridman (1:18:20.400)

and they're talking to the front desk

Lex Fridman (1:18:22.520)

and talking to Skipper and like,

Lex Fridman (1:18:23.600)

hey, we almost hit one of those damn things out there.

Lex Fridman (1:18:25.720)

And this kind of was one of those kind of

Lex Fridman (1:18:28.080)

slight watershed moments where we all were kind of like,

Ryan Graves (1:18:30.040)

all right, like this is a serious deal now.

Lex Fridman (1:18:32.480)

Maybe it was a, maybe we thought they were balloons

Ryan Graves (1:18:35.640)

or drones or malfunctions, or maybe we thought it was fine.

Lex Fridman (1:18:37.920)

But at the end of the day,

Ryan Graves (1:18:38.800)

if we're gonna hit one of these things,

Lex Fridman (1:18:39.920)

then we need to take care of the situation.

Lex Fridman (1:18:43.400)

And that's actually when we started submitting

Lex Fridman (1:18:46.080)

hazard reports or hazard reps to the Naval Aviation Safety

Ryan Graves (1:18:52.440)

kind of communication network.

Lex Fridman (1:18:53.600)

And it's not like a big proactive thing

Ryan Graves (1:18:56.520)

where people are gonna go investigate.

Lex Fridman (1:18:57.640)

It's more of a data collection mechanism

Lex Fridman (1:18:59.240)

so that you can kind of share that aggregate data

Lex Fridman (1:19:01.440)

and make sure that things are progressing.

Lex Fridman (1:19:04.720)

So it wasn't a mechanism that would result

Lex Fridman (1:19:06.960)

in action being taken, but we were hoping

Ryan Graves (1:19:09.240)

to at least get the message out to whomever

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.080)

was maybe running a classified program

Ryan Graves (1:19:12.800)

that we were not aware of or something like that,

Lex Fridman (1:19:14.520)

that hey, like you could kill somebody here.

Ryan Graves (1:19:16.320)

Like you've grown too big for your bridges here.

Lex Fridman (1:19:19.120)

Take a step back.

Lex Fridman (1:19:20.680)

So that was our concern at that point.

Lex Fridman (1:19:22.720)

That's kind of where we were thinking this was going.

Lex Fridman (1:19:25.040)

What's the protocol for shooting at a thing?

Lex Fridman (1:19:29.480)

Was there a concern that it's a direct threat,

Lex Fridman (1:19:31.360)

not just surveillance, but a thing that could be a threat?

Lex Fridman (1:19:36.320)

At least from my perspective,

Ryan Graves (1:19:37.360)

like that never really crossed into my mind.

Lex Fridman (1:19:39.480)

I thought it was potentially an intelligence failure

Ryan Graves (1:19:44.000)

that could be being watched and information gathered.

Lex Fridman (1:19:46.800)

But I didn't think that it was something

Ryan Graves (1:19:48.400)

that would proactively engage me in a hostile manner.

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.040)

It wouldn't really make sense either too.

Ryan Graves (1:19:55.320)

It would be shocking to like have one of these objects

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.240)

take out an F18, but there's no real tactical advantage

Ryan Graves (1:19:59.400)

other than fear perhaps.

Lex Fridman (1:20:01.640)

Psychological, yeah.

Ryan Graves (1:20:04.000)

I've learned a lot about the psychological warfare

Lex Fridman (1:20:08.080)

in Ukraine as a big part of the war

Ryan Graves (1:20:11.600)

in terms of when you talk about siege warfare,

Lex Fridman (1:20:14.000)

about wars that last for many years, for many months,

Lex Fridman (1:20:17.960)

and then perhaps could extend to years.

Lex Fridman (1:20:20.560)

But yes, it didn't seem,

Ryan Graves (1:20:24.760)

it didn't fit your conception of a threatening entity.

Lex Fridman (1:20:29.880)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (1:20:32.440)

So looking back now from all the pieces of data

Lex Fridman (1:20:35.840)

you've integrated, you've personally added,

Lex Fridman (1:20:39.160)

what do you think it could be?

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.960)

I don't know.

Ryan Graves (1:20:42.920)

I don't know what it could be.

Lex Fridman (1:20:44.120)

I think we've been able to categorize it successfully

Ryan Graves (1:20:47.080)

into a few buckets.

Lex Fridman (1:20:48.600)

We've been able to say that this could be US technology

Ryan Graves (1:20:51.880)

that someone put in the wrong piece of sky

Lex Fridman (1:20:55.920)

or perhaps was developed and tested in an inappropriate spot

Ryan Graves (1:21:00.040)

by someone that wasn't being best practices.

Lex Fridman (1:21:02.880)

Is there, sorry to interrupt,

Ryan Graves (1:21:04.520)

is there a sort of modularity to the way

Lex Fridman (1:21:08.380)

the military operates, the way it's possible

Lex Fridman (1:21:10.900)

for one branch not to know about the tests of another?

Lex Fridman (1:21:13.920)

Yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable

Lex Fridman (1:21:15.680)

to think that that could occur, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:17.680)

And so if we just make that assumption,

Ryan Graves (1:21:19.820)

we can integrate that into our analysis here

Lex Fridman (1:21:21.920)

and just say, okay, but at the point we're at now,

Lex Fridman (1:21:24.640)

we have to assume that that's not the case, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:26.440)

With everything that's been going on

Lex Fridman (1:21:27.820)

and the statements have been made and the hearings,

Lex Fridman (1:21:30.280)

I think that if it was a noncommunication issue,

Ryan Graves (1:21:35.360)

we're in big trouble at this point.

Lex Fridman (1:21:37.280)

What about it being an object from another nation,

Lex Fridman (1:21:40.480)

from China, from Russia?

Lex Fridman (1:21:42.680)

Or even one of our allies, perhaps, right?

Ryan Graves (1:21:44.300)

Maybe that's, you know, I don't think it's controversial

Lex Fridman (1:21:49.040)

to say that our allies could be gathering information

Ryan Graves (1:21:51.360)

about us or anything of that nature,

Lex Fridman (1:21:52.520)

but that would be an extreme case,

Lex Fridman (1:21:54.000)

but I think it's just important to say, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:55.760)

To not just say Russia or China

Lex Fridman (1:21:57.440)

and just call them the bad guys

Lex Fridman (1:21:58.680)

and assume that if they don't have it, no one can do it.

Lex Fridman (1:22:01.580)

And so from my perspective, you know, anyone else,

Lex Fridman (1:22:03.720)

anyone else, and it doesn't necessarily need

Ryan Graves (1:22:05.000)

to be a foreign power.

Lex Fridman (1:22:07.000)

It could be a non government entity, perhaps,

Ryan Graves (1:22:09.380)

although I think that's very unlikely.

Lex Fridman (1:22:10.880)

But again, these are things you must consider

Ryan Graves (1:22:13.360)

if you kind of throw everything,

Lex Fridman (1:22:15.720)

everything other than the US under scrutiny.

Lex Fridman (1:22:18.600)

But you know, from what has been reported

Lex Fridman (1:22:21.400)

and the behaviors that have been seen,

Ryan Graves (1:22:23.920)

it would be, I would expect to see remnants

Lex Fridman (1:22:26.720)

of that technology elsewhere in the economy.

Ryan Graves (1:22:29.920)

There seems to be too many things

Lex Fridman (1:22:32.280)

that require advanced technology

Ryan Graves (1:22:35.660)

that would be beneficial commercially,

Lex Fridman (1:22:37.880)

as well as in other military applications

Ryan Graves (1:22:40.120)

for it to be completely locked away

Lex Fridman (1:22:42.200)

by one of our competitors.

Ryan Graves (1:22:44.160)

Now I could see us perhaps locking something away

Lex Fridman (1:22:46.320)

if we're already in the lead

Lex Fridman (1:22:47.520)

and having it to pull out as needed.

Lex Fridman (1:22:50.600)

But for someone that's perhaps in a power struggle

Lex Fridman (1:22:53.520)

and they're in second place,

Lex Fridman (1:22:55.080)

they might be more aggressive with the development

Ryan Graves (1:22:57.360)

of different types of technology

Lex Fridman (1:22:58.760)

willing to accept bigger risks.

Lex Fridman (1:23:00.640)

Do you think it could be natural phenomena

Lex Fridman (1:23:03.400)

that we don't yet understand?

Ryan Graves (1:23:06.160)

I think that there are a number of things

Lex Fridman (1:23:08.420)

that this is going to be, right?

Ryan Graves (1:23:09.720)

I don't think there's one thing at the end of the day,

Lex Fridman (1:23:11.360)

but I certainly think that that is part

Ryan Graves (1:23:13.340)

of what some of this could be.

Lex Fridman (1:23:14.580)

I don't think it's what we were seeing on the East Coast,

Lex Fridman (1:23:17.640)

and I don't think it is related to the Roosevelt incident,

Lex Fridman (1:23:20.360)

or I'll even go out and say the Nimitz incident, but.

Lex Fridman (1:23:22.940)

What's the Roosevelt incident?

Lex Fridman (1:23:24.480)

The Roosevelt incident, typically referred to as the gimbal

Lex Fridman (1:23:28.000)

and or the go fast video.

Lex Fridman (1:23:29.460)

And then the Nimitz is from what the David Fravor

Ryan Graves (1:23:33.240)

has witnessed directly and spoken about.

Lex Fridman (1:23:36.000)

We'll talk about that as well.

Ryan Graves (1:23:37.140)

I'd just love to get your sort of interpretation

Lex Fridman (1:23:42.000)

of those incidents.

Lex Fridman (1:23:42.840)

But yeah, so in this particular case,

Lex Fridman (1:23:45.560)

natural phenomena could be a part of the picture,

Lex Fridman (1:23:48.720)

but you're saying not the whole picture.

Lex Fridman (1:23:50.920)

Yes, yes, and we can't discount it.

Ryan Graves (1:23:54.400)

Oh, the other thing is what about the failure

Lex Fridman (1:23:57.440)

of pilot eyesight?

Ryan Graves (1:24:00.480)

Like sort of some deep mixture of actual direct vision,

Lex Fridman (1:24:06.760)

human vision system failure, and like psychology.

Ryan Graves (1:24:10.960)

Like seeing something weird and then filling in the gaps.

Lex Fridman (1:24:17.920)

Because in order to make sense of the weird.

Ryan Graves (1:24:20.820)

I've tried to expose myself to scenarios like that

Lex Fridman (1:24:25.920)

that I don't necessarily think are right,

Lex Fridman (1:24:28.060)

but I've explored them to see if they could have some truth.

Lex Fridman (1:24:31.360)

And one example is let's imagine a scenario

Ryan Graves (1:24:34.080)

where if we're seeing these objects every day

Lex Fridman (1:24:35.520)

off the East Coast, I can imagine a technology

Ryan Graves (1:24:38.760)

or an operation where you had some type

Lex Fridman (1:24:41.440)

of traditional propulsion system operating drones

Ryan Graves (1:24:44.560)

in order to gather data like we had discussed.

Lex Fridman (1:24:47.680)

And I could envision a clever enough adversary

Ryan Graves (1:24:51.640)

that could perhaps destroy or somehow remove these objects

Lex Fridman (1:24:54.640)

and replace them with new objects essentially

Lex Fridman (1:24:56.880)

when we're not looking, right?

Lex Fridman (1:24:58.080)

And that accounts for the large airborne time.

Lex Fridman (1:25:02.480)

And so I explore options like that

Lex Fridman (1:25:04.920)

and I try to see what evidence and assumptions

Ryan Graves (1:25:08.280)

need to be made in order to prove or disprove that.

Lex Fridman (1:25:11.440)

And you would need so much infrastructure.

Ryan Graves (1:25:14.640)

You'd need so many assets.

Lex Fridman (1:25:16.360)

And so I try to explore some of those fallacies

Lex Fridman (1:25:18.720)

and some of those concerns.

Lex Fridman (1:25:20.040)

And as aviators, we're trained into many

Ryan Graves (1:25:23.200)

like actual physical, like eyesight

Lex Fridman (1:25:24.920)

and kind of illusion training.

Lex Fridman (1:25:26.800)

So like at nighttime flying,

Lex Fridman (1:25:28.520)

there's so many things that can happen

Ryan Graves (1:25:29.680)

flying with false horizons.

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.920)

And so we receive hours of training on that type of stuff,

Lex Fridman (1:25:34.880)

but this just falls outside the category

Lex Fridman (1:25:37.320)

from my perspective.

Lex Fridman (1:25:38.360)

What was the visibility conditions

Lex Fridman (1:25:40.600)

in the times when people were able to see it?

Lex Fridman (1:25:42.960)

And we just earlier discussed complete nighttime, darkness.

Lex Fridman (1:25:50.360)

In this case, was it during the day?

Ryan Graves (1:25:53.040)

It was a perfectly clear day that particular incident, yep.

Lex Fridman (1:25:57.440)

In a world that's full of mystery,

Ryan Graves (1:25:59.040)

I have to ask what do you think is the possibility

Lex Fridman (1:26:02.720)

that it's not of this earth origin?

Ryan Graves (1:26:07.920)

I like the term nonhuman intelligence in a sense,

Lex Fridman (1:26:11.280)

because again, there's a lot of assumptions in there

Ryan Graves (1:26:16.040)

that may cause us to go down the wrong roads.

Lex Fridman (1:26:20.080)

It could, you know, these could be something

Lex Fridman (1:26:21.960)

that are weather phenomena of earth, right?

Lex Fridman (1:26:24.200)

Or something else that is just something we don't understand

Lex Fridman (1:26:26.920)

and can't imagine right now that's still of this earth.

Lex Fridman (1:26:30.280)

If we consider extraterrestrials or something

Ryan Graves (1:26:33.160)

that came from a physical place far away in space time,

Lex Fridman (1:26:37.480)

you know, that leads us to some detection assumptions

Ryan Graves (1:26:39.840)

that we would need to make.

Lex Fridman (1:26:40.960)

And so I just try to not categorize it under anything

Lex Fridman (1:26:43.760)

and just say, hey, is this demonstrating intelligence?

Lex Fridman (1:26:47.040)

And start from there as a single object.

Lex Fridman (1:26:49.160)

What can we learn about it kinematically?

Lex Fridman (1:26:50.760)

How it's performing?

Lex Fridman (1:26:51.600)

What does that mean for its energy source?

Lex Fridman (1:26:53.520)

What does that mean for the G forces inside?

Lex Fridman (1:26:56.000)

And then step it out a level and say, okay,

Lex Fridman (1:26:58.320)

how are these interacting with our fighters?

Ryan Graves (1:27:00.120)

If they are, how are they interacting with the weather

Lex Fridman (1:27:02.080)

and their environment?

Lex Fridman (1:27:03.280)

How are they interacting with each other?

Lex Fridman (1:27:04.840)

So can we look at these and how they're interacting

Ryan Graves (1:27:06.920)

perhaps as a swarm, especially off the East coast

Lex Fridman (1:27:09.840)

where this is happening all the time with multiple objects.

Lex Fridman (1:27:12.680)

Right?

Lex Fridman (1:27:13.520)

And so we might be able to determine some things

Ryan Graves (1:27:15.040)

about their maybe, you know, sensor capabilities

Lex Fridman (1:27:17.480)

or the areas of focus, you know, if we can determine

Lex Fridman (1:27:20.320)

how they're working in conjunction with each other.

Lex Fridman (1:27:22.720)

But, you know, seeing one little flash of an object

Ryan Graves (1:27:25.120)

doesn't provide that type of insight.

Lex Fridman (1:27:26.960)

But we have the systems for it, and it's kind of,

Ryan Graves (1:27:30.720)

you know, an irony, but it's a fact of life,

Lex Fridman (1:27:33.440)

the reality that many of these well deployed,

Ryan Graves (1:27:36.320)

highly capable systems are held under the military umbrella,

Lex Fridman (1:27:40.140)

which makes it difficult to provide that data

Ryan Graves (1:27:42.440)

for scientific analysis.

Lex Fridman (1:27:44.480)

So there's probably a lot more data on these objects

Ryan Graves (1:27:48.120)

that's not being, that's not made available,

Lex Fridman (1:27:51.600)

probably even within the military for analysis.

Ryan Graves (1:27:54.920)

I think so.

Lex Fridman (1:27:55.760)

Yeah, I think there's a lot of data

Ryan Graves (1:27:57.160)

that could be made available.

Lex Fridman (1:27:58.760)

And, you know, that's one of the reasons why, you know,

Ryan Graves (1:28:01.840)

I've been engaged with the American Institute of Aeronautics

Lex Fridman (1:28:04.480)

and Astronautics to build, you know,

Ryan Graves (1:28:07.160)

a large resources of cross domain expertise

Lex Fridman (1:28:10.520)

so that if or when that data is available

Ryan Graves (1:28:13.120)

or that there's additional analysis needed, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:28:15.760)

we can spin up those teams and make that analysis.

Lex Fridman (1:28:18.600)

So there was a recently a house intelligence subcommittee

Lex Fridman (1:28:22.120)

hearing on UFOs that you were a part of.

Lex Fridman (1:28:25.080)

What was the goal of that hearing?

Lex Fridman (1:28:26.560)

And can you maybe summarize what you heard?

Ryan Graves (1:28:30.800)

The hearings, from my perspective,

Lex Fridman (1:28:33.360)

seemed a bit disingenuous, kind of top level.

Ryan Graves (1:28:36.540)

I think...

Lex Fridman (1:28:37.680)

Who was it run by, sorry to interrupt,

Ryan Graves (1:28:39.420)

like who were the people involved

Lex Fridman (1:28:41.400)

and what was the goal, the stated goal?

Ryan Graves (1:28:43.160)

Congressman Andre Carson did chair the committee

Lex Fridman (1:28:46.080)

and he was, I think, ultimately responsible

Ryan Graves (1:28:48.160)

for bringing it all together.

Lex Fridman (1:28:49.760)

You know, I think the intent from Congress

Ryan Graves (1:28:51.440)

was to try to bring light to what has been happening

Lex Fridman (1:28:54.500)

with the Navy and to help show the American people

Ryan Graves (1:28:58.000)

that Congress is taking this serious

Lex Fridman (1:29:00.800)

because something serious is happening.

Ryan Graves (1:29:02.760)

But, you know, the sense I got seemed a bit disingenuous.

Lex Fridman (1:29:05.640)

They talked around it a lot.

Ryan Graves (1:29:06.880)

They, you know, advertised their love of science fiction,

Lex Fridman (1:29:12.240)

but they, you know, they didn't treat this,

Ryan Graves (1:29:14.640)

I would say, in the manner it deserved

Lex Fridman (1:29:16.320)

as a potential tactical threat

Ryan Graves (1:29:17.600)

if it's coming from a foreign power.

Lex Fridman (1:29:20.240)

And I get it though, at the same day,

Ryan Graves (1:29:21.560)

they have very specific objectives

Lex Fridman (1:29:24.440)

within the DOD, right?

Ryan Graves (1:29:25.840)

They have a very important job.

Lex Fridman (1:29:27.320)

Their job isn't necessarily to do exploratory science

Ryan Graves (1:29:29.840)

for no reason.

Lex Fridman (1:29:31.680)

So I applaud and I encourage their efforts

Ryan Graves (1:29:35.380)

on the intelligence side to help understand this,

Lex Fridman (1:29:38.280)

but my concern is that they play a role

Ryan Graves (1:29:41.380)

they're not well suited for, which is doing science.

Lex Fridman (1:29:44.400)

And the Pentagon has opened a new office

Ryan Graves (1:29:46.160)

to investigate UFOs called

Lex Fridman (1:29:47.600)

All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

Lex Fridman (1:29:50.720)

What do you think about this office?

Lex Fridman (1:29:52.380)

Do you think it can help alleviate in a way

Ryan Graves (1:29:55.760)

which this hearing perhaps has failed

Lex Fridman (1:29:58.840)

to improve more the scientific rigor

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.920)

and the seriousness of investigating UFOs?

Lex Fridman (1:30:06.080)

I think that remains to be seen.

Ryan Graves (1:30:07.680)

I think it's a step in the right direction,

Lex Fridman (1:30:09.400)

but it's a step that was taken

Lex Fridman (1:30:10.880)

because the previous step didn't happen, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:14.060)

So the AOI MSG was the progeny, essentially,

Ryan Graves (1:30:18.720)

of the AARO or AERO.

Lex Fridman (1:30:21.480)

And the name was changed because nothing was happening

Lex Fridman (1:30:25.880)

and it was essentially just a confusing mess of words

Lex Fridman (1:30:29.080)

that were created to make this topic unpalatable.

Ryan Graves (1:30:32.720)

The Airborne Objects Identification

Lex Fridman (1:30:34.520)

Synchronization Management Group.

Ryan Graves (1:30:36.720)

Quite the mouthful.

Lex Fridman (1:30:38.280)

I practice that.

Lex Fridman (1:30:39.960)

But the new All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office,

Lex Fridman (1:30:43.080)

from my perspective at least,

Ryan Graves (1:30:44.320)

at least the perspective that they're putting out,

Lex Fridman (1:30:46.240)

they seem to want to be open.

Ryan Graves (1:30:48.240)

They put out a Twitter handle,

Lex Fridman (1:30:50.440)

they're going out on Twitter and communicating,

Ryan Graves (1:30:52.360)

saying they want to keep this open.

Lex Fridman (1:30:54.600)

But that's gonna run into a classification wall.

Ryan Graves (1:30:57.600)

Well, so Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick seems like an interesting guy.

Lex Fridman (1:31:03.240)

He does, yes.

Lex Fridman (1:31:04.760)

So he's got a, Evan looked in too deeply,

Lex Fridman (1:31:08.960)

but he seems to have sort of,

Ryan Graves (1:31:11.320)

he's coming from like a science research perspective,

Lex Fridman (1:31:13.560)

like a background.

Lex Fridman (1:31:15.780)

So he might be, at least in the right mindset,

Lex Fridman (1:31:22.160)

the right background to kind of lead a serious investigation.

Ryan Graves (1:31:25.820)

I think so.

Lex Fridman (1:31:26.660)

I'll just say generally,

Ryan Graves (1:31:28.360)

the office has been receptive to AIAA reaching out

Lex Fridman (1:31:31.120)

in order to collaborate, which has been a positive sign.

Ryan Graves (1:31:35.040)

Also pass the same kudos to Dr. Spergel

Lex Fridman (1:31:38.560)

and NASA's effort as well.

Ryan Graves (1:31:42.060)

I see these organizations that are standing up,

Lex Fridman (1:31:44.760)

I do see them as good faith efforts

Ryan Graves (1:31:47.800)

that are coming about through a lot of difficulty

Lex Fridman (1:31:51.920)

and negotiation most likely, right?

Lex Fridman (1:31:53.960)

And I see these as a small door opening

Lex Fridman (1:31:57.360)

that if we can take advantage of,

Ryan Graves (1:31:58.640)

can lead to a much more productive relationship

Lex Fridman (1:32:01.760)

between these organizations.

Lex Fridman (1:32:03.480)

How do you put pressure on this kind of thing?

Lex Fridman (1:32:05.960)

Does it come from the civilian leadership?

Lex Fridman (1:32:08.280)

Does it come from sort of Congress and presidents?

Lex Fridman (1:32:10.760)

Does it come from the public?

Lex Fridman (1:32:12.480)

Does the public have any power to put pressure on this?

Lex Fridman (1:32:15.320)

Or is the giant wall of bureaucracy

Lex Fridman (1:32:19.000)

going to protect it against any public pressure?

Lex Fridman (1:32:21.920)

What do you think?

Ryan Graves (1:32:22.840)

I think we've been in that latter state for a while,

Lex Fridman (1:32:25.840)

but society seems to be a bit different nowadays.

Ryan Graves (1:32:29.880)

We have the ability to communicate and to group

Lex Fridman (1:32:32.360)

and to form relationships in a way

Ryan Graves (1:32:34.560)

that hasn't been able to be present in the past.

Lex Fridman (1:32:37.480)

We've been able to do research for better or worse

Ryan Graves (1:32:40.160)

on our own in a way that hasn't been able to happen before.

Lex Fridman (1:32:43.880)

And so I sense that people are a bit less willing

Ryan Graves (1:32:47.160)

to kind of buy the bottom line statement

Lex Fridman (1:32:49.240)

from those in power as they used to be

Ryan Graves (1:32:52.240)

back when they didn't have access to those tools.

Lex Fridman (1:32:54.800)

And so I do think there is a massive role

Ryan Graves (1:32:56.640)

for the general society, general populace to play

Lex Fridman (1:32:59.560)

to show that they are interested in this.

Ryan Graves (1:33:02.040)

Because it's not that I don't think the politicians

Lex Fridman (1:33:05.200)

or the leaders in the Pentagon,

Ryan Graves (1:33:07.920)

it's not that they don't like this topic necessarily

Lex Fridman (1:33:10.480)

or think it's toxic per se,

Lex Fridman (1:33:12.160)

but they exist in a culture where this has been toxic

Lex Fridman (1:33:15.000)

and they don't feel comfortable talking about it.

Lex Fridman (1:33:16.800)

And these are people that have spent their entire careers

Lex Fridman (1:33:19.360)

working towards a goal and getting to very high positions

Ryan Graves (1:33:21.560)

within government.

Lex Fridman (1:33:22.640)

And so this is very against their nature

Ryan Graves (1:33:24.480)

to take a stance on a topic like this.

Lex Fridman (1:33:28.200)

And so the fact that these are standing up,

Ryan Graves (1:33:30.640)

even if they do have a small budget

Lex Fridman (1:33:32.520)

or if they struggled a bit at first,

Ryan Graves (1:33:34.360)

I still think it's a massive change

Lex Fridman (1:33:36.640)

and it's a big step away from that stigma

Ryan Graves (1:33:38.760)

that has been pervading this topic for so long.

Lex Fridman (1:33:41.640)

And you're actually part of alleviating the stigma

Ryan Graves (1:33:45.720)

for somebody that's as credible, as intelligent,

Lex Fridman (1:33:49.680)

as varied in background, able to speak about these things.

Ryan Graves (1:33:53.120)

That's a big risk that you took,

Lex Fridman (1:33:55.200)

but it's extremely valuable

Ryan Graves (1:33:56.960)

because it's alleviating the stigma.

Lex Fridman (1:33:59.800)

I thank you for saying that,

Lex Fridman (1:34:00.720)

but it didn't feel like much of a risk for me.

Lex Fridman (1:34:03.480)

I didn't come out about aliens or whatever.

Ryan Graves (1:34:06.480)

I had a safety problem that I started asking questions about.

Lex Fridman (1:34:10.080)

And I went down a road

Lex Fridman (1:34:12.200)

as a Navy trained aviation safety officer, right?

Lex Fridman (1:34:15.640)

That sent me to school for six weeks

Lex Fridman (1:34:16.960)

and Pensacola would be a safety officer.

Lex Fridman (1:34:20.680)

We're almost hitting these objects

Lex Fridman (1:34:21.760)

and it's not something that happened in the past

Lex Fridman (1:34:23.920)

and we want to understand it, it's happening right now.

Ryan Graves (1:34:25.840)

Like these occurrences are still happening.

Lex Fridman (1:34:28.280)

Aviators are flying right now,

Ryan Graves (1:34:29.920)

are still flying by these things.

Lex Fridman (1:34:31.200)

And in fact, I mentioned I was an instructor pilot.

Lex Fridman (1:34:34.720)

And I had a student call me about eight months ago or so.

Lex Fridman (1:34:40.240)

And he's like, hey, sir, I made it to the fleet finally.

Ryan Graves (1:34:43.720)

I had trained him how to fly.

Lex Fridman (1:34:44.960)

And then he goes to F18, he goes another year of training.

Lex Fridman (1:34:47.880)

And then he gets out to his squadron on the East Coast

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.120)

and he's flying with a senior member of the base,

Ryan Graves (1:34:53.680)

NAS Oceana, where the fighters fly out of Senior 0506.

Lex Fridman (1:34:58.440)

And it was kind of a bad weather day.

Lex Fridman (1:35:00.280)

And so they said, hey, if the weather's not good enough

Lex Fridman (1:35:02.360)

for us to do this dog fighting set,

Ryan Graves (1:35:04.240)

we'll go out and do a UAP hunt,

Lex Fridman (1:35:06.720)

and see if we can't find any things

Ryan Graves (1:35:07.800)

or take a look at them.

Lex Fridman (1:35:09.040)

I don't know if it was ingest or not,

Lex Fridman (1:35:10.440)

but I actually would say it's not ingest

Lex Fridman (1:35:14.280)

because there were notices that were being briefed

Ryan Graves (1:35:16.800)

about this being a safety hazard at this point.

Lex Fridman (1:35:18.880)

And so now that I think about it, it likely wasn't ingest.

Ryan Graves (1:35:23.080)

Long story short, they went flying.

Lex Fridman (1:35:24.560)

The weather was too bad.

Ryan Graves (1:35:25.880)

They did go on a UFO hunt and they physically saw one.

Lex Fridman (1:35:28.880)

And he called me up and said,

Ryan Graves (1:35:30.160)

hey, sir, I saw a Cuban sphere.

Lex Fridman (1:35:31.520)

They're still out here years later.

Lex Fridman (1:35:33.400)

And so it's almost like a generational issue

Lex Fridman (1:35:35.720)

for these fighter pilots, at least on East Coast.

Lex Fridman (1:35:37.960)

But that's great that they can talk about it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:35:39.840)

Exactly, exactly.

Ryan Graves (1:35:41.040)

They feel at least comfortable.

Lex Fridman (1:35:42.160)

They have a reporting mechanism.

Lex Fridman (1:35:43.840)

And so that was one of the problems that I noticed

Lex Fridman (1:35:46.040)

that we have a lot of reporting mechanisms

Ryan Graves (1:35:48.640)

to take care of safety issues and even tactical issues

Lex Fridman (1:35:52.880)

when the time's right in order to keep track

Ryan Graves (1:35:54.680)

of what's going on,

Lex Fridman (1:35:55.800)

but there's no way to communicate about this.

Ryan Graves (1:35:59.360)

Sure, we could submit a hazard report,

Lex Fridman (1:36:00.840)

but nothing's actually being investigated

Lex Fridman (1:36:03.280)

and if this is a tactical vulnerability or something more,

Lex Fridman (1:36:07.200)

it deserves attention.

Ryan Graves (1:36:09.040)

If I could ask your sort of take your opinion

Lex Fridman (1:36:13.720)

of the different UFO sightings

Ryan Graves (1:36:17.280)

that the DOD has released videos on.

Lex Fridman (1:36:19.640)

So what do you think about the Tic Tac UFO

Lex Fridman (1:36:22.620)

that David Fravor and others have sighted?

Lex Fridman (1:36:26.000)

That's a truly anomalous experience.

Ryan Graves (1:36:28.800)

I can't do like mental models in my head

Lex Fridman (1:36:35.380)

to find potential solutions to discredit that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:39.620)

Like as much as I try, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:40.820)

Just as a logical process, as a practice,

Ryan Graves (1:36:42.640)

I can't pick it apart in the way

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.220)

that we were just talking about a moment ago

Ryan Graves (1:36:46.500)

about thousands of drones being like sent up

Lex Fridman (1:36:49.300)

in very tricky manners, right?

Ryan Graves (1:36:50.380)

I can't really bring myself to a clever solution

Lex Fridman (1:36:53.580)

that other than just saying the pilots are lying

Lex Fridman (1:36:56.340)

or it was error, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:36:57.980)

And I believe, you know, I know Dave Fravor,

Ryan Graves (1:37:00.740)

you know, I consider him a friend, we talk a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:37:02.900)

I have zero, zero reason to disbelieve anything he says.

Ryan Graves (1:37:08.220)

Yeah, I agree with you, but in terms of the actual UFO,

Lex Fridman (1:37:15.860)

is there something anomalous and interesting to you

Lex Fridman (1:37:18.460)

about that particular case?

Lex Fridman (1:37:19.960)

Maybe one interesting aspect there is how much

Ryan Graves (1:37:24.740)

do I understand about the water surface

Lex Fridman (1:37:28.340)

and underwater aspects of these UFOs?

Ryan Graves (1:37:30.540)

It seems like a lot of the discussions

Lex Fridman (1:37:32.380)

is about the movement of this particular thing

Ryan Graves (1:37:36.200)

that seems to be weird, anomalous, seems to defy physics,

Lex Fridman (1:37:40.380)

but what about stuff that's happening underwater?

Ryan Graves (1:37:42.140)

That's interesting to me.

Lex Fridman (1:37:43.800)

If I had advanced technology, I would certainly

Ryan Graves (1:37:47.380)

like to operate in part underwater

Lex Fridman (1:37:49.460)

because you can hide a lot of stuff there.

Ryan Graves (1:37:51.660)

You think it would be somewhat as easy

Lex Fridman (1:37:53.620)

as traveling through interstellar space, at least, right?

Ryan Graves (1:37:56.100)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:37:56.940)

You know, I wish I had a great answer for that,

Lex Fridman (1:38:00.100)

but as an aviator, that's kind of a black box for us.

Lex Fridman (1:38:04.900)

We don't have great, what I would call

Lex Fridman (1:38:06.820)

cross domain tracking, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:08.220)

I can't see something go underwater

Lex Fridman (1:38:09.860)

and then follow it underwater.

Lex Fridman (1:38:11.420)

So it's literally not your domain,

Ryan Graves (1:38:12.900)

like underwater, like leave that for somebody else.

Lex Fridman (1:38:15.500)

Yeah, and you know, I use that terminology

Lex Fridman (1:38:17.540)

because it's kind of important, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:20.020)

Cross domain tracking is something that we haven't had

Lex Fridman (1:38:22.720)

to necessarily worry about, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:23.740)

Because airplanes operated in the air

Lex Fridman (1:38:25.840)

and submarines operated underwater

Lex Fridman (1:38:28.380)

and space planes operate in space, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:30.340)

But you know, there's going to be, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:38:33.180)

that's going to blur, I think, as we move along here,

Ryan Graves (1:38:35.820)

especially in the air and space regime

Lex Fridman (1:38:38.300)

and being able to perhaps transition my radar contact

Ryan Graves (1:38:41.820)

at 40,000 feet to another radar system

Lex Fridman (1:38:44.740)

that can track it up to 200,000 feet,

Ryan Graves (1:38:47.680)

you know, that might be a value.

Lex Fridman (1:38:48.820)

And so we seem to be missing that right now.

Lex Fridman (1:38:51.320)

So what about the go fast and the gimbal videos

Lex Fridman (1:38:53.740)

that you mentioned earlier?

Lex Fridman (1:38:54.700)

There was a, like, what's interesting there to you?

Lex Fridman (1:38:58.740)

So the gimbal, I'll talk about that one first.

Ryan Graves (1:39:01.120)

I was airborne for that one.

Lex Fridman (1:39:02.820)

The person that recorded it was a good friend of mine,

Lex Fridman (1:39:05.980)

but I mean, both air crew, I knew both of them,

Lex Fridman (1:39:07.540)

but the wizard himself, very close friends,

Ryan Graves (1:39:10.140)

went through a lot of her training together.

Lex Fridman (1:39:12.060)

We went to the same fleet squadron.

Ryan Graves (1:39:14.580)

He ended up transitioning to be a pilot

Lex Fridman (1:39:16.780)

and then came to where I was instructing.

Lex Fridman (1:39:19.460)

So I got to instruct him a bit on his transition.

Lex Fridman (1:39:23.540)

And, you know, the way that was,

Ryan Graves (1:39:25.740)

was we went out on a air to air training mission.

Lex Fridman (1:39:28.900)

So simulating a air fight against our own guys,

Ryan Graves (1:39:33.080)

they're acting like the bad guys

Lex Fridman (1:39:34.260)

and kind of go head to head against each other.

Lex Fridman (1:39:36.660)

And when we fly on those missions,

Lex Fridman (1:39:37.960)

we all fly out together, more or less,

Ryan Graves (1:39:40.500)

we set up and then we kind of attrite from the fight

Lex Fridman (1:39:43.300)

as we either, you know, run out of gas or something happens.

Lex Fridman (1:39:46.060)

And so people usually go back onesies or twosies.

Lex Fridman (1:39:49.060)

And so the air crew that recorded the gimbal,

Ryan Graves (1:39:51.700)

they were going back to the boat

Lex Fridman (1:39:52.980)

and we were on what's called a workup training event.

Lex Fridman (1:39:55.380)

And so this is like a month on the boat

Lex Fridman (1:39:57.700)

where we're essentially conducting war time operations,

Ryan Graves (1:40:00.640)

more or less, to stress ourselves out

Lex Fridman (1:40:03.420)

and to kind of do the last training block

Ryan Graves (1:40:06.260)

before we go on deployment, essentially.

Lex Fridman (1:40:07.540)

So it's pretty high stress.

Ryan Graves (1:40:09.340)

They actually do send aircraft from like land bases

Lex Fridman (1:40:12.780)

to kind of try to penetrate

Lex Fridman (1:40:14.400)

and we're expected to go intercept them.

Lex Fridman (1:40:15.980)

And so we're kind of practicing like we play.

Lex Fridman (1:40:18.580)

And so he saw these objects on the radar,

Lex Fridman (1:40:23.020)

the gimbal and a fleet of other aircraft or vehicles.

Lex Fridman (1:40:27.240)

And they initially thought it was part

Lex Fridman (1:40:29.540)

of the training exercise that they were sending something

Ryan Graves (1:40:31.860)

in to try to penetrate the airspace.

Lex Fridman (1:40:35.140)

And so they, you know, they flew over to it

Lex Fridman (1:40:37.220)

and as they got close enough to get on the FLIR,

Lex Fridman (1:40:40.260)

you know, I think everyone has heard their reaction

Lex Fridman (1:40:43.140)

and they realized that it wasn't something

Lex Fridman (1:40:44.540)

they were expecting to see.

Lex Fridman (1:40:46.140)

Can you actually describe what's in the video

Lex Fridman (1:40:47.540)

and what's the reaction in case they haven't seen it?

Ryan Graves (1:40:49.940)

Yeah, a lot of swearing.

Lex Fridman (1:40:51.540)

But so what you see on the FLIR footage

Ryan Graves (1:40:53.500)

is a black or white, depending on when you look at it,

Lex Fridman (1:40:57.180)

object that's somewhat shaped like a gimbal.

Ryan Graves (1:40:59.420)

It appears almost as if someone put two plates together

Lex Fridman (1:41:02.660)

and then there seems to be almost like a small funnel

Ryan Graves (1:41:05.820)

of IR energy that's at the top of the bottom

Lex Fridman (1:41:08.260)

of those plates in a sense.

Lex Fridman (1:41:09.620)

So almost as if, you know, there's a stick going in

Lex Fridman (1:41:12.420)

between two plates, but not that pronounced, right?

Lex Fridman (1:41:14.580)

So there's an energy field that kind of went to a funnel

Lex Fridman (1:41:16.860)

on the top and the bottom,

Ryan Graves (1:41:17.700)

at least that's how it's being portrayed on the FLIR.

Lex Fridman (1:41:21.260)

There's a lot of conversation about that being glare,

Ryan Graves (1:41:23.260)

things of that nature,

Lex Fridman (1:41:24.100)

but it was actually a very tight IR image.

Ryan Graves (1:41:26.500)

It just was nondescript shape, which was interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:41:30.420)

Typically we would see the skin of the aircraft,

Ryan Graves (1:41:32.820)

we can see the flames coming out of the exhaust,

Lex Fridman (1:41:35.020)

especially at those ranges.

Ryan Graves (1:41:37.340)

But...

Lex Fridman (1:41:38.180)

And there was no flames or there's no exhaust here.

Ryan Graves (1:41:39.980)

There was no exhaust, there was no, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:41:42.540)

there was no outgassing of repellent in any manner, right?

Ryan Graves (1:41:45.580)

It was just an object that had nothing emitting from it

Lex Fridman (1:41:48.420)

that was stationary in the sky.

Lex Fridman (1:41:49.900)

Well, not stationary, but it was moving along a path, right?

Lex Fridman (1:41:53.780)

It wasn't falling out of the sky.

Lex Fridman (1:41:55.980)

And it continued along, if we were to consider it

Lex Fridman (1:41:58.020)

from a God's eye view, again, on the SA page,

Ryan Graves (1:42:01.020)

it continued along in a path.

Lex Fridman (1:42:02.860)

And from the perspective, that top down view,

Ryan Graves (1:42:05.820)

it just went in another direction.

Lex Fridman (1:42:07.180)

So no, just an instantaneous direction change

Ryan Graves (1:42:10.820)

from that perspective.

Lex Fridman (1:42:13.100)

You also hear them, you know, very excitedly talking

Ryan Graves (1:42:15.300)

on the tapes about, you know, whatever the heck this thing is

Lex Fridman (1:42:18.980)

and look at the SA, there's a whole formation of them.

Lex Fridman (1:42:22.820)

And so the SA is a situational awareness page.

Lex Fridman (1:42:25.860)

And again, it's a large display that gives

Ryan Graves (1:42:27.460)

that God's eye view of all the radar contacts.

Lex Fridman (1:42:29.900)

So the video is actually showing just one

Lex Fridman (1:42:32.460)

and then they're speaking about many of them

Lex Fridman (1:42:35.980)

on the SA display.

Ryan Graves (1:42:38.020)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (1:42:38.860)

And what they essentially saw was,

Ryan Graves (1:42:40.580)

if we were to consider above the object north,

Lex Fridman (1:42:42.900)

so kind of offset to the north of the object,

Ryan Graves (1:42:46.380)

there was a formation of about somewhere

Lex Fridman (1:42:47.900)

between four and six of these objects

Ryan Graves (1:42:49.940)

in a rough wedge formation, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:42:51.660)

so kind of side by side like this.

Lex Fridman (1:42:54.500)

And again, not in a like autopilot type manner

Lex Fridman (1:42:57.420)

where it was very stiff.

Ryan Graves (1:42:58.300)

It was very kind of non mechanical,

Lex Fridman (1:43:00.660)

the flight mechanics again.

Lex Fridman (1:43:02.660)

And these objects were in that formation

Lex Fridman (1:43:04.460)

and they were going along and then they turned

Ryan Graves (1:43:06.940)

pretty sharply, but they still had a radius of turn

Lex Fridman (1:43:09.660)

and then went back in the opposite direction.

Lex Fridman (1:43:11.540)

And during that turn, they were kind of like

Lex Fridman (1:43:13.780)

all over the place.

Ryan Graves (1:43:14.620)

Like it wasn't tight.

Lex Fridman (1:43:15.620)

They weren't even like super,

Ryan Graves (1:43:17.300)

they weren't flying in a way I would expect them

Lex Fridman (1:43:18.940)

to be flying in relation to a flight lead.

Ryan Graves (1:43:20.860)

They were flying as if they were flying close

Lex Fridman (1:43:23.020)

to each other, but not in formation,

Lex Fridman (1:43:24.420)

which was kind of strange, right?

Lex Fridman (1:43:27.140)

And then when they rolled out,

Ryan Graves (1:43:28.140)

they kind of tightened back up.

Lex Fridman (1:43:29.300)

Like, so when they basically,

Ryan Graves (1:43:30.740)

they started that turn and then 180 degrees out,

Lex Fridman (1:43:32.900)

essentially they start flowing in the opposite direction

Lex Fridman (1:43:35.540)

and kind of got back in that formation.

Lex Fridman (1:43:37.460)

And while that was happening,

Ryan Graves (1:43:38.820)

the gimbal object was proceeding, let's say left to right.

Lex Fridman (1:43:41.780)

And as those, the formation kind of turned up to the north

Lex Fridman (1:43:45.860)

and was just passing back it,

Lex Fridman (1:43:47.340)

the gimbal just kind of went back in the opposite direction.

Lex Fridman (1:43:49.820)

So to follow it back in that direction.

Lex Fridman (1:43:54.060)

And in the FLIR itself, you see the object

Ryan Graves (1:43:57.220)

changes orientation quite a bit.

Lex Fridman (1:43:58.940)

So you see it more or less level,

Ryan Graves (1:44:01.380)

maybe candid about 45 degrees.

Lex Fridman (1:44:03.500)

And then you see it kind of moving around like this,

Ryan Graves (1:44:06.300)

almost as if it was a gimbal.

Lex Fridman (1:44:08.860)

I've come to learn after some,

Ryan Graves (1:44:11.980)

having seen some research online

Lex Fridman (1:44:13.620)

and people really looking into this,

Ryan Graves (1:44:15.860)

that it seemed that the object actually climbed

Lex Fridman (1:44:19.020)

during that maneuver.

Lex Fridman (1:44:19.980)

And so the reason it looked like it turned immediately

Lex Fridman (1:44:23.180)

is because it turned like this.

Ryan Graves (1:44:24.500)

It turned in a vertical fashion like that,

Lex Fridman (1:44:26.700)

which is pretty interesting.

Ryan Graves (1:44:28.340)

That's kind of like another example of a flight mechanics

Lex Fridman (1:44:31.740)

that we don't normally operate

Ryan Graves (1:44:33.300)

because we don't change our directions

Lex Fridman (1:44:36.020)

by maneuvering in the vertical.

Ryan Graves (1:44:37.860)

If we can help it, you're just killing the fuel.

Lex Fridman (1:44:41.580)

And so if you're like a surveillance platform

Ryan Graves (1:44:44.780)

looking to spend as much time around something,

Lex Fridman (1:44:46.620)

you're not gonna climb 500 feet every time you make a turn.

Ryan Graves (1:44:51.260)

Unless you're Tom Cruise.

Lex Fridman (1:44:53.460)

Unless you're Tom Cruise, naturally.

Ryan Graves (1:44:54.980)

Okay, so is that one of the more impressive

Lex Fridman (1:44:57.060)

flight mechanics you've seen in video forms

Ryan Graves (1:45:00.380)

or not the direct eyesight reports,

Lex Fridman (1:45:03.020)

but like in terms of video evidence that we have?

Ryan Graves (1:45:05.620)

I think so.

Lex Fridman (1:45:06.820)

We were seeing a lot of these,

Lex Fridman (1:45:08.580)

but we weren't just going on recording them all day.

Lex Fridman (1:45:10.820)

We just kind of put them in that safety bucket,

Ryan Graves (1:45:13.020)

be like, all right, there's objects over there.

Lex Fridman (1:45:14.300)

We're just not gonna go near it.

Lex Fridman (1:45:16.220)

And so we weren't putting our sensors on them that much.

Lex Fridman (1:45:19.020)

We were gathering the data kind of secondarily,

Lex Fridman (1:45:21.380)

but we weren't primarily focusing on it

Lex Fridman (1:45:23.300)

to see all the details.

Ryan Graves (1:45:24.780)

That's so fascinating because you have a busy day.

Lex Fridman (1:45:27.420)

You have a lot to do.

Ryan Graves (1:45:28.940)

All right, well, there's some weird stuff going on there.

Lex Fridman (1:45:31.340)

We're just not gonna go there.

Lex Fridman (1:45:32.700)

And that says something about human nature,

Lex Fridman (1:45:37.540)

about the way that bureaucracies function,

Ryan Graves (1:45:40.380)

the way the military functions.

Lex Fridman (1:45:41.940)

It fills up your day with busy, important things,

Lex Fridman (1:45:44.820)

and you don't get to, I mean, that is something

Lex Fridman (1:45:48.020)

that I'm in a sort of absurd way worry about,

Ryan Graves (1:45:52.180)

which is like we fill our days with so much busyness

Lex Fridman (1:45:56.820)

than when truly beautiful things happen,

Ryan Graves (1:45:59.580)

whatever they are, truly anomalous things.

Lex Fridman (1:46:01.820)

We just won't pay attention

Ryan Graves (1:46:04.100)

because they don't fit our busy schedule.

Lex Fridman (1:46:07.740)

Beautiful, I think that's right on the nose.

Lex Fridman (1:46:10.300)

And it's on my nose because I didn't give this topic

Lex Fridman (1:46:13.700)

the attention it deserved until I left, right?

Ryan Graves (1:46:16.300)

Until I left and I went to be an instructor pilot

Lex Fridman (1:46:19.460)

where I had more time.

Ryan Graves (1:46:21.780)

I had more downtime to kind of process and think

Lex Fridman (1:46:24.820)

and get out of exactly what you just described.

Lex Fridman (1:46:27.460)

And that's kind of what broke me out of it

Lex Fridman (1:46:29.340)

and got me thinking more about it.

Lex Fridman (1:46:31.340)

Why do you think the DOD released these videos?

Lex Fridman (1:46:34.620)

It's a great question.

Ryan Graves (1:46:36.060)

Did the DOD release it or did they kind of get out

Lex Fridman (1:46:38.300)

on their own in some sense?

Lex Fridman (1:46:39.540)

So I don't know the answer to that question,

Lex Fridman (1:46:41.180)

but my understanding of the situation

Ryan Graves (1:46:42.900)

is that the DOD talked about them so much

Lex Fridman (1:46:45.820)

because they were already out there in a sense.

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.740)

And so they had a choice where they could have

Lex Fridman (1:46:50.540)

just straight up lied and said it wasn't theirs or it was fake.

Lex Fridman (1:46:52.940)

But again, I think our culture now is too open

Lex Fridman (1:46:56.260)

and the information moves too freely to do things like that.

Lex Fridman (1:46:59.580)

And it kind of left them in a pickle

Lex Fridman (1:47:00.740)

that they had to respond to.

Lex Fridman (1:47:02.700)

So what was the role of Pentagon's

Lex Fridman (1:47:05.460)

Advanced Aerospace Threat Intelligence Program, AATIP?

Ryan Graves (1:47:09.180)

From your perspective, from what you know,

Lex Fridman (1:47:11.220)

maybe your intuition, is AATIP a real thing that existed?

Ryan Graves (1:47:14.940)

I was in a position as an aviator

Lex Fridman (1:47:16.780)

that never would have exposed me to anything like that.

Lex Fridman (1:47:20.120)

But I was curious about what people knew.

Lex Fridman (1:47:22.460)

And I think in my mind, maybe you hoped or,

Ryan Graves (1:47:26.100)

hope someone was looking into this in some sense.

Lex Fridman (1:47:27.840)

But on the day that Gimbal was recorded,

Ryan Graves (1:47:30.980)

I heard that they caught something extra interesting

Lex Fridman (1:47:34.100)

on the FLIR, and I went to the Intel debrief space

Ryan Graves (1:47:40.340)

to go see the film.

Lex Fridman (1:47:41.700)

And everyone's gathered around watching it,

Ryan Graves (1:47:43.540)

very interesting, and I heard the admiral was coming down.

Lex Fridman (1:47:45.980)

And so I was like, I'm gonna hang out back quietly,

Ryan Graves (1:47:48.260)

mind my own business, and just wanna see his reaction,

Lex Fridman (1:47:50.500)

try to read it to see if this is brand new

Ryan Graves (1:47:52.660)

or if it is something that they've been dealing with.

Lex Fridman (1:47:55.660)

And you know, he came in and he watched a video

Ryan Graves (1:47:57.780)

for like five or six seconds,

Lex Fridman (1:47:58.980)

and he went, mm, and then like turned around and walked out.

Lex Fridman (1:48:01.220)

And you know, I was like,

Lex Fridman (1:48:02.340)

he's definitely seen these before.

Ryan Graves (1:48:04.360)

There's no way that you only watch that for a few seconds

Lex Fridman (1:48:06.340)

and don't have more interest.

Ryan Graves (1:48:08.220)

It was, you know, too bizarre.

Lex Fridman (1:48:09.920)

So kind of going back, does the office exist?

Ryan Graves (1:48:12.960)

Well, you know, I've heard that the admiral essentially

Lex Fridman (1:48:18.340)

reported back to the Pentagon about that case real time,

Lex Fridman (1:48:22.700)

essentially, after he left, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:23.960)

So he basically went back and I was told he reported that

Ryan Graves (1:48:26.500)

to either ATEP directly or to other, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:48:29.420)

somehow the information got there.

Lex Fridman (1:48:30.680)

So from my perspective and from what I've experienced,

Lex Fridman (1:48:34.780)

it seems like, yes, it was a thing.

Lex Fridman (1:48:36.780)

But you know, as an aviator,

Lex Fridman (1:48:38.900)

I wouldn't know either way, right?

Ryan Graves (1:48:40.420)

That's just my experience from what happened.

Lex Fridman (1:48:41.900)

But it seems like there's somewhere to report to.

Ryan Graves (1:48:46.820)

At the time, it seemed like there was at least someplace

Lex Fridman (1:48:48.520)

to complain to, if not report to.

Ryan Graves (1:48:50.540)

Let me ask you about sort of people that are taking

Lex Fridman (1:48:54.900)

a serious look at the videos

Lex Fridman (1:48:56.620)

and just the different UFO sighting reports.

Lex Fridman (1:48:59.900)

So there's a person named Meg West who is a skeptic

Lex Fridman (1:49:03.840)

and tries to take a skeptical view

Lex Fridman (1:49:05.500)

on every single piece of evidence on these UFO sightings.

Lex Fridman (1:49:08.980)

What do you think about his analysis?

Lex Fridman (1:49:11.060)

He tries to analyze in a way that debunks some of these

Ryan Graves (1:49:14.660)

videos and assign probabilities to their explanations,

Lex Fridman (1:49:18.580)

sort of leaning towards things that give a very low

Ryan Graves (1:49:24.180)

probability to alien extraterrestrial type of explanations

Lex Fridman (1:49:30.280)

for these UFOs.

Lex Fridman (1:49:31.300)

What do you think about his approach to these analysis?

Lex Fridman (1:49:35.580)

Well, two parts to his approach.

Ryan Graves (1:49:37.300)

One, I commend him for all the good work

Lex Fridman (1:49:39.420)

and effort he put into it.

Ryan Graves (1:49:41.220)

I've seen him build some models and things of that nature.

Lex Fridman (1:49:44.060)

And so I think that's something that's absolutely needed

Ryan Graves (1:49:46.940)

in this environment.

Lex Fridman (1:49:47.780)

No one's asking anyone to believe anyone here, right?

Ryan Graves (1:49:51.540)

Trust but verify should certainly be the mantra.

Lex Fridman (1:49:55.140)

But where I have a disagreement with his approach

Ryan Graves (1:49:58.260)

is that he's approaching from a debunker standpoint.

Lex Fridman (1:50:02.780)

And from my perspective, not speaking for everyone,

Lex Fridman (1:50:06.180)

but when I hear that, that tells me that you're driving

Lex Fridman (1:50:09.980)

towards a particular conclusion,

Ryan Graves (1:50:12.340)

which has been a very safe process for the past X years.

Lex Fridman (1:50:16.980)

It's been like a very safe business to be in

Ryan Graves (1:50:19.420)

to tell people that they haven't seen aliens,

Lex Fridman (1:50:21.420)

but times have changed a little bit.

Lex Fridman (1:50:23.940)

And the tactics I've seen to try to retain that

Lex Fridman (1:50:30.860)

view on reality has included things such as

Ryan Graves (1:50:34.580)

completely dismissing what the aircrew are saying.

Lex Fridman (1:50:36.780)

And I think that is a fallacy to think that

Ryan Graves (1:50:39.980)

we have to take the human outside of that analysis.

Lex Fridman (1:50:42.820)

So those are the two things I disagree with.

Ryan Graves (1:50:45.460)

When you put the night vision on and you look at the stars

Lex Fridman (1:50:48.700)

and you look out there in the vast cosmos,

Ryan Graves (1:50:51.500)

only a small fraction of which we can see,

Lex Fridman (1:50:55.540)

how many intelligent alien civilizations

Lex Fridman (1:50:57.540)

do you think are out there?

Lex Fridman (1:50:58.860)

Do you think about this kind of stuff?

Ryan Graves (1:51:00.220)

I do.

Lex Fridman (1:51:01.620)

You know, I'm of the theory that we are not

Ryan Graves (1:51:03.280)

the only people out there.

Lex Fridman (1:51:04.120)

I think it would be a statistically silly comment

Ryan Graves (1:51:06.920)

to assume we are, although I get that we are

Lex Fridman (1:51:09.260)

the only data point that we currently have.

Ryan Graves (1:51:11.140)

Although I'm willing to jump over that fence

Lex Fridman (1:51:13.840)

and say that yes, there most likely is

Ryan Graves (1:51:15.980)

intelligent life elsewhere.

Lex Fridman (1:51:18.140)

Although I'll concede that it is a possibility

Ryan Graves (1:51:19.940)

we are early or it could be limited

Lex Fridman (1:51:21.960)

or it could be in a manner that we don't recognize

Ryan Graves (1:51:25.480)

or can really understand.

Lex Fridman (1:51:27.100)

I spend so much time thinking about

Lex Fridman (1:51:30.140)

how we anthropomorphize things on this UFO topic.

Lex Fridman (1:51:34.060)

And we've done it to ourselves with media in a sense.

Ryan Graves (1:51:36.300)

We've trained ourselves what to think about,

Lex Fridman (1:51:38.660)

what we think is true or what this would be like.

Lex Fridman (1:51:41.860)

And by doing so, I think we're closing ourselves off

Lex Fridman (1:51:44.780)

to a lot of what the possibilities could be

Lex Fridman (1:51:47.660)

and the things that we could miss.

Lex Fridman (1:51:50.800)

You beautifully put that the thing that drew you

Ryan Graves (1:51:54.540)

to fighter jets is the technology.

Lex Fridman (1:51:57.140)

So if you were to think, to imagine

Ryan Graves (1:52:00.380)

from an alien perspective, what kind of technologies

Lex Fridman (1:52:04.820)

would we first encounter as human beings

Ryan Graves (1:52:07.580)

if we were to meet another alien civilization

Lex Fridman (1:52:11.200)

in the next few centuries?

Lex Fridman (1:52:13.180)

What kind of thing would we see?

Lex Fridman (1:52:15.840)

So you're now at the cutting edge

Lex Fridman (1:52:17.540)

and you see the quick progress that's happening.

Lex Fridman (1:52:20.100)

That was happening throughout the 20th century,

Ryan Graves (1:52:21.900)

that's happening now with greater degrees of autonomy

Lex Fridman (1:52:24.740)

with robots and that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:52:26.540)

What do you think we will encounter?

Lex Fridman (1:52:28.940)

I think we're gonna see the ability to manipulate matter

Ryan Graves (1:52:32.620)

like we used to manipulate information.

Lex Fridman (1:52:34.620)

Like I think that's what, whether that means

Ryan Graves (1:52:38.080)

being able to pop something on the table

Lex Fridman (1:52:40.380)

that didn't exist or to influence a chemical reaction

Ryan Graves (1:52:44.940)

somewhere, but being able to manipulate

Lex Fridman (1:52:47.200)

and treat matter as if it was information.

Lex Fridman (1:52:51.060)

And so being able to design specific materials,

Lex Fridman (1:52:53.740)

being able to move past a lot of the barriers

Ryan Graves (1:52:57.580)

that seem to limit our progress with things

Lex Fridman (1:52:59.660)

such as miniaturized fusion or even just fusion in general

Ryan Graves (1:53:03.080)

is a lot of it is matter based, is material based

Lex Fridman (1:53:07.060)

and our ability to not manipulate,

Ryan Graves (1:53:11.020)

we can only discover materials in a sense.

Lex Fridman (1:53:13.460)

And so I think that a complete mastery

Ryan Graves (1:53:15.540)

of physical reality would be one of the key traits

Lex Fridman (1:53:18.540)

of a very intelligent species.

Ryan Graves (1:53:21.140)

Well, you're actually working on some,

Lex Fridman (1:53:22.960)

maybe you can correct me,

Lex Fridman (1:53:23.940)

but sort of quantum mechanical simulation

Lex Fridman (1:53:26.020)

to understand materials.

Lex Fridman (1:53:28.000)

So is that, do you see sort of the early steps

Lex Fridman (1:53:31.260)

that we're doing at quantum computing side

Ryan Graves (1:53:33.780)

to start to simulate, to deeper understand materials,

Lex Fridman (1:53:37.180)

but maybe to engineer and to mess with materials

Ryan Graves (1:53:39.820)

at the very low level that aliens will be able to do

Lex Fridman (1:53:43.460)

and hopefully humans will be able to do soon?

Ryan Graves (1:53:46.500)

Yeah, I think that's, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:53:48.300)

so if we think about how, what materials are made of,

Ryan Graves (1:53:52.260)

it's just a collection of atoms,

Lex Fridman (1:53:53.860)

but each one of those atoms has a lot of data

Ryan Graves (1:53:55.580)

associated with it.

Lex Fridman (1:53:56.420)

So if we wanna kind of calculate

Lex Fridman (1:53:57.840)

how they interact with each other,

Lex Fridman (1:53:59.900)

it requires a massive amount of computational resources,

Lex Fridman (1:54:02.460)

so much so that it can't be done in a lot of cases

Lex Fridman (1:54:04.620)

with classical computers.

Lex Fridman (1:54:06.140)

And that's where quantum computers come in.

Lex Fridman (1:54:09.100)

Although we don't have a perfectly functioning

Ryan Graves (1:54:10.860)

quantum computer at this point,

Lex Fridman (1:54:13.100)

one of the things that we're working at

Ryan Graves (1:54:14.620)

at quantum general materials is to essentially

Lex Fridman (1:54:16.740)

bridge that gap between what a classical computer can do

Ryan Graves (1:54:19.620)

as far as simulating materials.

Lex Fridman (1:54:21.460)

And of course, what a fully functioning quantum computer

Ryan Graves (1:54:23.720)

would mean for being able to design materials.

Lex Fridman (1:54:26.380)

And so, you know, having the ability to study matter

Ryan Graves (1:54:29.860)

at a very fundamental level

Lex Fridman (1:54:31.140)

and unleashing artificial intelligence

Ryan Graves (1:54:32.940)

to machine learning on that problem,

Lex Fridman (1:54:35.500)

I think is, you know, in a sense, you know,

Ryan Graves (1:54:37.820)

alien in a way that we're able to advance our science

Lex Fridman (1:54:40.800)

using, you know, a process that we may not fully understand

Ryan Graves (1:54:43.740)

with perhaps a non human based intelligence in some sense.

Lex Fridman (1:54:47.220)

And so we may find patterns in the processes, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:50.260)

How does our machine learning output, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:54:52.380)

can we match behaviors with what we're observing

Ryan Graves (1:54:56.020)

with what may be a machine learning algorithm with output,

Lex Fridman (1:54:58.040)

right?

Ryan Graves (1:54:58.880)

Can we try to classify the intelligence

Lex Fridman (1:54:59.820)

in that manner, perhaps?

Lex Fridman (1:55:02.140)

And so, you know, at GenMatt,

Lex Fridman (1:55:03.380)

as we're looking at these materials,

Ryan Graves (1:55:05.280)

we're considering what these algorithms

Lex Fridman (1:55:06.820)

could have used for later on.

Ryan Graves (1:55:09.120)

Could we perhaps reverse the process

Lex Fridman (1:55:10.720)

and determine what a unique or anomalous material,

Lex Fridman (1:55:14.040)

what type of properties it potentially could have?

Lex Fridman (1:55:17.940)

And you said GenMatt, right?

Ryan Graves (1:55:19.440)

Mm hmm.

Lex Fridman (1:55:20.340)

What's, what is GenMatt?

Ryan Graves (1:55:22.580)

GenMatt is a quantum general material.

Lex Fridman (1:55:24.500)

So it's the company I work for.

Ryan Graves (1:55:27.080)

We essentially are working on a couple of verticals.

Lex Fridman (1:55:31.680)

One of them is our quantum chemistry work.

Ryan Graves (1:55:33.940)

We're essentially, we're bridging the gap

Lex Fridman (1:55:35.800)

between essentially physics and chemistry.

Ryan Graves (1:55:38.200)

We're working on those problems and again,

Lex Fridman (1:55:41.360)

implementing artificial intelligence machine learning

Ryan Graves (1:55:43.280)

into that process so that we can design those materials

Lex Fridman (1:55:45.620)

from the ground up.

Ryan Graves (1:55:47.040)

Additionally, we are what we consider

Lex Fridman (1:55:50.520)

a vertically integrated material science company,

Ryan Graves (1:55:52.560)

which means we can generate our own data.

Lex Fridman (1:55:55.320)

And so within the next quarter coming up,

Ryan Graves (1:55:59.520)

we are launching a satellite in the space.

Lex Fridman (1:56:02.520)

They'll have a fairly advanced hyperspectral sensor

Ryan Graves (1:56:05.160)

in there, which is intended to be the first launch

Lex Fridman (1:56:08.220)

that will help us detect different types of materials

Lex Fridman (1:56:11.940)

using our advanced knowledge of quantum chemistry, right?

Lex Fridman (1:56:16.020)

We're gonna be leveraging that experience

Ryan Graves (1:56:17.440)

in order to better analyze that data.

Lex Fridman (1:56:19.600)

Oh, interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:56:20.440)

So materials that are strange or novel out there in space.

Lex Fridman (1:56:26.480)

Not necessarily, but we'll be looking back at Earth

Ryan Graves (1:56:28.520)

to be able to detect mineral deposits on Earth.

Lex Fridman (1:56:30.880)

Got it, got it.

Ryan Graves (1:56:31.840)

Getting the greater perspective from out in space

Lex Fridman (1:56:34.360)

to do analysis of different materials.

Ryan Graves (1:56:36.400)

Interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:56:37.400)

Yeah, I was really impressed by the DeepMind.

Ryan Graves (1:56:40.200)

I got to hang out with DeepMind recently

Lex Fridman (1:56:41.760)

and they really impressed me

Ryan Graves (1:56:43.400)

with the possibility of the application,

Lex Fridman (1:56:45.640)

as you were saying, of machine learning

Ryan Graves (1:56:47.440)

in the context of quantum mechanical simulation

Lex Fridman (1:56:50.440)

for materials, so to understand materials.

Ryan Graves (1:56:53.500)

It's really, really, really interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:56:56.340)

So manipulate matter, huh?

Lex Fridman (1:56:59.840)

I would say the next thing is horses, right?

Lex Fridman (1:57:02.240)

Or maybe fields.

Lex Fridman (1:57:03.080)

So manipulating or managing gravity.

Lex Fridman (1:57:07.560)

Can we maneuver within fields in some manner

Ryan Graves (1:57:12.280)

that allows us to perhaps move propellant less

Lex Fridman (1:57:16.040)

or in other manners, right?

Lex Fridman (1:57:17.000)

And so I think essentially having a deeper understanding

Lex Fridman (1:57:21.200)

of different fields and being able to interact with them,

Ryan Graves (1:57:25.160)

I think would be a potential avenue for travel

Lex Fridman (1:57:29.680)

or advanced travel, right?

Ryan Graves (1:57:31.200)

Propellant less travel.

Lex Fridman (1:57:33.420)

Can we quantum entangle gravity fields together

Lex Fridman (1:57:36.280)

and propel a ship by the gravity field of a planet,

Lex Fridman (1:57:39.120)

the mass of a planet, and a drive on a ship?

Ryan Graves (1:57:41.400)

You know, there's all sorts of interesting things, but.

Lex Fridman (1:57:44.600)

Yeah, people will look back at people like you

Lex Fridman (1:57:46.840)

and say, well, they used to fly,

Lex Fridman (1:57:49.360)

like with this kind of propellant,

Ryan Graves (1:57:51.320)

it seems like to be a very antiquated way of flying,

Lex Fridman (1:57:54.160)

and they were very impressed with themselves,

Ryan Graves (1:57:55.760)

these humans, that they could fly like birds.

Lex Fridman (1:57:58.620)

It's like so much energy is used to fly

Ryan Graves (1:58:02.880)

such short distances from that perspective.

Lex Fridman (1:58:05.200)

We can only throw so many rocks out the back.

Ryan Graves (1:58:07.280)

There needs to be a better way.

Lex Fridman (1:58:08.360)

Exactly.

Ryan Graves (1:58:09.200)

It just seems dumb, like these.

Lex Fridman (1:58:12.760)

It's like Flintstones or something like that.

Lex Fridman (1:58:14.640)

We're good at it, but there's a limit, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:16.440)

Like we need to be good.

Ryan Graves (1:58:18.160)

I mean, that's an interesting sort of trade off.

Lex Fridman (1:58:21.840)

How much do you invest in getting really good at it?

Ryan Graves (1:58:24.780)

I tend to believe the reason why it would be very important

Lex Fridman (1:58:30.160)

and very powerful to put a human on Mars

Ryan Graves (1:58:32.120)

is not necessarily for the exploration facet,

Lex Fridman (1:58:35.540)

but in all the different technologies that come from that.

Lex Fridman (1:58:39.380)

So there's something about putting humans

Lex Fridman (1:58:42.480)

in extreme conditions where we figure out

Lex Fridman (1:58:45.240)

how to make it less extreme, more comfortable.

Lex Fridman (1:58:48.280)

And for that, we invent things,

Ryan Graves (1:58:51.560)

like the DOD sort of helping invent the internet

Lex Fridman (1:58:55.360)

and all the different technologies we've invented.

Ryan Graves (1:58:58.040)

It's almost like an indirect consequence

Lex Fridman (1:59:00.040)

of solving difficult problems,

Ryan Graves (1:59:01.840)

whether that problem means winning wars

Lex Fridman (1:59:05.160)

or colonizing other planets.

Lex Fridman (1:59:07.320)

And so I don't think Mars will help us figure out

Lex Fridman (1:59:10.460)

propulsion systems or to crack open physics

Ryan Graves (1:59:13.520)

to where you can travel close to the speed of light

Lex Fridman (1:59:16.200)

or faster than the speed of light,

Lex Fridman (1:59:17.800)

but it will help us figure out

Lex Fridman (1:59:19.800)

how to build some cool technology here on Earth, I think.

Lex Fridman (1:59:23.240)

So I'm a big proponent of doing really difficult things,

Lex Fridman (1:59:27.020)

really difficult engineering things

Ryan Graves (1:59:28.600)

to see what kind of technologies emerge from that.

Lex Fridman (1:59:32.680)

But let me ask you this.

Lex Fridman (1:59:34.800)

Do you think US government is hiding some technology

Lex Fridman (1:59:39.600)

like alien spacecraft technology?

Ryan Graves (1:59:44.340)

I have no information either way.

Lex Fridman (1:59:47.200)

And if you did, you probably wouldn't tell me.

Lex Fridman (1:59:49.080)

But my assumptions, like what did my heart tell me?

Lex Fridman (1:59:52.640)

My heart tells me something's going on,

Lex Fridman (1:59:54.760)

but I have no evidence for that.

Lex Fridman (1:59:56.700)

Maybe that's me wanting something to go on.

Ryan Graves (1:59:58.600)

Maybe that's a human feeling to want to know

Lex Fridman (20:00.380)

you could call it, it's called the OODA loop

Ryan Graves (20:02.020)

that kind of made its way in the engineering of business now

Lex Fridman (20:04.460)

but the old observe, orientate, decide act

Ryan Graves (20:06.760)

was initially a fighter mechanism in order to get inside

Lex Fridman (20:10.520)

that kill chain of your opponent and break it up

Lex Fridman (20:12.800)

so that he can't process his kill chain on you.

Lex Fridman (20:17.180)

And so hypersonics are a way of shortening those windows

Ryan Graves (20:19.780)

of opportunity to react to them.

Lex Fridman (20:23.260)

I wanted to, like, how much do you have to shorten it

Lex Fridman (20:25.900)

in order for the defense systems not to work anymore?

Lex Fridman (20:29.260)

It seems like it's very, you know, I'm both often horrified

Ryan Graves (20:34.960)

by the thought of nuclear war, but at the same time,

Lex Fridman (20:38.740)

wonder what that looks like.

Ryan Graves (20:42.740)

When I dream of extreme competence in defense systems,

Lex Fridman (20:46.080)

I imagine that not a single nuclear weapon

Ryan Graves (20:49.060)

can reach the United States by missile

Lex Fridman (20:51.540)

with the defense systems, but then again,

Ryan Graves (20:55.300)

I also understand that these are extremely

Lex Fridman (20:57.940)

complicated systems, the amount of integration required,

Lex Fridman (21:00.760)

and because you're not using them,

Lex Fridman (21:03.720)

I mean, there could be, you know,

Ryan Graves (21:07.020)

there's like an intern somewhere that like forgot

Lex Fridman (21:10.580)

to update the code, the Fortran code

Ryan Graves (21:12.900)

that like is going to make the different,

Lex Fridman (21:15.180)

because you don't have the opportunity

Ryan Graves (21:16.580)

to really thoroughly test, which is really scary.

Lex Fridman (21:21.580)

Of course, the systems are probably incredible

Ryan Graves (21:24.140)

if they could be tested, but because they can't be

Lex Fridman (21:26.260)

really thoroughly tested in an actual attack, I wonder.

Ryan Graves (21:32.820)

I guess one assumption there would be that

Lex Fridman (21:35.820)

these hypersonic missiles would only be launched

Ryan Graves (21:37.780)

in the case of an attack.

Lex Fridman (21:39.860)

It'd be interesting if there were other hypersonic objects

Ryan Graves (21:41.940)

that we could use to flex those systems.

Lex Fridman (21:44.780)

Another thing that actually happened,

Lex Fridman (21:46.260)

and I just have a million questions I want to ask you,

Lex Fridman (21:48.220)

it's fascinating to me, is there's a bird strike

Lex Fridman (21:51.620)

on the plane, does that happen often?

Lex Fridman (21:53.700)

Yeah, it's a serious issue.

Lex Fridman (21:54.540)

And it damaged the engine, and they made it seem

Lex Fridman (21:56.820)

like it's a serious, exactly a serious issue.

Ryan Graves (21:59.240)

I've hit birds, I know someone that took a turkey vulture

Lex Fridman (22:03.200)

to the face, through the cockpit, right,

Ryan Graves (22:05.880)

shattered the cockpit, knocked him out.

Lex Fridman (22:08.580)

I think that, actually, I don't know him personally,

Lex Fridman (22:10.700)

but it was a story I know from the command I was at,

Lex Fridman (22:12.980)

and I believe the backseater had to punch out

Lex Fridman (22:15.560)

and punch them both out because he was unconscious

Lex Fridman (22:17.700)

in the front seat from the bird.

Ryan Graves (22:20.060)

It can kill you from hitting you,

Lex Fridman (22:21.300)

it's like a bowling ball going 250 miles an hour.

Ryan Graves (22:25.780)

It can take out an engine very easily.

Lex Fridman (22:30.420)

Every airport I've flown at in the Navy,

Ryan Graves (22:32.840)

I've had to check the bird condition, if you will,

Lex Fridman (22:36.060)

to see how many birds, and we've had to cancel flights

Ryan Graves (22:38.480)

because there's too many of them around the airport.

Lex Fridman (22:40.780)

Some airports even have bird radars, military airports.

Lex Fridman (22:43.180)

Is there systems that monitor the bird condition?

Lex Fridman (22:45.900)

There is, yeah, there's actual radar systems,

Lex Fridman (22:48.140)

and you can go in the, certain bases you have to call up,

Lex Fridman (22:51.620)

and they'll tell you what it is for the day

Ryan Graves (22:52.940)

or for that hour, and other ones have it

Lex Fridman (22:54.580)

in their weather report that goes out over the radio.

Lex Fridman (22:58.820)

What are some technological solutions to this,

Lex Fridman (23:00.940)

or is this just, because it's a low probability event,

Lex Fridman (23:06.060)

there's no real solution for it?

Lex Fridman (23:07.940)

I would say it's not a low probability event.

Ryan Graves (23:10.340)

This is happening a lot.

Lex Fridman (23:11.900)

Although the hits themselves aren't necessarily that common,

Ryan Graves (23:15.020)

or I'll say a catastrophic hit, either a near miss or a hit

Lex Fridman (23:18.780)

or the pilot having to actively maneuver to avoid it

Ryan Graves (23:21.900)

is pretty common, and in fact, it seems stressful.

Lex Fridman (23:24.500)

It is, it's so common in fact that we know

Ryan Graves (23:26.500)

that you never want to try to go over,

Lex Fridman (23:28.260)

or you never want to go under a bird

Ryan Graves (23:29.740)

if you see it in front of you.

Lex Fridman (23:31.180)

You always want to try to go over it

Ryan Graves (23:32.300)

because what they'll do immediately if they see you

Lex Fridman (23:34.180)

is, and you startle them, is they'll bring their wings in

Lex Fridman (23:36.740)

and just drop straight down to try to get out of the path.

Lex Fridman (23:39.080)

It's interesting, I didn't know they did that,

Lex Fridman (23:40.620)

but so if you immediately, if you try to go under them,

Lex Fridman (23:43.300)

they're gonna be dropping into you,

Lex Fridman (23:44.260)

so you typically want to try to go above them.

Lex Fridman (23:45.860)

Is this something you can train for, or no?

Lex Fridman (23:49.100)

Is this one of those things you have to really experience?

Lex Fridman (23:50.980)

It's a skill set that you somewhat train for

Lex Fridman (23:55.140)

in the duties of being a fighter pilot in a sense, right?

Lex Fridman (23:57.500)

Being able to react to your environment very quickly

Lex Fridman (23:59.500)

and make decisions quickly, so.

Lex Fridman (24:01.620)

Is that one of the more absurd things,

Lex Fridman (24:04.380)

challenges you have to deal with in flying?

Lex Fridman (24:06.660)

Is there other things, sort of maybe weather conditions,

Lex Fridman (24:10.660)

like harsh weather conditions?

Lex Fridman (24:11.820)

Is there something that we maybe don't often think about

Lex Fridman (24:14.620)

in terms of the challenges of flying?

Lex Fridman (24:17.140)

Birds, in a way, aren't a ridiculous threat for us.

Ryan Graves (24:20.420)

It's a safety threat that anything physical in the air

Lex Fridman (24:25.540)

is something that we really have to be careful about,

Ryan Graves (24:27.460)

whether we're flying formation off of the aircraft

Lex Fridman (24:29.540)

right next to us or whether it's a turkey vulture

Ryan Graves (24:32.300)

at 2,000 feet or a flock of 5,000 birds,

Lex Fridman (24:35.380)

like at the runway, we have to wave off, you know?

Lex Fridman (24:37.660)

And although they're low probability,

Lex Fridman (24:39.780)

a lot of bases will have actual

Ryan Graves (24:41.540)

Environmental Protection Agency employees

Lex Fridman (24:44.220)

that are responsible for safely removing migratory birds

Ryan Graves (24:47.780)

or different animals that may be in the runways

Lex Fridman (24:51.580)

or flying about.

Ryan Graves (24:53.340)

Wow, I didn't know what a turkey vulture is,

Lex Fridman (24:55.340)

and it really does look like a mix

Ryan Graves (24:57.100)

between a vulture and a turkey.

Lex Fridman (24:58.780)

Turkey.

Lex Fridman (25:00.220)

And look kind of dumb, no offense to turkey vultures.

Lex Fridman (25:06.260)

In that movie, who was the enemy nation?

Ryan Graves (25:08.820)

Was it, I mean, I guess they were implying it's Iran.

Lex Fridman (25:15.100)

Or was it Russia?

Ryan Graves (25:17.060)

I didn't think they were implying

Lex Fridman (25:18.140)

any particular nation state, frankly.

Ryan Graves (25:19.980)

I think they did a somewhat decent job

Lex Fridman (25:22.020)

of having some ambiguous fifth generation fighters.

Ryan Graves (25:26.220)

The location and the stockpile,

Lex Fridman (25:30.380)

I get how the story kind of insinuates certain things,

Lex Fridman (25:33.260)

but they seem to do a good job

Lex Fridman (25:34.300)

of not having anything directly pointing to another nation,

Ryan Graves (25:36.820)

which I thought was the good move.

Lex Fridman (25:38.940)

I enjoy these type of movies as an aviator

Lex Fridman (25:42.140)

and as an American, right?

Lex Fridman (25:44.340)

Because it's a feel good movie,

Lex Fridman (25:45.500)

but we shouldn't be celebrating going to war

Lex Fridman (25:48.980)

with any particular country, China, Russia,

Ryan Graves (25:51.420)

whoever may have these weapons.

Lex Fridman (25:52.820)

It's fun to watch,

Lex Fridman (25:53.980)

but it would be an incredibly serious event

Lex Fridman (25:55.620)

to be implying these weapons.

Ryan Graves (25:57.860)

Yeah, and we'll talk about war in general,

Lex Fridman (26:01.060)

because yeah, the movie's kind of celebrating

Ryan Graves (26:04.740)

the human side of things

Lex Fridman (26:07.060)

and also the incredible technology involved,

Lex Fridman (26:08.940)

but there's also the cost of war

Lex Fridman (26:12.460)

and the seriousness of war

Lex Fridman (26:13.900)

and the suffering involved with war,

Lex Fridman (26:16.100)

not just in the fighting,

Lex Fridman (26:17.140)

but in the death of civilians

Lex Fridman (26:18.660)

and all those kinds of things.

Ryan Graves (26:22.140)

Well, you were a Navy pilot.

Lex Fridman (26:24.180)

Let's talk a little bit more seriously about this,

Lex Fridman (26:26.820)

and you were twice deployed in the Middle East

Lex Fridman (26:28.820)

flying the FAA 18F Super Hornet.

Lex Fridman (26:32.020)

Can you briefly tell the story of your career

Lex Fridman (26:34.260)

as a Navy pilot?

Ryan Graves (26:35.420)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (26:36.260)

So I joined the Navy in 2009, right after college.

Ryan Graves (26:39.980)

I went to, essentially, officer boot camp,

Lex Fridman (26:42.940)

officer of Canada school.

Ryan Graves (26:44.260)

I applied as a pilot, and I got in as a pilot.

Lex Fridman (26:47.260)

That was the advantage of going that way

Ryan Graves (26:48.900)

is that I could essentially choose what I wanted,

Lex Fridman (26:50.660)

and if I got in, great.

Ryan Graves (26:51.780)

If not, I didn't get stuck doing something else.

Lex Fridman (26:54.500)

So you knew you wanted to be a pilot.

Ryan Graves (26:55.980)

I did.

Lex Fridman (26:57.340)

I joined.

Ryan Graves (26:58.180)

I went through my initial training.

Lex Fridman (26:59.300)

I went through primary flight training

Ryan Graves (27:01.140)

that all aviators go through,

Lex Fridman (27:02.900)

and I did well enough that,

Ryan Graves (27:06.020)

one of the first lessons they teach you in the Navy

Lex Fridman (27:07.380)

is that you can have a great career in the Navy

Lex Fridman (27:10.260)

and you can see the world and do what you want,

Lex Fridman (27:13.020)

but at the end of the day,

Ryan Graves (27:13.860)

it's all about the needs of the Navy and what they need,

Lex Fridman (27:15.580)

so they may not have the platform you like

Ryan Graves (27:18.100)

or you may not necessarily get to choose

Lex Fridman (27:19.780)

your own adventure here,

Lex Fridman (27:21.620)

but I was lucky enough that there was one jet slot

Lex Fridman (27:24.860)

in my class, and I was lucky enough,

Ryan Graves (27:26.860)

fortunate enough to get it, so.

Lex Fridman (27:28.420)

It was a jet slot.

Lex Fridman (27:29.580)

So yeah, what that means is that I was assigned

Lex Fridman (27:32.140)

actually a tail hook at that point,

Ryan Graves (27:33.700)

which meant I would go train to fly aircraft

Lex Fridman (27:36.380)

that land on aircraft carriers,

Lex Fridman (27:38.460)

and there's essentially three aircraft

Lex Fridman (27:40.780)

that do that at the time.

Ryan Graves (27:42.420)

There's the F18 and the E2 and the C2.

Lex Fridman (27:48.660)

C2 is kind of like the mail truck for the boat.

Ryan Graves (27:50.940)

E2 is one of the big radar dish on top,

Lex Fridman (27:54.060)

and then there's all the F18s.

Lex Fridman (27:55.580)

So E2 is comms, is C2 mail truck?

Lex Fridman (27:59.380)

Yeah.

Ryan Graves (28:00.620)

C2 basically brings all the mail.

Lex Fridman (28:02.420)

They pack on the shore,

Lex Fridman (28:04.380)

and they're the ones that bring supplies

Lex Fridman (28:05.620)

to the ship via air and people.

Ryan Graves (28:07.340)

Sorry if I missed it.

Lex Fridman (28:08.260)

Is it a plane or is it a helicopter?

Ryan Graves (28:09.900)

It's a plane.

Lex Fridman (28:10.740)

Okay.

Ryan Graves (28:11.820)

All right, and the F18 is a fighter jet.

Lex Fridman (28:13.780)

Correct.

Ryan Graves (28:14.620)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (28:15.440)

So I selected tail hook,

Ryan Graves (28:16.280)

which meant I could get one of those other ones,

Lex Fridman (28:18.380)

but 80% of them or so are jets,

Lex Fridman (28:20.060)

so I was in a good spot at that point,

Lex Fridman (28:21.820)

and that's when I went to Merde, Mississippi

Ryan Graves (28:23.460)

to fly my first jet, which was the T45 Gauss Hawk.

Lex Fridman (28:28.100)

Cool, so what kind of plane is that?

Lex Fridman (28:30.180)

Is that what you were doing your training on?

Lex Fridman (28:33.160)

That's the jet aircraft you get in

Ryan Graves (28:34.800)

before you actually go to the F18.

Lex Fridman (28:37.520)

It is a carrier capable,

Lex Fridman (28:39.540)

so go to the boat for the first time in it during the day,

Lex Fridman (28:42.560)

drop fake bombs, do dog fighting,

Ryan Graves (28:45.640)

low levels, formation flying, day and night.

Lex Fridman (28:49.720)

Oh, it's a pretty plane.

Ryan Graves (28:51.560)

Yeah, and it looks like a cone so that no one hits it.

Lex Fridman (28:54.520)

Okay, so it's usually not used for fighting,

Lex Fridman (28:58.400)

it's used for training?

Lex Fridman (28:59.440)

It's used for training how to fight.

Ryan Graves (29:01.000)

Got it.

Lex Fridman (29:01.900)

So what was that like?

Ryan Graves (29:03.120)

Was that the first time you were sort of

Lex Fridman (29:04.880)

really getting into it?

Ryan Graves (29:06.240)

Yeah, that was really interesting,

Lex Fridman (29:07.320)

because before that it was a 600 horsepower prop plane.

Ryan Graves (29:10.360)

Going from that to the T45 is one of the biggest jumps

Lex Fridman (29:13.600)

in power and like Navy machine operation.

Lex Fridman (29:17.560)

How much horsepower does the T45 have approximately?

Lex Fridman (29:21.120)

Maybe like 15,000 or so.

Lex Fridman (29:23.040)

So it's a huge jump from 600 you said horsepower about?

Lex Fridman (29:26.320)

Cool, so it's a big, big leap.

Lex Fridman (29:28.520)

But it's a jet, so it performs differently, it's faster.

Lex Fridman (29:32.360)

What that means, not just because it's faster,

Ryan Graves (29:34.280)

your whole mind needs to be faster.

Lex Fridman (29:35.420)

Everything happens faster in the air now, right?

Ryan Graves (29:37.320)

Those comms happen faster,

Lex Fridman (29:40.040)

your landing gear has to come up faster,

Ryan Graves (29:41.360)

everything just happens faster in a jet.

Lex Fridman (29:42.920)

So it's a big jump.

Lex Fridman (29:44.240)

And I'll never forget going on my first flight

Lex Fridman (29:47.460)

in that aircraft, it was a formation flight for someone else.

Lex Fridman (29:52.360)

And I was just in the back watching

Lex Fridman (29:54.040)

and there was an instructor in the flight.

Lex Fridman (29:55.700)

And so what that means is the instructor

Lex Fridman (29:57.840)

is in a single aircraft and then there's three

Ryan Graves (29:59.640)

or four other aircraft and they're learning

Lex Fridman (2:00:01.640)

that my government's in control

Ryan Graves (2:00:03.000)

of what some strange unknown thing is.

Lex Fridman (2:00:05.340)

What's your sense if such a thing happened?

Lex Fridman (2:00:09.700)

Would this kind of information leak?

Lex Fridman (2:00:12.780)

Would this kind of information be released by the government?

Ryan Graves (2:00:15.660)

I mean, that's the worry that you have

Lex Fridman (2:00:16.940)

is because when you don't understand a thing

Lex Fridman (2:00:18.820)

and it's novel, you want to hide it

Lex Fridman (2:00:20.700)

so that some kind of enemy doesn't get access to it

Lex Fridman (2:00:25.080)

and use it against you.

Lex Fridman (2:00:27.220)

I wonder if that is the underlying assumption.

Ryan Graves (2:00:29.820)

It's the one people always jump to,

Lex Fridman (2:00:31.580)

that it's for to maintain secrecy of technology.

Lex Fridman (2:00:35.220)

And I assume that's part of it.

Lex Fridman (2:00:36.660)

I wonder if there's any other reasons

Ryan Graves (2:00:38.020)

that we would want to not talk about it.

Lex Fridman (2:00:40.420)

I imagine that such information would have a shock

Ryan Graves (2:00:43.380)

to the social economic system of any country,

Lex Fridman (2:00:46.700)

if not the world.

Lex Fridman (2:00:48.100)

And so I wonder if perhaps that was part

Lex Fridman (2:00:50.220)

of the concern as well, how society can react to it.

Ryan Graves (2:00:53.760)

Maybe we're anti fragile enough now

Lex Fridman (2:00:56.000)

with everything that's going on

Lex Fridman (2:00:57.780)

and with our communication networks that,

Lex Fridman (2:01:01.900)

why not now?

Ryan Graves (2:01:02.740)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:01:03.560)

That's something I think about as well.

Ryan Graves (2:01:07.140)

Yeah, the effect on the mass psyche of something like this,

Lex Fridman (2:01:13.080)

that there's another intelligence out there.

Ryan Graves (2:01:18.740)

We had trouble enough to deal with a pandemic,

Lex Fridman (2:01:23.420)

to have something of this scale,

Ryan Graves (2:01:27.300)

basically having just an inkling of a phenomena

Lex Fridman (2:01:30.860)

that we have no understanding of

Lex Fridman (2:01:32.500)

and could lead to complete destruction

Lex Fridman (2:01:34.300)

of human civilization or a flourishing of it.

Lex Fridman (2:01:38.000)

And what do you do?

Lex Fridman (2:01:39.860)

What does a bureaucracy of government do with that?

Ryan Graves (2:01:42.980)

Especially when they're the ones holding the range of power

Lex Fridman (2:01:45.660)

and such a communication would relinquish that power

Ryan Graves (2:01:48.460)

essentially, to some degree.

Lex Fridman (2:01:52.300)

Since you think there's aliens out there

Lex Fridman (2:01:55.140)

and you're somebody that's thought about war quite a bit,

Lex Fridman (2:02:02.640)

do you think alien civilizations,

Lex Fridman (2:02:05.320)

when we meet them, would want war?

Lex Fridman (2:02:08.340)

Would they be a danger to us?

Lex Fridman (2:02:10.560)

Would they be a friend to us?

Lex Fridman (2:02:13.200)

What's your intuition about intelligences out there?

Ryan Graves (2:02:16.960)

My intuition tells me that when two people like yourself

Lex Fridman (2:02:21.040)

or myself or anyone get together,

Ryan Graves (2:02:23.480)

often the output is greater than the individuals.

Lex Fridman (2:02:26.880)

And when we work together,

Ryan Graves (2:02:28.400)

we can typically do things that are more impressive

Lex Fridman (2:02:31.320)

and better than if a single person works alone.

Lex Fridman (2:02:35.680)

And now I know that war has driven technological progress,

Lex Fridman (2:02:43.360)

but perhaps there's other mechanisms that can do so.

Lex Fridman (2:02:46.320)

But regardless, I wonder if we truly think

Lex Fridman (2:02:50.360)

about an advanced society that has been perhaps thousands

Ryan Graves (2:02:53.680)

or millions of years ahead of us,

Lex Fridman (2:02:55.920)

I would imagine that same truth to be there,

Ryan Graves (2:02:59.560)

that people working together or creatures working together

Lex Fridman (2:03:02.720)

is a good thing for society or its society as a whole.

Lex Fridman (2:03:07.920)

And if we consider that,

Lex Fridman (2:03:09.760)

as we imagine a society growing and expanding,

Ryan Graves (2:03:14.360)

in a sense, the ultimate output of a planet

Lex Fridman (2:03:16.960)

could only be achieved in some senses

Ryan Graves (2:03:18.600)

if everyone was working towards the same goal.

Lex Fridman (2:03:21.040)

And there might be wonders and secrets and things

Ryan Graves (2:03:24.720)

that we can't imagine just simply because of the timeframes

Lex Fridman (2:03:27.280)

that we live under and we think in.

Lex Fridman (2:03:30.280)

But if a planet has a single unit

Lex Fridman (2:03:33.520)

and it almost is as an entity itself at a certain level,

Ryan Graves (2:03:36.400)

if everything's working towards the same output,

Lex Fridman (2:03:38.720)

I could almost imagine an intelligent species

Ryan Graves (2:03:40.920)

that approached us planet to planet

Lex Fridman (2:03:43.320)

instead of person to person,

Ryan Graves (2:03:44.720)

because that's how they've evolved

Lex Fridman (2:03:46.000)

and they've assumed any intelligent species

Ryan Graves (2:03:47.760)

would understand that working together is better than not.

Lex Fridman (2:03:52.200)

And so my heart tells me that at a certain point,

Ryan Graves (2:03:56.920)

love and caring and the desire to work together

Lex Fridman (2:04:00.280)

is much more powerful than the technological progress

Ryan Graves (2:04:03.880)

that war would bring.

Lex Fridman (2:04:06.040)

I hope so as well.

Ryan Graves (2:04:08.000)

Well, let me jump to the AI topic that you've done.

Lex Fridman (2:04:11.120)

So you've done research and development efforts

Ryan Graves (2:04:13.080)

focused on multiagent intelligence

Lex Fridman (2:04:14.900)

for collaborative autonomy,

Ryan Graves (2:04:16.880)

machine learning AI stuff

Lex Fridman (2:04:18.440)

that we've been talking about for combat,

Ryan Graves (2:04:21.400)

for air to air combat,

Lex Fridman (2:04:23.080)

manned, unmanned teaming technologies,

Ryan Graves (2:04:24.880)

all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:04:26.440)

What's some interesting ideas in this space

Lex Fridman (2:04:28.480)

that fascinate you?

Lex Fridman (2:04:31.120)

Randomness, being able to not predict

Lex Fridman (2:04:34.560)

what the enemy is doing almost no matter what,

Lex Fridman (2:04:36.840)

because there's a level of randomness

Ryan Graves (2:04:38.120)

that's within the tactical envelope.

Lex Fridman (2:04:40.720)

Even if utility of randomness.

Ryan Graves (2:04:42.360)

The utility of randomness in an increasing.

Lex Fridman (2:04:44.880)

Sounds like a book you should write.

Ryan Graves (2:04:46.240)

That would be a good title.

Lex Fridman (2:04:49.240)

Name my band.

Lex Fridman (2:04:50.440)

Name your band?

Lex Fridman (2:04:51.520)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:04:53.280)

So yeah, can you elaborate that?

Lex Fridman (2:04:55.320)

So like trying to deeper understand

Lex Fridman (2:04:57.560)

how you can integrate randomness through AI

Lex Fridman (2:05:02.280)

in the context of combat.

Ryan Graves (2:05:03.920)

In order to make yourself,

Lex Fridman (2:05:06.160)

in order to take away the enemy's ability

Ryan Graves (2:05:07.920)

to try to predict what you're gonna do

Lex Fridman (2:05:09.800)

to disrupt their technological progress cycles

Lex Fridman (2:05:13.640)

so that they don't have a clear target to aim at.

Lex Fridman (2:05:16.120)

And if you don't have a clear target to aim at,

Ryan Graves (2:05:17.720)

it's hard to hit it.

Lex Fridman (2:05:18.880)

Additionally, more distribution of assets and capability.

Lex Fridman (2:05:23.280)

So imagine being able to digitally model

Lex Fridman (2:05:26.120)

your weapon or your system

Ryan Graves (2:05:28.120)

or your entire tactical engagement or scenario,

Lex Fridman (2:05:31.080)

or allow a machine learning

Ryan Graves (2:05:32.400)

to help you better understand the technology

Lex Fridman (2:05:35.280)

that you need to build

Ryan Graves (2:05:36.120)

in order to defeat a particular scenario.

Lex Fridman (2:05:38.760)

And I'm talking hardware now, not just the tactic itself.

Lex Fridman (2:05:41.720)

And being able to use large amounts of simulation

Lex Fridman (2:05:46.520)

and machine learning to build individual assets

Ryan Graves (2:05:49.200)

that are small boutique using advanced manufacturing

Lex Fridman (2:05:52.960)

techniques for a mission or for a particular battle.

Ryan Graves (2:05:56.080)

Instead of just having these large things against an enemy,

Lex Fridman (2:05:58.240)

you're building systems and technology for individual cases.

Lex Fridman (2:06:03.000)

What about manned and unmanned teaming?

Lex Fridman (2:06:05.960)

So man and machine working together.

Lex Fridman (2:06:08.960)

Is there interesting ideas there?

Lex Fridman (2:06:10.680)

I approach it from the position

Ryan Graves (2:06:13.440)

that the human should be commanding

Lex Fridman (2:06:17.960)

from the highest level possible, right?

Lex Fridman (2:06:19.480)

So mission, objective, base, targeting.

Lex Fridman (2:06:23.160)

And so if, just for an example,

Ryan Graves (2:06:25.440)

if there's a building here and I want that building

Lex Fridman (2:06:27.640)

to go away, that's the message I wanna communicate.

Ryan Graves (2:06:29.720)

I don't wanna tell certain vehicles

Lex Fridman (2:06:31.400)

to be in a certain spot.

Ryan Graves (2:06:32.360)

I don't wanna know how much fuel they have.

Lex Fridman (2:06:33.920)

I don't even wanna know

Lex Fridman (2:06:34.760)

what capabilities they have necessarily.

Lex Fridman (2:06:36.520)

I just wanna know that I have the ability

Ryan Graves (2:06:39.400)

to select from a cloud of capabilities

Lex Fridman (2:06:41.720)

and the right assets are gonna arrive

Ryan Graves (2:06:43.560)

such that they deal with the contingencies

Lex Fridman (2:06:46.240)

around the target such as protection systems or EW

Lex Fridman (2:06:49.320)

and then can prosecute the target

Lex Fridman (2:06:50.880)

to the high enough probability of satisfaction

Ryan Graves (2:06:53.440)

that's needed by the mission commander.

Lex Fridman (2:06:54.640)

And that's the power of the human mind

Ryan Graves (2:06:57.160)

is it's able to do some of these strategic calculations

Lex Fridman (2:07:00.560)

but also ethical calculations, all that kind of stuff.

Ryan Graves (2:07:03.600)

That's what humans are good at.

Lex Fridman (2:07:05.280)

Does it worry you a future where we have increasingly

Lex Fridman (2:07:10.560)

higher autonomy in our weapons systems, in our war?

Lex Fridman (2:07:14.400)

So you said building.

Lex Fridman (2:07:16.560)

What about telling a set of fully autonomous drones

Lex Fridman (2:07:22.760)

to get rid of all the terrorists in the city?

Lex Fridman (2:07:26.560)

So you said multiple buildings, region,

Lex Fridman (2:07:29.800)

that kind of, so greater and greater autonomy.

Ryan Graves (2:07:34.080)

Mm hmm.

Lex Fridman (2:07:35.160)

So that's a fear, right?

Ryan Graves (2:07:38.720)

You're viewing it from a we can cover more perspective

Lex Fridman (2:07:41.440)

which is fair and a lot of,

Ryan Graves (2:07:46.960)

I don't approach it from that topic.

Lex Fridman (2:07:48.480)

At least I don't think of it that way, at least morally.

Ryan Graves (2:07:52.240)

I think that with the advancement of warfare,

Lex Fridman (2:07:54.200)

assuming we have a just and moral leadership,

Ryan Graves (2:07:59.080)

if that's the case, then I am an advocate

Lex Fridman (2:08:02.240)

for increased autonomy and technology

Ryan Graves (2:08:04.600)

because I see it as an ability to be more precise.

Lex Fridman (2:08:09.040)

And if we trust the moral leadership of our government,

Ryan Graves (2:08:14.240)

then we would want to be as precise as possible

Lex Fridman (2:08:17.480)

in order to mitigate effects that we don't want.

Lex Fridman (2:08:21.160)

So I know that's not a satisfying answer

Lex Fridman (2:08:24.520)

and it leaves us maybe with bad feelings but.

Ryan Graves (2:08:27.160)

No, because having experienced sort of directly seen

Lex Fridman (2:08:34.920)

what it looks like when deliberately or carelessly

Ryan Graves (2:08:41.880)

war leads to the death of a large number of civilians

Lex Fridman (2:08:44.480)

as it does currently in Ukraine,

Ryan Graves (2:08:47.680)

the value of precision given ethical leadership

Lex Fridman (2:08:52.560)

becomes apparent.

Lex Fridman (2:08:54.200)

So there's something distinctly unethical

Lex Fridman (2:08:57.320)

about the murder of civilians in a time of war.

Lex Fridman (2:09:02.800)

And I think technology helps lessen that.

Lex Fridman (2:09:05.960)

Of course, all death is terrible

Lex Fridman (2:09:08.440)

but there's something about schools, hospitals

Lex Fridman (2:09:13.920)

being destroyed with everybody inside being killed.

Ryan Graves (2:09:19.080)

It's particularly terrible.

Lex Fridman (2:09:21.240)

It is and you approached it from the angle of

Ryan Graves (2:09:24.680)

more autonomy enables a wider swath of destruction.

Lex Fridman (2:09:30.000)

And that's where we get back into

Ryan Graves (2:09:32.440)

who's making the decisions based off of this.

Lex Fridman (2:09:34.920)

And my hope again would be that we would have the leadership

Ryan Graves (2:09:38.520)

that would use these things when needed

Lex Fridman (2:09:40.280)

in the precise way as possible to minimize that.

Lex Fridman (2:09:42.920)

And I've seen that firsthand, I've seen that in country,

Lex Fridman (2:09:45.760)

I've seen not blue forces but I've seen truck bombs go off

Ryan Graves (2:09:51.640)

on school buses, driving around Afghanistan

Lex Fridman (2:09:56.040)

while escorting convoys and it wasn't easy then

Lex Fridman (2:09:59.720)

and I'm sure it's not any easier now

Lex Fridman (2:10:01.800)

especially after what you've just seen.

Lex Fridman (2:10:03.880)

Do you have thoughts about the current war in Ukraine

Lex Fridman (2:10:07.200)

maybe from a military perspective,

Lex Fridman (2:10:09.600)

maybe from the Air Force perspective?

Lex Fridman (2:10:11.360)

So I can just mention a few things.

Ryan Graves (2:10:13.800)

There's the Barakhtar drones that are being used.

Lex Fridman (2:10:17.880)

They're unmanned.

Ryan Graves (2:10:19.000)

I think they have capability to be autonomous

Lex Fridman (2:10:21.560)

but they're usually remotely controlled.

Ryan Graves (2:10:23.880)

They're used for reconnaissance but they're also used

Lex Fridman (2:10:26.640)

by the Ukraine side for reconnaissance

Lex Fridman (2:10:28.560)

and I think also to destroy different technologies,

Lex Fridman (2:10:33.440)

tanks and so on, different targets like this.

Lex Fridman (2:10:36.200)

So there's also on the Russian side the Orlan 10.

Lex Fridman (2:10:40.040)

There's the fighter jets, MiG 29 on the Ukraine side

Lex Fridman (2:10:44.440)

and the Su 25 on the Russian side.

Lex Fridman (2:10:46.440)

Is there anything kind of stands out to you

Ryan Graves (2:10:48.120)

about this particular aspects of what this war looks like

Lex Fridman (2:10:51.640)

that's unique to what you've experienced?

Ryan Graves (2:10:54.760)

Maybe not unique but it's just been absolutely incredible

Lex Fridman (2:10:56.800)

to see the footage.

Ryan Graves (2:10:59.440)

We're watching war on Twitter essentially

Lex Fridman (2:11:02.760)

and to see these aircraft flying down low,

Ryan Graves (2:11:06.200)

spitting flares out, getting shot down,

Lex Fridman (2:11:08.960)

it's incredible to see this happening live

Ryan Graves (2:11:12.360)

for everyone to see.

Lex Fridman (2:11:14.600)

So that's just kind of a quick meta comment

Lex Fridman (2:11:16.200)

but as far as the actual,

Lex Fridman (2:11:18.560)

I think these small form factor UAVs

Ryan Graves (2:11:20.720)

where they're just like strapping weapon to it

Lex Fridman (2:11:22.880)

and flying over and trying to drop it at the right time

Ryan Graves (2:11:25.320)

or any of these type of commercial applications

Lex Fridman (2:11:29.040)

of technology into this ad hoc warfare area

Ryan Graves (2:11:31.920)

is incredibly interesting

Lex Fridman (2:11:33.160)

because it shows how useful that technology can be

Ryan Graves (2:11:36.480)

outside of the military.

Lex Fridman (2:11:38.800)

Especially like DJI, right?

Ryan Graves (2:11:40.000)

Like there's obviously a lot of technology in there

Lex Fridman (2:11:41.720)

is being leveraged for other capabilities

Ryan Graves (2:11:43.680)

within PLC military or at least we would assume.

Lex Fridman (2:11:49.040)

What happens if that is more widespread, right?

Ryan Graves (2:11:52.160)

Like what if we were creating our own drones

Lex Fridman (2:11:54.560)

and they were being used against us?

Ryan Graves (2:11:56.080)

Would we want to have some type of kill switch

Lex Fridman (2:11:57.720)

or something like that, right?

Lex Fridman (2:11:58.800)

So what I think governments are gonna have to consider

Lex Fridman (2:12:01.520)

like all these tools that are gonna be easily available

Ryan Graves (2:12:04.480)

to just any person could be turned into a tool of war

Lex Fridman (2:12:08.000)

or how do we stop that from being turned against us?

Ryan Graves (2:12:10.520)

Especially as we look at 10 years from now

Lex Fridman (2:12:12.960)

when we have a large number of autonomous UAVs

Ryan Graves (2:12:15.520)

delivering packages and doing everything else

Lex Fridman (2:12:17.640)

over our country and any one of those

Ryan Graves (2:12:19.560)

could be potentially a weapon

Lex Fridman (2:12:20.800)

if we don't have the proper security.

Ryan Graves (2:12:22.520)

Well, we're now in Texas and Texas values its guns

Lex Fridman (2:12:27.080)

and it sees guns as among other things

Ryan Graves (2:12:30.200)

a protector of individual freedom.

Lex Fridman (2:12:33.520)

You could see a future perhaps where,

Lex Fridman (2:12:35.520)

and I've certainly have experienced this in

Lex Fridman (2:12:38.560)

the empowering nature of this in Ukraine

Ryan Graves (2:12:41.480)

where you can put the fight for independence

Lex Fridman (2:12:45.960)

into your own hands by literally strapping explosives

Ryan Graves (2:12:50.160)

to GGI drones that you purchase on your own salary.

Lex Fridman (2:12:54.280)

I mean that one of the interesting things

Ryan Graves (2:12:55.600)

about the voluntary army in Ukraine

Lex Fridman (2:12:58.280)

is that they're basically using their own salary

Ryan Graves (2:13:01.120)

to buy the ammunition to fight for their independence.

Lex Fridman (2:13:04.200)

It's the very kind of ideal that sort of people speak about

Ryan Graves (2:13:07.920)

when they speak about the Second Amendment in this country

Lex Fridman (2:13:13.160)

that it's interesting to see

Ryan Graves (2:13:15.960)

the advanced technology version of that,

Lex Fridman (2:13:18.920)

especially in Ukraine.

Ryan Graves (2:13:19.960)

Sort of using computer vision technology

Lex Fridman (2:13:22.760)

for surveillance and reconnaissance

Ryan Graves (2:13:25.800)

to try to integrate that information

Lex Fridman (2:13:29.440)

to discover the targets and all that kind of stuff.

Ryan Graves (2:13:32.800)

To put that in the hands of civilians

Lex Fridman (2:13:35.400)

is fascinating to see.

Lex Fridman (2:13:36.480)

So to sort of fight for their independence,

Lex Fridman (2:13:38.600)

you could say that to fight against authoritarian regime

Ryan Graves (2:13:43.600)

of your own government, all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:13:45.360)

It shows you how complicated the war space in the future

Ryan Graves (2:13:47.840)

is gonna be invading a land like that

Lex Fridman (2:13:50.440)

where people have that many different types of resources.

Ryan Graves (2:13:53.440)

It could absolutely change warfare.

Lex Fridman (2:13:55.760)

I mean hopefully that creates a disincentive to start war.

Ryan Graves (2:14:00.760)

To go to war with a, yeah,

Lex Fridman (2:14:04.440)

sort of it changes the nature of guerrilla warfare.

Ryan Graves (2:14:07.080)

It does, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:14:08.360)

I don't think Putin was expecting to be in that engagement

Ryan Graves (2:14:11.520)

quite as long as he has, of course,

Lex Fridman (2:14:14.080)

but it can show you how you can get caught up.

Ryan Graves (2:14:16.520)

If land wars turn into an inescapable quagmire each time

Lex Fridman (2:14:22.800)

due to the complications around the society's ability

Ryan Graves (2:14:26.560)

to access interesting tools,

Lex Fridman (2:14:28.760)

it could be a huge demotivator for aggression.

Ryan Graves (2:14:36.920)

Well, let me ask you about this.

Lex Fridman (2:14:38.600)

Do you think there will always be war in the world?

Lex Fridman (2:14:43.520)

Is this just a part of human nature?

Lex Fridman (2:14:50.440)

I think so.

Ryan Graves (2:14:51.520)

I think it is.

Lex Fridman (2:14:53.600)

Until we move past resource limitation,

Ryan Graves (2:14:59.480)

there's always gonna be at least

Lex Fridman (2:15:00.920)

that one particular cause of conflict.

Lex Fridman (2:15:06.400)

And then we can also consider all our psychological

Lex Fridman (2:15:10.200)

lizard brain emotions that cause us to act out,

Ryan Graves (2:15:14.920)

although hopefully we have enough things in place

Lex Fridman (2:15:18.800)

to stop that from rising to the level of war.

Lex Fridman (2:15:22.160)

But we have our own biology, our own psychology

Lex Fridman (2:15:24.080)

and evolution to combat.

Lex Fridman (2:15:26.800)

But there are pragmatic reasons

Lex Fridman (2:15:28.280)

to exert violence sometimes, unfortunately,

Lex Fridman (2:15:30.360)

and one of those cases could be resource limitations.

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.480)

And so your question was,

Lex Fridman (2:15:34.720)

do I think there will always be war in this world?

Lex Fridman (2:15:37.080)

My unfortunate answer is perhaps yes,

Lex Fridman (2:15:39.480)

but once there's more than one world

Lex Fridman (2:15:41.600)

and we're less resource constrained,

Ryan Graves (2:15:43.040)

then perhaps there'll be a valve of sorts for that.

Lex Fridman (2:15:47.240)

I talked to Jacco on this podcast.

Ryan Graves (2:15:51.680)

I told him about a song called Brothers in Arms

Lex Fridman (2:15:55.520)

by Dire Straits, and the question I asked him,

Ryan Graves (2:15:59.680)

I'd like to ask you the same question,

Lex Fridman (2:16:01.440)

is like the song goes, do you think we're fools

Lex Fridman (2:16:06.280)

to wage war on our brothers in arms?

Lex Fridman (2:16:09.200)

And Jacco said, our enemy is not our brothers in arms,

Ryan Graves (2:16:14.160)

they're the enemy.

Lex Fridman (2:16:16.840)

And so this kind of notion that we're all human,

Ryan Graves (2:16:21.200)

that's a notion, that's a luxury you can have,

Lex Fridman (2:16:25.120)

but there is good and bad in this world, according to Jacco.

Ryan Graves (2:16:29.600)

I hear that anger and hate when I was in Ukraine

Lex Fridman (2:16:34.880)

amongst some people, where there was a sense

Ryan Graves (2:16:40.880)

where you could be brothers and sisters,

Lex Fridman (2:16:42.400)

you can have family, you can have love

Ryan Graves (2:16:45.800)

from Ukraine to Russia, but now that everything's changed

Lex Fridman (2:16:50.160)

and generational hate for some people have taken over.

Lex Fridman (2:16:54.880)

So I guess the question is, when you think about the enemy,

Lex Fridman (2:17:00.600)

is there hate there?

Lex Fridman (2:17:02.280)

Do you acknowledge that they're human?

Lex Fridman (2:17:04.400)

I had never had any hate or discontent

Ryan Graves (2:17:07.560)

when I was doing my job, I'll say,

Lex Fridman (2:17:10.280)

but I was also never in a true life or death situation

Ryan Graves (2:17:14.640)

where they were gonna kill me if I didn't kill them.

Lex Fridman (2:17:17.280)

But I think that environment isn't one born out of hate,

Ryan Graves (2:17:22.200)

being in that type of scenario,

Lex Fridman (2:17:24.040)

in a sense it's how to be alive, right?

Ryan Graves (2:17:26.200)

I mean, our natural state is to be fighting

Lex Fridman (2:17:28.720)

for our survival in a sense.

Lex Fridman (2:17:30.680)

And so I think there's great power and strength

Lex Fridman (2:17:33.920)

and clarity perhaps in that, and it's not always born out

Ryan Graves (2:17:36.920)

of hate, but out of necessity,

Lex Fridman (2:17:38.960)

and we can't always control that.

Lex Fridman (2:17:41.120)

And I think as we focus on ourselves so much,

Lex Fridman (2:17:45.400)

we only dance on that pinhead when we find ourselves

Ryan Graves (2:17:48.720)

fighting for things that we need,

Lex Fridman (2:17:50.880)

and we're always taking from someone else at this point.

Lex Fridman (2:17:53.720)

And so as someone that's been in combat

Lex Fridman (2:17:56.480)

and very high above it, I'll say, right,

Ryan Graves (2:17:58.560)

where I didn't feel like I was in particular danger,

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.720)

I rationalized it and I made my way through it,

Ryan Graves (2:18:06.720)

knowing that there were people on the other side

Lex Fridman (2:18:08.520)

that were going to die that were on our side than not.

Lex Fridman (2:18:12.320)

So it was always a very human thing.

Lex Fridman (2:18:15.680)

It was never a reaction, emotional reaction of any sense.

Lex Fridman (2:18:21.400)

So you were able to see the basic, it's human versus human.

Lex Fridman (2:18:27.840)

There's some aspect of war that is basically

Ryan Graves (2:18:32.680)

one people fighting each other.

Lex Fridman (2:18:36.280)

Yes, at the end of the day, especially I would say

Ryan Graves (2:18:40.960)

in aviation, tactical aviation, there's almost a kinship

Lex Fridman (2:18:44.320)

with your enemies in a sense, because you know them

Ryan Graves (2:18:48.240)

in a sense, right, you know what they've been through,

Lex Fridman (2:18:51.440)

you know what training they've been through,

Ryan Graves (2:18:52.680)

you know where they failed, and you know what type

Lex Fridman (2:18:55.480)

of person they are, because it's a very unique person

Ryan Graves (2:18:57.360)

that does that job and usually can spot them.

Lex Fridman (2:18:59.720)

I guess it's the kind of respect you have

Ryan Graves (2:19:02.320)

for the craftsmanship of the job that's taken on.

Lex Fridman (2:19:06.720)

Certainly, and that person didn't come out

Ryan Graves (2:19:08.520)

in his $100 million jet because I pissed him off.

Lex Fridman (2:19:12.000)

It's not an emotional response.

Ryan Graves (2:19:13.760)

We're both there, maybe because we chose to be in some sense,

Lex Fridman (2:19:17.760)

but at the behest of someone else

Lex Fridman (2:19:20.600)

and outside of our control and power.

Lex Fridman (2:19:22.800)

And so in a sense for me, it's almost a challenge

Ryan Graves (2:19:25.760)

that we've engaged upon agreeably,

Lex Fridman (2:19:27.920)

but that's such a romantic version that I have the luxury

Ryan Graves (2:19:30.680)

to have being high in my castle in the jet up there,

Lex Fridman (2:19:34.040)

not on the ground.

Lex Fridman (2:19:35.360)

So I understand that it's a bit more romantic

Lex Fridman (2:19:37.440)

than perhaps, you know, someone on the ground

Ryan Graves (2:19:40.920)

experiencing all the horrors down there,

Lex Fridman (2:19:42.840)

because everything looks very small from above.

Lex Fridman (2:19:46.600)

And that's another aspect of war with greater autonomy

Lex Fridman (2:19:50.160)

when you're controlling the mission versus,

Ryan Graves (2:19:53.880)

you know, have a Genghis Khan type of intimacy

Lex Fridman (2:19:58.520)

in terms of the actual experience of war

Ryan Graves (2:20:01.680)

where you directly have, you murder with a sword

Lex Fridman (2:20:05.260)

versus a gun versus a remotely controlled drone

Ryan Graves (2:20:09.480)

versus a strategic mission assignment

Lex Fridman (2:20:12.080)

to an autonomous drone that executes.

Ryan Graves (2:20:14.920)

Abstracted away until it's just a small decision.

Lex Fridman (2:20:18.480)

And my worry is the people without a voice

Ryan Graves (2:20:26.680)

are completely forgotten and silenced

Lex Fridman (2:20:29.160)

in all of these calculations.

Ryan Graves (2:20:31.040)

I spoke to a lot of people, poor people that feel like

Lex Fridman (2:20:36.400)

they've never really had a voice

Lex Fridman (2:20:37.760)

and they're too easily forgotten,

Lex Fridman (2:20:40.280)

even within the country of Ukraine.

Ryan Graves (2:20:42.520)

It's the big city versus the rural divide, you know.

Lex Fridman (2:20:48.440)

It's easy to forget the people

Ryan Graves (2:20:49.840)

that don't have a Twitter account

Lex Fridman (2:20:52.360)

and that their basic existence is just trying to survive,

Ryan Graves (2:20:57.120)

trying to put food on the table

Lex Fridman (2:20:58.520)

and they don't have anything else, anything else.

Lex Fridman (2:21:02.660)

And they are the ones that truly feel the pain of war,

Lex Fridman (2:21:06.160)

of the supply chain going down,

Ryan Graves (2:21:08.320)

of the food supplies going down,

Lex Fridman (2:21:10.120)

of a cold winter without power.

Ryan Graves (2:21:15.440)

You're still young, but you've seen some things.

Lex Fridman (2:21:18.960)

So let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat

Lex Fridman (2:21:22.640)

and give advice to young people,

Lex Fridman (2:21:25.860)

whether they're fascinated by technology

Ryan Graves (2:21:29.220)

or fascinated by fighter jets,

Lex Fridman (2:21:31.860)

whether they're fascinated by sort of engineering

Ryan Graves (2:21:35.260)

or the way the stars look at night.

Lex Fridman (2:21:38.100)

What advice would you give them?

Lex Fridman (2:21:40.140)

How to have a career they can be proud of

Lex Fridman (2:21:42.120)

or how to have a life they can be proud of?

Ryan Graves (2:21:45.460)

I'd suggest that they don't fear looking foolish.

Lex Fridman (2:21:49.820)

I spent a large portion of my life

Ryan Graves (2:21:52.260)

considering the laughter or the comments

Lex Fridman (2:21:56.880)

at my statements as indication

Ryan Graves (2:21:59.760)

that I shouldn't pursue that.

Lex Fridman (2:22:02.000)

And so I kind of woke up to that fact a bit later,

Lex Fridman (2:22:05.880)

but I would advise that people trust in themselves

Lex Fridman (2:22:11.000)

and trust in the things that they care about.

Ryan Graves (2:22:12.920)

It doesn't matter if they're good at it.

Lex Fridman (2:22:15.560)

All that matters is that they find something

Ryan Graves (2:22:17.440)

that they can apply love and care to

Lex Fridman (2:22:20.400)

and they will grow better at it

Lex Fridman (2:22:22.240)

and then most likely make the world better because of it.

Lex Fridman (2:22:25.080)

And don't be afraid to look stupid.

Ryan Graves (2:22:27.400)

Don't be afraid to look stupid.

Lex Fridman (2:22:30.000)

Yeah, that's one of the things that I think

Ryan Graves (2:22:31.480)

as you get older, you're expected to be,

Lex Fridman (2:22:34.880)

to have it all figured out

Lex Fridman (2:22:36.000)

and so you are afraid to take on new things.

Lex Fridman (2:22:39.160)

But I think as long as you're always,

Ryan Graves (2:22:40.800)

okay, looking stupid and having a beginner's mind,

Lex Fridman (2:22:43.400)

you can get really, really far even later on in life.

Lex Fridman (2:22:47.000)

So this isn't just advice for young people.

Lex Fridman (2:22:48.760)

This is really advice for everybody.

Ryan Graves (2:22:55.200)

Maybe a dark question,

Lex Fridman (2:22:56.640)

but has there been a difficult time in your life,

Ryan Graves (2:23:01.520)

a really dark place you've gone in your mind

Lex Fridman (2:23:04.840)

that stands out that you had to really overcome?

Ryan Graves (2:23:08.560)

I would suggest that I've been pretty firm ground

Lex Fridman (2:23:13.020)

for most of my life.

Ryan Graves (2:23:14.120)

I haven't had too many personal tragedies.

Lex Fridman (2:23:18.400)

I'll say that have really defined me.

Ryan Graves (2:23:22.760)

Certainly none that I would think are outside the norm.

Lex Fridman (2:23:25.800)

So there was no truly low point.

Ryan Graves (2:23:29.040)

Actually, I have one and it's tough for me

Lex Fridman (2:23:30.680)

because I've spent most of my life beating motions

Lex Fridman (2:23:33.920)

and high emotional responses out of my system

Lex Fridman (2:23:38.680)

because that's what flying is, right?

Ryan Graves (2:23:40.060)

It's keeping a steady line and doing what you need to do.

Lex Fridman (2:23:44.280)

In fact, there's been studies

Ryan Graves (2:23:45.200)

that show reduced adrenaline production in fighter pilots

Lex Fridman (2:23:49.480)

for a number of years after they get out.

Lex Fridman (2:23:50.760)

But getting out of the Navy was difficult for me.

Lex Fridman (2:23:54.400)

And I wasn't expecting it to be.

Ryan Graves (2:23:56.120)

A lot of bravado and machoism, of course, in the military,

Lex Fridman (2:23:59.520)

especially in fighter community.

Lex Fridman (2:24:01.360)

And we all have our plans made up to get out

Lex Fridman (2:24:03.640)

and none of it really accounts

Ryan Graves (2:24:06.280)

for any type of mental health or anything like that.

Lex Fridman (2:24:08.960)

It's all very much, where am I gonna get my paycheck from?

Lex Fridman (2:24:11.600)

Where am I gonna move to?

Lex Fridman (2:24:12.680)

And whether it's the Navy or just individuals,

Ryan Graves (2:24:16.400)

truly understanding the difference that makes.

Lex Fridman (2:24:18.320)

And when I got out, it was difficult for me.

Ryan Graves (2:24:21.060)

I think a lot of guys in that job, when they get out,

Lex Fridman (2:24:23.160)

they almost, at least I had anxiety when I got out

Ryan Graves (2:24:26.280)

because I was so used to being highly involved

Lex Fridman (2:24:29.920)

in something that just was I was always involved with

Ryan Graves (2:24:35.160)

that when I got out,

Lex Fridman (2:24:36.240)

I didn't know how to fill that space essentially.

Lex Fridman (2:24:38.640)

And while I wouldn't say it was an overly

Lex Fridman (2:24:41.840)

traumatic experience, I think it's one

Ryan Graves (2:24:43.320)

that's not accounted for enough

Lex Fridman (2:24:45.160)

that people that are getting out,

Lex Fridman (2:24:46.880)

so I would encourage them to take it serious

Lex Fridman (2:24:49.140)

and actually think about it and respect the change

Ryan Graves (2:24:51.680)

because it is a big one.

Lex Fridman (2:24:53.480)

Well, if I may say, you found a place in nature currently,

Ryan Graves (2:24:58.480)

a home, is there, can you speak to that

Lex Fridman (2:25:01.920)

being a source of happiness for you?

Ryan Graves (2:25:04.040)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (2:25:04.880)

An escape from the world?

Ryan Graves (2:25:06.220)

Certainly, it very much is.

Lex Fridman (2:25:08.040)

Was it deliberate that you found it there?

Ryan Graves (2:25:11.240)

That's home for me.

Lex Fridman (2:25:12.120)

So, I moved back up to the Boston area

Lex Fridman (2:25:14.920)

and my wife and I had an idea after moving

Lex Fridman (2:25:18.440)

about eight or nine times in the Navy

Ryan Graves (2:25:20.280)

of kind of what we wanted just generally.

Lex Fridman (2:25:23.560)

And it was all really about the land

Lex Fridman (2:25:25.760)

and not about the house,

Lex Fridman (2:25:26.920)

we just wanted privacy and to be nearby.

Lex Fridman (2:25:29.480)

And so we ended up finding a lot of land,

Lex Fridman (2:25:31.920)

a parcel of land, we put a house on it

Lex Fridman (2:25:34.160)

and it provides me with a sense of peace

Lex Fridman (2:25:36.520)

that I think I can only get when I'm in nature.

Lex Fridman (2:25:40.200)

And a sense of clarity that helps me think,

Lex Fridman (2:25:43.040)

helps me relax, maybe it's so relaxing

Ryan Graves (2:25:45.500)

that helps me think, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:25:46.640)

But being surrounded by nature and birds and animals

Ryan Graves (2:25:50.600)

for me has always allowed me to,

Lex Fridman (2:25:54.600)

I don't know, feel most in touch

Ryan Graves (2:25:55.840)

with my own thoughts in a sense.

Lex Fridman (2:25:59.320)

It just provides clarity.

Lex Fridman (2:26:01.240)

And so this little sanctuary you could say I've built

Lex Fridman (2:26:04.600)

allows me to interface via a fiber line at my house

Lex Fridman (2:26:08.920)

but also feel like I'm a million miles away sometimes,

Lex Fridman (2:26:12.400)

which is the best of both worlds.

Ryan Graves (2:26:13.840)

A, you can just walk outside to escape at all.

Lex Fridman (2:26:16.240)

Yes.

Ryan Graves (2:26:17.080)

To experience life as hundreds of generations

Lex Fridman (2:26:21.440)

of human species have experienced it.

Ryan Graves (2:26:23.480)

Maybe it's the dichotomy, my desire for the fastness

Lex Fridman (2:26:26.560)

of technology and experience compared

Ryan Graves (2:26:28.940)

with the most basic baseline that we have.

Lex Fridman (2:26:32.280)

Isn't that strange?

Lex Fridman (2:26:33.120)

How do you square that?

Lex Fridman (2:26:34.920)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:26:36.120)

How drawn you are to the cutting edge

Lex Fridman (2:26:39.000)

and still the calm you find in nature.

Ryan Graves (2:26:41.400)

I think it makes sense.

Lex Fridman (2:26:42.520)

Nature is vastly superior to almost all of our technology.

Lex Fridman (2:26:45.680)

From a technology perspective?

Lex Fridman (2:26:46.520)

Yeah, it is.

Lex Fridman (2:26:48.120)

And so in a way, it's being surrounded

Lex Fridman (2:26:49.640)

by perfection in a lot of senses.

Ryan Graves (2:26:53.320)

In the military and in general,

Lex Fridman (2:26:55.160)

have you contemplated your mortality?

Lex Fridman (2:26:57.240)

Have you been afraid of death?

Lex Fridman (2:26:59.320)

What's your relationship like with death?

Ryan Graves (2:27:01.320)

Well, I was willing to accept an oversized amount of risk,

Lex Fridman (2:27:06.160)

I'll say, when I was younger as an aviator.

Ryan Graves (2:27:08.600)

Not in the jet, but just that was my life.

Lex Fridman (2:27:10.840)

I felt like I was gonna live forever.

Lex Fridman (2:27:13.600)

And going out in the war, strangely,

Lex Fridman (2:27:15.760)

didn't really change that because as an aviator,

Ryan Graves (2:27:19.280)

again, we're riding up high on our horse up there.

Lex Fridman (2:27:21.160)

So there were times when I was in situations

Ryan Graves (2:27:25.720)

that could have resulted in death from flying

Lex Fridman (2:27:28.280)

or from emergency in the aircraft.

Lex Fridman (2:27:31.440)

But I'll be honest, I never really kind of sat down

Lex Fridman (2:27:35.960)

to think about the mortality of it afterwards.

Ryan Graves (2:27:39.360)

I feel like I kind of signed a check at the beginning

Lex Fridman (2:27:41.960)

and it was my job to perform as well as I could.

Lex Fridman (2:27:44.280)

And if something happened in that,

Lex Fridman (2:27:46.040)

then I better damn well be sure

Ryan Graves (2:27:47.680)

I would do my best at the time then.

Lex Fridman (2:27:50.520)

So I maybe didn't personally reflect on it

Ryan Graves (2:27:53.720)

as much as I one would think,

Lex Fridman (2:27:57.280)

because once you get in that machine,

Ryan Graves (2:27:58.840)

it doesn't give you a lot of time

Lex Fridman (2:28:00.760)

to sit back and philosophize on your current situation.

Lex Fridman (2:28:05.000)

And the same, just like we weren't seeing these,

Lex Fridman (2:28:06.840)

or when we seen these objects off the coast,

Lex Fridman (2:28:08.560)

we weren't necessarily examining them every day, right?

Lex Fridman (2:28:10.840)

We'd put them into that bucket

Ryan Graves (2:28:11.920)

because it wasn't something

Lex Fridman (2:28:12.800)

that was gonna kill us right away.

Lex Fridman (2:28:14.840)

And thinking about death when you're so close to it

Lex Fridman (2:28:17.800)

all the time would be debilitating.

Ryan Graves (2:28:20.480)

It would probably make you worse at your job.

Lex Fridman (2:28:22.520)

It would.

Ryan Graves (2:28:25.240)

Well, maybe you can think about death

Lex Fridman (2:28:26.760)

when you look out, when you go out into nature

Lex Fridman (2:28:28.360)

and think like the fact that this whole ride ends,

Lex Fridman (2:28:32.880)

it's such a weird thing.

Lex Fridman (2:28:34.640)

And the old makes way to new.

Lex Fridman (2:28:37.840)

And that's all throughout nature.

Lex Fridman (2:28:39.280)

And if you just look at the cruelty of nature

Lex Fridman (2:28:42.120)

or the beauty of nature, however you think about it,

Ryan Graves (2:28:44.120)

the fact that the big thing eats the little thing

Lex Fridman (2:28:49.320)

over and over, and that's just how it progresses.

Lex Fridman (2:28:53.480)

And that's how adaptation happens.

Lex Fridman (2:28:55.720)

Death is a requirement for evolution.

Lex Fridman (2:28:59.520)

And whether evolution allows us

Lex Fridman (2:29:02.600)

to see objective reality or not,

Ryan Graves (2:29:04.640)

it still gives you some interesting thoughts

Lex Fridman (2:29:06.620)

about perspectives of death,

Lex Fridman (2:29:08.400)

and especially considering it's a biological necessity

Lex Fridman (2:29:11.760)

as far as evolution is concerned.

Ryan Graves (2:29:13.800)

Yeah, it's weird.

Lex Fridman (2:29:14.640)

It's weird that there's been like 100 billion people

Ryan Graves (2:29:18.560)

that lived before us,

Lex Fridman (2:29:20.520)

and that you and I will be forgotten.

Ryan Graves (2:29:22.160)

This whole thing we're doing now is meaningless

Lex Fridman (2:29:24.720)

in that sense, but at the same time,

Ryan Graves (2:29:26.880)

it feels deeply meaningful somehow.

Lex Fridman (2:29:31.040)

I guess that's the question I wanna ask.

Ryan Graves (2:29:32.920)

When you go out to nature with family,

Lex Fridman (2:29:37.200)

what do you think is the meaning of it all?

Lex Fridman (2:29:38.760)

What's the meaning of life?

Lex Fridman (2:29:42.440)

Or maybe when you put on the night goggles,

Ryan Graves (2:29:44.400)

the night vision goggles and look up at the stars,

Lex Fridman (2:29:48.100)

why are we here?

Ryan Graves (2:29:50.560)

I can't speak for everyone,

Lex Fridman (2:29:51.920)

but at least the way I interpret it,

Ryan Graves (2:29:55.640)

or at least I feel like I interpret my way here,

Lex Fridman (2:29:58.600)

my job is, I feel like my role is just to be curious

Ryan Graves (2:30:02.320)

about the environment in a manner that allows us

Lex Fridman (2:30:04.680)

to understand as much as possible.

Ryan Graves (2:30:07.080)

I think that the human mind,

Lex Fridman (2:30:09.680)

whether it's just the mass inside our skull,

Ryan Graves (2:30:12.440)

or whether there's some type of quantum interactions

Lex Fridman (2:30:15.760)

going on, our mind has incredible ability

Ryan Graves (2:30:18.960)

to output new information in a universe

Lex Fridman (2:30:23.160)

that is somewhat stale of information, right?

Ryan Graves (2:30:27.080)

Our minds are somewhat unique in that we can imagine

Lex Fridman (2:30:30.960)

and perceive things that could never ever

Ryan Graves (2:30:33.280)

have possibly naturally occurred,

Lex Fridman (2:30:35.240)

and yet we can make it happen.

Ryan Graves (2:30:36.340)

We can instantiate that with enough belief

Lex Fridman (2:30:38.960)

that it's true and it can happen.

Lex Fridman (2:30:40.920)

And so for me, I feel like I just need to encourage that,

Lex Fridman (2:30:44.480)

to encourage interaction with reality

Ryan Graves (2:30:47.480)

such that it leaves us a newer and grander interactions

Lex Fridman (2:30:50.800)

with this universe.

Lex Fridman (2:30:52.600)

And all that starts with a little bit of curiosity.

Lex Fridman (2:30:55.440)

Exactly.

Ryan Graves (2:30:57.080)

Ryan, you're an incredible person.

Lex Fridman (2:30:59.020)

You've done so many things,

Lex Fridman (2:31:00.280)

and there's so much still ahead of you.

Lex Fridman (2:31:03.480)

Thank you for being brave enough to talk about UFOs

Lex Fridman (2:31:07.120)

and doing it so seriously,

Lex Fridman (2:31:09.160)

and thank you for pushing forward

Ryan Graves (2:31:10.640)

on all these fronts in terms of technology.

Lex Fridman (2:31:12.820)

So from just the fighter jets, the engineering of that,

Ryan Graves (2:31:17.680)

to the AIML applications in the combat setting,

Lex Fridman (2:31:21.040)

that's super interesting, and then now quantum.

Ryan Graves (2:31:24.400)

I can't wait to see what you do next.

Lex Fridman (2:31:26.560)

Thank you so much for sitting down and talking today.

Ryan Graves (2:31:28.320)

It was an honor.

Lex Fridman (2:31:29.140)

It was my pleasure.

Ryan Graves (2:31:29.980)

Thank you, Lex.

Lex Fridman (2:31:31.320)

Thanks for listening to this conversation

Ryan Graves (2:31:33.040)

with Lieutenant Ryan Graves.

Lex Fridman (2:31:34.880)

To support this podcast,

Ryan Graves (2:31:36.280)

please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (2:31:39.040)

And now, let me leave you with some words from Buzz Aldrin.

Ryan Graves (2:31:43.120)

Bravery comes along as a gradual accumulation of discipline.

Lex Fridman (2:31:47.200)

Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (30:01.200)

how to do joins and they're learning how to fly in formation.

Lex Fridman (30:04.520)

And as a new student in the back, it's amazing, right?

Ryan Graves (30:06.640)

Cause you know, photo op time and all this,

Lex Fridman (30:08.720)

like I'm seeing aircraft up close for the first time,

Ryan Graves (30:10.680)

it's awesome, and on the way back,

Lex Fridman (30:15.720)

we couldn't get our landing gear down, ironically.

Lex Fridman (30:19.240)

So to make a long story short,

Lex Fridman (30:22.160)

cause it's overall not that exciting,

Ryan Graves (30:24.000)

we couldn't get the gear down,

Lex Fridman (30:25.000)

we actually went to go do a control ejection

Ryan Graves (30:27.960)

to the target area where that is,

Lex Fridman (30:29.920)

about 15, 20 miles to the north of the base.

Lex Fridman (30:32.840)

Wait, did you just say that's not that exciting?

Lex Fridman (30:35.540)

Well.

Ryan Graves (30:36.460)

Cause that to me is pretty exciting.

Lex Fridman (30:38.720)

That, I mean, how, first of all,

Ryan Graves (30:41.040)

I mean, that must be terrifying,

Lex Fridman (30:43.440)

like early on in your careers,

Ryan Graves (30:45.440)

I haven't seen those things that,

Lex Fridman (30:49.520)

yeah, like how often does that kind of thing happen?

Ryan Graves (30:53.040)

Decent, more than you would think.

Lex Fridman (30:54.520)

More than you would think.

Lex Fridman (30:55.600)

There was no significant panic?

Lex Fridman (30:57.120)

This is like, this understood?

Lex Fridman (30:58.680)

This is what has to be done in this case?

Lex Fridman (31:00.600)

I think I was probably just too dumb

Ryan Graves (31:02.440)

to realize the significance of it,

Lex Fridman (31:03.920)

cause as a new student, you know,

Ryan Graves (31:05.440)

not really appreciating, you know,

Lex Fridman (31:07.080)

just what is ahead of me if we are ejecting.

Lex Fridman (31:10.080)

But at the time it was more, it was just like rote, right?

Lex Fridman (31:12.100)

Cause I was back there,

Lex Fridman (31:12.940)

and then I went from a observer mode to a,

Lex Fridman (31:15.560)

I'm gonna provide you the help that I can provide you

Ryan Graves (31:17.520)

as a member of this crew, you know, mode.

Lex Fridman (31:19.640)

And so it was less about, you know,

Ryan Graves (31:21.800)

on this 20 mile trip and thinking about my,

Lex Fridman (31:25.500)

how vulnerable I am, you know,

Ryan Graves (31:26.860)

we're going through checklists,

Lex Fridman (31:27.840)

we're talking to people, we're getting ready.

Lex Fridman (31:29.480)

So no, it wasn't fearful.

Lex Fridman (31:32.160)

And the whole time we were doing one of these

Ryan Graves (31:33.740)

to try to get the gear down.

Lex Fridman (31:36.100)

So we're unloading the jet and then loading it back

Ryan Graves (31:38.320)

to try to get the gear out with the stick.

Lex Fridman (31:41.060)

And it came down, it came down halfway there,

Ryan Graves (31:46.000)

just on its own.

Lex Fridman (31:47.360)

So it came back around and we did like a safety trap

Ryan Graves (31:50.320)

in case there was a problem with the gear.

Lex Fridman (31:52.240)

And that was my first flight, you know,

Ryan Graves (31:55.000)

a little bit of serendipity,

Lex Fridman (31:56.040)

but I'm gonna fast forward a bit.

Lex Fridman (31:57.800)

And I went back to that squad as an instructor

Lex Fridman (32:00.340)

about five or six years later,

Lex Fridman (32:02.320)

and I was an aviation safety officer at this point,

Lex Fridman (32:04.760)

which meant I was responsible for investigating mishaps.

Lex Fridman (32:08.360)

And a student went in and he went in the back seat

Lex Fridman (32:13.200)

of a form flight, just like the one I went on.

Lex Fridman (32:17.000)

And he went out and he ended up ejecting on that flight.

Lex Fridman (32:20.200)

Exact same type of flight.

Ryan Graves (32:21.920)

They went out and they had a runaway trim scenario.

Lex Fridman (32:25.040)

And it caused the aircraft essentially

Ryan Graves (32:26.320)

just inverted itself almost 180 degrees

Lex Fridman (32:29.520)

at about 600 feet over the ground.

Lex Fridman (32:31.520)

And they punched out just slightly outside

Lex Fridman (32:33.700)

the ejection window at about 300, 400 feet or so,

Lex Fridman (32:36.320)

but they were completely fine.

Lex Fridman (32:39.000)

So, you know, and then about two months later,

Ryan Graves (32:42.280)

we had another ejection.

Lex Fridman (32:43.320)

About three months after that, we had another ejection.

Lex Fridman (32:45.260)

So unfortunately, you know, it can be more common

Lex Fridman (32:49.440)

than people think.

Lex Fridman (32:50.280)

What does it feel like to get ejected?

Lex Fridman (32:52.440)

Thankfully, I don't know.

Ryan Graves (32:53.720)

I can describe it to you.

Lex Fridman (32:55.200)

I can tell you what it's like from what I've heard,

Lex Fridman (32:58.000)

but I truly think it's one of those things

Lex Fridman (32:59.560)

that you just don't understand until it happens.

Ryan Graves (33:02.480)

It's like instantaneous about 250 Gs,

Lex Fridman (33:05.280)

which is only possible because of inertia in our blood.

Ryan Graves (33:07.800)

All right, so you can actually get like 250, 300 Gs

Lex Fridman (33:10.160)

for like a few milliseconds,

Lex Fridman (33:11.520)

and then it backs off to like 40 or 50 Gs

Lex Fridman (33:14.200)

to get you away from the vehicle itself.

Lex Fridman (33:16.480)

And so, you know, you may lose consciousness.

Lex Fridman (33:20.320)

If you do, you know, who knows where you wake up.

Ryan Graves (33:24.180)

You know, you could be in a tree,

Lex Fridman (33:25.040)

you could still be falling, you could be in the water, so.

Ryan Graves (33:28.160)

The physics of that is fascinating, how to eject safely.

Lex Fridman (33:31.880)

Do you know the story about how that was tested at all?

Ryan Graves (33:34.920)

I don't know the full story,

Lex Fridman (33:35.960)

but there was an airport.

Ryan Graves (33:36.800)

I'm guessing nobody knows the full story.

Lex Fridman (33:39.040)

It's probably a lot of shady stuff going on.

Lex Fridman (33:41.480)

But anyway, you mean like in the early, early days, or?

Lex Fridman (33:44.400)

They took a flight dock up to a rocket sled

Lex Fridman (33:46.800)

and just see how much their body could take it.

Lex Fridman (33:49.160)

And he turned a lot of his body in the mush

Ryan Graves (33:51.520)

in the process of getting that science done,

Lex Fridman (33:53.560)

but he saved a lot of lives.

Ryan Graves (33:55.740)

People used to be tougher back in the day.

Lex Fridman (33:58.940)

Yeah, that's how science used to be done.

Lex Fridman (34:04.200)

So how did your training continue?

Lex Fridman (34:05.840)

So how, take me farther through your career

Ryan Graves (34:10.240)

as you worked towards graduating towards the F18s.

Lex Fridman (34:13.340)

So in VT9, where I was a student, there's two phases.

Ryan Graves (34:16.840)

There's an intermediate and an advanced.

Lex Fridman (34:19.560)

Intermediate is getting very comfortable with the aircraft.

Lex Fridman (34:22.180)

And at that point, you truly hear,

Lex Fridman (34:23.880)

all right, you're going jets now,

Ryan Graves (34:25.400)

or you're gonna go one of the other aircraft

Lex Fridman (34:28.000)

that land on the aircraft carrier.

Ryan Graves (34:30.200)

I was told I was going jets at that point.

Lex Fridman (34:33.000)

And then we go into same squadron,

Ryan Graves (34:35.480)

same aircraft, same instructors,

Lex Fridman (34:36.880)

but it's called advanced now.

Lex Fridman (34:37.940)

And now we're learning how to dog fight for the first time.

Lex Fridman (34:41.280)

We're doing what we call tactical formation,

Ryan Graves (34:44.320)

which is just like aggressive position keeping.

Lex Fridman (34:48.160)

We are doing dog fighting in low levels

Lex Fridman (34:52.260)

and all sorts of great stuff.

Lex Fridman (34:53.320)

So it's really that first introduction

Ryan Graves (34:55.040)

to that tactical environment

Lex Fridman (34:56.280)

and really putting Gs on the jet

Lex Fridman (34:58.400)

and on your body and maneuvering.

Lex Fridman (35:00.240)

Is there like tactical formation,

Lex Fridman (35:02.100)

is collaborating with other fighter jets a part of that?

Lex Fridman (35:05.040)

It is.

Lex Fridman (35:05.880)

So flying in a, that's what you mean by formation.

Lex Fridman (35:08.380)

So literally having an awareness.

Ryan Graves (35:11.040)

Is this done for you or are you as a human

Lex Fridman (35:13.560)

supposed to understand like where you are in the formation,

Lex Fridman (35:18.220)

how to maintain formation, all that kind of stuff?

Lex Fridman (35:20.520)

Yeah, there's a.

Lex Fridman (35:21.360)

Is it done autonomously or manually?

Lex Fridman (35:23.060)

There's a great autonomy point

Ryan Graves (35:24.500)

on the end of this I've thought about.

Lex Fridman (35:25.560)

So, but what we do, it's all manual.

Lex Fridman (35:27.320)

And so I'm looking at his wing

Lex Fridman (35:29.220)

and I'm looking at different visual checkpoints

Lex Fridman (35:33.100)

that form like a triangle, right?

Lex Fridman (35:34.640)

Like an equal out triangle essentially.

Lex Fridman (35:36.320)

And then as that triangle is no longer equal,

Lex Fridman (35:39.680)

I can tell my relative position against that aircraft.

Ryan Graves (35:42.400)

That's really cool.

Lex Fridman (35:43.400)

And so that's what I'm staring at first,

Ryan Graves (35:45.000)

sometimes hours on end, several feet away,

Lex Fridman (35:47.840)

doing one of these if I'm in the weather, that's all it is.

Lex Fridman (35:50.600)

So you get, it's almost like, is it peripheral vision

Lex Fridman (35:52.920)

or is it your?

Ryan Graves (35:53.740)

No, we're staring directly at it.

Lex Fridman (35:54.840)

The peripheral is going on my, on my.

Ryan Graves (35:57.880)

That's interesting.

Lex Fridman (35:58.720)

Stuff, right?

Ryan Graves (35:59.560)

My sensors and all my instruments.

Lex Fridman (36:01.160)

And so he is my gyroscope at that point, right?

Ryan Graves (36:04.240)

While you're flying, not looking straight.

Lex Fridman (36:06.640)

Correct, I'm flying like this for hours.

Ryan Graves (36:08.600)

It can hurt your neck.

Lex Fridman (36:09.680)

We don't like doing this as much.

Lex Fridman (36:11.280)

And I don't think it's just me, right?

Lex Fridman (36:13.000)

It's a weird thing where when you're like this,

Ryan Graves (36:14.800)

it's actually harder to fly formation slightly than here

Lex Fridman (36:18.460)

because being in line of your hand movements

Lex Fridman (36:21.680)

and of the aircraft somehow has an effect

Lex Fridman (36:24.640)

on our ability to be more precise and comfortable.

Ryan Graves (36:27.000)

It's strange.

Lex Fridman (36:28.840)

But so there's a symmetry to the formation usually.

Lex Fridman (36:32.400)

So one of the people on the other side

Lex Fridman (36:34.440)

really don't like being on that side.

Lex Fridman (36:37.000)

Is it, does it, who gets like the short straw?

Lex Fridman (36:40.440)

How do you decide which side of the formation you are?

Ryan Graves (36:43.160)

It's a good question too

Lex Fridman (36:44.000)

because there's kind of rank in some sense.

Lex Fridman (36:46.240)

So if it's a four person formation, right?

Lex Fridman (36:49.400)

You have the vision lead who's qualified

Ryan Graves (36:51.160)

to lead a whole division, but maybe the other ones aren't.

Lex Fridman (36:53.160)

And he has a dash two and that's his wingman essentially.

Lex Fridman (36:56.560)

And then in a division, there's two other aircraft.

Lex Fridman (36:58.600)

And then you have another senior flight leader.

Ryan Graves (37:00.600)

That's the dash three position.

Lex Fridman (37:02.320)

And then you have dash four, the last one.

Lex Fridman (37:05.080)

And if you were all lined up on one side,

Lex Fridman (37:06.860)

like fingertip, one, two, three, four,

Ryan Graves (37:08.860)

that dash four guy is gonna be at the end of that whip.

Lex Fridman (37:10.840)

So if you're flying formation,

Ryan Graves (37:12.480)

each one's making movements relative to the lead.

Lex Fridman (37:15.400)

Dash four is kind of at the end of that error.

Lex Fridman (37:19.200)

And so his movements are kind of like a whip.

Lex Fridman (37:21.120)

It's very difficult to fly in that position in close.

Lex Fridman (37:23.320)

Can you elaborate?

Lex Fridman (37:24.160)

Is it because of the error, the aerodynamics?

Lex Fridman (37:25.880)

So what's a whip?

Lex Fridman (37:26.840)

If this is a flight lead and this is dash two,

Ryan Graves (37:28.960)

flight lead is rock steady and just doing his thing.

Lex Fridman (37:30.840)

And flight two is gonna be working that triangle

Lex Fridman (37:32.800)

moving a little bit, right?

Lex Fridman (37:33.640)

And he has this small error bubble

Ryan Graves (37:35.840)

that he's doing his best to stay.

Lex Fridman (37:37.400)

And then, but dash three is flying off dash two.

Lex Fridman (37:39.240)

And so his error bubble is dash twos plus his own.

Lex Fridman (37:42.880)

And dash four.

Lex Fridman (37:43.720)

So it gets more and more stressful

Lex Fridman (37:44.760)

as you get farther out.

Ryan Graves (37:46.840)

Okay, what's the experience of that staring

Lex Fridman (37:50.060)

for long periods of time and trying to maintain formation?

Lex Fridman (37:54.840)

How stressful is that?

Lex Fridman (37:56.320)

Because we're doing that when we drive, staying in lane.

Lex Fridman (38:01.680)

And that becomes, after you get pretty good at it,

Lex Fridman (38:05.080)

it becomes somewhat, it's still stressful.

Ryan Graves (38:09.160)

Which actually is surprisingly stressful.

Lex Fridman (38:10.760)

When you look at lane keeping systems,

Ryan Graves (38:13.160)

they actually relieve that stress somehow.

Lex Fridman (38:15.280)

And it actually creates a much more pleasant experience

Ryan Graves (38:18.520)

while you're still able to maintain situational awareness

Lex Fridman (38:20.880)

and stay awake, which is really interesting.

Ryan Graves (38:24.240)

I don't think people realize how stressful it is

Lex Fridman (38:26.320)

to lane keep when they drive.

Lex Fridman (38:29.040)

So this is even more stressful.

Lex Fridman (38:31.080)

So are you, do you think about that?

Ryan Graves (38:34.880)

Or is this, yeah, I guess how stressful is it

Lex Fridman (38:37.380)

from a psychology perspective?

Ryan Graves (38:39.260)

It's very stressful.

Lex Fridman (38:41.760)

So I taught students how to do this as well.

Lex Fridman (38:43.640)

And so at our feet, we have two rudders.

Lex Fridman (38:46.120)

And if I'm flying off a flight lead over here,

Lex Fridman (38:48.920)

what you'll find a lot of times is you'll be flying,

Lex Fridman (38:51.120)

or like if I'm the instructor and the student's flying,

Ryan Graves (38:53.480)

I'll start to notice that he's having a harder

Lex Fridman (38:55.160)

and harder time keeping position.

Lex Fridman (38:57.000)

What I'll notice typically is he's locked out his leg.

Lex Fridman (38:59.880)

They'll lock out the leg that's closest

Ryan Graves (39:01.800)

to the aircraft they're flying against

Lex Fridman (39:03.800)

and push on the rudder subconsciously,

Ryan Graves (39:06.080)

because their whole body's trying to get away

Lex Fridman (39:07.240)

from the aircraft because they're so uncomfortable

Ryan Graves (39:08.760)

being close to it.

Lex Fridman (39:09.960)

And so I'll tell them, I can fix their form

Ryan Graves (39:12.280)

with just a couple of words.

Lex Fridman (39:13.180)

I'll say, wiggle your toes.

Lex Fridman (39:14.920)

And they'll wiggle their toes and they'll realize,

Lex Fridman (39:16.520)

and they'll loosen all the muscles in their legs

Ryan Graves (39:18.120)

because they realize they've been locked up

Lex Fridman (39:19.800)

and their formation flying will get a lot better.

Lex Fridman (39:22.400)

And so, there's a lot of stress associated with that.

Lex Fridman (39:25.920)

There's some interesting psychological or visual issues

Ryan Graves (39:32.220)

such as vertigo as you're flying.

Lex Fridman (39:35.280)

So if you're flying with him

Lex Fridman (39:36.820)

and then you fly right into a cloud, right?

Lex Fridman (39:38.740)

That's when it's very stressful

Ryan Graves (39:39.740)

because you have to be very close

Lex Fridman (39:41.040)

in order to maintain visual

Lex Fridman (39:42.080)

and you might be on a thunderstorm, right?

Lex Fridman (39:44.420)

And so you have to be very tight.

Ryan Graves (39:45.640)

You might start raining and then he's turning,

Lex Fridman (39:48.480)

but you might not even know that.

Ryan Graves (39:50.480)

You might not even be able to see that turn.

Lex Fridman (39:52.400)

And so all of a sudden you might look

Ryan Graves (39:54.160)

while you're in a turn thinking you were straight and level

Lex Fridman (39:56.120)

and you look just maybe back at your instruments very quick

Lex Fridman (39:58.800)

and you realize you're like in a 30 degree turn

Lex Fridman (40:01.040)

and your whole concept of where you are in the world

Ryan Graves (40:03.940)

starts getting very confused.

Lex Fridman (40:05.320)

And you immediately get this sense of, it's weird.

Ryan Graves (40:09.780)

Like I look at the HUD and it feels,

Lex Fridman (40:12.000)

all my senses are telling me it's spinning, but it's not.

Lex Fridman (40:13.880)

And so I have to trust my instruments

Lex Fridman (40:15.800)

even though it feels like it's spinning.

Lex Fridman (40:17.040)

And the same thing can happen

Lex Fridman (40:18.720)

when you're flying formation off of someone

Lex Fridman (40:20.400)

and it can be very dangerous and disorientating.

Lex Fridman (40:25.000)

But the point is to try to regain awareness

Ryan Graves (40:28.960)

by trusting the instruments,

Lex Fridman (40:30.200)

like distrust all your human senses

Lex Fridman (40:33.800)

and just use the instruments

Lex Fridman (40:35.000)

to rebuild situational awareness.

Ryan Graves (40:37.520)

Not in this particular case

Lex Fridman (40:39.000)

because our situational awareness is based,

Ryan Graves (40:41.600)

it's predicated off of our flight lead.

Lex Fridman (40:43.280)

So in a sense, I'm just trusting his movements.

Lex Fridman (40:45.480)

And so he's my gyroscope, but you're absolutely right.

Lex Fridman (40:47.480)

And if I was by myself, I would trust my instruments,

Lex Fridman (40:49.720)

but I can't just stop flying form and trust my instruments

Lex Fridman (40:52.120)

because now I'm gonna hit him.

Ryan Graves (40:52.960)

Oh yeah, you have to pay attention to him.

Lex Fridman (40:54.400)

So he's my reference.

Lex Fridman (40:56.040)

So the instruments are not helping you significantly

Lex Fridman (40:58.620)

with his positioning.

Ryan Graves (41:00.080)

Not, it's all completely manual.

Lex Fridman (41:02.520)

So is there a future where some of that is autonomous?

Ryan Graves (41:06.120)

Yeah, and I've thought about automating that flight regime.

Lex Fridman (41:10.200)

But when I started thinking about it,

Ryan Graves (41:11.960)

I realized that all the formation keeping that we do

Lex Fridman (41:16.400)

is designed to enhance the aviators

Lex Fridman (41:22.120)

ability to maintain sight, right?

Lex Fridman (41:23.760)

So we fly very tight formation so that we can go in weather

Lex Fridman (41:26.320)

and to reduce groups of traffic coming into the boat.

Lex Fridman (41:30.440)

We fly in one particular position

Lex Fridman (41:33.120)

so that all of the flight crew can look down the line

Lex Fridman (41:36.920)

and see the flight lead.

Lex Fridman (41:38.120)

So everything has based,

Lex Fridman (41:39.680)

everything has to do with the two air crew

Ryan Graves (41:43.000)

visually maintaining sight of each other

Lex Fridman (41:45.000)

and defending each other, right?

Ryan Graves (41:47.020)

In a combat spread, I might be looking,

Lex Fridman (41:49.640)

I may be three miles away from him flying formation

Ryan Graves (41:52.060)

directly beam and looking around

Lex Fridman (41:53.760)

to make sure nothing's there.

Lex Fridman (41:55.180)

So as I'm looking into automating this process,

Lex Fridman (41:57.360)

I thought, well, sure it's easy to get a bunch of aircraft

Lex Fridman (42:01.840)

to fly in formation off each other, right?

Lex Fridman (42:03.560)

It's trivial, but why?

Lex Fridman (42:05.480)

What is the best formation?

Lex Fridman (42:06.720)

Why are they doing that?

Lex Fridman (42:07.640)

And that opened up a much more interesting regime

Lex Fridman (42:10.160)

of operations and flight mechanics.

Lex Fridman (42:12.520)

And that's when we get back to that kind of stochastic

Lex Fridman (42:14.520)

mindset where we can bring in aircraft close

Ryan Graves (42:16.880)

to do some type of normal flying

Lex Fridman (42:18.400)

or reduce congestion around airports.

Lex Fridman (42:21.140)

But when we consider flying or formation

Lex Fridman (42:23.280)

in a tactical environment,

Ryan Graves (42:24.560)

we can be much more effective

Lex Fridman (42:25.840)

with nontraditional formation keeping

Ryan Graves (42:27.860)

or perhaps no formation keeping perhaps.

Lex Fridman (42:30.280)

So autonomy used for formation keeping,

Ryan Graves (42:32.700)

not for convenience, but for the introduction of randomness.

Lex Fridman (42:36.520)

Like to a real time mission planner, yeah.

Lex Fridman (42:39.000)

And then that's where you also have some human modification.

Lex Fridman (42:42.480)

So it's like unmanned teaming enters that picture.

Lex Fridman (42:47.240)

So you use some of the human intuition

Lex Fridman (42:51.400)

and adjustment of this formation.

Ryan Graves (42:53.840)

The formation itself has some uncertainty.

Lex Fridman (42:56.080)

I mean, it's such an interesting dance.

Ryan Graves (42:57.880)

I think that is the most fascinating application

Lex Fridman (43:02.960)

of artificial intelligence

Ryan Graves (43:04.080)

is when it's human AI collaboration,

Lex Fridman (43:06.960)

that semi autonomous dance

Ryan Graves (43:09.280)

that you see in these semi autonomous vehicle systems

Lex Fridman (43:12.360)

in terms of cars being driving,

Lex Fridman (43:14.400)

but also in the safety critical situation

Lex Fridman (43:18.040)

of a airplane, of a fighter jet,

Ryan Graves (43:20.640)

especially when you're flying fast.

Lex Fridman (43:22.960)

I mean, in a split second,

Ryan Graves (43:25.040)

you have to make all these kinds of decisions

Lex Fridman (43:26.600)

and it feels like an AI system can do

Ryan Graves (43:29.760)

as much harm as it can help.

Lex Fridman (43:31.200)

And so to get that right is a really fascinating challenge.

Ryan Graves (43:35.600)

One of the challenges too,

Lex Fridman (43:36.520)

isn't just the algorithms of the autonomy itself,

Lex Fridman (43:39.040)

but how it senses the environment.

Lex Fridman (43:41.680)

That of course is gonna be what all these decisions

Ryan Graves (43:44.300)

are based off of.

Lex Fridman (43:45.140)

And that's a challenge in this type of environment.

Ryan Graves (43:48.040)

Well, I gotta ask.

Lex Fridman (43:48.960)

So F18, what's it like to fly a fighter jet as best?

Lex Fridman (43:53.960)

I mean, what to you is beautiful, powerful?

Lex Fridman (43:58.660)

What do you love about the experience of flying?

Ryan Graves (44:02.080)

For me, and I think I'm an outlier a bit.

Lex Fridman (44:04.720)

It wasn't necessarily the flying itself, right?

Ryan Graves (44:08.520)

It wasn't necessarily the soaring over the clouds

Lex Fridman (44:12.160)

and looking down at the earth from upside down.

Ryan Graves (44:16.200)

I came to love that,

Lex Fridman (44:17.960)

but it wasn't necessarily the passion that drove me there.

Ryan Graves (44:19.920)

I just had no exposure to that.

Lex Fridman (44:21.920)

The only exposure I had was reading

Lex Fridman (44:24.820)

and going in the woods and science fiction and all that.

Lex Fridman (44:28.640)

And so, what seemed to kind of drive me towards that

Ryan Graves (44:31.960)

was just a desire to really be operating as close

Lex Fridman (44:35.160)

to what I thought was the edge of technology or science.

Lex Fridman (44:38.760)

And that's the path that I chose

Lex Fridman (44:40.320)

to try to get close to that.

Ryan Graves (44:41.900)

I thought that being in a fighter jet

Lex Fridman (44:44.880)

and all the tools and the technology and the knowledge

Lex Fridman (44:50.160)

and the challenges and the failures and victories

Lex Fridman (44:53.540)

that would come with that just seemed like something

Ryan Graves (44:56.000)

that I wanted to be a part of.

Lex Fridman (44:59.120)

And it wasn't necessarily about the flying,

Lex Fridman (45:00.720)

but it was about the challenge.

Lex Fridman (45:01.960)

And like I said, as a person from a small town,

Ryan Graves (45:06.320)

small high school, being able to get my hands

Lex Fridman (45:09.200)

or even just near something of such technological

Ryan Graves (45:12.160)

significance was kind of empowering for me.

Lex Fridman (45:15.520)

And that's kind of what bore the love of flight from there.

Ryan Graves (45:18.360)

Becoming, having some level of mastery in the aircraft,

Lex Fridman (45:21.860)

it really feels like an extension of your body.

Lex Fridman (45:24.040)

And once I got there, then kind of the love of flying

Lex Fridman (45:27.480)

kind of followed.

Lex Fridman (45:28.880)

So you sort of, one, is the man mastery over the machine.

Lex Fridman (45:33.160)

And second is the machine is like the greatest thing

Ryan Graves (45:35.520)

that humans have ever created arguably.

Lex Fridman (45:38.180)

The things that Lockheed Martin and others have built.

Ryan Graves (45:41.940)

I mean, the engineering in that.

Lex Fridman (45:46.520)

However you feel about war, which is one of the sad things

Ryan Graves (45:50.040)

about human civilization is war inspires

Lex Fridman (45:54.960)

the engineering of tools that are incredible.

Lex Fridman (45:59.440)

And it's like, maybe without war,

Lex Fridman (46:02.440)

if we look at human history, we would not build

Ryan Graves (46:04.640)

some of the incredible things we built.

Lex Fridman (46:06.660)

So in order to win wars, to stop wars,

Ryan Graves (46:09.640)

we build these incredible systems

Lex Fridman (46:12.320)

that perhaps propagate war.

Lex Fridman (46:15.000)

And that's another discussion I'll ask you about.

Lex Fridman (46:17.400)

But this, to you, this is like, this is a chance

Ryan Graves (46:21.880)

to experience the greatest engineering humans

Lex Fridman (46:24.960)

have ever been able to do.

Ryan Graves (46:28.120)

Like similar, I suppose, that astronauts feel like

Lex Fridman (46:31.120)

when they're flying.

Lex Fridman (46:31.960)

And I wanted to be an astronaut.

Lex Fridman (46:32.960)

I wanted to take that route.

Ryan Graves (46:34.840)

I was gonna apply to test pilot school.

Lex Fridman (46:38.320)

It just didn't work out for me.

Ryan Graves (46:39.800)

I ended up having a broken foot during my window.

Lex Fridman (46:42.360)

But long story short, I ended up after my time

Ryan Graves (46:45.720)

in my fleet squadron, and we can get back to the rest

Lex Fridman (46:47.640)

of the timeline if you want,

Lex Fridman (46:48.480)

but I went to be an instructor pilot instead, right?

Lex Fridman (46:54.120)

And then, I was talking about this

Ryan Graves (46:56.720)

with a squadron mate earlier today about how,

Lex Fridman (46:59.840)

I certainly wouldn't be talking with Lex today

Ryan Graves (47:01.900)

if I ended up going to test pilot school.

Lex Fridman (47:04.000)

I never would have, I never would have had the,

Ryan Graves (47:09.900)

I wouldn't, maybe recklessness, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (47:12.160)

but the willingness to have a conversation

Ryan Graves (47:14.280)

about UAP while I was, that led me to the decision

Lex Fridman (47:19.080)

to get out once I went there.

Lex Fridman (47:20.680)

And it kind of enabled me to talk about UAP more publicly.

Lex Fridman (47:26.560)

And if I stayed in the Navy, then I don't think

Ryan Graves (47:28.800)

that would have happened.

Lex Fridman (47:29.640)

I wouldn't have been able to if I went that route.

Ryan Graves (47:33.240)

Well, as a small tangent, do you hope to travel

Lex Fridman (47:36.300)

to Mars one day?

Lex Fridman (47:37.200)

Do you think you'll step foot on Mars one day?

Lex Fridman (47:40.520)

If you asked me that five years ago,

Ryan Graves (47:42.040)

I would have said, yes, I want to.

Lex Fridman (47:44.640)

In fact, I would like to die on Mars.

Ryan Graves (47:48.400)

Now, today, now I have some hesitations

Lex Fridman (47:51.000)

and I have some hesitations

Ryan Graves (47:52.160)

because I'm hopeful and optimistic.

Lex Fridman (47:54.880)

And I think that, you know, I think that we are truly

Ryan Graves (47:57.940)

like on the brink of a very wide technological revolution

Lex Fridman (48:02.000)

that's going to kind of move us how we used to move

Ryan Graves (48:04.720)

information and data in this last century.

Lex Fridman (48:09.260)

We're going to be manipulating and managing matter

Ryan Graves (48:11.320)

in that next century.

Lex Fridman (48:12.160)

And so I think that, I think our reach as humans

Ryan Graves (48:15.700)

are going to get a lot wider, a lot faster

Lex Fridman (48:17.520)

than people may realize, or at least.

Lex Fridman (48:19.880)

Wait, are you getting like super ambitious beyond Mars?

Lex Fridman (48:22.680)

Is that what you're saying?

Ryan Graves (48:23.620)

Well, I mean.

Lex Fridman (48:24.840)

Like Mars seems kind of boring, I want to go beyond that.

Ryan Graves (48:27.480)

Is that what, do you mean the reach of humanity

Lex Fridman (48:31.480)

across all kinds of technologies?

Lex Fridman (48:32.860)

Or do you mean literally across space?

Lex Fridman (48:34.480)

Across space, you know?

Ryan Graves (48:35.760)

So, you know, we're going to be, I think that

Lex Fridman (48:37.960)

as artificial intelligence and machine learning

Ryan Graves (48:40.240)

start broaching further into the topic of science,

Lex Fridman (48:42.840)

the area of science, and we start working through

Ryan Graves (48:44.760)

new physics, we start working through,

Lex Fridman (48:47.240)

or I should say pass the Einsteinian frameworks

Ryan Graves (48:50.320)

as we kind of get a better idea of what space time is

Lex Fridman (48:53.100)

or isn't, we may have, we may find, you know,

Ryan Graves (48:56.940)

answers that we didn't know that we were looking for.

Lex Fridman (48:58.880)

And we may have more opportunity.

Lex Fridman (49:00.600)

And I'm not saying this is something I'm, you know,

Lex Fridman (49:03.020)

betting the farm on, of course, but maybe that's a road

Ryan Graves (49:06.680)

I want to explore on Earth instead of on Mars.

Lex Fridman (49:09.640)

Maybe there's technology that can be brought to bear

Ryan Graves (49:12.440)

with new science and harder engineering that is a road

Lex Fridman (49:15.400)

that doesn't go past Mars to get outside the solar system.

Lex Fridman (49:19.360)

So there are different ways to explore the universe

Lex Fridman (49:22.360)

than the traditional rocket systems.

Ryan Graves (49:26.320)

If we can continue sort of your journey,

Lex Fridman (49:31.140)

you said that you were attracted to the incredibly

Ryan Graves (49:35.440)

advanced technologies of the F18s and just the

Lex Fridman (49:39.520)

fighter jets in general.

Ryan Graves (49:42.680)

Let me ask another question, which seems incredibly

Lex Fridman (49:45.880)

difficult to do, which is landing on a carrier

Ryan Graves (49:50.080)

or taking off from a carrier and landing on a carrier.

Lex Fridman (49:52.240)

So what's that like?

Lex Fridman (49:54.520)

What are the challenges of that?

Lex Fridman (49:56.360)

Taking off's pretty easy.

Ryan Graves (49:57.920)

It's procedurally somewhat complex where there's a lot

Lex Fridman (50:01.040)

of moving parts, almost like a clock, you know.

Ryan Graves (50:03.240)

You're almost in a pocket watch.

Lex Fridman (50:04.620)

So then you're a part of the machinery.

Lex Fridman (50:06.920)

And so long as you press the right buttons

Lex Fridman (50:08.640)

and do the right things, you're gonna go shooting

Ryan Graves (50:10.160)

off the front.

Lex Fridman (50:11.040)

So there's like a checklist to follow and there's

Ryan Graves (50:12.600)

several people involved in that checklist

Lex Fridman (50:14.400)

and you just gotta follow the checklist correctly.

Ryan Graves (50:16.480)

Essentially, yep.

Lex Fridman (50:17.640)

Lots of ways to screw it up, but you'll know

Lex Fridman (50:19.460)

how to screw it up.

Lex Fridman (50:20.880)

But landing on the back of the boat is a whole

Ryan Graves (50:23.320)

different animal.

Lex Fridman (50:24.920)

There's a lot more variables.

Ryan Graves (50:26.800)

There's essentially one or two people responsible

Lex Fridman (50:29.320)

for the success of that.

Ryan Graves (50:31.640)

The landing signal officer who actually represents

Lex Fridman (50:34.880)

a team of specially trained aviators who are responsible

Ryan Graves (50:38.420)

for helping that aviator land on the boat.

Lex Fridman (50:41.760)

And the pilot himself.

Lex Fridman (50:44.240)

And it is a hard task to actually fly precisely enough

Lex Fridman (50:49.400)

to be good at it.

Lex Fridman (50:50.320)

So to fly quote unquote the perfect pass,

Lex Fridman (50:53.640)

you essentially have to fly your head through a one foot

Ryan Graves (50:55.520)

by one foot box.

Lex Fridman (50:57.040)

That's essentially the target you're shooting for.

Ryan Graves (51:00.040)

Plus or minus probably about five knots on airspeed,

Lex Fridman (51:02.640)

although we don't really judge it by airspeed.

Ryan Graves (51:04.600)

It's something called angle of attack.

Lex Fridman (51:06.480)

But generally pretty tight parameters there.

Lex Fridman (51:09.480)

And you can do everything perfect and still fail.

Lex Fridman (51:11.920)

So when we go to touchdown, we immediately bring

Ryan Graves (51:13.800)

the power up and we rotate as if we were doing,

Lex Fridman (51:17.920)

as if we were bouncing off the deck.

Lex Fridman (51:19.840)

And if we catch it, then we slow down.

Lex Fridman (51:23.240)

And then someone tells us to bring the power back,

Ryan Graves (51:25.120)

which we do, we don't do it on our own.

Lex Fridman (51:27.420)

Cause it's such a violent experience.

Ryan Graves (51:30.600)

Think you're trapped or not, or something breaks

Lex Fridman (51:32.640)

and you bring your throttle back.

Lex Fridman (51:34.240)

And that's a very serious thing.

Lex Fridman (51:35.680)

It happened to best of us, I'll admit I've done it once.

Ryan Graves (51:38.360)

When I first got to the squadron,

Lex Fridman (51:40.760)

it's called ease guns land.

Lex Fridman (51:42.680)

And so I came in the boat and I brought the power.

Lex Fridman (51:45.640)

I cracked the power back a little bit

Ryan Graves (51:47.040)

before I've been told to her that my aircraft

Lex Fridman (51:49.820)

had finished settling in.

Lex Fridman (51:51.480)

And that was a big faux pas, right?

Lex Fridman (51:52.840)

So, especially as a new guy.

Lex Fridman (51:53.920)

So it's a very serious business.

Lex Fridman (51:57.480)

There's a lot of eyes on you

Lex Fridman (51:58.440)

and there's a lot of ways to screw it up.

Lex Fridman (52:00.100)

But the physical rush of like having a great pass

Lex Fridman (52:03.380)

and then like the crash of into the boat and all that,

Lex Fridman (52:07.320)

the physical sensation from it,

Ryan Graves (52:09.120)

when everything's going great,

Lex Fridman (52:10.680)

it's top of the world, it's a great feeling.

Lex Fridman (52:12.620)

How much of it is feel?

Lex Fridman (52:13.560)

How much of it is instruments?

Lex Fridman (52:16.640)

How much is other people just doing the work for you,

Lex Fridman (52:18.640)

catching you, as long as you do everything right?

Ryan Graves (52:20.720)

There's a few systems we use.

Lex Fridman (52:21.860)

One is called the BAL.

Lex Fridman (52:23.200)

And the BAL is external to our aircraft.

Lex Fridman (52:26.060)

And it's B A L L, BAL, like BAL, okay.

Ryan Graves (52:29.120)

It's a iFloss landing system,

Lex Fridman (52:31.480)

which stands for something very long convoluted.

Lex Fridman (52:33.440)

But essentially it's a mirror with lights on it.

Lex Fridman (52:35.560)

And you see the light at a different cell

Ryan Graves (52:40.560)

based on your position relative to an ideal glide slope.

Lex Fridman (52:44.580)

So if you're right on it, you're right in the middle.

Lex Fridman (52:46.240)

And if you're below, you're low.

Lex Fridman (52:48.080)

And as I add power and maneuver the aircraft,

Ryan Graves (52:51.240)

that BAL, I see that BAL rise, I see that BAL low.

Lex Fridman (52:55.160)

It's a lagging indicator though, right?

Lex Fridman (52:57.100)

And your jet is a lagging engine too, right?

Lex Fridman (53:00.200)

It takes time to spool up the engine.

Lex Fridman (53:01.400)

So that adds to the complexity.

Lex Fridman (53:03.120)

You have to think ahead a bit.

Lex Fridman (53:05.880)

So you don't want to,

Lex Fridman (53:07.920)

you can't just bring the power up and leave it there.

Ryan Graves (53:10.480)

You have to bring the power up, touch it, bring it back.

Lex Fridman (53:13.040)

And oh, by the way, your landing area is moving,

Lex Fridman (53:15.360)

not just away from you, but also on an angle, right?

Lex Fridman (53:17.920)

Cause we have an angled deck.

Lex Fridman (53:19.000)

And so you're constantly doing one of these

Lex Fridman (53:21.500)

to correct yourself as you go.

Ryan Graves (53:23.440)

That seems so stressful.

Lex Fridman (53:24.400)

And every time you do one of those,

Lex Fridman (53:26.320)

maybe it's a 30 degree angle bank, right?

Lex Fridman (53:28.480)

I'm losing lift, right?

Lex Fridman (53:30.240)

And so I have to compensate with power each time I do that.

Lex Fridman (53:33.020)

So I'm doing another one.

Ryan Graves (53:33.860)

Cause you have to maintain the same level

Lex Fridman (53:36.960)

you're always lowering.

Ryan Graves (53:38.360)

It's a constant rate of descent

Lex Fridman (53:39.520)

that's increasing from about 200 feet per minute

Ryan Graves (53:41.920)

to about 650.

Lex Fridman (53:43.120)

And every time you do this, that's messing with that.

Ryan Graves (53:45.760)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (53:46.600)

So you have to compensate.

Lex Fridman (53:47.440)

And you're doing that manually.

Lex Fridman (53:48.600)

Do that manually.

Ryan Graves (53:49.440)

All right.

Lex Fridman (53:50.260)

And then of course, as you come down that glide slope,

Ryan Graves (53:52.960)

it becomes more and more narrow.

Lex Fridman (53:54.320)

And you have to, of course,

Ryan Graves (53:55.840)

modulate your inputs such that they're smaller and smaller

Lex Fridman (53:58.840)

cause they have a bigger and bigger effect

Ryan Graves (54:00.000)

as you get closer in.

Lex Fridman (54:02.400)

And what happens too, when you get in close is that

Ryan Graves (54:04.920)

right before you cross over,

Lex Fridman (54:06.200)

if this is the boat right here, your table,

Ryan Graves (54:08.240)

right before you kind of get your wings

Lex Fridman (54:10.040)

over the boat itself,

Ryan Graves (54:11.760)

this big wind from the main tower of the boat

Lex Fridman (54:15.520)

is where it dips down.

Lex Fridman (54:16.400)

So the wind actually goes down and it's called the burble.

Lex Fridman (54:18.560)

And it'll actually pull the aircraft down,

Ryan Graves (54:19.800)

increase your rate of descent.

Lex Fridman (54:21.360)

So at that particular point,

Ryan Graves (54:22.360)

you need to increase your speed.

Lex Fridman (54:24.600)

You know, increase your power

Lex Fridman (54:26.360)

and try to compensate against that.

Lex Fridman (54:27.640)

And so that's kind of a third variable

Ryan Graves (54:28.960)

that's trying to screw you up on your way down.

Lex Fridman (54:31.920)

What's the most difficult conditions

Ryan Graves (54:34.080)

in which you had to land

Lex Fridman (54:34.920)

or you've seen somebody had to land?

Ryan Graves (54:36.720)

Because I think you were also a signal officer as well.

Lex Fridman (54:40.720)

I was, yeah.

Ryan Graves (54:41.540)

I was the head landing signal officer for my squadron.

Lex Fridman (54:44.120)

So you've probably seen some tough landings.

Ryan Graves (54:46.960)

I have.

Lex Fridman (54:47.800)

I've seen a ramp strike,

Ryan Graves (54:49.720)

which is when a part of the aircraft hits

Lex Fridman (54:52.480)

before the landing area,

Ryan Graves (54:54.880)

which is basically the round out of the boat.

Lex Fridman (54:57.440)

That is before the landing area.

Lex Fridman (54:58.560)

So they basically struck the back of the boat coming in.

Lex Fridman (55:01.400)

It was just their hook.

Lex Fridman (55:02.400)

So it wasn't their craft.

Lex Fridman (55:04.800)

And they were fine.

Ryan Graves (55:05.640)

That one was kind of ugly.

Lex Fridman (55:07.200)

But it like rips that part of the aircraft.

Ryan Graves (55:09.520)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (55:10.360)

And then you land on your bellies, that kind of thing.

Ryan Graves (55:12.440)

In this particular case,

Lex Fridman (55:13.680)

it hit and then it gave

Lex Fridman (55:15.600)

and essentially dragged the hook on the surface after that.

Lex Fridman (55:18.760)

And so he was able to grab a wire at that point.

Lex Fridman (55:21.040)

When does that kind of thing happen?

Lex Fridman (55:22.200)

Is it just a miscalculation by the pilot

Lex Fridman (55:24.000)

or is it weather conditions?

Lex Fridman (55:27.040)

I wouldn't even call it a miscalculation.

Ryan Graves (55:28.780)

I mean, I'm going to put the blame on the pilot

Lex Fridman (55:30.400)

because he's the only one in the cockpit.

Lex Fridman (55:31.640)

But then the day he's reacting to the situations

Lex Fridman (55:34.240)

he's dealing with.

Lex Fridman (55:35.080)

And so it may be errors or he may be doing the best

Lex Fridman (55:37.720)

with the conditions that he's been given.

Ryan Graves (55:40.480)

On that particular one,

Lex Fridman (55:42.100)

you just got too high rate of send.

Ryan Graves (55:43.480)

It's very common.

Lex Fridman (55:44.320)

And that's what you see it with new pilots.

Lex Fridman (55:45.560)

You see it with older pilots, right?

Lex Fridman (55:47.280)

New ones and complacent ones.

Lex Fridman (55:49.320)

What you see is they'll try to make the ball go

Lex Fridman (55:52.480)

right where they want it in close.

Ryan Graves (55:54.000)

They think they can beat the game a little bit.

Lex Fridman (55:56.120)

And they try to, and so we have sayings,

Ryan Graves (55:58.360)

we teach pilots as a landing signal officer,

Lex Fridman (56:01.480)

we tell them like, don't recenter the high ball in close.

Ryan Graves (56:04.040)

It's one of the rules to live by.

Lex Fridman (56:05.800)

And so when the ball's up high,

Ryan Graves (56:07.440)

don't try to bring it back in close

Lex Fridman (56:09.260)

to like the center point when you're in close.

Ryan Graves (56:11.820)

Cause what you're doing is you bring the power off

Lex Fridman (56:12.920)

and you're going to crash right down.

Lex Fridman (56:14.440)

And that's what happens, right?

Lex Fridman (56:15.680)

Cause you got the burble pulling you down.

Ryan Graves (56:18.000)

You might be correcting, which is decreasing your lift.

Lex Fridman (56:21.160)

And then you have that type of maneuvers.

Lex Fridman (56:23.520)

How are you supposed to do all of this

Lex Fridman (56:25.000)

in harsh weather conditions?

Lex Fridman (56:27.000)

And so that's the one I wanted to tell you about.

Lex Fridman (56:28.480)

That's the hardest one.

Lex Fridman (56:29.440)

And what you hear is if you hear 99 taxi lights on,

Lex Fridman (56:33.380)

that's a really shitty day.

Lex Fridman (56:34.880)

99 taxi lights on, what's that mean?

Lex Fridman (56:37.920)

Everyone put your taxi lights on

Ryan Graves (56:39.880)

because you're about to land on the boat.

Lex Fridman (56:43.160)

And you don't see the boat?

Ryan Graves (56:44.040)

Weather is so bad that the landing signal officer

Lex Fridman (56:46.640)

on the boat can't see you either.

Lex Fridman (56:48.680)

And you can't see the boat.

Lex Fridman (56:49.640)

And you won't be able to see it when you touch down.

Lex Fridman (56:52.520)

So we call that a zero, zero landing.

Lex Fridman (56:55.080)

And you turn on the taxi lights so that the LSO

Ryan Graves (56:57.920)

who has a radio in his hand that looks like a phone

Lex Fridman (57:00.240)

from 1980 is talking directly to the pilot.

Lex Fridman (57:04.720)

And he's looking at that little light in the rain

Lex Fridman (57:06.960)

and he's telling them you're high, you're low,

Ryan Graves (57:09.240)

power, things like that.

Lex Fridman (57:11.360)

Come right, back to left.

Lex Fridman (57:13.240)

And literally talking him down to land

Lex Fridman (57:15.160)

on the boat right there.

Lex Fridman (57:16.000)

And the pilot, usually it comes as a surprise

Lex Fridman (57:18.020)

to the pilot, the landing,

Ryan Graves (57:18.860)

because he's just listening to the voice,

Lex Fridman (57:20.080)

can't see the ball, can't see the boat.

Lex Fridman (57:21.800)

And all of a sudden you just hit the boat.

Lex Fridman (57:23.400)

You crash, I mean you crash.

Ryan Graves (57:24.840)

We're going about 1,600 feet per minute descent

Lex Fridman (57:27.920)

at that point.

Lex Fridman (57:28.760)

So you're going super fast.

Lex Fridman (57:30.960)

So all of this is happening fast.

Ryan Graves (57:32.560)

You don't know the moment it's gonna hit.

Lex Fridman (57:37.640)

So you're just going into the darkness

Lex Fridman (57:40.040)

and just waiting for it to hit.

Lex Fridman (57:41.880)

Maybe not dark though, a lot of times it's white.

Ryan Graves (57:43.860)

Into the light.

Lex Fridman (57:44.700)

You're just going into the light.

Lex Fridman (57:46.680)

And then there's a voice from an 80s phone.

Lex Fridman (57:50.100)

I got it.

Ryan Graves (57:50.940)

This is terrible.

Lex Fridman (57:53.920)

But so you still have to,

Lex Fridman (57:57.600)

so this kind of thing happens.

Lex Fridman (57:59.040)

You still have to land.

Ryan Graves (58:00.320)

Sometimes you just don't have a place to divert.

Lex Fridman (58:02.560)

But in a sense we're trained for that

Ryan Graves (58:04.220)

because we do the night landings as well.

Lex Fridman (58:06.240)

And I think you'll find this interesting,

Lex Fridman (58:07.880)

but I always found that the night landings

Lex Fridman (58:10.260)

where in these particular cases,

Ryan Graves (58:12.640)

you're usually lined up behind the boat,

Lex Fridman (58:14.800)

maybe 10, 15 miles, whereas the other ones,

Ryan Graves (58:17.040)

it's like a tight circle, the landing pattern.

Lex Fridman (58:18.960)

And so we can potentially see the boat way out there

Ryan Graves (58:23.460)

if the lights were on, which they're not.

Lex Fridman (58:25.160)

But we can maybe see like the string of aircraft

Ryan Graves (58:26.960)

in front of us.

Lex Fridman (58:28.100)

But what's interesting is that it can take a while.

Ryan Graves (58:31.160)

You might be 15 miles out

Lex Fridman (58:32.360)

and your lights are turned down as dim as possible.

Ryan Graves (58:36.040)

You have a cloud deck maybe at six or 7,000 feet

Lex Fridman (58:38.800)

so that the starlight, there's no moon,

Lex Fridman (58:40.960)

but let's say the starlight's blocked out

Lex Fridman (58:42.600)

because just the starlight alone, no moon,

Ryan Graves (58:45.240)

you can see the boat, you can see the water.

Lex Fridman (58:47.120)

But when that goes away, it's like closing your eyes.

Ryan Graves (58:50.520)

You can't tell anything.

Lex Fridman (58:52.040)

It could be upside down.

Ryan Graves (58:53.720)

It could be in any position.

Lex Fridman (58:55.600)

And for me, it was almost a meditative process

Ryan Graves (58:58.480)

that I had to snap myself back out of

Lex Fridman (59:00.560)

when I was on like a long straightaway.

Lex Fridman (59:02.880)

And then I would see the light pop up

Lex Fridman (59:05.080)

in the sea of darkness.

Ryan Graves (59:06.620)

No lights anywhere.

Lex Fridman (59:07.600)

Can't even see the horizon.

Lex Fridman (59:09.120)

And I just see a light out there.

Lex Fridman (59:10.760)

My instruments were telling me, and they're turned down

Lex Fridman (59:12.920)

as far as they can go, right?

Lex Fridman (59:13.760)

So I can barely see them.

Lex Fridman (59:14.580)

So my eyes can adjust.

Lex Fridman (59:16.120)

And I'm just staring at this light in the distance.

Lex Fridman (59:18.560)

And it's just very meditative and it's the hum behind you.

Lex Fridman (59:21.620)

And then at like four miles, you know,

Ryan Graves (59:25.180)

almost like, oh, the light is a little bit bigger.

Lex Fridman (59:26.780)

And you almost kind of have to snap back to it

Lex Fridman (59:28.280)

and be like, oh, I need to like kind of like

Lex Fridman (59:30.160)

look around a little bit and engage my brain,

Ryan Graves (59:32.240)

link it back to my body and like do this thing.

Lex Fridman (59:35.120)

Because you're going to have to actually land.

Ryan Graves (59:36.760)

Well, is there just, you said you don't necessarily feel

Lex Fridman (59:40.520)

the romantic notion of the whole thing,

Lex Fridman (59:42.120)

but is there some aspects of flying where you look up

Lex Fridman (59:45.800)

and maybe you see the stars or yeah, that kind of thing

Ryan Graves (59:51.280)

that you just like, holy crap,

Lex Fridman (59:53.080)

how did humans accomplish all of this?

Lex Fridman (59:55.400)

Like, am I actually flying right now?

Lex Fridman (59:58.320)

I used to have those moments on the boat