(slow dramatic music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour & Company."

Here's what's coming up.

A world exclusive with the head of the Ukrainian Army as Christiane conducts the first television interview with General Oleksandr Syrskyi, and.

- [Speaker] We want to see justice done.

We want to see right.

- [Bianna] Another shooting haunts America as children head back to school.

Thoughts and prayers go out to the families, pero will the bloodshed at Georgia's Apalachee High School actually change anything?

Then.

- He does not feel things, like, things that you or I naturally feel, he doesn't feel, he doesn't feel risk.

- [Reporter] A look inside the mind of the fraudulent FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, my conversation with "Moneyball" author Michael Lewis, who has a new book on the fallen crypto king.

Also ahead.

- Fewer people engage in military service.

There's just less familiarity.

- [Bianna] "Selling America," Michel Martin speaks to the "Washington Post's" Missy Ryan about the US Army's fight to find recruits in a divided nation.

(slow orchestral music) (slow orchestral music continues) (slow music) - [Announcer] "Amanpour & Company" is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, the family foundation of Leila and Mickey Straus, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you.

- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour who just today sat down with the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Army for his first-ever on camera interview.

Four star General Oleksandr Syrskyi has commanded the armed forces since February.

Before that, he helmed his country's ground forces as Russia began its full-scale invasion in early 2022 when he led that initial battle for Kyiv and pushed Moscow's forces out of the capital.

Since his elevation to the top of the military seven months ago, there have been a series of strategic challenges and victories for Ukraine, among them the recent surprise assault on the Russian region of Kursk, and the current fears that the key city of Pokrovsk could fall imminently.

Christiane joins me now from Eastern Ukraine.

Christiane, this is a significant interview, his first on camera interview, and coming at a very pivotal time in the war.

- Bianna, that's exactly right.

As you can imagine, we've been after this general to sit down and talk to us about, you know, Ukraine's chances and its changing fortunes.

Certainly since he became the head of the, or the forces back in February, and finally at this time, we sat down with him, which, as you can imagine, is a crucial time.

We've been reporting all week about the uptick, the significant increase in Russian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones that have been pounding cities, including Kyiv, pounding all sorts of infrastructure.

And so I asked him about the bigger picture.

I asked him about the Kursk operation.

I asked him about morale on the frontline.

I asked him about, you know, being outmanned and outgunned still by the Russian forces.

And he had a lot of really interesting things to say.

He was very frank, very candid about Kursk, which took everybody by surprise, not just the Russians, but US allies as well, we understand, and it's caused some debate as to whether it was the right move.

He said for the first time that it was done in order to stop Kursk being used as an offensive platform by the Russians to attack, for instance, Ukraine's second biggest city, which is Kharkiv in the northeast, Sumy and all those places up in the northern area.

He said that they did it in order to create a security platform, a security zone for them.

And when I put it to him that it was causing some consternation, if you like, amongst the forces further down in Donetsk, the strategic hub of Pokrovsk, et cetera, this is what he had to say.

Some of your, for instance, your defense minister has said publicly that the reason was to divert Russian forces from other parts of the Eastern Front.

But there are others on the Eastern Front, commanders who say it hasn't diverted enough forces.

And there's still a lot of pressure on your forces on the Eastern Front, that important logistical hub of Pokrovsk.

So has it been strategically a success, and even tactically a success, what you've done in Kursk?

And do you think you might lose Pokrovsk?

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] we do everything possible not to lose Pokrovsk.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] We increased our defense capability in the area.

Indeed, over the last six days, the enemy hasn't advanced a single meter in the Pokrovsk direction.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] In other words, our strategy is working.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] Of course, the enemy has concentrated their most trained units in the Pokrovsk area.

But we've taken away their ability to maneuver and to deploy their reinforcement forces from other directions.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] In other words, it turns out that even though they did not take any units from the Pokrovsk direction, well, except for one marine brigade, they are now unable to maneuver their reserves as they used to.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] And this weakening definitely has been felt in other areas.

We note the amount of artillery shelling, as well as the intensity of the offensive has decreased.

In fact, the Pokrovsk direction remains the most problematic for us, whereas the situation has stabilized in other areas.

So I think this strategy was chosen correctly, and it will bring us the desired result.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - There appears to be, and certain, you know, commanders and frontline soldiers have told CNN that there's a bit of a morale problem in some parts of the frontline, that a lot of young conscripts, young trainees are being sent out there.

The battle is very difficult for them.

Some of them just, you know, leave the trenches and go home.

And I just wondered, you know, again, you said boosting morale is a very important part of your job, and I think there's something like 19,000 cases that have been brought before the military authorities of desertion and the failure to turn up for duty.

Talk about that.

How can somebody like you boost morale and make people still want to fight?

Because that, we we feel, we hear that that moment of patriotic fervor that was so obvious at the beginning of the invasion seems to be cooling down.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] You're right on this point.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] The issue of morale is a very important area of our work.

Of course, talking about the Kursk operation, we should note, this is what has significantly improved the morale of not only the military, but the entire Ukrainian population.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] It was and still is an incentive that has boosted the morale of our servicemen, their thirst for victory.

That's the first of all.

Secondly, speaking of the training.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] Of course, everyone wants the level of training to be the best.

So we trained highly qualified, professional military personnel.

At the same time, the dynamics of the front require us to put conscripted servicemen into service as soon as possible.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] That is why we conduct a compulsory basic military training for at least a month.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] And qualified training, which is at least two weeks a month.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - I want to know, I mean, you as commander, do you go to the front lines?

Do you go to the trenches?

Do you talk to soldiers there, and commanders?

What do they say to you?

Because I know some of them have been there for, you know, more than two years.

They barely get rotation.

They don't get to see their family.

There are these glide bombs, these terrifying things, and the drones, and there's just so much.

I mean, it's almost World War I, kind of, you know, attacks on them in the trenches, and they're there for a long time with no real hope of rotation.

What do they say to you when you go to see them and talk to them?

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] First of all, we speak the same language.

(Oleksandr speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] We understand each other, no matter who I'm talking to, whether this is an ordinary soldier, a rifleman, for example, or a brigade commander or a battalion commander.

You know that I have been in this war since 2014, and over the last two and a half years, since the beginning of the full scale aggression, I've personally been participating in combat operations as the commander of the operational and strategic group.

Now, I am the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In other words, the front line is my life.

We understand each other.

I know all the problems that our servicemen, soldiers, and officers experience.

- It was extraordinary to hear him be so frank.

And he also talked about the slow delivery of US weapons, and he talked about how, you know, it caused a huge loss of life, that congressional sort of stalemate that delayed weapons and ammunition for seven months.

Luckily, he says they have them now, and they're putting them to the best use, Bianna.

- It really is interesting that, the way he describes the Kursk offensive, which, as you note, surprised Ukrainians as much as it surprised the rest of the world, including their biggest benefactor, the United States, was viewed as a strategic incursion to stop it being used as an offensive platform in their attacks against the Kharkiv area.

- Exactly, and it's the first time they've really laid this out, because, you know, a lot of the talk in the media, talk sort of amongst sort of experts was suggesting that it's like we're going in there to get land as a bargaining chip, too.

But he did actually also say, "We have taken a lot of Russian POWs, which we hope to change, to exchange for our POWs."

But even when I talk to Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who has since resigned and been reassigned this week, he told me that this was not about trading.

This was about making a point of defeating Russians right there in this very, very strategic area, and to, you know, prevent them from being able to conduct these attacks against Kharkiv, which, as you know, they have periodically tried to take and they've been rebuffed every time.

So it's quite a big deal what they've done.

And the question is, what does happen to the rest of this eastern and southern frontline?

They are really hoping for more equipment.

They obviously want a lot more anti-air defense systems, anti-missile defense systems, because that is being just really the bane of this country's life for the last two and a half years, because Russia has that superiority.

And, you know, they say that the problem with delaying this weaponry and ammunition to us means that we just lose a lot of our good people, and at a time when clearly they can't afford that, as you heard him say, "We need more and more people."

But he's thanked the US, he thanked their allies, and he said, "We must win."

And he said, "Together we are stronger."

He said that in English, that last part, Bianna.

- That's an important line to say in English, and really notable that he chose you after all this time.

He has been very elusive.

He hasn't given any on camera interviews.

Choosing now sends a significant message, as well, and he was quite blunt with his assessment, as you note, about some of the challenges they continue to face.

Really looking forward to the rest of the conversation, Christiane.

So glad that you were able to get this interview, thank you.

Well, now we turn to that war zones within America's education system.

Many children across the United States are starting the new school year this week, so it was particularly harrowing for them and for parents across the nation to see a high school shooting once again all over the news, four people killed, two 14-year-old students and two teachers after a shooter opened fire at Georgia's Apalachee High School.

The suspect, well, another student, also just 14 years old.

Law enforcement tells CNN that he was armed with an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle.

This is the 45th school shooting in the United States so far this year.

Joining me on this is Kris Brown, president of Brady, a nonprofit combating gun violence and its causes.

Kris, thanks so much for joining us.

I hope you don't take offense to me saying I wish we didn't have to have this conversation with you.

This is, as we always note, a seemingly unique American problem.

We're three weeks into the school year there in Georgia and tragedy strikes.

We should note two of the teachers, Christina Irimie, Richard Aspinwall, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo.

Our thoughts are with them and their families, of course, but that's a refrain we keep on stating every single time there is one of these shootings.

What is your reaction now, 24 hours later, getting some of the details, specifically this was an AR-15 style weapon that the shooter used, and perhaps more shocking, the shooter was just 14 years old?

- I would say as an American, a mom of two girls who are 22 and 20, as someone who's the leader of a gun violence prevention organization whose offices are right next to CNN.

In fact, two parents of a child that was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school in Parkland, Florida were on CNN yesterday.

I and other members of my team greeted them as they left talking to Jim Acosta about all that they have done since 2018 to stop gun violence, and the chilling and horrible thing, I have to say as a human being, is while we were cheering them on and talking to them about how important Change the Ref, their organization, which is incredible, is, there was another school shooting.

So, for me, it creates anguish for Manny and Patricia Oliver, the parents who lost Joaquin Oliver at Parkland, it's horrific.

And for the parents and those who are related to the educators and all of that community, this is a stain that will never go away, and it happens every day in America, in all sorts of communities that never get coverage.

And so, for me, it makes me angry, it makes me upset, and then it motivates me to continue on this journey, because as an American who has lived overseas for many years in a country, Switzerland, that has more guns than any other European country, I will tell you, when I lived in Switzerland, the number one question I got asked is, "Where can I go in America and not get shot?"

And that's a big reason, when I moved back, that I joined this movement, because American gun violence is a uniquely American epidemic.

It is a blight, and it's preventable.

And that's why this particular tragedy and these particular facts make me angry and make me want to act.

And I hope a lot of other people feel the same way, because this did not need to happen.

That's really the bottom-line message.

- And when you say it's preventable, it's through legislation, which sadly seems to be stymied.

I mean, you see President Biden has been working relentlessly on an assault weapons ban.

That didn't happen.

Even his predecessor, Donald Trump, there was a federal ban on bump stocks following the mass shooting in Las Vegas, killing some 60 people attending a concert there.

The Supreme Court recently struck down that ruling, as well, or that ban.

I'm wondering what, if anything, Congress can do, in your view.

We're coming up on an election in two months.

We've seen a number of issues raised between these two candidates.

Kamala Harris spoke out about the shooting yesterday.

We'll play her sound in just a moment.

But realistically, what is on the table and what are the options now, in your view?

- Our lives are on the table.

Our children's lives are on the table.

And come November 5th, we have stark choices for who we choose to be our president.

Do we want someone who responds to mass shootings at schools with, "We should just get over it," that's a direct quote from candidate Trump, or do we want someone who with President Biden has actually transformed the American landscape around gun violence prevention?

Let's just note for all of your viewers, we talk about how hopeless this issue is.

It's not hopeless, it just takes votes, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris got them.

Two and a half years ago, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

That's the most comprehensive gun violence prevention bill ever passed by Congress.

In the 30 years since our organization, Brady, Brady United, passed the Brady background check system, and that passed because 16 Republicans said yes.

So I'm very hopeful, despite all of these horrific shootings, I'm very hopeful we can change this because the reality is in states across America, those states that have stronger laws and have better enforcement have far fewer gun deaths.

And we have candidates running up and down the ballot, including for the presidency, who believe this is a top priority issue.

And we can change this if we vote.

- In the final few seconds we have here, I just want to note Kamala Harris yesterday calling this a senseless tragedy and ending by saying it didn't have to be this way.

And I think we can all agree on that.

The weapon of choice in these mass shootings does appear to be this AR-15 style weapon that is so easily accessible and so easy to use that even a 14-year-old can kill four people within a matter of seconds.

In your view, are you optimistic that any legislation specifically surrounding these types of assault weapons can be passed?

- Yes, I am, because Jim and Sarah Brady, the forebears of the organization I lead, passed a federal assault weapons ban, right after- - [Bianna] Which expired, right.

- It's expired because at the very last minute, I mean, we don't have time to go into it, someone put in a sun setting provision, but Congress passed that.

The American people in every poll, the last one we saw, 70% across the board want that law.

- [Bianna] Yeah.

- But I will say, that's not the only one.

We need much more and we have those choices before us to save our kids.

The number one killer of our kids in America is guns.

And so, it's on the ballot.

- It is shameful, and we have to start somewhere.

Kris Brown, thank you so much for the work- - Thank you.

- That you're doing and thank you for joining us.

Well, the world's cryptocurrency market is currently worth more than $2 trillion, if you can believe that, despite massive volatility and minimal regulation.

The market for Bitcoin and other digital currencies continues to grow.

And no one person embodies the wild west of crypto world like Sam Bankman-Fried.

Once upon a time, SBF was the world's youngest billionaire, an odd duck in cargo shorts, lionized by the media as a wild-haired wunderkind.

Well, now Bankman-Fried is serving 25 years for fraud in a federal prison.

Author Michael Lewis set out to untangle the mystery of Sam Bankman-Fried in his bestselling book "Going Infinite."

As the paperback edition hits the market, I asked Lewis about the SBF he came to know.

Michael Lewis, thank you so much for joining us, what a whirlwind- - My pleasure.

- This past year has been for you.

You first met Sam Bankman-Fried, he was the world's youngest billionaire, right, worth about $22 billion, a huge player in cryptocurrency.

How much did you know about cryptocurrency at the time?

- I'd had people pitching me stories to write about crypto.

Crypto is very self-promotional.

And it's from kind of the second year of Bitcoin's life, I've been inundated by people from that world.

So, I had it explained to me 18 different times, and I'd kind of hear the explanation and then let it leave my brain.

So, I knew that much, I could have told you what it was.

It was like a solution groping for a problem, and it didn't interest me at all to write about it.

When I met him, when I met Sam Bankman-Fried, I thought, "Ah"- - He interested you?

- He interested me, and his attitude towards crypto interested me, because he was the first person from the crypto world who didn't try to sell me on crypto.

He said, "This could all go up in smoke."

He said, "There's nothing here, there's nothing there.

Maybe it's useful, maybe it's not."

But he actually said, "The biggest risk to our business," which is ironic in retrospect, "is that Bitcoin goes to zero and that this whole thing just goes away."

- And when you first met him, what was your initial takeaway?

Was it, this is the man that can be a subject of my next book, or did that require more work?

- It always takes more work.

This is the man who I need to do some R&D on in order to determine if he's the subject of my next book.

But he had these ingredients that you could see there was possibly a book.

I didn't have a story.

So, it was unsettling because I've had situations where I've put that much time into it and not written the book.

So, I knew that that was a possibility.

And then he gave me a story.

- Well, and what a story, I mean, it is.

FTX is now bankrupt.

He's been sentenced to 25 years in prison, convicted of seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering.

Prosecutors said this was one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So, tell us now, looking back, who is Sam Bankman-Fried to you?

Is he someone who is still misunderstood, or do you think that he is who prosecutors said he was, and that is one of the world's biggest frauds?

- I think they exaggerate their point.

I think that he, I think he clearly broke the law.

There came a point, when they were in a crisis, where he did put it at risk.

He, like, the customers' deposits, the $10 billion, whatever it was, he took risks without asking anyone's permission and could have lost it all.

- So, when you say he broke the law, in your view, do you think he intentionally, or he knew at the time what he was doing was illegal?

- I think in June of 2022, when he decides he's going to repay the loans he's taken out from crypto lenders, about $10 billion in loans, effectively with his customer deposits, are effectively putting the customer deposits at risk.

I think he knew what he was doing then.

I don't think, I don't see how you don't know.

Now, he never confessed to me that he didn't know, but I did get very close.

I asked him a question.

I mean, there's all kinds of damning things in this book that nobody's really paid that much attention to, but there's a little footnote at the bottom of the page.

I asked him, I said, "Look, you had $10 billion of other people's money in your private trading firm, and they didn't know it.

And no one ever asked, like, 'Where's the money?'

People just assume, why would you do that?

If someone had asked you, like, 'Where's the money?'"

He said to me, point blank, he said, "I would have either answered a different question or I'd have made a word salad."

Like, he was very clear about, to me, that he didn't want people to know that.

So, he was hiding that fact.

But anyway, so, the prosecutors painted a portrait that was an exaggeration of a character, like, where I think they jumped the shark is not so much in their description of the financial dealings, especially starting in June of 2022, but in the description of him as a character, this notion that he, that, like, his hair is the way it is, and he's the way, that he's got- - But he liked that, right?

I mean, didn't that sort of, that's what, I think- - But he's always that way.

- [Bianna] Yes.

- He wasn't, like, looking in the mirror and saying, "How do I trick people?"

- You don't think that was all a ruse?

You don't think this was- - No.

No, no, no, you asked how I get to know him, I interviewed his high school classmates.

He didn't have any friends, being classmates.

And then they had encountered him since and said, "He's just the same guy, what's weird is Sam is now, Sam the weirdo is now worth $22 billion, but he's still the weirdo and he's exactly, everything's the same."

No, I think he was kind of unchangeable.

And what did happen was he figured out, at some point, that his natural eccentricity played well.

So, he did nothing to blunt it.

But that was just who he was, very natural.

That wasn't fake.

- So, if you think that the sentence was too harsh, what would have been an appropriate sentence in your view?

- Good question.

Good question.

- 'Cause one of the arguments you make is that his victims were made whole again.

- [Michael] So, so, yeah.

- But you could say the same about, I'm not comparing him to a convicted murder or an attempted murder, but if someone's attempting to kill someone and they don't, they should still be punished, no?

- [Michael] Right, yeah, I don't think he was attempting to kill anybody.

- No, right.

But my point is, he shouldn't get off scot-free.

- No, no, of course not.

There are people who are a threat or a danger to society, sure.

The judge tried to say that he was 'cause he would just do it all over again.

I think that's baloney, that's preposterous.

He would never be able to do it all over again.

And he'd be banned from the securities industry and all the rest.

So, I think that argument, you got to put him away to disable him, is a silly argument.

Now, do you need to put him away for 25 years to show how seriously you take this crime?

I think not, I think, like, five to 10 would have done it.

It would have been, I would have given him a lesser sentence, but I would have given him a sentence, but you're- - And you say that objectively?

- [Michael] I mean, I- - Because you know, the accused, obviously, you know that over the course of the last year or so that you've been accused of getting too close to your subject.

- I don't even know what that means because every book I've ever written, you can't write a book like this without getting to know the person.

I don't do this where 15 minutes and, oh, that's, I know you now, or I'm going to just quote you.

I spent, I move into these people's lives.

So, objective, I don't think, I don't accept that as, like, a goal.

Fairness is what I accept as a goal.

Like, trying to fairly describe the person.

And often, and in this case too, my characters are very upset with how I describe them.

They think that I've got my view of them and it's not exactly their view of themselves.

- And that applies to Sam?

- [Michael] That applies- - What was he upset with?

- [Michael] Well, he doesn't get upset.

So, that's upset with- - Or what did he take issue with?

- So I've got not directly from him, I've got no response.

Like, it's not, this is indirect.

But through his parents, they think that I have presented him as less human, like, less feeling.

They make a big point, and I think it's a big part of his character, he does not feel things.

Like, things that you or I naturally feel, he doesn't feel.

He doesn't feel risk, he doesn't feel happiness, he doesn't- - So, you saw that, but you don't think his parents see him as that?

- [Michael] His parents don't see him that way.

- How do they see him?

- They see him as vulnerable, which is interesting 'cause everybody else sees him as a predator.

But they see him as, I think they've seen a child from growing up who has been perpetually a worry to them because he didn't fit in and he was on the receiving end of a lot of social abuse and isolated.

Like, he retreated into himself and didn't, you know, he was a child who was, you didn't know how it was going to turn out.

I think his parents' friends said to me, and they have big social circle at the Stanford Law School.

People said to a person that they had this sense, when he was little and growing up, that the parents were both afraid of and for him.

Like, they had a sense that maybe he was capable of doing weird things.

- [Bianna] At an early age, I'm sure.

- Very early age.

- When was the last time you spoke with him?

- A few months ago, six weeks ago.

He has 10 minutes of phone calls he can do every day, and I've been on the receiving end of a few of those.

And I went and visited him in the Metropolitan Detention Center maybe three months ago.

So, I have actually seen him, too, but this- - [Bianna] Has he changed?

- No, same, completely, he's unchanged.

I don't think you can change him.

He's such a clear character.

There's no stance, like, oh, he's broken.

His parents are broken.

You really notice a difference with his parents.

But all the people around him, who work for him, you can notice a difference in them.

He seems like exactly the same person.

- And this goes back to the lack of feeling, right, or the parents say you didn't describe that in the book, but it seems to me, the way you're describing him now, solidifies your view that he just doesn't feel.

- He doesn't feel.

I mean, what he needs, if you want to torture Sam Bankman-Fried, you deprive him of information.

He needs a constant flow of information and stimulation.

And it can take any form.

If you gave him the internet in jail, he would hardly notice he was there, I think.

So that with suffering he's doing in jail is suffering that's caused by this deprivation.

- Do you get a sense of any remorse on his part?

I know he doesn't feel, but did he say- - So, you say remorse, right?

You say remorse, that is a feeling.

- If we looked up the current market cap of cryptocurrency now, it's north of $2 trillion.

(Michael laughs) Has your view on it changed at all?

- No, yes, no, I think it, there was a time in crypto's life where it could have, I think, been a house of cards and just collapsed.

It's been institutionalized now.

- Yeah.

- [Michael] And- - Despite the fact that you have everyone from Janet Yellen to Jamie Dimon sort of poo-pooing it still, but it's still there.

- It's more than there, right?

It's survived everything.

- [Bianna] It's an industry.

- Here's how I think about it, to keep it interesting to myself, because I'm still not that interested in it.

It doesn't do anything.

You know, it's not going to replace fiat currency.

It's not a terrific store of value because it's so volatile.

What it's picking up, what I think it's measuring, and it is always measured, and from its inception, is mistrust in institutions.

It's mistrust in governments and banks, and it's a place that's sort of a thermometer for that mistrust.

So, if you want to see, if you want a simple reason why it's gone back up, look at our deficits.

Look at the inability of the US government to manage its finances.

It's like, there's a story a lot of people are telling, and it's an increasingly plausible story, that the dollar is going to be, you know, inflated away, the value of it.

And so, people want something that feels solid, and this is, for some people, that place.

But it's more of registering emotion and sentiment than it is anything else.

There's no value there, there's nothing like it.

There's no earnings from Bitcoin.

- Speaking of government institutions, maybe we should end on this point because you still believe that Sam Bankman-Fried is not a threat to society.

But you think uprooting- - Anymore.

- [Bianna] Anymore.

- Right.

- But you think uprooting, what's even more of a threat is uprooting civil servants, right?

And this is something- - Yes.

- You've written a lot about and there's a lot of concern about what we could possibly see in a second Trump presidency, replacing civil servants who have been in work for years and decades and not affiliated with either party and replaced with loyalists.

Talk about the work you're doing now on this front.

- So, I'm troubled by this toxic idea that the US federal government is somehow the enemy of the people, 'cause when you actually go and talk to the people who work in the, you know, the civil servants, they are dedicated, they're doing things that are really important, and they're not being paid for it.

And mainly, they're just getting grief.

And they don't, it's not a culture where they celebrate the employees.

And they're real American heroes who are not in the military, in our government, and we ought to notice them.

We ought to understand what they do, because if you don't understand, you might get rid of it and not realize quite what you're getting rid of.

And this is the Project 2025 report, which is the closest thing Trump has to, like, a plan for governing.

It's basically a plan for dismantling the federal government, or disabling it in places.

And it's so, it's kind of become a rallying cry for the right, but it makes no sense.

Like, you say something idiotic like, "Oh, we'll eliminate the Department of Energy."

Do you know what the Department of Energy does?

It manages the nuclear stockpile.

It stops nuclear bombs from going off when they shouldn't and makes sure they work when you need them.

You know, it's almost a Department of Science that you're trying to dismantle there.

No one else is gonna do that.

I can't do much about this, I'm not a politician.

But I can tell stories that dramatize what goes on inside this place, and get people to reconsider an unconsidered view, that it's kind of pointless and wasteful and the people in there are all bureaucrats.

And so, for "The Washington Post," in the eight weeks running up to the election, every week there's gonna be a big piece highlighting one of these people inside the government, and- - Can you give us a preview of one of these public servants?

- I mean, the story I wrote, it's about a guy who's in the, he's now in the Department of Labor, but it almost doesn't matter where he is.

He's been on a 30-year quest, successful, to solve a problem, which most people don't even know it was a problem, roofs collapsing on the heads of coal miners.

It killed 50,000 people in the 20th century, 50,000 Americans.

And the industry never solved the safety problem.

It's easily the most common cause of death from underground miners, and he figured it out.

And the how and the why he figured it out, and took the death rate from pretty high to zero in 2016 is an amazing story, and he's done it basically by himself.

So, that's the first piece of the series- - So, we'll get eight weeks of that?

- [Michael] Eight weeks of that.

- Wow.

- That's the first, and there are going to be eight more like it.

- Incredible, real unsung heroes, right?

- Yes.

- [Bianna] Michael Lewis, thank you so much for coming in.

- A pleasure.

- [Bianna] Great to have you in person- - Yes, totally fun.

- Well, now the US Army is struggling to fill its ranks.

Missy Ryan, national security and defense reporter of "The Washington Post," finds a range of reasons for this crisis, as she tells Michel Martin.

- Thanks, Bianna, and Missy Ryan, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- You recently profiled an Army recruiter trying to do his job.

You point out in the piece that the Army has missed its recruiting targets for the second year in a row, but every other branch of service, except for the Marines, also missed their recruiting targets in 2023.

Why are they having such a hard time?

- Yeah, well, it's really, it's a very multi-part answer to your question that really represents a perfect storm of conditions, economic conditions, social conditions, political conditions that have all come together in recent years to cause this significant recruiting crisis for the military.

As you say, it's not just the Army that has had a hard time getting enough young people into its ranks to meet its goals, but the Army does represent sort of the biggest problem because it's the largest branch of the military.

- So, let's just tick through some of the reasons that you identified.

One thing that you said in your piece that might be surprising to some people is that you wrote that only about 23% of all Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 meet the Army's physical, moral, and educational standards.

That's less than, obviously, less than a quarter.

So, I mean, I guess we could sort of take those individually.

But what's the sort of the dominant theme here?

And this reminds me of the fact that, like, people forget that, like, the Free Lunch Program in the United States started because there weren't enough Americans, you know, sort of in the '30s and '40s, you know, after the Depression, because malnourishment was something that had become sort of common, that a lot of recruits for World War II didn't have the, they weren't ingesting enough calories.

They weren't strong enough to sort of join the service.

So, there is a sort of a history of our seeing some of these things, but that just seems odd in the current environment that, you know, are people not getting enough food, or what's going on here?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, you raise an interesting point, which is the sort of history of the US Armed Forces intertwine nature with American society and the way that has ebbed and flowed and developed apart or together at different moments in American history.

And what we're really seeing at this moment, and what was something that we explored in this article, was the extent to which, you know, there are many aspects of American society that have really moved away from the requirements that the Armed Forces has, and we see that, for example, in some of the eligibility to serve, and that would be the ability to, for example, meet the minimum requirements for this entry test that the military has, the ASVAB, as it's called.

There has been a big learning loss drop that occurred after COVID.

And so, there's been a real problem with people getting the minimum requirements.

The Army, for example, has rolled out a special sort of remedial course to help people get the minimum scores.

There are problems with getting the right sort of body composition requirements.

There's, you know, part of, the Army has another pilot program to help people lose weight in order to meet the requirements.

There are people who show up in the afternoons at different recruiting stations to try to get their body in shape to be able to join the military.

And then, there are things like, you know, drug use and the fact that norms in American society are changing around anti-anxiety, depression, ADHD medication, which are not permitted for people who want to join the military, and the use of marijuana.

So, you think about the sort of changing norms around all of those things together, there really is a mismatch with the way that the military is trying to find its next generation of recruits.

And so, they're really grappling with that.

How do we change our standards?

Do we change our standards?

What are the things we need to stick to?

- Let me just talk about the standards for a minute.

Do the standards make sense in the current environment?

Because I know that a lot of people of a certain generation have certain prejudices against marijuana use.

- Yeah.

- But, I mean, okay, I mean, if people use that recreationally, if it's legal, I mean, they don't have a prohibition against people using tobacco and tobacco, if used as- - [Missy] Or alcohol.

- The product intended can kill you, alcohol can kill you, but they don't have prohibitions on that.

Are some of the standards outdated, or do they still make sense?

- I think it depends on who you ask.

I think that, you know, there will be, there are a lot of people in the Army leadership and the military leadership, generally across the services, who say, yes, we need to cling to certain standards around, you know, academic achievement, for example, around body composition, because, you know, this is a lifestyle that's not for everybody.

We need to make sure that we have young people who are, you know, able to, you know, hit the ground running in certain, you know, with whatever task they're given, under deployment or, you know, run for cover or whatever.

But then, there is a debate about some of the standards and, you know, you bring up marijuana, you know, that is something that the military cannot currently change on its own, even if it wanted to, 'cause it's subject to, you know, federal law.

I think there's also a very active debate about the rules around ADHD and depression and anxiety medication because many of those things, you know, anxiety medication, ADHD, are permitted for people once they're in the military, but there is a requirement for you to be off them for a certain number of years before joining.

And so, there's a really active debate about that.

And I think they're trying to find the right balance about, you know, what do we need for this, you know, cohort of people who is tasked with keeping the nation safe and have this extra responsibility and burden, but at the same time, we need to make it accessible for an adequate number of people.

- What about the job market situation?

I mean, is that a factor?

Because I was thinking about, like, I don't know if you've got the data here, but I was thinking about post-9/11.

And I think that people joined irrespective of what the job market was doing.

I mean, there are some famous cases, people like, you know, Pat Tillman, who gave up on, you know, NFL career to volunteer.

He tragically lost his life in Afghanistan in a friendly fire incident.

And so, but, you know, after 9/11, people said, "You know what, I need to serve, I need to contribute."

And I just wonder, is the job market really that big of a factor or are there other things?

- I think, you know, it's hard to distinguish, you know, how significant one factor is versus another.

But absolutely, I think both of those things are factors that, you know, there was a surge in people enlisting after 9/11.

Obviously, there's, you know, a sort of rally around the flag effect if the United States is attacked.

We're no longer in combat operations in the same way that we were at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That clearly has had an effect.

But at the same time, you know, the tight job market is a factor because, you know, a lot of the motivation for people enlisting for a long time has been economic.

And it's not just the unemployment, the low unemployment rate, it's also that the sort of structure of our economy is changing.

You now have a lot of competition from companies like Starbucks or Walmart that have higher minimum wages, but also, they offer college benefits, which used to just be the military that did that, you know?

And so, there's different kinds of competition, which clearly is good for society, but it is not great for the military when they're thinking about, you know, what is their comparative advantage.

- And then, there was a really interesting piece in this past June in military.com.

It published a piece called "The Army's Recruiting Problem is Male."

They found that male enlistments have dropped by 35% over the past 10 years, whereas female recruits have hovered around the same.

I just found that fascinating, what do you make of that?

- Yeah, you know, there has been a decrease in recruiting from some of the traditional, you know, demographic groups that the military has relied on heavily, you know, you know, recruiting among white men has gone down, and recruiting from the sort of Bible Belt areas that, you know, traditionally were the geographic areas in the United States that were stronger has also seen challenges, you know, and nobody really knows why.

I mean, you can hypothesize maybe about the politicization of the military that has occurred, you know, in the public discourse in the last, you know, six, eight years, you know, in a notable way.

But what, you know, the Army and the other services are trying to do is take the military out of that, try to revamp the way they reach people, redo the ad campaigns and reach people in the places where they are now, which might not be, you know, hanging out at the mall because a lot of malls are being shut.

It's reaching people via video games or social media.

You know, fewer people enlist right out of high school, so it's going to community colleges, or trying to seek people after they get a tertiary degree.

So, you know, there's not one single cause, and there's not one single answer to the problem either.

- I totally get that because you've really made that clear, but I am curious about whether, you know, the United States is not currently engaged in a sort of active sort of military engagement that, you know, that is directly related to America's direct interests, okay?

So, US is out of Afghanistan, that was a whole messy scene.

But then there are wars in Ukraine.

There's this conflict in Gaza.

There are tensions in the Middle East.

And, you know, America plays a role in it and having thoughts about that or sort of has diplomatic roles here.

I do wonder whether you've seen evidence that this ambivalence about what America's role should be plays into people's willingness to serve in that way.

I mean, where people say, "Well, this is what I'll do if I think it's righteous, but I'm not going to do that if I don't."

Do you know what I mean?

I wonder if that's part of it.

- I do, you know, I do.

You know, when you say ambivalence, I certainly agree that, you know, there is ambivalence about, you know, what, how active the United States should be militarily and just generally around the world.

And there certainly isn't the same urgency when you think about what we need to be doing beyond US borders that there was after 9/11.

It's hard to say what, how big a factor that is.

I mean, I certainly think it's a factor.

And, you know, the military leadership, obviously, is hoping that, you know, it'll be a while before the US gets involved in direct combat again.

And so, they'll have to take on the challenge of how do you get a force that's big enough if we don't have, you know, forces that are, you know, battling directly adversaries on a battlefield somewhere outside- - Well, in fact, you talked to the Secretary of the Army about that, I mean, and she said that one of the reasons, that's not the only reason it's a concern, but if the United States is not in a readiness posture for its own defense, how can you realistically go out and play a peacekeeping role or some kind of role overseas?

- To me, that gets to the other dimension that we kind of explored in this piece, which is mistrust, lack of trust in institutions.

And, you know, for decades, the military has been the highest or one of the most highly rated public institutions in America in terms of how people, Americans feel about them.

You know, you have the military up here and you have, you know, Congress and journalists kind of down at the bottom, but that has actually taken a hit in the last 10 years, and it's gone down to levels we haven't seen in a number of decades.

And, you know, I think that there are, going back to the politicization of the military, varied reasons behind that.

But I do think that, you know, we heard this from people when we were out reporting where, you know, some people's parents or the potential recruits themselves would say something about, you know, "I don't want to serve the military under X president."

- Remember during that scene where Former President Trump went to, you know, the park in front of the White House and held up the Bible in front of St. John's Church, and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, later apologized, saying, "I should not have done that."

The whole reason he said that he had to walk that back was that he had to defend the neutrality and integrity of the institution.

So, I'm kind of wondering, I'm assuming it's not just that incident, but- - No.

- When people said to you, the politicization, when you talk about the politicization of the military, what are you talking about, and how did people express that to you?

What did they say to you?

- There was a lot around, in 2020 around the conversations about whether ways in which the National Guard could be used against protesters.

But there, you know, also a lot of debate about, you know, the extent to which troops should be trained on diversity initiatives within the military, you know, discussion about extremism and racism around the military, and all of those conversations took on sort of outsized importance in, you know, the public discussions or out prominence in some, the way that some Americans think about the military.

And, you know, we haven't quite got back to the places that we were, to the place that we were prior to that yet.

And we certainly heard a lot from people whose kids might join the military, from people themselves.

So, you know, I think, for me, it's just one more manifestation of the hyper polarization of American society.

- One thing that really came clear in your piece, though, is just how hard these recruiters work.

I mean, (laughs) what kind of stood out to you?

- Yes, they really hustle.

I mean, you know, it's not easy to find people, even just to locate young people to talk to.

You know, it's not like there's, you know, in a lot of American exurbs, suburbs, you know, people are driving around in their cars and going from one place to another.

You know, you're not finding people congregating out and doing things maybe in the way that you used to.

And so, these people have, like, the extra challenge of finding people, tracking them down.

You know, there's not a receptivity.

Another big challenge is the fact that as fewer people engage in military service, there's just less familiarity.

Like, back after, you know, World War II, everybody had, you know, an uncle, a father who served, you know, everybody knew what the military was, and now, it's just a smaller and smaller, more isolated part of society, and that is sort of a reinforcing vicious circle for the military.

- You know, I can't let you go without asking about this recent dust up around the former president's behavior at Arlington National Cemetery.

I understand it's one incident among many, and you've said several times that this is not just one thing, but I am curious about how you, as a person who spends so much time, you know, reporting on the service and reporting on people, on their efforts to get more people to participate.

Gee, what do you make of it?

- Yeah.

I think that it can only hurt the military's attempt to kind of rise above the hyper partisan, hyper polarized, hyper acrimonious moment that we're living.

You know, every time there's an event like that, you know, and you have, it's very complex.

You have people whose family members of the people who died in the Abbey Gate bombing during the, you know, chaotic, disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Some of them are supporting President Trump.

You know, you have the military coming out and saying that the campaign disobeyed clear rules.

You know, I think there's a lot of hurt and antagonism and, you know, clear differing interpretations of what happened on all sides.

But I think the bottom line is that this only reinforces this trust and perception problem that the military has, and that's going to have real knock-on effects for national security if it deters more and more people from joining.

- Missy Ryan, thank you so much for speaking with us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for watching "Amanpour & Company" on PBS.

Join us again tomorrow night.

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