♪♪ John: Tonight on "Pbs news weekend"... How some Americans are paying each other's medical expenses through healthcare sharing plans -- a popular but unregulated alternative to traditional insurance. Then... Artificial intelligence on the battlefield and the challenges the U.S. Military faces as it adopts this fast-moving and fast-growing technology. And... My conversation with the author of "American born Chinese" on turning his acclaimed graphic novel into a TV series. Gene: For a lot of us who are immigrants' kids, at first we're embarrassed of our parents' culture and of the kids at our school that come from that culture. But as we get older, we realize that our parents' culture is actually connected to something much deeper and much wider than we first imagined. ♪♪ >> Major funding for "Pbs news weekend" has been provided by -- >> For 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. We offer a variety of no contract plans and our u.s.-based customer service team can find one the fits you. To learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. ♪♪ >> And with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions -- and friends of "The newshour." ♪♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. John: Good evening. I'm John yang. As leaders of nato countries prepare for a summit later this week that will focus on Russia's war in Ukraine, Russia said it shot down a cruise missile near the crimean city of kerch. The 11-mile-long kerch bridge is a key Russian supply line, linking Russia and the illegally annexed crimean peninsula. Yesterday Ukraine appeared to confirm the widely-held assumption that they blew up the span last October, leaving it out of commission for weeks. The nato summit will also discuss Ukraine's bid to join the alliance, although there aren't enough votes to approve membership. Today on ABC's "This week," Ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy said that he wants at least security guarantees from nato. Pres. Zelenskyy: It would be an important message to say that nato is not afraid of Russia. I'll be doing whatever I can in order to, so to speak, expedite that solution, to have an agreement with our partners. John: President Biden, who left today for Europe, says Ukraine isn't ready for nato membership. He told CNN's Fareed zakaria that it shouldn't happen while the war is going on. U.S. Central command says it killed islamic state leader usamah al-muhajir in a drone strike on Friday in northwestern Syria, near aleppo. Officials said the strike didn't appear to kill any civilians. They also said the drone was harassed by Russian military jets -- the third day that Russian aircraft made close passes on U.S. Drones. Russia says its forces are in the midst of six-days of joint military training with Syria. And, there are more excessive heat warnings and advisories across the country. Millions of people from southern California to Texas are affected. In Phoenix, Arizona it was the ninth straight day that the high was above 110. In El Paso, Texas, the high has been over 100 every day for nearly a month. There's no end in sight as extreme heat is in the forecast for at least another week. Still to come on "Pbs news weekend"... How the military is using artificial intelligence on and off the battlefield... And a conversation with gene luen yang, creator of "American born Chinese." ♪♪ >> This is "The pbs news weekend" from weta studios in Washington, home of the pbs newshour weeknights on pbs. John: We all know that navigating health insurance plans can be complicated, time consuming and frustrating. But hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in an alternative to traditional insurance. It's called health care sharing plans. Members of these plans who often share similar religious beliefs agree to make monthly payments to help pay for other members' medical expenses. Unlike insurance, these plans are unregulated and they don't have to cover preexisting conditions or meet the other minimum health benefits mandated by the affordable care act. Kate Harris is chief deputy commissioner for life and health policy at the Colorado division of insurance and markian hawrluk is the senior Colorado correspondent for kff health news. Welcome to you both. Markian, let me start with you. You've written about these plans across the country. How widespread are they and who enrolls in it? Markian: It is a great question, John, and until recently we really didn't have a great answer. Until Colorado surveyed 16 sharing plans in Colorado, and across the nation and found 1.7 million people had enrolled in these plans. And that was more than even industry individuals had realized. These plans appeal to people who look for a low cost alternative health care insurance and appeal particularly to people with a particular religious viewpoint who want their health insurance to reflect their moral viewpoints. A lot of people like the fact that it's a sort of neighborly arrangement, that you are helping your neighbor with their health care costs and they will help you with your health care costs when you incur them. John: The plan members you talked to what complaints do , they have? What do they see as the downside? Markian: Yeah. Everybody really has to sort of read the fine print of what's covered and what's not covered. And sometimes you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get your health care costs reimbursed by the plan. Lots of these plans also require members to first ask the hospital or a government agency to cover this health care as charity care before they get their bill submitted. So just more hoops than a traditional health insurance might have. John: Kate Harris, does your office or any other office in the state government of Colorado have oversight of any of these plans in Colorado? Kate: What we've done in Colorado is we started collecting data from these plans to learn more about them and what they offer. We also take complaints from consumers directly who have perhaps struggled to get their care covered by these plans. John: What are the most common common complaints you hear? Kate: It's really twofold. The first we hear is that what they thought they were buying was insurance. And then the second thing we hear most often is that even if they knew that it wasn't insurance, they thought it would guarantee coverage of their medical bills. And what we find is that's just often sometimes not the case. John: We reached out to the alliance for health care sharing ministries, which represents the five largest and longest operating programs. They gave us a statement from Katie talento, their executive director. She says, "The purpose of health care sharing ministries is to provide Christian individuals and families with the freedom to choose the health care program that best suits their needs. The alliance for health care sharing ministries strives for open, honest communication with its members and only accepts ministries that are dedicated to becoming accredited through the newly formed independent health care sharing accreditation board. They are transparent with their members every single month about how much money has been shared between the membership and how much the organization has used for overhead expenses." The people you've talked to, the plans you've looked at, does that ring true to you? Markian: They do claim that their members understand that this isn't traditional health insurance, that the rules are a little bit different. But we also hear from consumers that they they don't necessarily understand what is being covered. For example, in the report from Colorado, members had in 2021 submitted $362 million of health care bills that they wanted covered. Yet the health care sharing plans only covered about $132 million of that. They said, well, that's because, you know, not everything on a single bill is covered, and people understand that. Sometimes there's duplicative things. There may be things that we arranged that we weren't going to cover. And you have to remember that these won't cover preexisting conditions. There are morals clauses in here. For example, they won't cover things like abortion, birth control, often mental health care. They won't cover chronic medications. They won't cover out-of-wedlock births. Or if you have an injury due to alcohol use or drug use, illegal drug use, they're not going to cover those things as well. John: Kate, is there any effort at all in Colorado or anywhere else to have some oversight, to have agencies regulate these plans? Kate: Right now what we are focused on is collecting more data from these plans to understand, you know, what they do and don't cover and what their financial vulnerabilities may potentially be for coloradans. And then we're working to educate consumers, you know, really provide them the tools so that they can make the best decisions about whether they should purchase one of these or whether they should purchase something that's under the affordable care act with federal and state subsidies that is often quite affordable. John: A lot of these people are people without insurance who sort of maybe don't qualify for the subsidies in the exchanges? Kate: What we hear is that often, you know, maybe they checked a few years ago and they didn't qualify for subsidies, but there's been new subsidies at the federal and state level that have passed recently with the inflation reduction act and then with some of our local laws here in Colorado. What we hear most often is that when somebody actually does go back to check what they're eligible for under the affordable care act marketplace, that they are eligible for save and -- savings. John: Markian, and are there people the kinds of people that this is a good thing for them? This is a good fit. Markian: You have to remember that a lot of these plans have annual or lifetime caps and a single catastrophic accident that, you know, you could be, you know, in a car accident, end up in a hospital and easily rack up millions in health care costs. And that health care sharing arrangement might not be able to cover all those costs for you. So there's a tradeoff there. You really get what you pay for in health insurance. So, you know, if you want to take that risk and save yourself some money on the front side, that's a decision some people will make. John: Markian hawryluk of kff health news and Kate Harris of the Colorado division of insurance. Thank you both very much. Markian: Thank you, John. ♪♪ John: Artificial intelligence has been a crucial tool for many nations' militaries for years. Now, the war in Ukraine is driving innovation, and as that conflict drags on, ai's role in it is likely to grow. Ali rogin looks at how militaries are using ai today and ahead to how it might be used in the future. Ali: More artificial intelligence on the battlefield calls -- carries potential but also risks. Congress is pressing the Pentagon to invest further and move faster on ai to avoid falling behind on this and nimble but critical technology. Paul is from the center for a new American security and a former army major, Pentagon official and an author. Thank you for joining us. Artificial intelligence is already used to some extent on the battlefield but we're not talking about completely autonomous technology. What is available currently? What are warfighters already using? And then where do you see the technology going in the near future? Paul: That is right. We're already seeing ai being used on the battlefield in Ukraine. Now humans are still in control of the fighting. But one of the things ai is doing is helping to process information faster. Ai is being used to sift through satellite images and drone video feeds, and that helps militaries then better understand what's happening on the battlefield, make decisions faster, and then target the enemy faster and more accurately. Ali: So what happens when we do consider having humans not be at all in control when these systems are fully automated, what are the pros and cons of that? Paul: Well, we're certainly headed in that direction. So what happens when a drone has as much autonomy as a self-driving car? We are already seeing drones being used in Ukraine that have all of the components needed to build fully autonomous weapons that could go out over the battlefield, find their own targets, and then all on their own attack those targets without any further human intervention. And that raises very challenging legal and moral and ethical questions about human control over the use of force in war.pali: We're seeing Ukraine sort of lead the conversation in the application of using these fully autonomous devices. Do you think we're going to see more of that? And is there concern about how they might be used by differently by state actors and non-state actors like terrorist organizations? Paul: Well, war is an accelerant of innovation. So the longer that this war goes on, the more that we're going to see more innovation on the battlefield. We're already seeing innovative uses of drones and counter drone technologies, things like electronic warfare systems that can target drone operators and then call in artillery strikes on the drone operator. And that kind of technology pushes militaries towards more autonomy. But it is not just confined to nationstates. Ices actually had a pretty -- ISIS actually had a pretty sophisticated drone army a few years ago, and they were carrying out drone attacks against Iraqi troops that were pretty effective. Ali: Now we've talked about how A.I. Is used in weapons, but how about systems off the battlefield? So how does that translate to military use? Paul: Most of what militaries do is not actually right at the tip of the spear fighting. It's logistics, personnel, maintenance. It's moving people and things from one place to another on a day to day basis. It looks a lot like what Walmart or Amazon do. It's what happens at the end that's different. Ai has advantages in all of those other non-combat functions that are critical to how militaries operate. And if militaries can make their maintenance and logistics and personnel and finance functions just 10% better, that's going to have huge impacts for militaries on ultimately their capability at the military's edge on the battlefield. Ali: Some of what we're seeing in Ukraine is employing commercially available technology that can simply be purchased for a couple of thousand dollars. How is the U.S. Department of defense dealing with keeping up with that sort of competition that exists? How is that playing out? Paul: They're not keeping up. That's that's the short version. They're woefully behind because the culture so radically different. And the bottom line is you can't buy ai the same way that you might buy an aircraft carrier. The military is moving too slow. It's mired in cumbersome bureaucracy. And the leadership of the Pentagon has tried to shake things up. They had a major reorganization last year of the people working in ai and data and software inside the defense department. But we haven't seen a lot of changes since then. And so the Pentagon's going to have to find ways to cut through the red tape and move faster if they're going to stay on top of this very important technology. Ali: Lastly, on the global level, as this technology continues to proliferate, some countries are calling for the establishment of some general rules of the road. What does that conversation look like? What are some of the contours of that debate? Paul: We've certainly seen debates over the last several years all the way back to 2014 about lethal autonomous weapons. There is a pretty wide range of views on this. And the United States, as well as other countries like Russia, have said that we have existing rules. We have the laws of war. The laws of war apply to autonomous weapons just like any other weapon. And we need to focus on adhering to those and making sure that any use of these weapons is consistent with the law of war. Ali: What about the other side of that? Those who say we need additional rules and that the existing rules don't fully apply here? Paul: That's right. There are about 30 countries that have said that they'd like to see a preemptive, legally binding treaty that would ban autonomous weapons before they can be built. But right now, none of the leading military powers or robotics developers are part of that group. And so it hasn't yet had the political heft to get to a treaty. That could change as we see the technology advance and as we see, of course, more broadly concerns about ai grow, as we are seeing technology advance, and there's more calls for global regulation of ai. Ali: Paul scharre with the center for a new American security, thank you so much for joining us. Paul: Fix for having me. ♪♪ John: "American born Chinese" is not a typical coming of age story. The new Disney+ streaming series follows teenager jian Wang as he tries to balance his life at a predominantly white high school with his life at home with his Chinese immigrant parents. And even more worlds collide when he becomes entangled in a battle of mythological Chinese gods. The series, which features this year's academy award winners, Michelle yeah and qi Quan, is loosely based on the groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name. Gene luen yang is the author of that book and he's one of the show's executive producers. Gene, first of all, as far as I can tell, we're not related. Gene: Yeah. I think ancient yangs were just very good at having families. John: That's it. But we are both american-born children of Chinese immigrants. Gene: That's right. John: This series plays a lot on self-identity, on self, and on assimilation. How much of that is is reflected from your life? Gene: Well, the book, which came out in 2006, it's fiction, but I pulled very, very heavily from my own life experience. I never met a magic monkey, but I did grow up in a neighborhood that was predominantly not the same as me. You know, I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood. I went to a predominately white school, and I did go through a period of time when I felt embarrassed of all of the things about myself that made me different from the people around me. That carried on into the show. I think the book is just from me, but the show is from a whole bunch of us, and many, many of the folks who worked on the show, both in front of and behind the camera, had that same experience of going through a period of their life where they weren't settled about who they are. John: Along those lines, I want to play a clip from the show. It is where the main character meets a new student at his high school. >> So sorry, but my Chinese isn't too good. >> This is Wayne Chang. He's a new student, and he's Chinese like you. >> Ok. >> I thought that you could show him around since you two have so much in common. >> We do? >> So for the rest of the day, he's going to be your shadow. >> What? >> He's going to tag along with you to all of your classes except English, because he's esl , and math. He's way ahead of you in math. John: It's a funny scene, but there's a lot going on there. What were you trying to show there? Gene: That scene was written by Kelvin Yu, who came from "Bob's burgers." That's where a lot of the the humor comes from. And in that in that scene, there are these two boys, jin, who is an ABC, an American born Chinese and wei-chen who comes from Asia , and in a lot of ways their relationship kind of symbolizes jin's own relationship with his cultural heritage. At first, he's really embarrassed by this new friend, right? But as the friendship progresses, he realizes that friend wei-chen is actually connected to a much wider and much deeper world. For a lot of us who are immigrants' kids, at first we're embarrassed of our parents culture and of the kids at our school that come from that culture. T as we get older, we realize that our parents culture is actually connected to something much deeper and much wider than we first imagined. John: And the character getting involved or getting caught up in the the the mythological story of the monkey king, is that sort of him reengaging with his heritage? Gene: Oh, absolutely. Monkey king is arguably the most important figure in Chinese mythology. If you go to China, if you go to Japan, you'll see monkey king all over the place. He's on lunchboxes and t-shirts, and he's also part of classic literature. So in the story that we tell, both in the book and in the show, the monkey king kind of symbolizes all of that. It symbolizes this wider world of Chinese mythology and Chinese wisdom that the main character learns about and gets to know. John: The last time you were on the show, you talked about how you liked graphic novels because of the interplay between pictures and words. And when the graphic novel came out in 2006, it was notable in part because of the way you told the story, sort of three separate stories, seemingly unrelated, that get wrapped up at the end. When you brought it from the page to the screen, did you have to lose some of that? Gene: Because it's a television series, because we're doing eight episodes in the first season, the collisions happen differently. The the world of jin Wang and his normal high school life, it collides with the world of the mythological gods right at the end of the very first episode. And then we do have this third world, this world of a sitcom that stars a character who's kind of like an embodiment of all of the Chinese and chinese-american stereotypes that haunted so many of us when we were growing up. That world collides, I think, in a really beautiful way in episode seven of the first season. John: I want to talk about that character because in the book you call him chin ki, which is obviously, you know, playing off the the racial slur that has been applied to Chinese. And I've read that you will fear that because of that character, this would never be adapted for the screen. How did you solve that problem? Gene: Well, I kind of didn't want it to be adapted, you know, not directly from the book, because I was always worried that cousin character that you are talking about would show up on YouTube as these disembodied clips, you know, decontextualized. And that would be the exact opposite of what I was trying to do in the book. They took that fear that I had, and they made it a plot point in the very first episode. So in the very first episode, we see the main character being haunted by these clips on social media of this character who kind of embodies all these negative Chinese and chinese-american stereotypes. And in doing that, I think Kelvin and his writers room teach the viewer how to think about that character. John: Are there things in this television adaptation that you admire, that you wish you had thought of when you when you wrote the graphic novel? Gene: Well, I mean, the big thing is that it's in television, right? It's a totally different medium from the comic book or the graphic novel. And I think the team that created this television series, they are experts at what they do. One of the things that I admire the most is actually the way they choreograph the action. You can have action in a comic book, but nothing's actually moving. It is all still images. It's not only fun to look at, it also expresses character. There were so careful about all of the fight choreography and about making sure that the fights, the punches and the kicks actually express something about the inner motivations of all the characters. That I deeply admire. John: Gene luen yang is the author of the graphic novel "American born Chinese," and one of the executive producers of the streaming series, "American born Chinese." Thank you very much. Gene: Thank you. Thank you so much, John. ♪♪ John: And online right now, how parents struggle with job stability as childcare costs climb higher and higher. All that and more on our website, pbs.org/newshour. And that is "Pbs news weekend" for this Sunday. On Monday, a conversation with the U.S. Ambassador to nato, Julie Smith, on the eve of the alliance summit in Lithuania. I'm John yang. For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. Have a good week. >> Major funding for "Pbs news weekend" has been provided by -- >> For 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. Our u.s.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you. To learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. ♪♪ >> And with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions -- ♪♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. ♪♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]
