we have shut down the so many public diplomacy capabilities in this country. we shut down the united states information agency in what i call the right person fit of absence of mind in 1999. i think it was all supposed to be very efficient and we folded a shadow of usia former capabilities into the department of state where it remains an orphaned child. yes, we do some public diplomacy at the state department, but it is ignored. it is not something that is your ticket to becoming an assistant secretary of state. we have a diplomatic culture in this country and not a serious soft power culture. i would venture to say that the u.s. army has a greater sensitivity to soft power than the department of state has.

it understands hearts and minds operations have been recognized the vital necessity of the source of things on the battle runs in iraq and afghanistan. it understands cultural diplomacy and understands it to be a strategic instrument of american power. a huge part of this is the problem of our international broadcasts. our international broadcasts, radio, television and obviously internet are the only unfiltered information that we can get into the minds of aliens in l.a. and the people around world. all other information that we transmit is filtered by the governments that control their media as does russia should this extraordinary extent as it has started to do. we have shut down the voice of

america and the russian ukrainian broadcasts over a short wave. we've barely had an imprint on a station for i don't know what the reason was why the pbg was not able to renew even the little am station that we had in moscow, but a subcontractor failed to review the contract and then putin basically shut the thing down. i don't know where the responsibility lies. in any event, the broadcasting board of governors, which runs the doa, radio free asia, radio marti, radio sowa, et cetera, is a dysfunctional agency which has a board of bipartisan board of

unpaid volunteer commissioners who, only part time and have exercised legislative -- executive authority. this board -- the secretary of state is a member of board, but is effectively in absentia. the result is the bureaucracy there is effectively unaccountable. this is a board that does not report to anybody when it comes to the foreign policy to be inconsistent with in the case of the voice of america, voa broadcasts have to be consistent with the foreign policy of the united states. this surrogate radios -- the freedom radios that serve a separate nation from the voice of america, like radio free europe, radio liberty act as a

surrogate domestic free press for countries denied free media. these are entirely separate missions. they are worthy, both of them is being pursued. they are extremely cheap. the pbg tried to shut down our broadcast to china in mandarin and cantonese. on the grounds, the shortwave is an obsolete legacy technology. why then did beijing by 290 shortwave transmitters in the last couple of years? because shortwave is beijing's favorite and only most effective method of communicating with its own people. short wave gets to the audience. you can listen -- you can listen to radio anonymously. all of this of course -- radio

brought cast and tv broadcasts have been incrementally junk by the cbg -- bbg as if everybody is going to be on the internet and as if there aren't millions of internet police in a place like china, as if these internet sites can't be blocked for the entire web can't be shut down. in any event, we have to start getting serious about getting alternative and alternative voice out there in the world. an entire overhaul of strategic communications. my solution for this is to make the voa and the freedom radios come in the surrogate radios and television stations have aired on independent directors that

report ultimately to the white house, to the national security council, there are different ways of structuring this and reasonable people can disagree, but they have to be accountable. i also believe we should set up a new u.s. public diploma agency where he folded and all of the public diplomacy functions of the u.s. government into one big empire so that they would ultimately be taken seriously in this agency. i believe 50% of all ambassadorships should come out of the agency and then people would start taking public diplomacy seriously. >> thank you, john. thank you for that intervention on behalf of u.s. public diplomacy. i know there are lots of talks about reform efforts in this field and they be one of these in a few days or months will

have another meeting here at heritage to talk about all that is going on in that sphere. now let me introduce our next speaker, paul 79 who also i believe is a guest lecture at the institute of politics, but that is not by any means his only reason for being here. paul 79 is a longtime specialist in your ratio. he has served as director and dean and various capacities at the azerbaijan diplomatic academy. he has been associated with the university and talon and that the euro college at the university in estonia. he also launched a euro window on your ratio series very. prior to joining the faculty in estonia, he worked for various parts of the u.s. government.

the state department, the central intelligence agency, the international broadcasting bureau, as well as voice of america radio free europe and radio to perceive. he has frequently work and is advisable to the government, lithuania during their strive for independence from the soviet union. it would give us that point of view. >> paul, over to you. >> helle possessor to talk about moscow and ethnic russians, of the russian federation. i cannot resist adding to john lenczowski's insightful comments that those of you who are going to become interested in the issue of countering what the russians are doing in the propaganda and misinformation wars need to her the name

natalie graf, who was america's leading specialist on this information. it continues to be important. it says three things relevant to our discussion today. the first is the worst problem in international relations is there and tries to project and others what they are themselves. it is not only upon the russians do it. it is everyone. we tend not to see it when they do it ourselves the way this is summarized years ago was the u.s. since the soviet union diplomat and they treat them like spies. we sent diplomats and they treat them as spies. we treat them as diplomats. this is a problem. the second is that the problem is in fact far worse than many people think. most of the statement said vladmir putin and his friends made today are outright lies.

lies are fairly easy. there is a much more serious that in the case of disinformation at natalie wrote years ago, disinformation is mostly true. that is to say you create a set of expectations and then you introduce one or two falsehoods and that has enormous consequences and that requires enormous resources to find out it is easy to do with these blatant lies. but do not think that blake and my sanity on challenge out there. third, as natalie grant road, dealing with the question of disinformation and efforts to influence, one has to realize that this is a long-term problem, that you cannot get in and dip out. the united states is increasingly short-term in its approach and that means we come in and don't see what's been going on and we don't understand

how much we've been manipulated already by having ignored the first four and a half back of a five act play. what is going on in eastern ukraine today is nothing especially new in some regards. in other ways it is a serious change and we'll talk about that. one of the saddest things i have ever seen was an estonian television report in august 1998 when the russian ruble collapsed at the end of yelp and time. and you will remember that because the ruble was collapsing , citizens of the russian federation rushed to spend their rubles so that they would have goods because the ruble would be worth anything. the tragedy was in northeastern estonia, in the city of nara for, there were ethnic russians for russian speakers who are rushing to the stores to buy goods with hard estonian crones because they had been washing russian television and did not make the distinction between the

estonian currency, which was a hard currency and the russian currency which had collapsed. this is not unimportant because very often, even reporting, which may be accurate have consequences when it is put in a new context that people are now paying attention to. i would like to very quickly cover three things with you. first, i would like to say something about the tragedy, which is inherent in the russian state and the russian people and hot and four of the 700 years, which goes to the issue of who is russia and who is not. second, i want to focus specifically on why moscow approached the so-called ethnic russians in the near abroad, unquote, between 1991 and 2010 one-way and why vladimir putin has made a bad in the other direction now.

because in some respects, what putin has done is to violate even the rules of the game that moscow has sort of accepted after the settlement at the end of the soviet union. third, i would like to make four or five comments, violating my usual trinity approach on what they've got to do and do not and that we have certain capacities that we can run up very rapidly and there were other things we had better be ready for if we care about the future. okay, the tragedy of the russian people in the russian state can be expressed in a single sentence and that is the russian state became an empire before the russian became a nation. there's an enormous number of consequences, one of which of course is that it means the russian state has never been a nationstate. on the other hand, it means

ethnic russians have always been defined by the state rather than defining themselves. when we say ethnic russians, we act as if we are talking about a category, which is at the same level as the category of the irish or german or the french. that is simply not true. these are categories defined by the state and it is defined by the state for a very particular reason. second point -- the first point -- the second of state has always defined it as city, has always defined you as a russian man who is not in one of the things that has been terribly important in the last few weeks as vladimir putin's people realize how weak russian national agility is. if you have watched the desperate effort, ethnic russians, russian speakers, per russian people, it is a fact russian identity is

extraordinarily weak russian national identity is far weaker than national identities of any central asian nation. that is some name that just will not be accepted by people in the city because if you were trained as a soviet specialist, you were trained as a russian specialist in fact you were trained as a moscow specialist, which may go much past the ring road to get to the airport. russian national identity is very weak because of a series of policies first on the empire, then under the soviets and more recently under the empire bazaars did everything they could come including never asking the question of ethnicity. never, not once because they need a non-russians were more numerous and that the russian state did not have the capacity to hold the place together unless they kept the russians are mobilizing as an ethnic community. under the soviets, there's a

faustian bargain a rush at the russians got to run things, but only if the price of denying they were doing it comeau strong kidded national russian development. since 91, the russian federation has been -- has been seriously compromised in its ability to allow the emergence of ethnic russian identity because they russian nation they in fact the russian federation is the quickest way to do two things, both of which the kremlin doesn't want. versus the destruction of the russian federation, which is almost a third now non-russian. so if you get russian nationals at home, you look at the end of the russian federation. and that can't, if you allow russian nationalism to develop, not overly developed non-russian nationals, that you will require the kind of state authority -- the authoritarianism that will preclude economic development.

that was the soviet union found itself in the 70s and 80s when it had to choose between stability and development. we know the stability under gorbachev may try to choose development and about him apart. that problem hasn't run away and there is a third element here which is critical and that is the russian federation government, including vladimir putin are terrified about some thing which we need to talk about, namely that russian -- the ethnic russian community, however you want to define it, has ceased to be an assimilating nation and its is being assimilated by others in breaking into frank's. what that means of course is if you don't cannot authoritarianism a calm and putin thinks he can outlast that with oil gas revenue, what you are going to watch is there isn't going to be a russian nation. there's going to be her parents come in for mainlanders and the

ethnic russians outside the russian federation, my primary subject are going to drift away. it is only the willingness of people in moscow and the west to accept the idea that language and identity are the same that gets us from russian speakers to nick russian to people who are loyal to moscow. that is just simply untrue. in soviet times, there was a great joke. what you call people who speak three languages? trilingual. would you call people who speak two languages? bilingual. what you call people who speak one language? an american. the problem is we bring this to the table and we think language is identity. nonsense. if you look around the world, you will see many, many national movement that took off when people stop speaking the language of the empire were started speaking it and it goes in a variety of ways.

it doesn't all work. now when the soviet union -- second part -- when the soviet union came apart in 1991, there is great exit tatian among the people in the west and some in moscow that roughly 25.4 million ethnic russians in the 11 former soviet republics and three formerly occupied baltic countries would become the modern equivalent of useful as a bridge. it would be people moscow would reach out to. didn't happen. amazingly it didn't happen. why? there were two reasons i think. one domestic and one fourth. if you provide a russian national strategy at homecoming would've led to further disintegration of the russian federation because you would've provided russian nationalism that under boris yeltsin could not have taped. the second is with a view of the yeltsin government, people at kos about in their advisory that the only way russia could have

influenced in the neighborhood was by promoting good relations with the governments which are headed by two certain nationalities, promoting at nick russian nationalism among these russian groups. could be viewed as an unfriendly act as you can testify his son and and latin stew that as a state. consequently, despite a lot of talk about it, moscow did relatively little to play the card except in estonia latvia between 91 and 2010. relatively little. but the reason there is a third reason that matters even more. most of these people did not see themselves as a rush and the way we wanted to see benefit to question as members of a coherent national community. instead, they saw themselves as speakers of a language and because their identity had been

defined by the state, if the russian state was weak and somebody else is offering a better deal, that you should take. i have a picture of a demonstration and scoff globalists, which is the western most of the russian federation from about seven years ago, showing a group of russian and globalists marched around the science on which it said i'd rather be a second-class citizen in estonia than a first-class citizen in the russian federation. and these people were ethnic russians, okay? now, what vladimir putin has done because he has understood that if the only way you can promote a tighter russian national that flows in the original proposition i said is with authoritarianism and he believes he has capacity to do that. but what he has now done, and this is the real crime and ukraine, the crime that he must be opposed and that we must

bring him ultimately to the hay. that is he is the first major of a major country since 1945 who had sat ethnicity, as he understands it, is more important citizenship. that is destructive in a possible international order and the descent the dangerous to the neighbors of russia. it is dangerous to russia itself because it will lead to an explosion in the dangerous to the rest of the world because it will be copied. if you love the principle to go unchanged, as we seem to be, that ethnicity -- that citizenship is not defining. but you would get if the activation of foreign-policy and it will become increasingly violent. current ems say the least be a new 9-1-1 for us. in last week a set period and 91 we decided the end of history at happen and we can certainly are the rest of the world. in two want to buy into the year they were so bad things, but we assumed they were all substate

at yours. crimea should be reminder of their evil things in the world and some of them are in states. but the idea of the expressions of roderick coherent group is not true. if not only their different between ethnic russians who live in uzbekistan and ethnic russians who live in estonia and the questions and ukraine. there are enormous differences. but the important thing to keep in mind is that those people are disappearing. you may have seen the articles last week in moscow saying where are the 3 million ethnic russians from ukraine? you know, they have disappeared. sure, they have decided the term of identity they may speak russian, but they identify not only is ukrainian citizens, but members of the ukrainian civic nation. and that is what happens when you make ethnic identity, as the russian state has, dependent. we can't afford to allow that. what do i think we should do?

that they suggest -- i guess i will go back to three things. i like trinity's. that'll keep me better in the 10 to 12 minutes ifad. first, we have to recognize the probably face of moscow is not simply moscow's lies. not simply moscow's disinformation directed at russians abroad, but in the entire structure and the reporting by russian television to the neighboring countries is itself, even if for accurate, it is noise, but sometimes they get something right, is by itself a subversive act and therefore we have to support this government like latvia and lithuania who bought russian state television has destabilized. so rather than condemning as a violation of human rights, which i've heard from people in this town, we've got to support it. second, we have to support, with money, and also provide political coverage to the

post-soviet states to do some vendettas extrude nearly difficult for them to do and which they have been reluctant to do for obvious reasons. that is they need to begin producing television and radio programming and rushing to make sure that the ethnic russians on their territory do not look at moscow tv in moscow radio. i was asked by the latvians whether they should shut down moscow television. absolutely. but that is not enough. what you need to do is credit latvian russian language tv that ethnic people, the russian speakers and lack you would rather watch. it's an enormous task, but it's not impossible and it is some thing these governments can do if they enjoyed the protection, the cover if you like better support could provoke. and third, we desperately need to expand, revive u.s. international broadcasting.

we need to begin broadcasting immediately in crimean sitar and we can do that. we had programming coming from radio liberty's come totter bar service until a couple minutes ago. they've got the people. they can do it. we've got to revive short life as a halfway house before we can get up to speed to do direct to home television. third point under that, we have got to stop buying into russian definitions of where he broadcasts. in the history of u.s. international broadcasters, the united states has never, not once, except for one time, broadcasts to a region of what my job -- how moscow defined and divided up the place with other languages. that one exception was in 1986

was briefly the united states broadcasting ukrainian to the far east, to the russian far east. you may know that in the russian far east, there are roughly three to 5 million ethnic ukrainians. that broadcasting was sent from japan. it should be done again. and that is not the only place i'd be happy to talk about for you can do that. we should be taking the battle right back to moscow and we should he broadcasting and a whole bunch of languages you maybe haven't heard of recently laid goriot as well as expanding the qatar's and bosch car broadcasting and so on. and the last point, we have to understand we have reentered a world, which too many people in this city not permanently had been put to bed and that is we are now dealing with denied

areas. there are places with extraordinarily difficult to get information. where areas are denied, where it is difficult to get information and the internet doesn't solve everything despite the mantra of some people, you need real expertise. you need to spend the time gathering names. i was privileged to work in the research department and liberty and i can tell you how much time it took wendy's were denied areas to find things. but these are the only kind of broadcast that make sense. you cannot trump that. you cannot short-circuit that by assuming you can get it all off the internet. now, that is going to require us, not only to restore a research function, which we can't slough off to universities. it just simply isn't possible. but it is critically important to overcome one of our leaders.

besides looking at my picturesque operations becoming second-class citizens in estonia come each morning i think of one other thing i have pasted over my computer screen. in 1944, winston churchill observed to the american ambassador that the americans can always be counted on to do the right name after they've tried everything else. that was a wonderful possibility in 1944 and 45 when the united states had half of the world's gdp. now that we are down to 20%, had it to 10% within this decade, we have to be smart and clever because we cannot afford to be wrong with the assumption that we can always catch up. if we do not do some thing to challenge what moscow is trying to do, we will watch it much more vicious, much more violent, and we will watch it much more rapid disintegration of a

variety of states, and put in the russian federation. .. the challenge in the cold war r was never just communism, it was

soviet russia imperialism and we were watching and imperialism once again. misusing the categories and misusing information and if we don't counter is now, we will have to counter. the strength of this country has only been in its soft power in its ideas and its influence far more than its military strength or economic power. the united states wins when it plays a soft power cleverly. it loses when it is put into a relatively more comfortable less advantageous situation where it would have to rely on hard power. if we don't promote hard power through broadcasting and public diplomacy, we will eventually be driven and it will cost far more dangerous to our goals and interests as well as everyone else.

>> the final speaker is the senior research fellow in russian duration studies and policy here at the heritage foundation. he joins the heritage foundation in 1992 and has earned his doctorate from the university of massachusetts and served as a consultant to both the executive branch and the private sector on policy towards russia and eastern and central europe and central asia. he is also a member of the council of foreign relations and the international institute of strategic studies in london and the association for the study of nationalities and also appeared on numerous television and print media in russia here and

everywhere. they are a difficult act to follow its déjà vu all over again as yogi berra said because i started in the radio report research and continued as a masters paper through the heritage school thesis. it is as a tool of soviet power projection in the third world and the phd on the russian imperialism crisis. so all of these pieces are coming out together. and i feel young again. when you listen to the rhetoric coming out of russia such as russia is rising from its knees

such as blaming the political opposition and the national traders, you shudder and wonder where this comes from. this is reminiscent in the 1930s rhetoric of the dark ages such as the head of the russian funded institute of democracy and something else based out of new york and writes an op-ed calling hitler until 1939 as a brilliant politician and his counterparts say that, quote, the area in tribes came down the caspian mountains and

concord the space between the baltic and the pacific. like the tv station and like some of the websites that have been shut down. i spent the five hours on the transcript of the president that was pioneered by the late hugo chavez and the calling of the sms questions come and he said what do these people want? they are not thrown into the camp like in 1937. so i guess that they should count their blessings. so, when you are in encountering this new political environment,

the new notions, some of which are mentioned here, such as russia and about the southern and eastern parts of ukraine, this terminology was indeed used in the imperial russia and the such as describing essentially and the national liberal and nationalist forces. and above blurring of the notions of russian speakers and ethnic russians whereas clearly warning the nationalists in the same five-hour q-and-a dot russian people have absorbed

many genetic brands of strains so that no blood is ethnicity should be allowed because that is very dangerous. when you are dealing with this new environment, you also have to look at what are the terminology notions that are being used as propaganda notions and pieces. so for example what is federalization of ukraine. the federalization is rendering ukraine & as a nationstate. it is dictating a constitutional change to the neighboring country and i'm wondering what the federalization might mean for russia itself. as dave wrote, the people shouldn't debate covered live in glass houses shouldn't throw

stones because people in chechnya and pakistan but producers a good chunk of the world diamond production that produces a lot of oil and gas and others will start to fertilize and come trolls revenue such as mr. putin suggests for the ukrainian brother in and the russian federation will not look very good. what is -- what are the channels of these new notions that are being distributed through? of course it is russian media that it is a new russian media. we remember that the russian information agency that was reformed and ran for ten years by underwent a massive change with the appointment of a new

leader and a man who for example in the same and that he was strangulated to which mr. putin responded don't worry we can't strangulated anybody. but this is an example of how the notion of how russia under siege is being used and promoted by the propagandists. we channeled in english, spanish and arabic note there is no russia today in chinese because they don't want russia today. russia today is a channel

through which the notions are distributed around the world, the legitimacy of the ukrainian state and that he sees the new government of ukraine as illegitimate and the legitimate president and again, the people who are fighting and separating from the rest of ukraine are the locals when it's very clear by the way they bear themselves by the kind of night scopes into silence or they carry on their

rifles [inaudible] .ac and eastern ukraine it isn't special forces. these are local like this who could buy 80s night scopes and of course in every local hardware store. another tactic is separatists compared with the tactic used by hamas when you put human shields, women and children on rooftops in front of schools into israel from these sites and then if they respond, they may

cause civilian casualties, and this is what the local activists are taught were instructed to do so that there will be casualties allegedly caused by the ukrainians. there is a broad litany of complaints against the united states that are mp repeatedly articulated by russian spokespeople. these accusations that there is no international monetary policy controls over the u.s. dollar and therefore the u.s. dollar has no right to be an international currency that of the u.s. violated international law and asked general mentioned, not just in iraq but also in afghanistan, kosovo, syria fear the violator of the international law.

the u.s. probably defined out of its legitimacy because of the liberal policies that russians and russian orthodox project. we are not in illegitimate source. it is very much in terms of the hunting clash of civilizations in terms of a conspiracy, global conspiracy theory in which the world is not ruled by the elected government, but by intelligence services and other conspiracies, be it bankers et etc.. but as a propaganda narrative that you find in many contemporary russian sources and of the leading russian

ideologists. i strongly recommend anything that generates just to see how bizarre the areas are and how to recognize that he is consistently occupying the positions of an advisor to the chairman starting with the general. so these conspiracy theories have one problem with them. so they start to believe in themselves and the policy is built on these conspiracy

theories. i agree we need to pay much more attention. we have to have systematic studies of russian propaganda. i'm the first one to support freedom of the press, freedom of expression but the russian government shuts down the voice of america that creates a lot of problems and we have something like 100 here on new york avenue on russia today and russia today is a channel that we can advise you if you were foolish enough to come and speak as i was, then they shout you down and for me no more. thank you very much.

i'm afraid i'm sounding like a broken record because i hear in this organization for 21 years and we need to reform the international broadcasting and it keeps hobbling along like a three-legged cat. we need to rethink it and decide if we want it as a separate agency, which i probably think that we need in terms of public diplomacy and international broadcasting or they need some kind of a dotted line in between the states. what was the favorite term? the schemes of launching the pentagon information operations.

we think the russians think like us and think it is a part of something colsomething called i2 information operations. we start the computers and hacking and disseminating the messages that will mess up the opponent up and interfere with the management and then everything else is just a corollary of that. so we need to understand how the russian information works in that theory. we cannot tolerate i think the spokespeople on our soil who praised hitler. what is he doing here and why is he here? i frankly do not understand. and we need to hire political

dissidents for our broadcasting. in the 70s and before that, they did a perfect job on radio liberty. anybody to -- we have unfortunately a situation where we have again political exiles from russia and the director ofe job of being international broadcasters. if the next administration is going to do if this is a huge undertaking. they cannot do it on the cheap, but we need to do it. it is an important part of our survival, of our foreign policy. thank you very much. >> but gave the panel a big round of applause. [applause]

there are lots of reports we will be taking it and this is almost an invitation to having another public lecture on what we can do from our end to follow up. i would like to invite the audience to bring up their questions to the panel. we will have a couple of roaming microphones i hope so identify yourself by name and affiliation. there are a number of people here from the broadcasting services and a few who have been involved in the past. we are going to find you over here in the corner. someone i know will have a strong opinion. >> i served on the broadcasting board of governors for eight years, and in some cases i would have to say that it was a great honor and a privilege to serve the country and amazing

journalists that represent the country. i do agree with many of the things that you have set about fixing the broadcasting board of governing. the problem i would tell you is a bit complicated and i will try to be short and to the point. first of all, you have to really understand what is going on. the governors that serve serve as a pleasure of the president and they are paid when they serve. they have to respond to the concern of the united states senate and house of representatives of what's going on. on the other hand they do meet monthly but many of us that live here that's more frequently and the bottom line is they rely on the information that is delivered to them about the entities that we were responsible by the tear of the senior executive service career management. so basically you are hearing a full term source of information much of which is what you were

talking about that has been dead wrong. the strategic plan that was flawed the idea and many of us continue to fight for the preservation of shortwave radio. it must be protected. also, trying to protect russia which we could have stopped. the question is i think we have to look at the term of winning the hearts and minds. i would return and come back with a term called the strategy. you can sit here and come up with wonderful ideas about what he would do in the future and how you would change it but there's a couple things you have to think about first you have to go to the foreign relations committee and encourage them to beef up the money because do you know china al spends us 8-1 that isn't even figuring out how much

russia outspends us so we are dealing with $755 million to run these services and the most important thing to fix immediately in the voice of america is that the newsroom is dysfunctional. it's operational. we can't even keep up with bbc. we were the last ones to talk about ukraine. we were talking. look at the charter of the broadcasting board of governors and the voice of america and what the mission really is and what we are supposed to do. if you are going to fix it you have to have been able to do journalism. we have wonderful journalists who have been serving in the voice of america and they are being turned into tent and they are bullied and they are not allowed to do their job.

and i speak with the former governor and i work behind the scenes to try to help them. the other thing is you are talking about russia and all of the eastern european divisions and yes we have to focus on them but if you're going to do strategy you have to think who else is playing ball. the russians, chinese, the cubans, but the most important influence on the air right now are the russians, so we have to look at the map. i know i sound frantic about it because i do believe it is dysfunctional but i think that if you and the great powers with the voices and the connections that you have for the people in the house and the senate to be able to help come an command yew the board members are not

perfect but you're stuck with them right now. they are going to be higher in and you can help with that. you do not need to have someone coming in from cnn. you don't need to have someone with a great -- you need people to come into the broadcasting board of governors and be able to figure out the strategy of how to be able to say what you have and enhance what you have to get the money to boost it up and to get those careerists that are crippling and intimidating the talented but you have and the government employees put them somewhere else. [applause] stack i would like to make one, somebody that is very proud of having served much of his career in the broadcasting who was involved in a number of decisions that were made about. i would just point to one. the outrageous decision to enter on the assumption that we would

have to do everything by a. n. or fm broadcasting you would have to be pretty close to your target audience which generally means you have to be in the country that you are broadcasting to. once you do that you put yourself at risk and that is even worse than being closed down. the first risk is people that say we mustn't take risks of criticizing these people because we might be closed down command that happens. the fact is that the wholesale decision to rely on fm broadcasting locally in the countries puts an enormous risk. it was notable in advance and people were told of this and the assumption was to be done that in the united states people listen to fm radio and they don't listen to shortwave, therefore it should be that we should be leave half broadcasting into some of these countries but from the neighboring countries, not in

them created a minute that you put a station on the ground under the control of any of these regimes there is a risk. i think that that is the technology unfortunately that was a huge strategic error and i would urge them to thinking thit what needs to be done in the u.s. international rod casting one starts with a sort of technological underpinning that unless you can conduct your message to somebody the message that you're going to worry about is all very interesting. sometimes i know and i was a greaat agreat liberty people sau know, we can just -- because we exist, that gives people in washington feel good time and if we could just pull the plug and save money because it is our existence that matters and not getting the message. that was silly. people didn't really mean it that you have to do to help your audience can have a technology that lets you do that. the internet is only -- we

needed that kind oneedthe kind o listens and who doesn't get the fact is that there is good work being done by the scholars at the academy of sciences on how people use the internet and how different the russian internet is from internet use in germany. that needs to be factored in. but the decision to go to fm, i wanted to go to the director satellite tv broadcasting because while it is more expensive, not one of those things that was thrown up to those that made that argument, that is something that gets you out of being controlled or worse, influenced by the government that can close you down when they want to and backed -- i think that one needs to look at the technology rather than on those who is preparing what's news as the first stage to correct the problem

>> i want to just comment on the apropos recommendation that we should be thinking about strategy. the problem is you cannot rely on the broadcasting board of governors to be the innovators of american national strategy has to be done by the president of the united states, the security council and its component members of the secretary of state and defense and the national security advisor is there serving those policymakers and it has to be an integrated strategy that takes into account the different parts of the statecraft and the problem is that the structure is completely divorced from the

strategy and it doesn't report to anybody in the executive branch and it is not held accountable to anybody in the executive branch. and as the result and the only time that can possibly happen is if there happens to be a strong national security advisor that is willing to assume the powers and competition with the secretary of state and if there just happens to be an -- a staffer to take on th that portfolio, which they're almost never is. so this is why a structure where if you had a u.s. public diplomacy agency where the head was a deputy secretary of state, where within, you have a broadcasters -- and i understand there are serious arguments about why dos era gets a

broadcasters should be an independent entity in the way they were during the cold war. i understand that. but i also be leave that there can be some kind of arrangement with the surrogate broadcasters even under the structure of a public diploma agency. i recommend that the director of the agency be a statutory member of the national security council. excuse me, statutory observer with the same rank as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of the national intelligence who are statutory observer's. and then as they say, public diplomacy will be there after takeoff of policy and not just during the crash landings. and i think that the budgetary part of that even -- i conceivef

having every public diplomatic functioning in the u.s. government essentially to be put in including usaid and people will argue with me and it is a simple argument and i take it, but even including the peace corps, which is another valuable instrument of american power which is another orphan child that is not related to u.s. national strategy. and so, i think that when we start thinking about these strategically and when people are forced to do so -- and by the way i also think the funding problem needs to be solved because these functions never get funded according to the national strategic needs. never. and the only time that anything does get funded according to the national strategic need is in the defense department which is why i recommended that we create

a unitary defense and foreign affairs budget, which is a seamless garment of soft power and hard power, and all of it should be funded according to the national strategic need and that simply requires the congress to divide the different nests so to speak in order to agree. because i agree completely that the softcover is our strong su suit, and we should be up to exercise it much more skillfully with the right kind of funding in order to get this right. >> one of the things i think is very important is the function of broadcasting is working where they have the freedom of speech

and they are shocked you could have the right and the left come together. the only thing to consider on the dependence of that is the fact that it is a journalistic entity because we are protecting that. >> [inaudible] >> a couple of technology observations first of all the difficult foit isethical to me g 20-year-old enron -- and russia buying a radio in order to listen to the quality of the content that the radio liberty today applies. maybe the content was better

they would but this is a technology that paul and i and john remember and people who grew up on facebook and twitter do not know what it is, somehow you close the technology gap is the challenge i think and how you deploy these messages in facebook and twitter is the bigger challenge and who is going to do that when we are talking about creating a public diplomacy czar? we are going to create a public diplomacy czar and some of the precedence with people and madison avenue that had no foreign policy background and who were great advertisers for uncle ben's rice or some other products didn't really cut it

into the numbers of under secretary for public diplomacy that came and went with no discernible impact suggested sut not only we need to rethink the architecture, we need to rethink their resume of these people. it's not an easy job to be able to combine the strategic outlook and understanding of the media. finally, something to be said about the creativity of government employees if we are talking about redesigning the same and having government employees do that on twitter and facebook i think it will be tough to get them to talk to 20-year-olds in beijing, moscow

and especially small towns around russia, ukraine and china, afghanistan and the arab world. >> as we get deeper and deeper into this discussion i would like to give gave it with the ve of america the chance to give us his point of view on all of the points that have been made. >> it's great to be here discussing what i'm passionate about and everybody else in the room and that is america's soft power. it's great to be in a room full of people who think we don't have enough of it because that is what the people that work for voice of america also be leave. the question is how to go about it. it may be that president putin has done a favor in a weird way by his behavior recently. it may be that we will wake up and cause people to think more

about the need for the well-funded assisting the soft power by the united states. i hope so, because like others in the room, i so strongly the need and not end in the power of it if it is done right and is funded right. there are a number of different ways. the existing board is recognized that the current structure is not what it should be. to the congress they've asked for a ceo structure of the nine part-timers they don't run the federal agency as well. i think it is a discussion about how best to go forward and to fund and other quickly lead u.s. public diplomacy in broadcasting

and there are lot of different points of view. i don't agree with everything the members of the board and of the panel had said that there was a lot of wisdom that has been expressed. don't think the voice of america is hobbling along. we reach in fairness with which we have which is not a large budget compared to the cctv and others. i think we do remarkably well. we reach approximately 164,000 people a week on one platform or another with news and information and information about the united states and its values and the society. which is highly valued that is why when hundred 64 million people are interested in it. the column said, and i think she's right, there is the issue of journalism to read what we do at voice of america is journalism. the reason that so many people want to hear us is because we do

that's non- propaganda. the radio moscow model had the biggest signal in the world, incredibly powerful. nobody listened to it because they had nothing to say that was of any interest. the voice of america does have things to say and talk about because the voice of america talks about freedom of speech. we export the first amendment. people care about that kind of thing and they are interested in what is going on in the world in an honest newscast. so, i think as you talk about how to best organize it, john, my friend from many years, my one criticism of the idea of the presidential appointment of running things, my concern about it is the firewall really has helped voice of america and the younger broadcasters. it allows us to have credibility that is the point of the realm of how you build an audience by being truthful. when we talk about the scandal that happened in iraq that was a stain on our own country's honor

and that we do so honestly, we build the audience. we build that ability. as a honest journalism of the kind that america stands for is enormously powerful and much more so than the propaganda operation run by the political leaders. so i think as you think and talk about that, it's important to keep that in mind. perhaps i should start there -- stop there. i wish the shortwave was the answer, but the statistics are not suggested that as you said, 20-year-olds in moscow are not fighting shortwave radios these days and it's difficult to see how to get them to do so, how to go the new way that might work better. can we get them to do that? it isn't clear. the idea of the direct to home satellite television is very appealing and there's a lot of discussion of that going on right now with what is happening possibly it needs a closer look. but statistics suggest on the one hand the former soviet quite

a few people might have access to buying dishes and in russia there are not many. so, it is of interest and it is something that we should look at and perhaps in the coming period that may be something that is done. the idea that they had some kind of a -- that is a good idea and i think it's something the united states should support. we have a system in various ways that would be an interesting kind of collaboration talked about going forward. let me stop there. in the various criticisms we are finding a debate about what we do and we are passionate about what we do and those that work there now and we are glad there are people in town that are passionate about it, too because it is very important and never the more important at the time when russia seems to be acting up. thank you.

>> two quick comments. first, i can't agree more with the idea that doing journalism is absolutely essential that the greatest impact that international broadcasting has having a lot of the places i know about. we have reported things that the political weight of the country wasn't sure it wanted reported. i've talked to so many people who remember when radio liberty broadcasted but what are gate hearings into there were lots of people who were on the hill and in the administration that didn't want that to happen. but i remember the comment of one which may matter more in the coming weeks. he said juno if you live in a country this was back in 1991 he said if you live in the country where they bring down the president just for bugging your office he says that the country i want to be part of. and i think there was a tendency to forget the extent to which this kind of that were imposed

by the political establishment are not very useful. the other thing i would because i spent my life looking at the e periphery of the countries, moscow was not russia. there is a tendency in the state department and in this to project whatever is true of moscow and in the country as a whole because that is where we have the data and it's the easiest to get to the data and that is where the embassy is. but if you look at media consumption patterns in places like sadr which is the largest now russian republican federation, most people come into this includes the 20 rules rely on shortwave because the distances are so huge. that's what is true on the periphery of the russian federation is very different than what is true in moscow, and just because we have a government that tends to act as if moscow is russia,

international broadcasters seem to be aware that russia is a country that a large part of it are people who have very different consumption patterns in the media than do the people in the center. i am quite sure that -- because i've been in contact with the people that if you said to being told i'm entitled about the new standards and is quite striking and i would urge as strongly as i can i think we need to take our friends on not just in moscow, but in the enormous regions. i want to mention one last point you should all be aware that the popular movements in the three of the russian federation's have

called on moscow to invade because they believe that if the russian military invaded, they might have a chance of having as many rights as the crimean's are supposed to get. there have been a number of improvements if you will by the international broadcasting. i know that our sister organization -- we also have been enormously on ukrainian television, channel five and other stations in ukraine are using an enormous amount of material into the service is working overtime as is the russian service to have as much impact as possible.

are they seeing the funding and the state department to hire a couple of people who are going to be working in the russian language broadcasting to eastern ukraine with a perspective from the united states and from ukrainians so there are things that are being done, some of them i don't want to discuss in detail because i don't think it is helpful. there is no point in telling our rivals what we are up to. but there is a lot being done and more could be done if we had more funding. but we are not sitting still and i think we are playing an important role. those in ukraine, very much so. and increasingly we will look for more ways to do things in russia. it's true that russia shot down many of the broadcasters but it isn't true the story that recently happened, the radio stations in the suburbs of moscow that were shut down. to be honest, that is a relatively minor development. i don't like it, it was a decision by the kremlin.

it lost us at most one, 1.5% of the audience in russia. the big play is digital but we have other things we are doing as well. i don't want to go into too much detail. we are not without our ways of reaching the russian people, and of course with more resources we could do even more. >> we are going to take two questions here and then i'm going to invite you all to make a comment. we have so much to say i think that is definitely merited. >> i'm from the international committee in crimea. my question is going to change the topic. a week ago i had a young lady at

my house we were casually talking. she is from crimea and grew up in crimea. she is a young woman and her parents moved her to crania when she was a child. she casually mentioned she said russians don't have morals but they have pride. i wonder whether you would like to comment on this. >> russia is just as subversive as any other nation. there are people among the russians that have the highest morality that russia and has given us many wonderful people and it has given -- it has recently led to a number to declare their own government is engaged in a criminal enterprise in ukraine, that russians have

profits, so i think that the first half of that sentence is not universally true. the second half, however, is terribly important that you worry about pride. when you are insecure about who you are, one of the elements or one of the things that flows from the opposition i started when we talk about the relationship between the state and the nation is that in the states where the nation exists where the nation preexist the state, nationalism and the states tend to be countervailing forces. in other words, when people feel the state is at risk, the nationalism goes up and when they feel the state is secure come in nationalism goes down into the difference is evidence of looking at how many they were in the neighborhoods to protect from 2001 as opposed to september 12. in a situation like the russian federation however, the sense of the national identity tracked together what that means is the

state is very weak and the national identity is weak and the state has to figure out a way. that's why vladimir putin orchestrated the killing of 300 russians in 1999 and blamed it on the chechens to restart against the nation in the north caucasus. the problem is when you get to a certain point, this nationalism focuses on pride alone and it pushes forward policies that are dangerous and it feeds on each other, and that i think, that half of the proposition is absolutely true. >> the last question appear and then we will all have a chance to comment. >> i'm a former white house correspondent. it's nice to see david here. i will just make a few points because i'm able to speak in public in ways i wasn't able to

when i was it comes correspond corresponded. they have been very clearly hobbling along. i and others made a specific effort over the last few years to bring to the attention to the outside world things that the public relations apparatus and to an extent they didn't want to discuss and in its recent months actually responded to. other parts of the bpg and be te sarah get live tv shots on the internet websites, you know, you might not be able to say that about other parts of the structure. anyway, i've looked over the detail if anyone wants to talk to me about the many ways that i seldom hobbling around in the range of the issues including in the digital realm. you can contact me by phone or e-mail. but i wanted to make a point which is related to what you

were saying in which you discussed also john and paul especially and which is how do you change the voice of journalists that work for voice of america that operate under their own charters as it still does under its own charter, changing its reporters and correspondents at these places. i can tell you very clearly that if it was declared to be to have oversight, there would be explanations going off in the white house correspondents association and in my opinion i think there should be questioned as to whether there should be the white house correspondent. if the goal is to change or take down the billboards on the various bureaus around the world and the overseas bureaus and replace them, that's another thing that i think it's a very important question and one i would be interested in hearing because there are many people

and many journalists who got their beginning and many that came in that they do not see themselves working under any structure or being seen by the colleagues as being attached to let say the white house and maybe less so at the pentagon state department. anyway, that's what i want to say. i would be interested in your comments. >> let me just observe i have never advocated that voice of america should do anything that could be construed as propagan propaganda. it's never done that, nobody wants that, and every once in a while we know that a secretary of state or somebody else may call up the director and told them thim to try to send a broat which has happened in the past. but for most of its history,

voice of america worked as a part of the information agency which was a separate agency that reported alternately to the white house under guidance from the state department because usia didn't make policy but was subject to the state department policy. i don't think that the united states needs to have a government-funded cnn. we need good journalism, that's right. but this is simply not a state journalistic enterprise. voice of america as part of the voice of the foreign policy of the united states and it does so by speaking the truth. but there are and one can be completely objective how one reports these things but as everybody knows there are

different editorial ways of presenting objective news. there are headlines, there are photographs and there are editorials. there is an editorial office that defends the policies of the united states and somebody needs to do that in the world. somebody needs to defend those policies coming into cnn doesn't do it. so there is no argument here. i think that there is room for a bipartisan board like the bbg the model that works well was exercised by the old board for international broadcasting before it became a governing board. it was an oversight board that was bipartisan, and it made a self -- it was too high here

experts who didn't have equities in the diaspora of politics or the politics of a given country and they would find some professor in the university of nebraska who spoke the language fluently and find out whether that broadcast was biased in favor of one faction or another and whether it was pushing the given agenda. and by the way, for the surrogate radios, those need not be consistent with u.s. foreign policy. they need to be not inconsistent with u.s. foreign policy and there is a difference. it's a strategic difference and one can have an arms length arrangement with that kind of an outfit, but all of these are

nevertheless part of the foreign policy of the united states. let me make one more point about information technology. every venue has to be attempted whether it is a.m., fm, shortwave, cell phones, satellite. i remember we discovered that soviet televisions have the channels built into them and that were not being used. and if we had a satellite that the broadcast over uhf coming you could pick it up directly on the tv with a normal antenna without a dish. they are then and shortwave. there is a technological revolution that is called digital radio and you can not

only broadcast voice but you can broadcast text and video. who is going to get themselves a receiver? the people that find that there is a good signal being sent. we could flood the world with cheap receivers coming out of some people will get to them and they can listen to this stuff or watch it anonymously. with regards to audience statistics i just want to say i think that's what the voice of america does and what you do has been absolutely nothing short of heroic in the strategic environment of several administrations come and visit is a bipartisan problem.

but i would say -- i would even caution you if i may say so to not shortstop yourself when it comes to audience statistics. if there is a single monk in a monastery in tibet, listen to the basic monastery commander then he tells the relevant piece of news to all of the rest of the monks in the monastery and then all of the pilgrims come from all around the country and then go back to their villages. is that an audience of one or of thousands? i'm not quite sure. but when there is good relevant information that affects the lives of people coming yes sometimes it can be distorted when one says to another. but i think the strategic effect is there, and i think that they have a bigger effect than the modest statistics would reveal.

so those are just a few thoughts. >> one fonts to build on. other than my wife and closest friend in the world that are delivered at the address at the formal creation, one of the things leonard mary was very proud of was that he had in his archive a set of books, notebooks that he had recorded every single day from 1950 until 1988 the ability to listen or not listen to western broadcasters like the voice of america and white radio liberty or radio free europe because he saw that as his lifeblood into the world. ..

it is hard to develop the reputation. it is easy to lose it. the firewall is critical. journalism is critical and that which is commentary needs to be labeled very carefully. her journalism i've always thought we should act with confidence and would often act as if we are not confident. the first confidence is the truth is definitely on our side. not on the other side, so we

have every interest in putting not accurate the, even if it mixes with that in that moment because the long-term truth is important and works to benefit. the second is that i definitely believe that the solution to that information is in almost every case more information. it is having good information. one of the reasons mentioned in the russians soviet broadcasting did so badly as there were alternative source is people could see just how bad it really was. it is critically important that the services be there all the time and ballot the russian government shall we say is only loosely connected to the truth. into its facilitators in the west who are willing to lie and challenge. the truth works for us. one lasting and i will shut a. i worked half of my life and

international broadcasting for the night his government and i am very proud of that. but the proudest moments i had his eyes searching for secretary baker at the end of 1990 in beginning of 1991, working with the non-russian peoples of the soviet union and the ark of the leak exceeds. during that period, there is no money in the state department is due to take these leaders around the places when they came to washington. and so, it was left to me to take them around in my old yellow volvo and a word and i had a carefully plotted strategy because there were things that you definitely wanted them to see. but as the elected heads of government to achieve sustained, 15 soon-to-be countries they took around for these, it is striking that all of them has to have their photograph taken in the first instance not what most people in this room would imagine in front of the white

house or the state department for the washington monument or the kennedy library. all of them wanted to be taken -- have their picture taken in front of the u.s. supreme court because somehow they had heard via the u.s. international broadcast that in that building there is a description equal justice under law and that is where they thought they were. that was a moving thing. my favorite example was when the former head of the party and one of these countries at this bouffant hair was combing in the rain and the wind said they would have a good picture of him in front of the u.s. supreme court. i say thank you boa for doing not. >> arial, any closing thoughts? >> i think what we learned today and there's plenty of both

historic and current political material here is how important international broadcasting and public diplomacy is. and gosh, i've been in this for 21 years and sometimes it is the word is learned from our tremendous fit to read in the cold war through soft power. when i was a kid, we are saying international right casting is worth one half of one aircraft carrier and the results were tremendous. we need to rethink it. no, it is not your grandfather's central broadcasting authority. it is a much, much more fluid and dispersed world and as somebody who grew up listening

to voa, to bbc as a kid, i can tell you the competition is much more shares. the content is much more entertaining and competitive. it is much more interrelated. i am a taxi to the russian face book and reference as to the team after a comment to sex in the city, things like that are permeating the russian discourse on facebook and outside of face the. it is a new ballgame msn at the contact is different, the technology industry frank, but the strategic purposes remain the same. these are both tools to influence how we think, how other people think. other people at the standards in many cases better than we do. i think the russians to understand what the soft power we do exactly as the tool of

geopolitical competition. but i agree with, chomsky at the system being we can be very good at. in this moment in history, we are not as good. and what does it take to bring us back to the leading position, becoming once again the leading power, i think this is a challenge to all of us and to the administration to come. not all great. thank you a much for the wonderful panelists. thank you all for coming to this great discussion. [applause] >> in the discussion on russia continues five ip p.m. eastern

over on c-span when we are live from the atlantic council discussing the foreign policy of president flat near putin life at 5:00 on c-span. >> for more than a year, there've been allegations, simulation that i know about the planning and that i was involved in an extensive plot to cover it up. the house judiciary committee is now investigating these charges. on march 6th, i ordered on materials that i had previously furnished to the special prosecutor turned over.

these included tape recordings of 19 presidential conversation and more than 700 document and files. on april 11, the judiciary committee issued a subpoena for 42 additional conversation, which it contended were necessary for investigation. i agree to respond to that subpoena by tomorrow. >> michael bromwich, former head of the agency that regulates upshur trillin says the u.s. is better equipped to respond to oil spills the deepwater horizon dumped millions of barrels of

oil. he spoke at a bipartisan policy center discussion earlier this week on energy reduction. >> i've got some coffee to keep me busy. thank you. well, welcome back, everyone. i am very excited and honored to introduce our next panel. we have three veterans in various ways of deepwater horizon commission here and three of our country's most senior experts on the safety and prevention risks we been talking about. to my left, make sure in three managing and the man president obama trapped to bassi and the other one. he let two of led two of those organizations and it's had a career in government asked the person people close to to look inside an organization and make sure it is functioning well.

now the consulting of law world, help you companies get that rate. fran ulmer, if you've been around washington for a week or so may seem a number of spots in the last week or so. president obama has tapped as the shared the research research commissioned future selves a member of the deepwater horizon commission. she hosted the state of alaska and has a very personal and visceral sense of what it's like to do with these issues in it. so terrific to have hurt perspective. and richard sears at sanford, chief scientist for the deepwater horizon commission and the industry knows science, technology and they got a terrific to on how we go forward on what we know it needs to know. because we've got such great respect is to really ask each of you, where we are starting with your date. where are we now in terms of the

art to? what do they know? what do we need to know? what is the state of play? had to reassure the public path forward is one that will be safe and secure. >> well, i think we are in a low right now. i think there is a flurry of activity when i was in the government in 2011 and in anticipation of shells drilling in 2012 as is well-known and well-documented well documented that was the heiress of fiascoes, which ended in really no meaningful progress and i think really created a cloud over the prospect of future arctic offshore development into my mind that cloud really has not moved or listed the interior department is planning to put out arctic regulations sometimes in the next few months. shell has been blocked by court decisions going forward this

coming center on trade center come although was clear to me whether they would have their ducks in a row sufficient to go forward many of them. so i think there are major questions about whether and when in the next few years there will be any offshore arctic activity and that does mean really address the question of whether we are really ready. >> well, first of all, let me say i am very pleased to be here and appreciate the fact people are taking some time to think about the arctic not only from the standpoint of oil and gas development, but from the standpoint of how rapidly this region is changing, both climate change, but also economic pressures, globalization. the opportunities not just in the arena of oil and gas, but shipping and tourism and mining and all kinds of trends that are

pushing more and more the arctic as a region that people are interested in paying attention to, doing research in, asking questions not only about the state of readiness, but perhaps more importantly what we need to do is finish in and what we need to do as an art technician to prepare a region, which is both exceedingly valuable and honorable for what lies ahead. what lies ahead is continuing change and very rapid change. so with regard more specifically to oil and gas, i would say things have changed a lot in the 40 plus years i have lived there. but trudeau bay oil development started flowing in 1977 down the pipeline and has radically transformed the state and its economy just as oil and gas has

radically transformed many economies that have experienced the kind of development income and variety of both regulatory challenges and social and economic policy choices. in terms of offshore oil and gas development, which is really what your question is focused on, that is a very different game than the oil in gas development that has taken place on shore and alaska over a busted mature development associated a movie forward international petroleum reserve to the west as well as assorted additional smaller fields to the east. the offshore chukchi in the beaufort, the lease is led by the department of interior raised many questions about not only industries, but also governments readiness from the

standpoint of science, understanding the region, understanding necessary to allergies and incorporating enough risk prevention and i'm totally into prevention. the department of interior, to be honest, and i credit you and your team with this, i really stepped up their game and shamanic ways, both for the standpoint of lessons learned in the deepwater a recent oil spill, but also the standpoint of doing some other things they wanted to do before deepwater horizon, like this since, just as an example. if they knew would increase safe operations for oil and gas development, the politically or not possible and we often find that you don't wait? it takes a crisis to make some thing that should have happened a long time ago, including safety rigs.

so i see a lot of change postma condo -- the condo they should've have been. a tragedy that would only be remembered if we continue to ask ourselves, what was it that could have happened before macondo it didn't happen, that might have avoided it from happening? i think the answer is many things. first and foremost, the biggest tivos, complacency and over compliance. the complacency of the team you know what it is that answers the question are you ready as opposed to continually looking for ways to improve. so i credit the department of the interior as making a lot of things better than they were pre-macondo. but there is still a lot that needs to be done particularly in an area like alaska.

>> i actually think i will pick up right where fran was going and talk about the system-level and how these ventures are executed. this is true for arctic. it's true for deepwater. it's true for unconventional. these are all very complex technical assistance that could range from geology to engineering to infrastructure and on down the. they are managed by often very large, often very small organizations. but however large or small the organization is, they are complex people systems involved, complex for the scale of the organization running it and all of this -- all of this, the technical engineering committed people are so embedded in even more complex natural system that is generally very poorly made.

when we consider, are we ready to do any of these things, whether he unconventional for deepwater arctic, the real question is i rethinking systemically systemically about the complexity? are you thinking how these things interact and are we prepared for managing the complex to be and be prepared when we get surprised by what we didn't know for what we didn't believe for the complacency because we thought we knew everything. >> let's come back on a couple of pieces then. let's start with probably the issue first on most peoples mina comes to the expiration of the day, which is oil spill. what do we know about responding to an oil spill in the alaskan arctic and what do any of the output ulster with you about what we now and maybe richard, you can talk about fairness system point of view of what

should companies may be be doing and then mike, maybe from a government point of view, how do you think we are doing in terms of a regulatory system? >> use the back tears the good news. the bad guys if it is almost impossible to clean up and oils will any place. so the exxon valdez oil spill happened 25 years ago and large. probably less than 10% of the oil spill was ever recovered. i don't know if the current number is for the deepwater horizon, the less than 10% in terms of recovered oil. and i would say actually even though people can differ about this, the gulf of mexico is probably a good place from the standpoint of readiness. you have a lot of capacity in

that region to deploy asset. you have numerous coast guard bases, airports, harbors, vessels of opportunity that could be deployed. there were 6000 or 7000 votes in comparison to the arctic where there was veritable infrastructure, it is day and night. so even in a place with a lot of assets to an oil spill, you can't recover very much. on top of that, cold, dark, stormy, icy, remote active infrastructure,, lack of a perp rate technology associated with recovering spills and icy waters in icy conditions and it magnifies the problem dramatically. not that his bad news. here's the good news. the good news is that the deepwater horizon oil spill there, more money is being spent

by government and the private sector to do research about how would you least on in icy waters? says cintas, the industry basically stepping forward with an industry agreement. they are doing a lot of research about how you do institute burning and how, whether there is no mechanical recovery opportunities and ice conditions, research is being done, similarly by the federal government. more money and more effort is made to the coast guard, epa, interior, other entities that are in some way was on civil release will play a role in the cleanup. so yes, there is more investment in the research and that i would say it's still not enough. there is a lot of work that you could and should do in terms of actually doing the training,

doing on site positioning of assets if you're going to move forward in a particular region, particularly in the arctic. so there is more to be done. let me just say tomorrow the natural grease arts council will release its most recent report on the topic of oil -- responding to an oil spill in what kind of research needs to be done, what research has been done. stay tuned tomorrow and we will release the document, which is the product of the year's worth of work of looking at the question of what do we know about how you respond to spills in icy waters, specifically in the u.s. arctic and what research topics still remain that should be investing in the universities by the chair, by the public sector. it is very timely we are having this conversation. paddy year ago, the commission i chair issued a report similar to the one, but the one and rc is

doing a fantastic night think the layout for the public and everyone to think about. can we invest the assets necessary to do the research, but also position i said to train the personnel and to organize totemic public in private if the kind of response and capacity would like to have in the arctic. >> so this is good because from a company is now, we see where we are in the arctic and how does an oil come in a look at an art take opportunity? again, good news than bad news. unfortunately they are the same news. the good news and david pointed this out in the first panel that arctic geology typically is a little more and fighting and the typical deepwater golf of mexico high-pressure turbo died environment and that swells can

be tracked to have an economic, but they are not going to be the kind of love we saw in the macondo. it is not going to be a 40,000 era lead to a disaster. that is the good news. the bad news as it is still going to be a fight that barely dated fast your were 10,000-barrel a day disaster in a deep companies really don't know how to respond to a major accident in the art they partly because they've never had to end the technology when it's been tried in all environments is not worked particularly well at all. what companies need to do is step back again and think about what it is they are endeavoring to do. these conversations go on and companies are good and rich. they are typically about geology and engineering in understanding the system in which they are

producing on the infrastructure bill used to do that. but the questions are usually much more complicated than that. for my own good, i wonder if one companies, large and small, are thinking about venturing into frontier environments in general, arctic specifically, what kind of discussions are going on at the board level? are these companies -- are the present these companies actually asking the organization if this gets away from us, will it destroy this company? in many cases in effect in most cases it will. the macondo accident didn't cause bp to go away. it didn't bankrupt company. bp was one of five or six or seven can you send the world that could have survived an accident of that nature. but any of the other thousands of oil come means, hundreds if

not thousands that operate in the gulf of mexico access to smaller than that would bankrupt and even a company the size of bp, if you look at the scale of what it is going to cost them in the end and you put that up against the few billion barrels of oil that they will produce as their own share, i expect the gulf of mexico is probably not going to make money. on a full lifecycle, full life skill for the corporation, gulf of mexico is probably going to be a money loser. >> let me stick with you for a second. how do you solve this problem? can you simulate arctic conditions? can he do that in the land? can you go someplace else? from a scientific point of view, how do you get to the point where you can understand how to deal with those conditions? >> well, i want to start with the most important first thing is to invest the money in the technology and people in

management systems to try to ensure an accident doesn't happen in the first place. really, it was not technology that failed at macondo. it was people that failed at macondo. it was just like since macondo commend the other blowouts of fires and accidents in the gulf of mexico were not technology related. it was people not following procedures. as people not paying attention to the realities of what they were doing. so the first thing that needs to happen for operations of the art because the companies involved need to make sure that they are doing everything they could be doing to manage these ventures as well as they can, to use all of the expertise available to them and available to the industry globally to make sure those ventures are. that's what they should do in the way of prevention. beyond that, there needs to be

more investment and research and what if. what to do with an accident does happen. and this is where the regulator needs to step in and of the nation we need to decide if that were the? >> that's a good trip to you, mike. how do you exercise responsibly the role of government is the licensing authority? >> well, let me first comment on a couple things fran and richard have said. i completely agree the fatal flaw of industry and government to produce macondo was complacent b. and overconfidence. i don't think we have to assert the immediate aftermath of the accident. i don't think we have it now. i'm very worried in a cup luthiers it will descend on us again and we will be in the same

place or similar place that we were back in 2010. one of the striking things to me in this list as many of you know, a new field for me, was how undeveloped all three of the areas we focused on really were prevention, containment and still response and i appreciate frank's friends comment and accommodation on our work on prevention. i thought that was the important first place to start in a soap because richard has suggested a silly place we need to invest a tremendous amount of time, money and thought into raising the level of prevention everywhere. not just in the arctic, but the deepwater and the ultra- deepwater. i was stunned frankly at the primitive level is still response technologies that the u.s. government had to u