giving you a proceed to democracy. >> ,house speaker nancy pelosi holds everything onthe legislative agenda . the briefings happening on it negotiations for ukraine and funding the us government through the end of the fiscal year. livecoverage at 1:15 p.m. eastern here on c-span2 . >> the russian militaries become a brutal assault on the people of ukraine. without provocation and without justification, without necessity. this is a premeditated attack . >> c-span has unfiltered coverage of the us response to russia's invasion of ukraine. bringing the latest from the president and other white house officials, the pentagon and state department as well ascongress .

we had international percent perspectives from united united nations and foreign leaders . online at c-span.org or the free c-span now mobile video app . now conversation on the russian invasion of ukraine. this is part of the center for strategic and international studies global security forum . topics include vladimir putin's strategy, zelensky's leadership in wartime and combatingmisinformation and disinformation . >>. >> nine, eight, seven,six, five, four, three, two, one .

>> welcome to the center for strategic and international studies. president nior vice and director of the international security program . welcome to those both in person and thoseparticipating virtually . we have a wonderful agenda which i'll lay out in a moment but before we do that i didn't want to highlight the focus of our discussion this afternoon. it's on sharpening soft divides. foreign-policy in an area of domestic division and this is the most recent iteration of our global security forum. let me begin just by thinking a number of people that have been involved in putting all this together. let me start with leonardo. we spent a fantastic partner along the way in supporting this entire project. and the product that has come out of it. so thanks leonardo. thanks also to yarrow for his

stalwart leadership in the global security forums and what a wonderful team he had to work with and that we had to work with. led by the organizer extraordinaire of today's event catherine as well as a number of others supporters and anastasia, catalina hallstead, paula reynaud, michael kelly, alexis day marsh on a ghoul. fantastic partnership and work from everybody involved. also thanks to the conferencing and streaming team that has been a great partner along the way. for the agenda today is going to begin with a panel that led by emily harding from the center for strategic international studies as the moderator with sue gordon, nancy yousef and mike greene from the center for strategic international studies.

i'll let emily get to that panel to and do the introductions. and will have a keynote conversation, moderated by suzanne spalding. she'll sit down with secretary of defense, former secretary of defense leon panetta and secretary cohen. that will be in person at csi asked. so before we begin and i hand us over to errol to provide an outline of gsf i do want to provide a little bit of background for how we got to this subject and a little bit of the background on csf as well as security forums. it's the flagship conference of csi international security program. and again as we noted this year we do this in partnership with leonardo. t previous years have looked at other important issues, the role of allies and partners, emerging technology. competition in the gray zone.

and a number of other si issues. and it's so and its subject for this year what we want to do is focus on a strategically important issue . one which was at the front and center of us foreign policy and us national security that we believe if we could contribute to. and just as a reminder, csi s is at its core a bipartisan nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing spractical ideas to addresssome of the world's greatestchallenges . so based on that , sort of strategic overview of what csi s is laid out on its website. we wanted again to hit an issue where we could deal with it in a way that was objective, analytical, innovative, cost disciplinary and one that had impact. so what we wanted to do is in

looking at options looking at subjects that have beendone in the past , we wanted to find commonalities, common interests in an area of domestic divisions. we can certainly see over the past several years in the united states there are examples of divisions within the us. we certainly saw it on and around and after january 6. we saw it around and following the protests regarding the death of george floyd. we've seen it in other ways including around elections in the us. there's also a positive development with the diversity across theus . and historically the us is, was and can be in the future strong precisely because there are differences and that we having open democratic society, we have the opportunity to support freedom of expression,

freedom of speech and if we look at it we have a company that has a richhistory of diversity of political views, multiculturalism . we got a rich tradition of letting immigrants into the united states and racial ethnic diversity . we got urban and rural differences, differences of various locations. regions in the west, northeast and other areas. and we also have the ability to express our views openly. we've seen in the last week or two what happens in a country in this case russia where they do not have read him of expression and freedom of speech. as we see even the thdeparture of western media organizations out of fear that they will be prosecuted or simply explaining what is going on in the world in ukraine. so based on those differences but also what can be strengths what we want to do

is be constructive and to think through how to soften some of the divides that we've seen in the us in ways that can be productive. so with that thank you for joining us. thanks for what will be a wonderful set of panels and i'm going to turn this over to errol who will walk through some of the main findings. over to you. >> thanks except and it's great to see so many actually shining faces as opposed to virtual faces. for those of you online we hope to see you in person very soon. as seth mentioned for this year's global security forum we wanted to dig a bit deeper. especially into thechallenges facing our us foreign policy makers. as we kept talking about

potential topics , in said zoom rooms we kept asking ourselves several questions. would that course of action that we were talking about be acceptable to the us public, and that acceptance or not even matter. as the old political adage goes foreign-policy doesn't win elections so it can certainly lose them. the insinuation of course is that voters, americans don't care about foreign policy unless things go wrong. but the more we dug into the topic of this year's gsf the more we realize it was probably time to update our collective thinking on how and why americans matter for america's foreign policy. the report we launched today is an attempt to do just that. we began the process of developing the report late last year by convening an expert workshop here at csi s. we prioritize diversity knowing full well that we are not exactly a representative

sample of the united states. we put together a bipartisan group from many different disciplines, diverse not just politically and technically ll but racially, geographically and from a gender perspective. many were not just foreign-policy savvy leaders in their communities across the country. the november workshop featured three simultaneously scenario-based exercises . while all three scenarios ve were placed in the future we tried hard for them to be plausible if not actually probable. the first scenario dealt with a severe disruption in the street. korean proxies blocked the street leading to a real threat of escalation in the region between around, saudi arabia and theirvarious allies . the blockade throws global supply chains into disarray causing among other things

the price of oil to skyrocket and the usual panic buying, long lines at gas stationsand other things that tend to follow these types of distractions . the second scenario is one that's near and dear to my own heart and working here at csis with project on mobility. it dealt with a hypothetical turmoil in the central american countries which along with climate change, gang violence and other root causes least regular migrants to leave el salvador, making their way north in large numbers. the third and final scenarios that are experts including one of our panelists that's going to be with usgently , don't with taiwan. specifically a chinese encroachment on taiwan's island. in this type of scenario for gas pipeline explosion damages a chinese fishing

village. both sides are quick to point fingers and hastily plan militaryexercise and in the east china sea and are an increasing risk of direct conflict . our diverse group of experts did not agree on the best courses of action to recommend to the parliament any scenario. nor in fact did they agree on the degree to which public opinion even matters. in the various scenarios. some were very certain about what needed to happen . many others were less certain. however, almost all the experts agree that us global leadership on the issue matter. as to appropriate consultation and messaging with the agamerican people and with ourallies around the world . but we figured that wasn't enough. we wanted to dig a little bit deeper than that even. so we not only anonymously surveyed experts that were with us at the security

forum. some of whom are here in the roomwith us today . we then took that a very similar questionnaire and put it to the field of the public survey. of voting age american adults. and as you can see, there were over 2000 responses. here's some of what we found. by a wide total margin those across the political spectrum from people who self identified as extremely liberal to extremely conservative believed that the us should be more involved in the world, not less. in this answer and others, we found partisan identification also matters less and we had perhaps expected. you all read the news. about our domestic divides. probably as much if not more than we do.

this was definitely a pleasant surprise. thathaving been said , the public is still divided. more divided than the experts we surveyed in fact. in particular on the types of engagement they were comfortable with. yes, the largest number of people are expressing interest in more us involvement but those expressions of interest were not uniform across military political and economic lines. put in english, the public was much more afraid of military entanglements than escalation. it's worth noting that the survey was done before russia reinvented ukraine which i'm guessing will be a hot topic of conversation and the panel to come . but given that what we learned throughout this process, my guess is that this fear of escalation remains. despite the outpouring of support for humanitarian economic and even security sector assistance to ukraine.

so after all this, what are the main policy implications from our work. first and foremost, making us foreign policy in an area of domestic division is hard. really hard. we are in an increasingly connected world with scenes of death and destruction beaming directly into our twitter feeds. >> .. it also requires honest assessment of the risk tolerance of the public. though ultimately, this is a really, really important point,

those responsible for our national security should not eliminate valuable strategic options simply because they are unpopular. unpopular actions will sometimes be necessary but policymakers need to clearly communicate with the public why it is important for them to take those actions, and in doing so helped shape the public narrative around unpopular decisions. there will be disagreements. after all, what's more american than disagreement and debate, especially about places like the thanks giving dinnertable? foreign policymakers should ground these debates and inf consensus wherever they exist. for example, as i just showed, the american public is not isolationist. we believe and a strong active and principled united states. well, there you go, let's start there. my thanks go out to former superstar interdental author sierra ballard and my deepest deepest thanks go to catherine.

not only was she a great co-author come she is the brains and the heart behind this event that you have your today. it's now my honor and privilege to turn the floor over to emily harding, the other co-author on this report and are incredible deputy director and senior fellow at the international security program here at csis. please join me in welcoming emily and the panel. [applause] >> all right. so with that mixed assessment of the pros and cons of where we are right now. first i want to introduce our wonderful panel today. we have susan gordon who is currently a consultant on technology and global risk serving on multiple public boards. she was busy in the government. she keeps yourself or your business will. i had the pleasure working with her when she was the principal deputy director for national intelligence and also the deputy director of the nga and is well

known withinme the government fr her leadership and are driving forward innovation in the government. i'm sure her conversations with business leaders are also bearing fruit. we also have nancy youssef who is the national security correspondent with the "wall street journal." previously as at buzzfeed and has covered the middle east to all of the turmoil the last few years including serving as a pure chief entire book and also serving in iraq and in afghanistan. and with mike green who is of the svp for asia, , japan chair and kissinger chair. csis, the man of many chairs. he's a director of asian studies at georgetown law school as well and he served on nsc staff from 2001-2005 including as senior director for asia. i'm going to be asking mike a lot of questions about the difficulty of making foreign policy when you're trying to also communicate it to the american public. so a few thoughts to kick us off here we find ourselves here in washington during the ides of march, changeable and uncertain whether for a turbulent time.

12 days ago russia did both the attic expected and the unthinkable. they started a land war in europe. they had been telegraphing that punch u for months but many were still shocked when it actually happened. the outpouring of support from the world and across the u.s. has been truly inspiring but there are still those who we have seen try to use this crisis as a wedge issue. so today once again gs f is tackling the most difficult and most timely issues of the day. we are living a case study of unity and division in the face of a foreign policy crisis. erol did a phenomenal job of laying out the phenomenal report. i hope you get a copy of this beautiful shiny report we work so hard on. a few point to want to hit on though. americans are not isolationist. however, they disagree deeply on how to engage in the world. we are seeing the state in ukraine. some people want a no-fly zone. some people want assurances the u.s. will limit its involvement to economic sanctions only. second, one thing that we found

in her our case studies witr experts is that the initial phases of a crisis are the most conducive to unity. butt then population start to feel sacrifice, unity tends to fray. president biden is a restored to use the language of sacrifice the american people to the sanctions that are put in place on russia are the most strenuous sanctions we have ever seen and the knock on effects of the sanctions are still to be felt. i don't think anybody really knows the extent to which they will be reverberating across the world. policymakers have treacherous n path to walk. not just the best wayt to solve the palm but about how to explain it to the public. disinformation competence the picture chipping away at a resilience in unity. the challenge for policy makers, how do you make the tough foreign policy choiceses knowing that whatever you do, your adversaries are going to use it against you, and knowing that a part of the population is going to believe fervently that you are doing it wrong.

so with that as a starting point, i'm going to go to nancy first, given her role as speaking to the american public on a daily basis about developments around the world. how are you saying these debates devolve? specifically on ukraine but then also it of the device of points racing now in learning in a future? >> well, first and foremost thank you for having me in the heart of such an esteemed panel. i'm excited to be and it's wonderful to be up to talk to others about current events as were reporting them. to your question, i'll comment as a storyteller because that's part of what i'm doing and i think one of the things we're seeing out of ukraine is a compelling story. he's a compelling leader. the way that ukrainians have responded has captured the international community. so many in the american public think of the united states as

the country that can do something and respond. sometimes when we talk about the response people will gravitate around a phrase. it's implications of such in the case of a no-fly zone it was hundreds of aircraft potentially with european allies and you have to coordinate with them. there's no guarantee that russia

would abide by the no-fly zone. you see the disagreements break once we talk about the mechanics. you get a sense that people have a redline and it poses such a threat. we are doing something. just maybe we are not putting troops on the ground.

it's not just about whether you put the red with the blue. it's more complicated than that. what's interesting about this moment and the topic because we are seeing a softening of divides because it is harder in this moment as it moves on to describe the event to one policy

or another. it was a disruptive moment and a disruptive time that we thought surely it was either president biden's were former president trump's fault that created this event and we went to our corners and now that you see it coming on, we see this isn't something that we can abide with the values being attacked and the ones being defended are the ones that we actually all hold. so to me the most interesting thing in this recognition that at a fundamental level all of us bailey of the same set of things. freedom and defense of freedom. one of my hopes as we can use this as we go forward because we will get out of this crisis.

i don't know what it will look like. it's a big moment in history and will require much bigger destruction on till hopefully we can capture this. i am very concerned, americans are going to start to feel the pinch. we are already seeing gas prices above four dollars a gallon.

they are going to start to come home. >> i don't know if he was starting to use that language with the american people, but -- >> there's a lot of conversation we have been needing to have about what is happening in the world and we've been under an illusion believing we are all playing this great game and we've gotten at this moment without having had all those. so we didn't do that. we have to scurry to having those larger conversations about

why this moment is about more than putin invading ukraine and no-fly zones and more than the lives being lost. this is not a retrenchment. it is a modern russian philosophy so we need to start having these conversations and you might play a huge role in this because they are limited in the things that they are able to say because they are operationally evolved and now we start his leg a lot of good work coming out, putting this moment in that context and hopefully they will be able to say yes but remember this threat that is different but similar to the threat from china are the ones that matter and let's go ahead and start planning that.

>> the perfect segue. can you talk a little bit about how you think the policy in the time that you had tough choices to make but there's also the difficulty of trying to explain those lungs hope complex subjects with diverse american public. >> i think the biden administration has done generally very well on that front after having done generally twice on the withdrawal and there's a couple of things that makes that easier. number one, the world is rallying. i just came back from a trip with former officials in taiwan where this was a global crisis and china is watching, north korea is watching and you just

assembled the most significant coalition in 70 years to deal with aggression. so that helps because the american people want allies and in iraq we spoke a little bit about that. so that's what the administration has going for it. it also helps when the ally is ukraine of 22, citing and it helps when the evil that you are up against is unmistakable. and you mentioned earlier part of the way the adversaries use the position as the people who were standing up for putin have gone very quiet.

so a lot of these things will help maintain support which is already 75 to 80% but the gas prices will go up and i think they built at least for now with the other factors vietnam and korea. >> one other comment i think the national security and intelligence community double down on the transparency so if you think about the ark of intelligence going from secrets to supporting decision-makers who may or may not be within the government, it's in the last four years made this transition to be that voice that is trusted

and conditioned prepping of the space so that when misinformation tries to sleep in, the trick has already been there. the intel policy is unprecedented. to get a piece of information out, weeks, years but in this current crisis they are using intelligence extremely effectively. i don't what the consequences for intelligence. >> i hope they are doing it right and i think it will change, but i agree it's remembering that your job is national security. when the times change --

>> as you mentioned in the weeks leading up to the invasion, you had top military officials with some level of details. felt like you were being invited in a way that wasn't in the past. you can see things in terms of the military buildup. in a way that i think more than

others in terms of predicting this. what cities may or may not have fallen and what they can see. it hampered their ability. the other thing i would add, this is a conventional war in something we haven't seen on this scale. we are so used to counter counterinsurgency in which the

u.s. shows some restraint. they didn't go as aggressively as they could. they didn't have the resources to do it and now the will to go as aggressively as it can. the u.s. is getting more intelligence on the counter conventional warfare in a way they haven't been able to be so it was not on the scale before. it is about the amazing work the community can do on a daily

basis. they say there are policy successes and failures the sense of dread of course here they are out in the public. there's always a downside. we all hope they are doing it in a way that protects as many as possible and for those you can't protect you find a way to mitigate. i hope this is an opportunity for the american people to renew a little trust in government and seeing that the services are doing their job well and properly and using that information responsibly but on the point of trust in government, what have you seen in terms of what works in worksd

government, what do you think they should be doing to improve that relationship. we need government, do we all agree? do we think our government is as relevant as it needs to be? it was designed in a different way. these are policies and procedures in place to make sure the government is fair and equitable and transparent but this is a really different world and one that we don't talk about enough to believe we had a disrupter during a disruptive time and we need the government to respond to how the disruptive

world works and being good at government. it doesn't do anyone justice to suggest that it's malfeasance. it's not my experience that it is. second, put leaders in place that are good enough as those of big systems to make effect to the changes they need to. three, i love this country and what the founders envisioned. i love that we have the different parties and views on how we should approach different problems, but something has happened where every person is on one party or another because we have other political appointees. quit moving all government

leaders out every time you have a new administration come in because most are apolitical. this is a transparent time and any institution that says if anything it better be true there just isn't a trust for the governments of those set of things will be on the way. we need to talk about the government institutions. there isn't a young person in school that wouldn't want to be part of this.

this is protecting america and the interest. you do have to move it along and if you were talking about sharing information differently because the moment demands it. so bureaucracies can get started. >> where there is a well, there is a waiver. >> it's a problem for think tanks and corporations.

we've had deep debates. what do we do after. we talked about getting in buses and things like that. it turns out people like facts. they are powerful things and i suspect at some level the speed with which it declassified things this time had a lot to do with the marketplace. people can get stuff to "the new york times" [inaudible] [laughter] it would have been highly restrictive so i think the marketplace has changed and the

government is figuring that out. the other thing is bipartisanship. we have meetings on china all the time but never from both parties and when the cameras are off it's what we've got to do and the administration would be wise to convene congress constantly sharing intel, ideas. there will be some outliers. that's inevitable but the bipartisanship is possible and in its ukraine case. this a deep bipartisanship and

what created that magic is we were all sitting in the same office space and in the same room republican or democratic colleagues when you are trying to get ready for the hearing the next day and a lot of the discussion happened behind closed doors. the only thing i would add is i think one reason there was some doubt about the claim even though we could see incredible masses is i do think afghanistan was a factor and the way afghanistan and the way information was put forward i think was a contributing factor and when you hear americans saying let's do more, it really

crushed not only internally but externally about the ability and what it could and couldn't do. it's an opportunity to reassert itself as the leader of the defenders of democracy at a time when you see every day everydays fighting so valiantly against the classes were the democraticc system. >> that's very true. i kind of like the idea getting on buses and traveling the country. it would be like the nerdiest party bus in the world. there is this moment right now where this is the first open source war. anything you want to know it

exists whether it is true or not so we are in this moment where there's a huge amount of information. a lot of it is credible, there's a lot of disinformation and you see people trying to sort through to not stop and think through for a second this thing that i absorbed is real or true or sourced or just somebody pushing an agenda. but the way that you the journalist work through what is true and real and how to talk about that with the readers in this world where there's so much pressure to just to get it out there before you know for sure that it's true. >> everybody that's posting this

outrage it's a challenge because you will have readers and seeing them to react or post something or confirm it or whatnot and what you are advocating for is time. we sold this last week when the nuclear power plant was dropped and we were living in a world where this radioactive material being released and you are trying to confirm it in my case everyone is trying to confirm it even though no one could get to the site to make an assessment so that is an example of your expected to have information and there is no point to get it and people are giving you their information or perception of information. so readers come to us within

expectation that we validate their point of view when there is a label. for me it's it validates someone's point of view and so the way you do it is you fight for time and try to second and third source things. i can only give you as much as i know. sometimes you have to be okay with not being first. the way i tried to do it journalistically is not to take every nugget but come up with things that are bigger that don't put me on that hamster

wheel as validating something in the moment. the last thing i will say information was like a faberge egg and information has become much more fluid and malleable and that's affected it so sometimes i feel like i put a lot of time and it feels like how consumers experience it.

let's preserve the credibility and to see what we can find out that's real before we talk about it to a reporter for example, and that idea is the faberge egg like you getting your house egged on a daily basis. the point about validating your own opinion that we started come this idea that you can have a conversation and disagree without it being personal, a personal insult and i feel like we've gotten away from that as a country there needs to be this tradition. the tradition of debate without it being a personal debate. i feel the need to make a comment. i think one of the reasons we've lost that is in the sources for information you tend to

gravitate to the one that is closer to your point of view and increasingly they offer very different facets so what we created is allowing people to believe that they are seeing the truth this is the only thing that you could have and if you don't have that opinion so we've got to do something to get back to having a more common fact it's a decision someone could make they are trying to get a

fact set out one viewpoint or another. we were talking about intelligence there is a craft for intelligence that's what makes it intelligent. there's a craft to it and it's a little arcane so when they issue judgments because intelligence generally is about possibility so it's fundamentally uncertain and the urgency of the moment.

of there's still a gap that needs to be crossed because it's not the same at just taking information and making different thoughts. we have to become more transparent but the idea if they are going to be part of the government and trusted by the public they have to be more transparent about what they do and how they do it. if they are the national decision-makers they are being attacked by our adversaries and competitors through information shaping if they are a global company we are going to have to arm those people with the best information we have.

airlines refusing to fly in now. we will pull ourselves out regardless. the democracies i will say much like the hackers the one cautionary comment i would make is this is a big system. there are systemic effects that will happen and so my preference

is always to love the energy and it's one of the reasons people can take or should take much like the eloquent discussion about why you do or don't enforce a no-fly zone so how do we get that conversation to be more robust so those actions are more mindful of the systematic effect? >> love your energy. let's correct it properly. >> one of the things i've been very impressed with is this close partnership trying to pull everybody in and have them work as a team. the citizen activism you want to

try to channel for good so on that note i want to talk a little bit about making the public resilient to misinformation. suzanne will be sitting on the stage and just a while and she has done tremendous work on building democratic institutions and trying to create a public that is more aware of what it means to be a citizen and democracy. when i was working on the russia investigation, we worked a lot on thinking about resilience by the public to the disinformation and one of our recommendations was more funding for critical thinking to get people thinking about the information they are absorbing. china is becoming more of a

player in this space as well but how should we be thinking about creating public populations, engaged citizens that are resilient? the problem i worry about most i don't think we have a public division problem. the polls show there's a lot of unity about the analyzing of the competition with china. the problem throughout the division is not in the public and china is not effective in the way russia was. i think they just are not that good at it.

they are not among the corporate america and of those are big divisions. they are not monolithic in northern california and new york do not want to get on the site of the strategic composition or live out technology except a little bit but by the same token who don't understand what corporations do or understand profits or responsibilities to shareholders, in the strategic competition with china that's what we talked about when we had

our group it was the private sector and very specifically silicon valley. both sides have to learn about the others. those are the scenes we try to explain in the competition. >> talk about the scenario i participated we had a discussion and then how we explain this to the american people and that is where the census in the room fell apart. it was difficult how they would communicate. what was the ark of the ark of e discussion in your room? there wasn't much debate about taiwan as a national matter of interest.

one was how do we get corporate america to help and that is why this case is so interesting the facts that you have international collaboration matters because the corporations here are going to see if allies are working together it gives more room to the corporations to make decisions in the national security space so our discussion happened before and i think it would be different today. china is very different but we would have more than we did a few months ago and maybe we could form an international coalition and it's not all about the exports.

this is what we heard when we were here last week. the u.s. and the left are in a better position. do you want to add anything on the more resilient population point? i want to talk about communicating effectively and then i want to ask the panel what advice they have for the biden administration talking about this crisis to the american people. when i was at the nsc and my government career with so many conversations ended with the objects of that won't be good,

it's one of those nails on a chalkboard but if it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do and we will let the chips fall where they may. but then we always picked up the phone and called the press secretary. learning how to communicate very well what has to be done. can you say how you find those kind of >> let me start by saying now the press secretary you talk about calling the press secretary, now the press secretary is in room of those conversations. the thing that a strike me the

most in the course of my career is as information has been spread across more platforms, the messaging of the policies become more important. you would think would be the other way around when there were three channels and just a handful of sort of daily national newspapers, you would think would be the way around. actually as it's become more diverse the messaging has become a a much more, a bigger pie of the policy puzzle and that's been something that's really struck me. i'm not good at advice giving, but i will say, in my experiencg a couple things stand out. i think is always our reticence to let the people who are actually making decisions go to the podium and talk about their policies which i think is always unfortunate. i'll just be to the military. in the sort of post stan mcchrystal wrote a lot of commanders will say why should i

go out there and risk my career and give a perspective on what i've done? i understand that. >> could use a little bit about what happened to stan mcchrystal? >> 2009, ten, stan mcchrystal was a commander in afghanistan put spent a lot of his career doing special operations. he and his staff took a rolling stone reporter with them for several months and in the course of that they said a lot of things that were less than appropriate, including making references to the now vice president. it was an incident where i general was summoned back to washington and fired not for the conduct of the war but for how his staff talked about the war because it said something about his management of that staff, and it was a communications fail versus a battlefield fail. it was really scarring for people and the united states military because up until that point they been told it was better to communicate.

we seen a real retreat. so now you have press secretariesre talking at times s when the uc see people in command. i think to me if i were to give advice i think it's having the people speak to what they've done. i'll give you an example. there was ave strike in syria of the head of isis a few weeks ago, seems like years ago now but just a few weeks ago there was a strike of head of isis. a few reporters were invited. these are people spent months planning this, making the mock, mockup of the site who had seen these guys in real time go in and their ability to speak to what they did. you could hear the pride in what he did. you could hear the fear and what they did. you could hear a sense of the east that just couldn't be communicated from, as much as i love former spokesman, and so intransigent indicating the one thing that's been lost and has been really detrimental is the voice from people who are in the

room. press secretary a great. it's a lot to understand things day-to-day a little better but when big events happen i think it's important to have that person who is part of it, have a conversation and to show us that you have the confidence and this ability cannot only manage that operation but to speak about it in a way, in a responsible way. >> along with the trendlines you see, feels like i'm at an actual study on this, would be interesting how may my soure name versus unnamed sources in the press pic you have a person thing with his situation, that's probably my least favorite tagline in a news article. person familiar with the details. i would hope so. again as a former intelligence analyst we had to be explicitt about what our sources were. you would spend a couple lines describing firsthand source with excellent access who response to tasks and you have a lot of

transparency on whether this person actually knows what they're talking about. i hear what you're saying. it would be great to have more people who have been on the grant and doing the operations actually speaking about them. can you do that and protect privacy? can you do that and described them as credible sources? >> this is where my bias is going to show. i can understand wanting to protect privacy but they are public servants. in my case, , cindy other peopls children into harm's way, making really critical decisions. i don't know how you can show your support of your decision making other than put your name behind it. the other thing i would say is, we've gotten to the point now a lot of these senior defense officials, i should be writing people up, but i -- are people who -- >> that will only last for ever. >> spokesman for people who are public figures.

i do think at times it is detrimental to the u.s. policy -- i give you an example, when putin and biden had the first talk, they hadn't -- they had the official unofficial person. they have like official people designated as a senior administration official to speak about the u.s. experience our perspective on that phone call. the russians had their spokesman come out by name on camera and give the russian version. it gave more credibility to the russian version of that phone call because you what a face and the name behind it. so it's not just about my wanting to know which is, it's a big part of it to be fair, but it shapes the messaging when you have somebody willing to put the name behind it. and can actually affect policy and it affected perceptions of that call, so much so that the next time there was something that happened this summer come out on camera. imagine if jake sullivan had been a senior administration official saying that russia could attack before the end of

the olympics and you should get out, versus having a name and someone standing at the podium saying it. it's the difference between the speaking to hear and speaking with a megaphone. >> so you were in a position where he had to decide who to put in front of the cameras, who to let talk to reporter. how did you think through the problem? >> for most of my career in the intelligence community we didn't talk to reporters. that's a fire of offense but we figured out, you know, so we got better atut that. so decision-maker should always take responsibility for decisions, right? and to your point, i think it depends on the seriousness of it. it. it depends on the gravity that you want. you should never send somebody to answer questions who can't answer questions. the truth has its own sound, somewhat unprepared to go in the place, the conversation is going

to go, is going to take totally sound work and make it seem sketchy here so i think it's just tuning it to the moment. i think some of our most effective techniques are when we put experts off the record in front of people to have really detailed conversations so they can see that face, they can feel it, but you are doing it in the glare of exactly what brought us to this moment, which is a very divided public, right? and that has to be a factor in any leaders decision-making about what is going to happen to that human. mind you, no one knew who i was until the moment i was no longer going to be in my position in the trump administration. i don't know the first time you get a a link in note that says i know where you live and i will be therege tonight, you traitor, and you're like you don't know me.

there is a reality to that that i just think, but always put someone who can speak to what they're speaking about. if it's a big t decision where going to get to policymaker device, that would be the one i would say is, if you're going to do something hard, and it today, you're the one that's saying you're doing something hard and it's big and you do it at the right level and you take it where it is. but you have to have someone who is good enough to be able to have a conversation about the truth, at whatever level they are speaking. >> i want to turn to mike for advice for just a second but it is about the device when it by our audience if you have questions to please step up to the microphone over there. we have a very talented panel and look forward to hearing your questions. mike, advice for you. >> we've talked about divides, and one of the divides we haven't talked about is division

between our priorities in asia and our priorities in europe, and the national security strategy and the national defense strategy was supposed to come out late january or something like that. you don't know quite what the world is going to be looking like, but all indications were that the original drafts were going to focus on, unlike the trump national security strategy, we're going to prioritize china. now they're going to rebalance that the bit and figured that out and are big debates about how much we should put our strategic competition with china at risk to deal with russia and ukraine. as in asia expert i say put at risk because what happens in ukraine is going to be fundamental to what happens next in asia. the free get it wrong and if you're worried about resources, we're talking about u.s. diplomats -- deployments to nato that will be big, a friend to the will be much longer plus the loss of credibility if we fail. for now if you want good asia

strategy we have to get this right. but there still, that still going to leave big questions of resources. my advice to the administration is indeed to go to the american people, to congress, frankly the midterm results may make this easier and you do plus-up defense. we have to be able to deter in both nato and the western pacific at the same time, and it will be somewhat easier now in the sense that we have demonstrated our ability to form global coalitions that will help. but you got to spend. that takes a message from the president and i think frankly the congress would support it. after november. and then the other one is we haven't talked about it very much, but if you're going to maintain stability in both regions you got to have an economic statecraft, strategy. you got to have -- and the administration has floated this indo-pacific economic framework to sort of look at this to keep opel busy -- people busy.

it's mostly slogans and things so far. it's not a hot war in asia. it's a game of influence and strategic leverage, and the chinese and road trying to join the big trade agreement, we pulled out of, they're pulling out all the stops the can and we are just doing almost nothing. so this is very political. the surveys show the american public thinks trade is good. you could build a coalition to do more on trade. the administration and the previous administration decide it's too radioactive, it's not popular. when you talk about doing the right thing, not the popular thing, this may be harder than increasing defense spending but they've got to do it. if this is a moment when we realize there's evil and danger in a world you can't just fight it with defense and diplomacy. you've got to have an economic strategy. >> could add something, because it jumped up for me when you said, is reading a report on

defense spending. before russia's invasion of ukraine there was a lot of talk about not increasing defense spending as much at a lot of it was driven by domestic politics in that come under the trump administration the president would frequentlyes say that he, this is not a political statement but he would say he knew better than his generals, there was an erosion of trust and you could see reflected interpose budget. there were more commissions, more reviews, there was some discussion of cutting or at least that increasing defense any as much as it was because of sort of domestic political sentiment that the pandemic showed us that we have put our national security resources where they need to be and maybe we need to n make a shift. it's interesting, in a span of 12 days and led to a completely different shift in conversation in terms of ho we think about defense spending. i think it speaks to a quickly events move and how for governments that are not necessarily as agile as the times were livings in, that the challenge of responding to i

think it was certainly a year plus of sentiment among some base, some republican base that says we didn't want as much spending, and now we talk about needing more. i think it speaks to where the merge can happen between public sentiment and national securityb policy but also how fickle these can be. .. in. >> in 12 days there's complete and utter turnaround but this is something we were speaking about before in the session as well, watching all of this move so >> i do wonder how long that can last. what will tip back a different direction and right now we're talking about more spending. i'm sure that's going to carry through relations bills

and authorization bills is far as the american horrible you see anything that could tip the balance one way or another either towards a serious commitment or towards a winning ascension. >> i would start a conversation. we're prepared to have that conversation. about the larger issues. this moment, i believe we will salt package weight. i don't know what that will be. whether that is taking the land but never winning ukraine. whether that is that you're forcing forced meinto some sort of engagementi don't know what i think it will be . i would start changing the rhetoric. about why we need to do

things. it's so easy to be righteous during a time like this. on energy. on defense. i think if you take that rhetoric and that righteousness and say with use this and say where we are whether it's an incredibly elegant discussion about how it's national security but it is a competent national security but we need to start those and that needs to start seeping in to the conversations and the addresses everybody's had. the leadership of congress will have missed an opportunity to really seize this moment. where our nation sees a moment that it's sewing and disquiet. the pandemic showed us this quiet. it will come back because

these trends are not going away. >> i mean, zelensky has been such a tremendous leader for his his people. he's been down with thetroops , taking off a suit and tie to put on basically 50s and he had used his prostrating let's say to great effect to really use messages that are going to resonate with his people and leaders in europe and frankly are resonating quite well here in the united states . there's a line about i don't need a ride, i need ammunition. that's going to be one of those iconic leadership moments i think of this conflict. we talk about profiles in courage and this is a profile in courage. i am deeply concerned if something happens to him that that messaging may die off over the long term that if you don't have another person

stepping up and continuing the drumbeat, but that too could tip the balance away from this dynamic and compelling leader who is uniting the worldaround his thoughts . >> obviously it's not just him. if it were just him you wouldn't be having strong pockets of resistance in the, leaders are critical and it matters but you know, we have been insituations before . where we didn't have strong leaders but also didn't have strong leaders so in that sense we have a strong hand. at least in terms of how we explain to the american people how allies and how were to overcome. >> the stories from across ukraine are compelling and astonishing in a lot ofways . and there's everyday heroism.

i'm from a part of north carolina and watching them turn taxes tractors that speaks to me in way. i would hope that if he does have to go underground or if he does have to hide there are people ready to step up in a public wayacross ukraine . that kind of leadership i think is critical to speaking to the american people. to come out and say this is why you need to do this, the fight against tyranny. this is what sacrifices may be required but also why. is leading the despite the unpopularity. i wanted to ask you about that leadership quality, where have you seen this play out in the way of healing

divisions.you've covered some divisive parts of the world, where are you seeing this work well. >>. >> i think where i get to see it most often is in watching commanders command and the difference between one unit and a neighboring unit is so contingent on that person and their ability to galvanize their troops and to show that there in contention. i've seen it on a micro level and in the military what makes it so extraordinary is your scene a 23-year-old who's never left his hometown was being asked in some rural part of afghanistan to lead other 18, 19-year-olds. and into battle and to be he

inspiring and motivational to them. that's in the course of work that i don't see often and in the most interesting way because they're there with them and you're in that conflict day after day feeling the pain that you're feeling when they're across the wire. so i just echo some of it is the training they and some of it is really in eight talent that they have i think the ones who been the most effective speak the clearest. are in the fight with them and there's a real sincere sentiment behind what they're trying their troops and i think that's a credit, that's what struck me about zelinski. he operates not inmy head the way i think of a president . as someone leading great speeches, he's doing that but

he reminds me more of an army captain. leading a unit in terms of trying to motivate and going out on the streets with his, i mean the worst commanders i've ever seen on the ones who stay on base, don't go out with their troops. don't understand what they're asking about. and don't believe in the cause and they think what makes him compelling other than the obvious reasons is as a leader he has all those necessary skills to not only freebies but also the international community. one of the things i think in terms of this news event is one of the few world events that i covered i guess arab spring would be the closest where there's international agreement that of who's right and who's wrong. the idea of somebody invading another country that did nothing to them despite the historical ties is something, children and i go home and

children understand that dynamic areoutraged by that dynamic and his been able to personify that tone and tenor . i think it, it's how i experience it, how my readers experience it and when i hear from my own family members. >> the elements is the strength of projects where you speak and he tacitly sort of acknowledges the united states so you know he knows who his biggest ally is. but he's unwilling to also he understands he's unwilling to pander to that moment and i think there's something compelling about people who understand their responsibilities and do have a line where they won't just capitulate to anything in order to get a vote through. >> this is democracy under

attack in ukraine. he's saying this is a threat to a very very principle of a country like the united states and you're saying the united states this isn't worth committingyour forces to, how do you reconcile that. it's been such a big threat while to do more. he's challenging that . >> he speaks in russian to the russian people and that thing is here i am, a russian-speaking jew in the ukraine and you're telling me what exactly western markets very compelling. so the contrast of his leadership style begins leadership has been stark. i think it was senator romney who had a great line about zelensky with his men in the thick of it, in the trenches and you see who can in this marble room with this huge

long table, so incredibly distant from his advisors. it looks like a mausoleum where freedom goesto die. >> you know where vladimir putin looks good right now ? in chinese because chinese media has essentially social media and state media has essentially replayed the russian narrative. has censored any narrative of zelensky and when it gets through its attack this fake news to large parts of the world are buying it. this is not something that the chinese scholars or diplomats really believe but there are parts of the world where the narrative is being controlled in ways that help putin because i believe this is debated among china experts, i believe ginseng is all in for putin. he cannot let him fail. he/she will not trade secondary sections of banks

at major risk but china's already defined un security council resolutions on the area. allowing: fuel and other things. and i think it's a pretty state that you will see significant backfilling from beijing and the tell is this narrative inside china that the government is pushing. so we are doing great with this media but in large parts of the world where not breaking through. >> great. >> thank you to the panelists for having a great discussion. a question i had and i've only waited a couple more months what we've seen is there's been incredible support for both operation allies with afghanistan and now using incredible support with ukraine so what are some lessons we can learn from both of these operations that have brought together the american public that we could

use fora future scenario ? whether it's taiwan, whether it's that straight. so just curious, opening it up to the whole panel. >> now start because i came from taipei . and she is studying zelensky. she's picking fruit and i think as effectively finding ways to communicate in the way zelensky did. to unify a population that is divided on some of these questions, to unify an international tcommunity. and you know, part of that is not being provocative. and being steady and reliable. so there is a lesson for taiwan. the president is clearly internalizing it. i thinkeffectively shaping the narrative not only on taiwan but internationally . and we as we deal with, look.

there are other places in the world that are under threat from large autocracies and we want to be thinking how we work with some of these countries and get some of these lessons in . how do you spend your defense dollars or do you spend it on being big chinese objects and missiles or you spend a on civil defense and thingslike that. how do you think about your narrative . other countries in the world. it may be that us and a few other allies with high-end capabilities come to your health militarily but there are a lot of powerful economies in the world that can be your -friend in a crisis so there are very big lessons just for taiwan, india, for other countries that are under pressure from the powerful autocracies in their neighborhoods. >>. >> doctor jones. >> it's been a great panel. question that probably is first to mike and anybody else who wants to weigh in on

it. we have important moments over the past hundred years or so which have kind of reshaped how the us both domestically hand the government as well as internationally with allies and partners have restructured and we thought of themselves. it's certainly the post world war ii period where we developed a alliance structures and economic arrangements. there's the post 9/11 period where we created and we can argue about the effectiveness of some of these but we created a department of homeland asecurity and created a national counterterrorism's center. we restructured howimportant these efforts were.so this , that kind of moment and even if not, how. we spent a lot of time in the us and we've heard voices over the last couple of years it doesn't matter anymore.

let's have a transactional relationship as opposed to multilateral one. so how do we use an event like this tostart to restructure . we're not really well structured to compete with some of the estate. we omdon't have a lot of resources into public diplomacy or the information campaign. we're having information agency that we did during the cold war. we don't have a clear alliance structure yet in the asian-pacific. it does look like were going to take our nato alliances more seriously now and now we're hearing from european states about increasing their percentage of gdp that they're willing to spend on defense. the big question from for mike to be given is his best that kind of moment are we approaching it where we can start to really think about how we structure our cells both domestically as a government and and then

internationally to deal with competition here? >> is a small question jeff, thank you. >> that's what gave it toyou. >> on the international side, we have a motive and opportunity and requirement. we're not going to create a global nato. russia and frchina are different . their perception varies even in asia. so we're not going to create nato on a global scale but we would be full not to create the kind of connections from nato to us-japan alliance to the quad. we be foolish to not create a lot more connectivity around specific issues of security. which would include technology competition, it would include how we stop for interference and how we work together to develop a toolkit that we don't have now to

deal with the situations for example where asking allies to cut off nordstrom, or asking the japanese to cut off gas and oil. how do we as a global group of democratic allies create the mechanisms to backfill quickly when we're asking one of our members to cut off a state like this, right russia. how do we help each other defend against boycotts like china's doing against australia or lithuania right now west and mark there's a very robust agenda for security cooperation using economic tools, stopping for an interference that doesn't require the senate but it requires active linking of alliances around the world . and some of this is happening already. the other thing is domestically, we have a lot. the theme here is we have a lot more unity than not. there's one place where i'm not as confident about our national unity and maybe this is naunfair but we have a national crisis that we need

to think about how we apply our resources and the answer is the army says yes, look at what's happening, we need more tanks and artillery and the rain courses look at what's happening, we needmore small assets . we need all the service wto air missiles and you have the air force and navy. so i don't hear out of the services unity of effort. when i think i see is the services seeing this crisis and making the case for their own admission and i think that the administration needs to impose some discipline. it sort of gets back to what we were saying earlier about this being a moment for the president to say we need the country needs to step up. it's about economic policy but also about disciplining not just how much we spend but how we spend it and how we prioritize missions because i sense that unity is not there right now among the

services. i'm sure the joint chiefs will send me a message complaining but i think it's not where it needs to be i think the first thing is we have to irreally embrace that we are competing. that we don't just have every advantage, that some of our investment has to be not just protecting but investingin those states . that allows us to be so advantageous. the second thing is this technology thing, if we don't have commerce department that is able to have a real voice and technology development, technology policy and the only real voice is defense department, we will not get that balance we need to between military security and economic security where are

the two audits of national security so that the other thing is we need to prop up domestically our ability to have a view of eequality policy should be and it can't be just defense. >> i think the biden administration has someone who could do that. commerce secretary is not always strategic but he has a strategic right now and running stage is good practice for doing things . >> i would add cyber security as well. every time there's a new shiny object in the federal government they want to create a department of an agency for and this is one of gethose that i think instead of creating a agency for cyber security r, we would create an agency for front door security and what you need to do is embed this in the dna of federal government and that's what i see the national cyber director and antigen trying to do. it really does it very well. >>. >> taking your comments about unity and also going back

emily when you are talking about sacrifice. that's something that's a little bit difficult for the public sector and the public sphere in america so how do leaders communicate need for sacrifice andgenerate a groundswell to move forward so it doesn't just turn into twitter more of complaints against each other . >> speaking of easy questions. >> i don't think there's any magical here. i think yes. my leadership trick is when you are in conflict you go to a higher level. we can agree on many time the specifics. the problem is when we sacrifice right now is where asking to sacrifice what you do from what i want to do. and so i think the conversation needs to be very clearly around the reason that the sacrifices necessary. and then the sacrifices need

to be proportionate to the outcome you expect. because if we are in a time of utmistrust, if we just hear something that sounds like a policy of one party or another we will assume that it's just using the crisis for that moment. so i think were going to be a have to be a little more talking about sacrifice that yields outcome, not just for sacrifice as something you're going to have to give but i'm in no promises . >> it's absolutely crucial in so much of the line between the sacrifice and the outcome is twisty and long and difficult to explain. >> it's scary to put your name on an outcome. >> it's scary but what we need to start doing. >> there is a huge element of humility there. the outcome has to be bigger than me so i can put my name on it to serve the bigger n goal. it is not about mining is attached to this post policy

fails, it's about is this good for the long-term future . >> that's what nancy was saying when she was talking about the willingness of people to stand by their work . if they understood it wasn't about sue gordon was saying something, but it's sue gordon whatever position i represent. i am much more willing to both be true in that and willing to do it because it's not me personally, it's the position i hold and i'm still i feel quickly on medicine all right story that i think nd iif you want to know how powerful this is she tells this very well about when she was going to her first un security council meeting. and she was walking in the room and thinking where are they going to like her, how is she going to get along. and she saw her name in the united states and she was different because she knew niwho she was and she knew about the responsibility she carried so i think there's a little bit of that.

and i think that's what you y were saying so eloquently about life people would put their name on it it would carry more weight because it wouldn't be about the human, be about the responsibility . >> thank you so much for your sharing. my question pertains to your thoughts on about the response of media and world leaders to the crisis in ukraine as compared to what ever that has been happening or has happened in the past and for example tigre or yemen. so in some situations the response has been different from what was observed in ukraine. there can be two possibilities for that. either it's because of russia nuclear arsenal they hold and that is imposed and secondly, there could be an issue or zeal for the undertones to this so what would be your thoughts about that. >> revisits both .

it is. there's no other way. it's a compelling story. it's the story of a country a lot of people in this country have connections to. i think we seen this in some of the coverage when people talk about ukraine is more developed and more sophisticated than afghanistan or iraq or yemen. just in newsrooms everywhere there are russian and ukrainian speakers. there werespeakers , there weren't diary speakers. i do think there's both of those elements of it. and it's on my record personally because having spent so much of my career covering iraq and afghanistan and the conflict in the middle east is sometimes starting to me to see how much interest on one hand i think it's wonderful and

justified. it is also frightening to know it wasn't equally distributed. i'd also say that an ability to treat these conflicts i think almost contributed. vladimir putin didn't just start to show his ways in the last month or 12 days. this was something over two decades. in parts of the region we didn't get as much attention to what syria for example. so i do think the inability to look at this as a conflict and say it's just having there. has actually contributed to our misunderstanding and miscalculation and why i think so many are surprised at something in some ways have been coming together in the past two decades in other parts of the region we didn't pay asmuch attention to four or for access in our own . >> i agree with that but i would say afghanistan was on

the eyes of the demonstration. i think there is another important difference which is the american public that question was good we help build a democracy in afghanistan and the answer. to be no . we're talking about a democracy attack. so it's different in that sense. and i think personally i think this is the time to look back at how congress is throwing robust support for helping ukrainians from the united states. this is a time to look again at how many afghans we can get out and get to the united states. i make that argument strongly but i think the cases are different and it's not just a racial factor. ukraine is not perfect but a democracy being attacked, it's different for the american public in a place where were trying and when i was in office we thought we might have a chance when we were trying to tell democracy so those are important differences i think.

>> question and a good one. we have about four minutes left. and i want to be sure that we turn to you for any closing thoughts you might have. this has been a really powerful discussion about the areas of unity where we talk about foreign policy and how you can make it that to the american people. i'm very much looking forward to secretary pineda and colin talking about this as well and i was at the agency when secretary pineda was the then director. i really appreciated his leadership style which was outgoing and very approachable. one of the moments of my agency career i think i'll remember forever was when then director cannot hold us all into the bowl to talk about and share with everyone the success that all of his people's hard work for so long had gone into and it was one of those moments of unity and it was a challenging

moment for the agency. both of them will have some compelling things to say about how do we talk to the american people aboutforeign policy discussions, and policy failures and sacrifice . what this means to be a part of global interconnected community. but any closing thoughts from our panelists. >> the reality is we now have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. we're going to have to be able tomaintain focus on asia . and at least all of the same time and i was told recently with the administration working on asia and one of the agencies asked when you are in the white house and there was going on how to keep the focus on asia? and i said the key really is knowing what your strategic goals are. and then bend everything towards that.i do think that one thing that will help us in this walking and

chewing gum in the same time in asia is there is a consensus about what the threats are and whatthe opportunities are, the importance of alliances . we're not going to fight that. i don't know if that's true for the middle east. i think there's much less consensus about what we should be doing in the middle east and if i were okay , we have to mark up getting lieffect it might be in how we deal with that part of the world . that sort of segue. >> i thought we were working on the jcp oa negotiations rightnow and if it's already happening nobody's paying attention . i wish they were. >> i think there's no other take away except to say these are all connected. there is no ukraine prices and middle east crisis and asian crisis. these are all interlinked and in the months ahead i'll give you one example. the story about syrians being recruited to go to ukraine.

we're seeing veterans go in and the conflict in ukraine becomes foreign fighters from around the world and in the case of the middle east we can see as those shifts happen and as russia moves its focus on ukraine we can see a change in dynamics in the middle east. we can see russia becomes more aggressive in the middle east and it goes out to american forces in a way to signal frustration with what the us is doing so as we think about these issues going forward i think it's important to understand there is no isolated crisis and that in a more complicated world where living in we're seeing it play out in several different ways in ukraine and so the onus becomes on thoughtful leaders like you to have to know, look at

these issues and hethink and a more nuanced way.i'm sorry but i think it's the only way to get a solid understanding of how to think about themand how to craft policy . >> i can't believe i have to go third . these are really hard issues. we're just seeing them with incredible clarity now. so that's one and i don't think there are quick fixes . even as you demand response. second, i do think that informed progress has always been our strength but it's harder to be informed sodon't listen to anyone that tells you what to believe, do the hard work . there are lots of data sources out there . it's almost seamless between government and the private sector andthe populous . it is all related, they're all affected so they have to work in concert and the last

thing i'd say is there are people every day who would advance their interests so those who say there are real evil difficulty out there are not making it up to get some policy. >> that's absolutely right. on that note of unity and informed policy being a team sport thank you to our efforts out here. i really appreciate it. [applause] >>. [inaudible]