to fall back on. i felt that was the most important thing and president karzai became a great partner in that. >> i found it interesting in the karzai interview that it clearly made an impression on him that he picked up the phone personally and would call him and apologize. the to realize the impact it would have on him for was a natural and in a reaction to it? >> at the time, i was not thinking about the long-term relationship, it instead i was thinking about how you would deal with someone with which you have a trust relationship. as we build the relationship over time, it became not only of trust but deeper. that was something that i took great confidence and comfort in. >> i think that people do not realize that our military leaders deployed in war zones, they have to leave their own men

and they have to be diplomat and soldier and leader and they have to do it under the scrutiny of a 24-hour media cycle. talk about the impact of media on leadership. >> i think that both the amount of scrutiny in the speed in which scrutiny comes out in media has changed the environment in leaders in a way that we do not fully comprehend. a leader, even at a junior level, it will be in the media very quickly and it will go viral. that is before additional facts can be gathered and actually assess what has happened, before people have had time to put together different perspectives of the story. leaders, despite best efforts to try to project a good information -- they cannot put something out until they are sure it is correct, so they tend

to not be so fast as someone who does not have that same responsibility. a leader has to operate in an area where it there is a perceived mistake. i would argue that there is great danger on leadership. one thing that it will do is cause leaders to become overly cautious. i think it will likely have an effect to keep people who would be leaders from entering the field because it becomes such a no fail situation. >> how do you take that experience that you talk about internationally with the media and make that practical advice for the students? >> the first thing that i do it is one then the that is the reality. you cannot pretend that -- if we just manage better and set up the war . . that is not realistic right now.

i think that the best that you will do is break-even. on most days, it will be very difficult to do that. leaders have to first understand that requirement. they have to build trust up and down their chain so that if something comes up, people see that and they can put that into context. if they see something that happens, they suddenly know that does not seem right. beyond that, i think the media has to take lessons from that. the media does not carry the same level of responsibility that has to. they can affect the situation more than is understood. >> is that exacerbated because we have journalism reporting the facts, but there is a lot more opinion out there right now. it is not always clear which is which. is that an added factor to the chaos? >> i think that it is. i think that the one thing that

helps with that is that people are starting to recognize that. unfortunately, they are starting to discount certain parts and positions of the story. they assume that there is a certain bias to it. that affects our media in the long term. >> what is your sense of the students? is there an interest in public service? they have access to you and access to many wonderful leaders at yale and harvard. does that inspire them to service or do you see that they ask why they would want to do that? >> i do not see any reluctance to serve for the some of my students have already been serving in various levels. some in government and some in the united nations that have come back to graduate school. i see that they have a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and a deeper sense of responsibility. i sense that they are willing to try this, no matter what the

risks. if we can arm them with a better appreciation, they stand a better chance to be affected. >> are there good examples of positive leadership that you have seen, whether it is here in the united states or around the world? acts of leadership that impress you? >> there are three. i went down into helmand where people were not being successful. that was not the reality on the ground. as i went down, this was a company that had been creative for high in combat and people that had entered the service with the expectation that they would fight the enemy. in this area, i found pieces of cardboard that were off of mailboxes and they had written different lessons of counterinsurgency and they were written and posted all over the camp. every time you to your bond for

to the small child all, you read the lessons that were learned. these were things that they learned in that area recently. i thought that this was kind of gimmicky, so i went to talk with the noncommissioned officers and the young marines. it was extraordinary because they were doing it. was not a chain of command. -- it was not a chain of command handing it down. harvard university is a preeminent university, but the students there have a level of idealism and frustration with the progress that they see and they have organized student leadership groups. they still e-mail me as they try to reach out to the future. finally, the group that really is most stunningly courageous is the female legislatures in afghanistan. to be in the parliament in

afghanistan is to be challenging. to be a female in parliament takes real courage. you are running against a lot of cultural pressure that you have lived through. they lived through the tall that era. they show not only an extraordinary amount of maturity, they actually are very centrist in their views and they show the courage that is is not required of everybody. >> we have talked in the past come and i think it would be interesting for the group about the importance of leadership that is required in the nonprofit sector to support the mission in afghanistan. we talked about the government and the media and the military. can you speak about the need and impact of leadership in the non- profit sector in afghanistan? >> i think it is as important as it is on the government side or the military. there are 1700 non-government

organizations in afghanistan. it is possible for each organization to the dairy and negatively -- very narrowly focused and try to do what they want to do. they want to do what seems good for them. working in an organized fashion, the not only do not accomplish what they want to do, but in the grander scheme, the work against the overall effort. a combination of uncoordinated good does not equal a generator -- a general good. this is something that is very difficult. often, the magic's they are sent to operate with do not play well. >> i am going to ask one more. before i give up the store, i have to ask you to talk -- one of my favorite general

mcchrystal stories is about plywood leadership. if you would share with us, what is plywood leadership? >> i thought that it was great when i saw that everything was built out of plywood. we built everything out of plywood in iraq. you could do it very quickly and inexpensively and you could rip it apart and we do it so that your function of your organization was shaped body form and you could change it as often as you needed to. it also has a certain mind-set to it. if you are working on plywood, you remember that you're here for a function and you are not here to enjoy the particular types of furniture that you have. over time, i got a little more is in -- like -- these are pieces of the grade lumber that is shaped very thin and and it is grouped together. when they are alone, you can

break them with your hand, but when they are glued together, they have extraordinary strength. if you take ordinary people, and you have leaders as the glue, you have created something much stronger than individuals. i became a great believer. >> let me open this up. we have microphones around. we will go to harold first. >> thank you very much. i read sebastian young book. his extraordinary an inspiring. added to capture the bad guy? [laughter] >> i will start at the end. the night after we killed mr. is our colleague -- mr.zarkawi, i

gave an award to an intelligence analyst. he told the t -- he pulled the team together. it was a manhunt that was as much police like. over 2.5 years, we built an understanding of zarkawi the man and his organization. we targeted the center of that organization until we understood how the operated. we were able to leverage a certain pieces of intelligence, but we were not just doing it in a one day lightning strike. we built a stronger and stronger understanding until it was a tiger caught in a news. about one month before we

concluded it, we were all sure that we were very close. we did not know where he was, but we had built up a focus of knowledge that gave us confidence. it was extraordinary. it was a team of people that did pick and shovel work month after month after month. >> ok, give them up front. >> general, thank you very much for your service to your country. the question i wanted to ask is about innovation. there are some that would argue that the wars of today are actually innovation wars. if you look at 9/11, in some perverse way, that was a new way of waging war. on the ground in afghanistan, we innovate, they innovate, we innovate back. i wanted to ask you about our abilities and the abilities of our adversaries. >> on the enemy side, they have

innovated very well. they started by using certain terrorist tactics like 9/11. they have changed how the opera to use improvised explosive devices and those devices have gone from very simple wired artillery rounds to the extraordinarily complex devices that are put off by remote devices or they are operated by some interesting ways. what we have done, i think that the biggest innovation is that we have forced ourselves to become a better team. we use technology in a way that you would not a predicted before. different technology to detect changes in things, but the real innovation is the different parts of the u.s. government and across the middle force -- the nato force. you always have the pieces, but you cannot get them together at

a time and place that is right. innovation is the biggest. bringing our intelligence community tighter and tighter. there is still long way to go on that. there is innovation that is not so much technical as it is cultural. our processes work against cooperation. a person can follow the rules of this organization and do everything they were told and not do the level of cooperation. that is the biggest level. there are young people out there that are extraordinary. they take ideas and they do not seem to be handcuffed by old rules and old ways. >> hello. i am here representing the blonde -- blog community. we're wondering when the book is coming out.

there are a rumor buzzes going. >> we will have to see how it goes. we need to focus on leadership. we need to talk about it. we need to study it. we need to write about it. it is a passion of mine. that is what i am thinking of. >> we look forward to it. >> i was struck, general, by the disparity between how you describe president karzai and somebody you trust and somebody you like and yet people in afghanistan, afghanistan leaders and american officials in afghanistan really do not have that same view. what are they missing that you saw? >> i think that any senior leader is in a position where they see him from their perspective. it is very hard to get into that perspective and look out. president karzai has a number of constituencies. you can go to his background and his father was killed by the caliban and he has a fairly westernize education.

as he comes into leadership in afghanistan, there is a certain part of the population that looks at him as a pastun leaders -- pashtun leader with a western bank. -- bent. he is part of the northern alliance. some leaders have a different concern about the caliban -- taliban. president karzai is in a position where he has to balance between competing elements, the support of all of which he needs. if he is completely in the pockets of the west, he is a puppet. if he completely goes to the north, then the pashtun and the talnban are upset with them. -- taliban are upset with him.

he is in a country that is economically dependent on outside sources and so that makes it even harder. i found working with president karzai something that i felt was not only important, but something that i valued. i am sure that he did not find me a perfect commander, and i would not claim anybody that i worked with was perfect, but it was a trusting relationship. i think that is what we need to build with any leader that we work with. >> in the back? >>we are getting your microphon. >> general mcchrystal, it clears that with the leak -- wikileaks is planning on releasing

thousands of pages of confidential material. >> i think it is sad. the decision by anybody to leak classified information is something that is not only illegal, it is something that that individual is making judgments about the value of the permission and the threat to comrades that almost nobody is qualified to make that judgment. if somebody leaks information that puts me or one of my soldiers at risk, that is level of irresponsibility that is very upsetting. then there is the decision to release them widely. i am also not comfortable with that, either. i think the level of responsibility towards our people needs to be balanced within the argument for a need or right to know. i cannot judge every piece of the affirmation. i would not try to. but i would say that there has to be that balance and that level of maturity, because it is

likely that some of that information could cause the death of our own people or some of our allies. >> you mentioned the courage of some of those women in the legislature in afghanistan. what do you think is going to happen to the women in afghanistan when the american troops leave? can anything be done to keep any gains that they have made or would they be put in this a position that they were in before. >> the current policies of the government of afghanistan are in their constitution and will be protected. that is imperfect, as you know. what is the law of the land is not always the practice of every locality. the general concept of

protecting those rights will continue that role. if the government is increasingly affected by the taliban, that is all at risk. the officer the work with me was about 13 and he was living in his home with his mother and his brother and he watched as the mother and two children were walking along a mud bank next to the road. the mother was wearing a burkett and because of the uneven ground, she lifted her birth a slightly to see where her footing was. taliban gunman went over and beat her with wire pieces of metal wire. the young man who watched this letter became my aid. he vowed that he would never let the taliban take over again.

it is that kind of fate that i think awaits many women if we do not given up to to to protect their own society. >> all the way in the back? >> >> general mcchrystal, what leadership skills come into play when dealing with an ally like pakistan, which seemed to help us one minute and help us the next? >> i think that one of the things you have to have from leadership is like any friendship, hopefully you have consistency. its consistency on both sides. if you use the term erratic to describe our allies in pakistan, if you took a mackerel look at u.s. policy, you might make the same argument from the pakistan standpoint that american policy has become erratic.

good intentions create a lack of consistency in the relationship. if you do not have that in a long-term relationship, it is very hard to expect allies or friends to be there when it is difficult. it is difficult for both sides right now. in aakistani's are difficult time right now. the floods were much more devastating than katrina was in new orleans with much less capacity, naturally, to deal with it. -- nationally, to deal with it. i am not arguing for being an apologist for what anybody ought to do, but we need to look at both sides and try to see it through each other's eyes. >> stan, let me ask you, you

mentioned the yellow ribbon nonprofits. you're seeing the greatest transition of soldiers from military live to private life. we see more families struggling because of the multiple appliance. -- multiple deployments talk about military families and what leaders need to anticipate to help bring those families back to civilian life. >> i have to think the american people for the level of support of the soldiers that has never been better. it has been really good. at the same time, to provide some context, we are fighting two wars with a professional force. unlike a war we use draftees, we have soldiers with four and five a year long tours in combat. that means four or five year

long tours for families in the united states. i think we have to do everything that we can to support them. those who leave the service, particularly in the economic economy like this, we need to have given as much support as we can because they made a real sacrifice. it is important for this effort. people will watch how you treated servicemen and service members and now and they will draw lessons from that. i think we're doing pretty well, but it is something that i would ask everyone to continue with. >> yes, last question. >> thank you, very much. you see many governments in the west cutting defense budgets. i think that the obama administration might also be tempted to do that.

as a military leader, would you advise, given the fact that we are mired in a long-term military situation, what advice would you give? would you say that it is responsible to cut from defense? if it is inevitable, then where would you cut and were to absolutely not cut? >> there is no right answer to that question because in each nation, if a nation leans too much towards defense and weakens their economic position, then very soon, they do not have an effective position. it is a balancing act. i would never urge any nation or the united states to defend its way to bankruptcy. our basic power comes from our values and our economic strength. it is a balance. if you do have to decrease military spending, and i think that is inevitable in difficult times, the only thing -- the one thing i would protect in these times is people.

your real talent and your real effectiveness lies in the people. we have a very highly technical trained people that have families. if you have to protect anything, i would do it at the expense of hardware and technology because it just takes another generation to replace that talent. >> thank you. we will ship rolls and i will actually lead a panel. i will take my leave and what you call ahead and explain about this great panel of business leaders. >> thank you very much. i appreciated. [applause] -- i appreciate it. [drum cadence]

[drum cadences] >> let me first that my pal and fellow comrades here for joining us here today and thank you for giving us a chance to do this. what we wanted to do this afternoon was to talk about leadership with some extraordinary leaders. a think you know the background of each of these people, but what we have represented is business, the airline business, the financial business, education, history, the ability

to understand what has been. what is most interesting that we can talk about is leading it is difficult. leading into a headwind. that is what leaders are most challenge by. in many cases, obstacles are not obvious. but are not a business competitor, the our people and environments that make it will challenge for whatever we are trying to do. but i would like to do is start by getting some historical context. if you would, give me an idea on leaders in history who have run into a headwind. >> i was thinking, as you were talking, that i have no business being on this stage because academics are the least qualified people in society to talk about leadership because the only thing i have ever let our discussions. are discussions.

all i would do this brought a few ideas. i was really enjoying it your idea of plywood leadership in the last session. i was thinking that it is a lot better than deadwood leadership, which is often what democracies get stuck with. there are two decades that are helpful to think about in terms of the difficulties that the u.s. has faced. but one was in the 1930's and the other was in the 1970's. whether you were leading a political movement, a the head winds were very strong. in the 1930's, there was a sack at inflation. -- a stagnant inflation. people desperately want leadership in a crisis. they crave it. the look for a messiah.

sometimes they get one, but it is actually the blood dangerous. it was -- hitler was a fantastic charismatic leader who led germany to hell and took most of the world with them. luckily, the united states that franklin roosevelt who did not abuse the charisma that he had. the figure that most attracts me to this day is winston churchill, who was deeply unpopular through much of the 1930's, yet he alternately save not only his country, but western civilization. the key point the comes out of the comparison is that to be a leader means to be deeply unpopular because of what you believe them. i think that the great leaders are ones that lead in the face of a popularity, even that are begging for leadership. >> i think that education in america may be in a crisis. when i graduated from high

school i had a sense of that. give me an idea on leading in an area where you have a clear need. >> i would first say that it is not that we may be in a crisis, we are in a significant crisis. if you look at any of the statistics, we are spending more than twice as much money on education that we were 40 years ago. the results have declined. the children who were in our schools today will be the first generation of children who were less educated than their parents. if you look at where we were several decades ago forces were we are now, -- versus where we are now, we are 26 out of 30 developed nations. there is no doubt that we are in the midst of a crisis.

part of the problem that we face in education is that people do not understand how significant the crisis is. in terms of leadership against a strong headwind, i would say that for me, when i took on the job leader in the -- the -- the job as chancellor of washington d.c.'s schools, i felt that my contributions to the effort would be that i could not be foolish enough to take the same path of somebody else had taken or that i was smarter than anyone else. i decided that i was or to take a different path that nobody else had taken. whether i succeeded or failed, someone would learn something from me.

as i thought about what leadership means and how could i leave in a different way, i think that my biggest lesson has been that it is ok not to be liked. let me say, i am really good at this. [laughter] but in public education, it is probably the most conflict averse area that you can imagine. in my mind, for for two long, we have been willing to turn a blind eye to the injustices that are happening to kids in classrooms today. let me just give you one statistic to give you an idea. there is a -- an economist who

has basically done a lot of economic modeling. he has basically shown that if we, as a nation, were to take up the lowest performing teachers in this country, move them out of education and replace them with an average teacher, we could literally propelled ourselves from the bottom to the top. if were to ever tell a ceo of the corporation to fire the bottom 6% of his staff you will move from 25 in the marketplace to number one, they would do it and a heartbeat. that one move, we agonize over it and we talk about how it is so humane and cruel.

that is one example. this is the most important sector. >> wall. we talk about making tough calls. the airline industry has been anything but easy money. you have done some amazing things in starting and number of airlines. talk about flying in the face of headwinds. . .

i tried to keep things simple. he just paint a picture of what could be. jetblue, i started with 15 pieces of paper that i had written a business plan on and was fortunate to raise $145 million, and it became a phenomenon in the york. continues today. not as great as it was before, but still really good. being able to sell that story to investors and people, records that you bring in, visit every single new person and say we will bring back their service. we will give them extra legroom, create not the greatest airline that was ever created, but the greatest customer service company ever created.

to be able to create something from scratch. we eat lunch in the lunchroom with our people. some people say, wow, have never met the president of our company before. i think that is the essence of a leader, somebody who can inspire people. i have two goals. i tell people this every day. number one, i want this to be the best job you ever had. i walk and asking, is this the best job you ever had? if they say no, i say, what we do to make the best job you have ever had? basically, i want every customer to get off the airplane and say, wow, that is a great flight, i

am never fly with anybody else again, the best light of my life. that is simple. can't do number two without number one and create an exceptional company. there are very few exceptional companies. headwinds and issues. we had an issue at jetblue. we had the same problem that everybody else did in new york. delta had planes on the runway for 10 hours. but people expect hero from jetblue. jetblue can't do that because it is a great company. we took a huge amount of abuse in the press. i could have said let's try to be like everyone else or let's be different. i convened our team together and said we are going to create a customer bill of rights that no other airline is going to have. we will put in writing what we are doing for our commerce. that is still in effect today. we are the only airline that has a customer bill of rights. washington is trying to impose

one on the others, and they refuse to do it i went on the air waves starting with "today" and lerm at night -- literman at night. i apologized to our commerce and said i am sorry, we screwed up. i am not going to let this happen again. we value you, and here is our customer bill of rights, and we have learned from our experience. >> none of this would work in politics. >> i know. we were number three -- and this is what i'm really proud of. business-week magazine did a survey of the top customer service companies in the united states. there wasn't an airline in the top 100, except jetblue was number three. before they publish, they scribbled us out and put nordstrom there because of a stumble. the next year we were back

there. our score is better now because of this attention to detail. but a time of crisis is when you grab it -- >> and every board member is grabbing me saying don't apologize. i got fired a couple of months later. i would do the exact same thing today. sometimes it didn't always work out. there are 2,500 people in brazil that have jobs today because i got fired, and there are four million brazilians that will travel today because i got fired. they are happy that i got fired at jetblue. i have to do what you think is right. as long as you do what is right, things will work out. >> it happens, david. [applause] >> you know what i mean actually. >> we talked about some historical context, how hard it is against headwinds. you have led countless organizations now.

what separates great leaders from a run-of-the-mill leader? >> well, i kind of agree with a lot of what everybody said. starting with neil, i was laughing internally because i said i wonder what comes first, being disliked or being a great leader, the chicken or the egg. i certainly know what being disliked is all about. then like michelle, i was involved in the education wars and that kind of slips over. the day that it was announced that john walton and i were going to put 40,000 kids in school at our expense, a union official was interviewed on television who said all you need to know about this bozo is he was unamerican. i was leading, and eventually we put 100,000 kids in school

and whatever. so, as you and i have talked, i think the greatest impediment to leadership is conventional wisdom, which would be a little different way of saying what david is saying. that is the greatest impediment. most people think that success is doing kind of what everybody else does and doing it better. i don't know whether it was in my genes, and i wouldn't recommend it except here we are looking at a bunch of successful people -- for me that was never -- it didn't make any sense. if everybody else was doing it, i didn't want to do it. i wanted to do something different. so out of that has come a lot of different things. i think you have to have kind of a moral compass.

you have to care about what is right and what is wrong, which you were mentioning, dave. and you have to be secure in yourself and go do it. if you're just trying to do what everybody else does, though, and do it better, which is where the great preponderance of people live, you're not a real leader. >> extraordinary. what i want to do is now jump ahead to what we've learned. everybody here has actually been through a lot. neil, i'm going to start with you, throw it to historically what we have learned. i am giving time to the other panelists. what i'm going to come back and ask you, as virgil says, trust one who has been through it. if you were going through it again, what would you advise the other you in terms of doing it differently or better? neil? >> well, the things i have learned from history, not of course from my own personal experience, and i want to make that clear again -- there are two really. the first was really allude --

alluded to, but it needs to be emphasized. information needs to flow through an organization. whether you look in the mill stare sphere, in the business sphere or in the political sphere, having flows of knowledge that reach the guy or gal at the top, that is tremendously important. a side light on military history. one of the most extraordinary things that happened in the 19th and 20th century, the russian army became the best army in the world. the german army tended to stumble, because there were mistakes made at the top. but man for man, they were formidable. why was the german army so good? it was good because the junior

officers were listened to up the chain of command. we don't have a board room lunch area. we all lunched together. that is a relatively recent phenomenon. when it was decided that a merchant bank in london would have an open door policy, that everybody would be gathered together and exchanging information, he was regarded as a revolutionary. that is number one. number two is a more puzzling things. i have heard michelle speak twice now about the battles she has waged to try to improve d.c. he cation. both times i came away completely inspired and ready to make her czar of american education, ideally also all western education including the u.k. you hear somebody speak, and you think this person totally gets it. let's give them total power. this is terribly dangerous. i think it is great, but i am

stopping myself from doing that, and i wouldn't let anybody else from doing that. no matter how gift an individual, if you give that individual too much power, they are err because they are human. i have learned a huge amount from reading the diary kept by one of the senior military figures in the second world war, allen brook. his diary of world war ii was all about how he kept churchill from screwing up. there were constant checks on his genius. in addition to having knowledge flows, there has to be a check on that leader, no matter how brilliant the leader is. what i would love to explore here is the difference between a good and a bad check. the good check is harder to identify. the bad check is common. we know the bad check is a vested interest. you bumped into the vest interest in the teacher's

union. but i want to have the good check to stop you from screwing up. >> michelle? >> or do you just want absolute power? >> it is preferable to what we have today. >> it hasn't been such a bad thing. you know, it is interesting. as i sort of look back over actually my entire career, when i came out of college, i went and taught through teach for america in this inner-city school. through that experience i came away with it is all about teacher quality. if we can get great teachers into schools, then it would work. i started an organization that recruited great people into the teaching protchings. as i was doing that, i quickly realized, it is not that nobody wants to come in and teach. it is just that the h.r. departments in these school districts are so dysfunctional that great people actually can't come into the profession.

so then i shifted from recruitment to i am going to fix the r.h. system. as we were doing that, we realized you could just fix the h.r. system. the entire school district is broken. that is when i took on this challenge in washington, d.c. i said i am going to fix the school district and show that it can work. for three and a half years the mayor and i went at it and said we are going to put everything towards this. he gave me all the support in the world and we actually took what was largely known as the most underperforming district in the country and made it functional. we were in the absolute bottom in the gold standard examination, and after two years, we were leading the nation in gains in 4th and 8th grade. it was the only one where every single subgroup of kids were improving their academics. i knee evely thought if we --

naively thought if we reproduced the results. people would want it. i started hearing people say things like well, student achievement isn't everything. i was saying really? what else is there when you are in education? and a lot of people have now -- monday morning quarterbacking have said to us. could you have done it differently? if you were nicer, a little more collaborative or giving, could you have been -- could you have stayed another term? i think it is so hard to imagine that because i think that if we would have compromised along the way, we would not have actually seen the results that we did. and just to give you one example, we put in place a new

teacher evaluation system last school year which finally actually linked how a teacher was evaluated to how much their student grew academically. at the end of the first year we identified about 250 teachers who were rated as infective, and so they were subject to termination. so i went to my boss in august, and i said here is where we are. these 250 people are subject to termination. i said however, i realize that you have an election right around the corner, so tell me what you want to do. he looked at me and said well, when it comes to kids and making decisions about children, we don't look at the poll numbers. we look at the faces of the kids and doing what is right for them. if fire teachers means we have more grade kids come fall. then we do it and let the chips fall where they may. we did it, and the next day

people are going nuts. they said are you crazy? you cannot fire people three weeks before an election. this is political suicide. right? but for us it was really easy because it was our true north. we had always made those decisions based on what we believed was in the best interests of kids regardless of the push-back we knew we were going to get from adults. i think part of what i would say to the next person coming into this sort of role is you can't waiver from your true north. you have to to always make those tough decisions. the question, i think, is, is there a way to change the political calculus so that politicians who are courageous enough to make those calls can actually get the support that they need to continue that work along? i talk to education reformers across the country who, after my boss lost, said that's too bad. i didn't realize that that

election might have gone the wrong way, and we should have gotten involved. from the teacher's union, they put a million dollars into the challenger's campaign. they had advance all up a and down the east coast driving people to the polls to make sure my boss was not re-elected. and all the do-gooder education reformers across the country were looking, watching and hoping he would do ok. i think for any future leaders who are taking this on, it has to be how can we change the political calculus for those folks. >> teddy, can you change the political calculus? >> can i? >> can leaders? >> yeah, you can change -- the primary thing here to me is a philosophical thing called first things. if you don't get first things right, you have no chance of

getting anything right. so if politicians have to be elected by holding their hands out by the system we have today, by elections essentially never stopping, i think it mandates mediocrity. i have been saying that a long time. i think your story, michelle, proves a couple of points. first of all, what you were trying to do was do things -- you had a moral compass. you were trying to do things and succeed in doing things the right way and actually had a lot of success. now you have to switch over to what the general knows about. you have to know your enemy. you shouldn't have been shocked that these people didn't like what you were doing. it is the same thing as the union guy calling me an unamerican bozo, which

radicalized me, and i have an idea this is in the process of radicalizing you also. there you go. [laughter] >> yes, you have to get first things right, and first things are not right in our country now. >> can i butt in with a question? >> now that i think about it, quite a large number of people on this stage lost their jobs through doing the right thing but not being cynical enough. who has read "the prince" when they got into this leadership business? no, no. the trouble about being a leader is you do have to be nasty as well as being nice. you have to have the nasty bit right. otherwise, your enemies screw you. everybody i meet in the leadership business seems to be adrift. i say read "the prince" and then see how things look. a little bit of cynicism doesn't seem to do any harm

here. >> i want to answer your checks. for myself, i solved the how can you not be fired problem by not having a boss. i solved that 30 years ago. >> beat it with tenure. [laughter] >> which she hates, by the way. >> i hate it, too, but what are you going to do? >> at least you're good. >> fire me any time, michelle, tenure or not. >> it is not so much checks, niall as i don't think a great leader thinks he has all the answers. you probably know much more about commufrpbl than i do, but i have read a lot of books about him. he was very opinionated. he had some great ideas. he certainly had his north star. one of the interesting things he said, not that chamberlain was a bad guy, but he was a banker, and he kind of thought in terms of doing business with

hitler instead of what was right and wrong. i think a real leader wants all the good advice he can get. then as a leader, he can do what he wants, and he has to be responsible for it. i don't think it's a question of checks. i think it's a question of anybody who is leading an organization who doesn't want all the quality around around him or her he can possibly get i don't think is a great leader. >> teddy, when i went to brazil to start the airline, i have brazilian citizen because i was born in brazil. my dad was a foreign correspondent there. they said you can get american investors, but you have to have voting control. i said that is how it works for me. i have voting control and own 15% of the company. but this notion -- so you have to be able to have -- so the

check i have against my investors if i do a bad job, and i blow the money, they won't give me anymore money, and we go out of business. that's my check. your comment about the czar of education, things have gotten really so bad that it is almost like you would like to give somebody you knew who would have the credentials and do the good job, knowing that at the end of four years if you didn't do the good job, you could be taken out. that is what is wrong with this country. it is all about getting elected. the teacher's union gets advance, takes people around, and they basically lose an election, and things wrill revert back, and those 250 teachers could come back. who knows what they will reverse. but we really have to change things. maybe we will go from 26th to 30th, or we will drop into the

second echelon. but we really have to change things. things have to get bad enough. we saturday around on this panel this morning, and they talked about how bad things are, and showed us the graphs. what is the solution? well, the solution is education, number one. someone has to lead us there. the best thing that michelle can do at this point in time, and i will close with this. she could become the greatest martyr of all time when it comes to education reform. i think someone should pay her to go around the country and tell that story. 6% to 10% of the teachers, if you get rid of them, we go to number one. she did an evaluation to determine if someone could actually teach. they determined 250 people that weren't. the boss made the decision to fire them. he lost the election, and education reform stopped, and they reverted back. if that isn't a powerful story

in this country, and maybe some great thing will come from that. you can keep telling the story, because then we will get it in this country. this is there vocal minority that can get a van and put up a sign is winning, and the rest of us are suffering. it is a shame. >> i would like to go back to all the panel members one more time and ask about a thought for the future. go forward 10 years, and you are going to counsel a person who 10 years from now is going to be in your relative seniority and responsibility, and you had a very short sound bite, what would you tell them? >> i would say the most important thing is to study history. the leaders that have done best have been the ones who have understood past leadership. the leaders who have done the most harm have had a theory. usually a utopian theory.

my advice would be before you get into this business of leadership, study the past and learn from both the great successes and the heroic failures. because in many ways the heroic failures who are most admirable and you can learn the most. >> only seven or eight books you recommend? >> i will give you a reading list. >> michelle? >> one of the things that i am doing right now, when i talk to education reformers across the country is to talk to them about our experience in d.c. and to say, as my good friend joe klein, low is out in the audience says, the teacher's union has controlled the agenda, the educational agenda in this nation for the last three decades very well. why? because they have millions of dollars and millions of people, and they use those dollars and people to get the politicians that they want lankied and the laws that they want passed and the laws that they don't want blocked. they are playing this game over

here. education reformers, the do-gooders are playing an entirely different game, and it is the wrong game. we are trying to appeal to a politician's sense of what is good and right for kids. but these folks over here are getting them reelected and financing their campaigns. you can't compete when you are trying to talk about what is morally right versus what is keeping you in office. what i would tell reformers is we have to start playing the right game. we have to understand what's at stake, and we have to understood the strategies that are going to motivate the leaders in this country to actually start acting in different ways, and i think what we have going for us is that we have right on our side. so it should make it easier for these folks. >> all right. teddy? >> i would say you have to find out where zarkawi is hiding. that is the most important lesson of this panel. you have to know where he is

hiding. so you are right, you have to know who the enemy is and what to do about it. i have taught a lot as well, and i used to get rushed by these kids saying how did you make that, how did you do that, how did i make all that money? i used to say -- first of all, i don't want to talk about money at all because i don't think that is success. the only bit of advice i would give you is figure out something to do on your own. these kids would say to me what should i do to be a success in private equity? i would say forget that. come up with something on your own in business or something else. that is the best advice i could give a younger person. >> i lecture a lot on college campuses. i ask people when i am talking

to them and say can you think of five companies that you adore, that you absolutely worship, that you wouldn't even think of going to one of the competitors to buy another product? you log on to their website, go right to that store, get that cup of coffee, that computer or that ipod, that you are completely assured to that brand. >> what besides gulfstream did they come up with some >> hardly anyone could come up with five companies, and i think that is good. that is great. i say if you can't come up with five, then go create one. that means there is an enormous amount of opportunity. you don't need to start something completely new. take something like the airline industry and say this industry is broken. the customer service isn't good, the economy isn't good. a lot of people aren't traveling that could travel. become the best customer

service company. do that so that people adore you so that people say i am only going to fly with those guys from here on out. you have to have great focus, and you have to have great people and pay them well, and you could become one of those great companies that people write about and teach about. it is hard, and it is a focus, but it can be done. that is the message i give them. it takes that leer, that vision of leadership and getting it done, and you can create something awesome. >> that is great. i will like to conclude by thanking the panel. i was taken by michelle's idea of firing mediocre teachers, but since i am a mediocre teacher -- >> do you have tenure? >> i do not. people say you get together on leadership, and you talk about it. sometimes you do need to talk

about it. sometimes you need to read about it, talk about it and do it. you have to do, but you have to get together with people who have done and listen, too. i would like to thank everybody very much for your time tonight. [applause] >> i would like to thank everybody here. hey, i am out here, and i want to thank general mcchrystal, who is an astonishing leader and so generous with his team. a really great class. wonderful. wonderful, david. excellent. well, everybody now, i hope that -- i am wrapping this up now. we are all going to now adjourn. do what you like to do. freshen up, have a shower. we are going to regroup for cocktails in the street, jazz, dinner, 7:00 p.m. see you later and thank you very much for today's attendance. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] and that is what leadership

should force. that was mayor bloomberg this afternoon. they want republican support but never consulted one republican before they made the corporate tax increase as a pay-for. they want republicans' support

before they pass this bill but didn't apply that standard before they passed all the bills. no, you only apply it to cops and firefighters and construction workers. what a sad and pathetic double standard. these heroes deserve better. and no matter what happens on this vote, i will continue to do all i can to pass this bill as soon as possible in the future. let me say, i look forward to continuing working with carolyn maon lonnie who has been honest, open and direct. this is a sad moment for this body and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman from new york is recognized. mr. nadler: i yield one minute to the the gentleman from new york, mr. wiener. wine wean stand up and wrap yourselves around procedure. we see it every day where members say we want amendments, we want debate, but it is a no. but we stand up and say if only

we had a different process. you vote yes. you vote in favor if you think it's the right thing. if you believe it's the wrong thing, it's no. i will not yield. the gentleman will observe regular order. the gentleman gets up and intim dates people. the gentleman is wrong. the gentleman is providing cover for his colleagues rather than doing the right thing. it's republicans wrapping themselves around republicans rather than doing the right thing on behalf of the heroes. it is a shame, a shame if you believe this is a bad idea to provide health care, then vote no. but don't give me the coward review that if only it was a different procedure. the gentleman will observe regular order. and sit down. i will not. the gentleman will sit. the gentleman is correct in sitting. i will not.

the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman will suspend. mr. weiner: i will not stand here and listen to my colleagues and say if only i had a different procedure that allows us to stall and then vote no. instead of standing up and defending your colleagues and defending your colleagues and voting no on this humane

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for federal office. with all due deference to separation of pewers, last week

the supreme court reversed a century of law that i believe will open the flood gates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. i don't think american elections should be bankrolled by america's most powerful interests or worse, by foreign entities. they should be decided by the american people and i urge democrats and republicans to democrats and republicans to pass the bill that

frank. barney frank was able to get this dealership back open. is that what we have come to in this country, that rather than a private business with a private contract with another private corporation, they are no longer

able to work out their agreements because as columnist michael barone has called, we have gangsster government when the federal government has set up a new cartel and private businesses now have to go begging with their handout to their local, hopefully well connected congressman or their senator so they can buy a peace offering for that local business. is that the kind of country we're going to have in the future? when i was on the phone today for over an hour with one of my local dealers, the very first thing out of her mouth was this, she said this is the most un-american thing i have ever seen many my life. i can't believe that i lived to see the day that my country would come to this point where having my dealership for 90 years, i get a letter fedexed to me that tells me that i have

until friday to sign this document, to not only give up my company that was made wrtless, worth $15 million, made worthless overnight. now gm is demanding that she hand over her customer list, her service customer list to gm. why? gm most likely will use the customer list and give it to her former competitors. what is she getting for this? she had the rug pulled out from her and from her husband. they virtually lost everything they virtually lost everything ov

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blackmailed into voting for a piece of social agenda that has no place in this bill. this is the kind of shenanigans that makes the american public irate. this is the kind of thing, like passing 300 pages of amendments at 3:00 in the morning, that makes the public nauseous. i for one, as much as i support our troops, indeed, i even have a son going to afghanistan in three weeks, as much as i support him and the rest of our troops, i will not allow us to be blackmailed into voting for something totally extraneous on this bill. that's the reason why i will not support the bill.

the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from missouri. . mr. skelton: i wish to remind my fellow missourian that the united states senate voted for the defense bill with the inclusion of the section that he objects to by 87 votes to 7. a strong bipartisan vote. i yield three minutes to my friend the chairman of the subcommittee on strategic subcommittee on strategic forces, mr. langevin.08

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guess what happens. nothing. nothing happens. we have in effect cyber crime sanctuary countries. now, why would nice people like the russians and others create cyber sanctuaries? cynical people would think that law enforcement and other government officials in those countries are on the take and are getting part of the

billions of dollars from the cyber crime activities. even more cynical people would point out that from time to time those governments might ask the cyber criminals who they know to do them little favors. i'm reminded of the theme in the first god father movie when he says, some day i will ask you for a favor. well, i think that happens with cyber crime. you're allowed to do your cyber crime from russia or belarus, the ukraine, as long as you don't attack in our country, as long as you don't attack in russia. and then, when the russian government wants to do a cyber war, as it did in 2007, or a cyber war against the nation of

georgia as it did in 2008, well, you know, those attacks on the infrastructure in georgia and astonia that crippled the banking system, crippled the telecommunication system, they weren't done by the government of russia. no, no. the russian government says they were done by patriotic activists. who, the russian government, of course, didn't prosecute. so it's convenient for some of these governments to have these people around to do their little dirty work for them in cyber space. we've had problems similar to this before where there were countries that were not living up to international standards. we dealt with it. one that comes to mind is money laundering. we had sanctuaries for money laundering from narcotics, from terrorism, and nations got together and created the

financial action task force and they established model laws and they said you need to pass those model laws and then you need to enforce those model laws. and when islands in the pacific and caribbean didn't, they were then told if you don't pass those model laws and enforce those model laws, if you continue to be money laundering sanctuaries, the united states and united kingdom and germany and france and japan will no longer convert your currency. i had the pleasure of calling the prime minister of one of those little caribbean countries and delivering that message. it was kind of fun. it took about two weeks to get the parliament into session and pass the model law. we could be doing things like this with regard to cyber crime sanctuaries, but we're not. we could have sanctions against

countries that refuse to cooperate in prosecution of cyber crimes. we could limit their access to the rest of cyber space. we could scan all of the message traffic leaving their country. we could have an international system to do that. they could pay a price. but right now we're paying the price. because the government has been unable to get its mind around the problem of cyber crime and thinks it's something that we need to send assistant u.s. attorneys off to worry about in 90 different jurisdictions. send f.b.i. agents into companies and put crime scene tape around their computers. that's the way we're addressing it now, and we're obviously not seriously addressing it. related to cyber crime is cyber

espionage because some of the same people who are doing cyber crime are doing cyber espionage. but there are others doing it as well. so what is cyber espionage? well, primarily it's espionage. the second oldest profession in the world. and cyber espionage is importantly different from regular espionage. in old espionage, if you imagine you were the kgb station chief, the resident on massachusetts avenue or -- and you had the job of recruiting somebody in the c.i.a. and somebody in the f.b.i. to be a russian spy, a soviet spy, that was a really hard thing to do. if you picked the wrong f.b.i. agent to recruit, heed arrest you. if you picked the wrong c.i.a. agent to recruit, he would turn you in. but yet, they succeeded in getting robert hanson in the

f.b.i. and others, and those people for money were traitors to their country, and took documents, pieces of paper in their suit jackets, in their brief cases out of c.i.a. head quarters, they went to little parks in fairfax county and dug holes and put the papers in the ground, dead letter drops. then the kgb guy from the embassy would pick it up. and eventually little pieces of paper would get into moscow and get analyzed. there's a lot of risk for very little reward. cyber espionage is different because there's very little risk. you sit back in moscow or beijing or wherever and instead of having your agent break into a file cabinet, you have your hacker break into a serve. and you don't get a few pieces

of paper, you get peta bytes, tera bytes of information. i see looks of confusion about those words on some faces so let's say you get libraries of congress worth of pieces of paper. you can measure hacks these days in how many libraries of congress went out the door. and it's not just government sites that are being attacked. it's not just classified information that's being stolen. it's information from companies , information about intellectual property, chemical pharmaceutical formulas, biotech information, designs of new aircraft, the design of the f-35 was stolen before the f-35 ever flew. corporate information. it's corporate information like what is the new product? when is it coming out?

how much is it going to cost? it's corporate information like what are the other oil companies going to bid to get that big iraqi oil? you may have noticed that two weeks before the auction on the last iraqi oil concession, most of the major oil companies around the world were harked. except for the chinese oil company which won the bid. it happens every day. cyber crime happens every day, cyber espionage happens every day. the secret network at the pentagon has been hacked, secretary of defense's personal computer has been hacked, chance loor of germany's personal computer has been hacked. the head of the british security service sent a letter two years ago to the c.e.o.s of the 300 largest corporations in the uk, and it said, you must assume that your network has

been successfully hacked and your intellectual property has been taken by the government of china. now, i suggested to janet napolitano that she perhaps would like to write that let tore a few people. what we now know is that google was right when it said in its press release, we're different from other companies because we're telling you we were hacked. what we now know is that during that one hacking campaign, 3,000 american companies were successfully hacked. so like the head of the british secret service, security service, i think we need to say to people, if you have anything of value, any intellectual property, however fleeting in value, if you have formulas,

designs, anything of value, it's been taken. it's already gone. this, despite the fact that we spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year in this country on antivirus software and on things called fire wauls and intrusion prevention systems. none of that stuff is successfully stopping these penetrations. that's cyber espionage. what's the difference then between cyber espionage and cyber war? a few key strokes. because if you have penetrated a network in order to collect information, you can then take the next step of engaging in destruction, disruption, or damage. and cyber war i think is when a nation state engages in unauthorized penetrations of a network to do disruption, destruction, or damage.

now, a lot of people still think about cyber war in terms of ones and zeros attacking each other on some fourth dimension. cyber war is actually something that happens in the real world. if you don't believe me, ask the people who are running the iranian sintry fuges. since somebody created a very targeted cyber guided missile, and launched it against the iranian sent fugse, it's called stucksnet by the media. stuxnet, it involved incrippings, it involved four day attacks. zero day attacks are very valuable things in cyber war. they're attack techniques that have never seen the light of day before. this attack used not one but four. it stole certificates from

various sites so that it looked authentic. it attacked one kind of software. a seemance issued kind of soft ware that runs electric systems. seimens, pc. and it did, well, something once it got into those networks. i note that the international atomic energy agency obsoirs say that the sent fugse have been operating at a very slow rate since that got into the wild. it caused sentry fuges to slow down and malfunction. somebody did that. the united states government admits that it experimently attacked an electric power grid

in idaho and experimently got into the control system for the electric power grid and experimentmently got into the control for a particular generator and caused that generator to malfunction to the point where it was about to explode. before the experiment was stopped. a couple of years ago, i was watching tv and there was an add that came on with a black screen, white words being typed on it that said, sometimes a power blackout is just a power blackout. sometimes it's cyber war. i'm thinking, who is sponsoring this ad? and then the seal of the united states air force appeared. the united states air force has created a numbered air force, a 24th air force which has no

airplanes, and has no missiles. this 24 ds air force is to fight in cyber space. the united states navy has created a new fleet. the fifth fleet is in the persian gulf and there's one in the mediterranean and one off japan. there's a new fleet created and it has no ships. its job is to fight in cyber space. leon panetta tells us in public testimony that between 20 and 30 nations have created military or intelligence organizations to fight in cyber space. so cyber war is real. and it can cause things to happen. it can cause generators to explode, it can cause trains to derail. i asked the head of union rail if he relied a lot on computers. he said, dick, i'm not a train company, i'm a computer company

that has train. do you remember when the red line derailed last year? the metro's response to that was to have the conductor start driving the trains. because up until then, the computers have been driving the trains. and the derailment occurred because one of the computers malfunctioned, one of the little switches on the tracks. the cyber war plans that are being drawn up by many nations around the world cause attacks or could cause attacks that would explode generators, that would cause high tension wires to melt, that would derail trains, that would cause gas pipelines to explode, or that could cause mass confusion in financial systems. now, so far the united states government at least has drawn a red line around attacking financial systems. but a dem stration of how

computer dependent our financial system is, the other day or actually a year ago by now, when the stock market went a little funny one afternoon and some stocks that had very little intrinsic value were trading. one company had a net value of $1 trillion by the time the hour was hour and others were trading about a penny a share. and the s.e.c.'s answer to that was, oops. let's just pretend that hour never happened. and we're going to set all the values back to just before that began. and the investigation that's been going on thinks that the answer was that one of the many computers engaged in automated trading made a little trading action that generated that

mistake. well, what else could you do to the stock market if you were malicious? so i'm not saying cyber war is about to happen, although there are little examples that are happening with some regularity. but nation states do not go out and attack each other just because they have a new weapon, thankfully. when you get a new sports car you might go out and break the law, see how fast you can go. nations usually don't do things like that. we've had nine nations with nuclear weapons and no one's used them in anger since 1945. but when you do have in the future political circumstance, an economic circumstance where a nation state decides it wants to conduct wartime activity, it has the option now of conducting wartime activity in cyber space, a stand-alone

cyber attack, org augmenting kinetic war with cyber war. as you look out on the horizon and ask yourself when might that happen to the united states, what scenario could develop, think about what would happen if israel bombed the iranian nuclear facilities or if the united states enforced the last u.n. security council resolution that allows for inspection of iranian bound ships on the high seas and all of that activity generates a situation where we're dropping iron on iran. iran would presumably want to do something back here in the united states. and in the past for them to attack in the united states they would have had to call on hezbollah or the cudes force to do a terrorist attack. but now, in the age of cyber space, an iranian cyber force

could attack in the united states withoutr leaving tehran or wherever they are. and they could cause the kind of disruption that i just have spoken about. causing key elements of our infrastructure to explode. and malfunction. and it's as though our policy is as though we were a football team that believed you only needed an offensive squad. think about the red skins if they only had an offensive squad. not a bad example. i mean, a team with a really good offensive squad. think about the best team in the league with the best auchesive squad but think about them showing up one day without a defensive line. that's kind of the united

states. we've got a really good offensive capability in cyber space. but we do not have the ability to defend this country. it is the policy of this government that the new cyber command defends the military, my friends in the department of homeland security are sposed to defend the rest of the government. and somehow the two of them are supposed to provide advice or something to the rest of us. but essentially, the electric power grids, the railroads the banks, the pipelines, all of the things that would be attacked in a war are on their own and the government's policy when you boil it down says you guys should really defend yourself. it's a bit like if in the 1906s -- 1960s we had said to the

president of u.s. steel the russians have a lot of bombers and in the case of a war they may come and bomb your steel plants in pittsburgh. so you, u.s. steel, ought to go out and buy some fighter planes. some air defense missiles to protect yourself. that's what we're saying. that's our policy. all you, electric power companies and all you chemical companies, all you refineries, all you train companies, you ought to do more on cyber security. we might give you some advice. that's our policy. and in terms of cyber war, what is our national strategy for fighting cyber war? what are the rules of cyber war? we don't have one as far as i can tell. we don't have a national strategy. and the pentagon implies that they have one.

as far as i can tell, they don't. it's akin to the early 1960s in the arena of strategic nuclear strategy. now, when the kennedy administration came into office and they asked what is our strategic nuclear strategy? they were a bit horrified to find out that our strategic nuclear strategy at the time was to go first. it was called launch on strategic warning. means go first. and our strategy was to launch all of our weapons against all of the target sets in the soviet union, china, poland, germany, checks lovackia, romania. and the kennedy administration said i think we need a more refined strategy than that. from what i can tell, our policy on cyber war strategy is very similar to the curt yiss la may strategy for strategic

nuclear war. we need a strategy and we need it publicly discussed the way the kennedy administration publicly discussed strategic nuclear strategy. we need congressional review, we need academic participation, and we need to know what the law implications are of cyber war. are they the same as the laws of armed conflict? are there things that are off limits? and how can you be sure when you launch a cyber war that it will only hit the target? i talked a little while ago about stusmnet which seems to have been targeted on the sent fugse but caused an indian communication satellite to stop working. so there are issues of collateral damage. and finally, let me suggest that when we're thinking about cyber war, we need to think about cyber arms control. and i know all of you who have done arms control immediately

say there's a verification problem because many of you said that about biological arms control and chemical arms control and strategic nuclear arms control and conventional arms control in europe. those were hard problems, too. but those were hard problems that we got through. it took 15 years to negotiate conventional arms control in europe but we got an agreement. just in time for the war saw pact to collapse, but nonetheless we gt an agreement. it takes a long time. you begin with baby steps, you begin with confidence building measures. but we're not doing any of that with regard to cyber war. and it may not be the case that cyber war is ameanable to arms control, but we'll never know until we try to find out. and right now, the administration is not seriously trying to find out.

so with all that, i hope i have prepared you for the keep fear alive rally a week from tomorrow. thanks very much. [applause] çsccssgswçw >> with that, can i have the first question. >> there are some in the military who probably a very small minority who think there actually should be a fifth service, army, navy, marine corps, air force, and cyber.

how do you feel about that? >> well, i did find in the research for doing the book that there was a two star air force general who had said before congressional committee, you know, in the past we demanded physical fitness standards of our people. but you know, when i think about what we need now, he said, i don't care if the person can run five miles with a pack on their back as long as they can take down an electric power grid. so that suggests to me that at least the military is beginning to adapt to the needs of cyber war. i think it may be a while before they create their own service. >> with regard to stuxnet, is there anything that can be learned by the after effects about what the iranian capabilities are? and what does that tell us about the risks of an offensive

strategy and whether it's israel, whoever? >> i think there are lessons to be learned. the first lesson is that a very sophisticated complex weapon could be made. and i think it's pretty obviously has been made by a nation state and has been used. so we're rewrite -- when we were writing the book, a lot of this sounded theatrical. we didn't have the perfect example that stuxnet was. i think that also demonstrates that there are problems with collateral damage. this was meant to be a very targeted attack. and if you look at the code, if you decompile the attack, as

people have, there are all sorts of things built into the attack so that it doesn't spread. it's almost as though the code for the attack was reviewed by a legal committee. >> you talked about the challenges inherent in trying to reach any kind of treaty with regard to cyber war. and i wonder if an additional challenge isn't that there are still significant segments of the government that think that we can and must dominate cyber space and yet it seems hard to imagine that any other country is going to enter into a treaty that locks in our supposed dominance of cyber space. >> i'm glad you used the word

dominance because as you read through the unclassified and i suspect the classified military documents on cyber war, this word dominance keeps reoccurring. what is our objective? dominance of the do main, dominance of cyber space. the navy renamed their organization in the navy head quarters staff that deals with cyber war the cyber dominance office. i will skip the obvious joke. i think the united states needs, if it's going to enter into international agreements to mitigate the damage that can be done by cyber war, to give up some options. you know, i think international agreements and particularly arms control agreements, you've got to give, you've got to accept limits on yourself. and if our policy is in fact what the navy and others keep saying about dominance, then we

won't get an arms control agreement. and this is why i think this is an issue for the president and for the national security council where the military ask make their case that they should be unfettered to achieve dominance, if that were something that you thought actually could be achieved. i doubt that it can be. i think the fact that we are so weak ourselves, so unable to defend ourselves really calls into question the use of the word dominance. you know, if the united states had in some attack, cyber attack, dobe something in another country but they in return have turned out the lights in washington and stopped the natural gas from the pipelines and derailed our trains, who has dominated whom there. >> how old -- how would you

structure and begin building in defenses for the u.s. private sector? >> well, that's a good question. i used to think that to defend the private sector you had to defend everything. and in fact, when we had a national strategy back in the clinton administration and early bush administration, national strategy for cyber security, it pretty much called for everything to be defended. i think you have to be much more selective, really, to get something done and i think touf concentrate on a few things. i would concentrate on securing the power grid, on which so much else depends, and i would look at the five or six internet service providers that are the back bone i.s.p.s. and i would, through regulation, nasty word in washington, i know, through regulation require those five or six backbone i.s.p.s to

filter what's moving across cyber space and look for pacts which have known signatures of attacks. that is a doable technology. we could be doing it today. some of them actually are doing it today. but they do not have the benefit of all of the attack signatures that the government has. but a simple f.c.c. regulation, if they were allowed to regulate the internet, that said the tier one i.s.p.s have to reach an agreement with the government for filtering for mall ware, would get us 85% of the way, i think. >> we're going to double team dick. h.r. >> my question was simply whether or not your book proposes the elements of a plan or the general contents of a plan that have not what you think we should do. >> it does.

it has elements of a defensive strategy. and it has elements of initial steps in arms control. the defensive strategy builds around, as i just said, the electric power grid, securing the electric power grid which i think could be done. right now, the federal electric regulatory commission has issued rules for securing the power grid but it is incapable of dauting to know whether those rules are being implemented. and i think doin the filtering for attackings on the backbone, that's the beginning of a defensive strategy. we make a whole series of small suggestions for the beginning of arms control beginding with confidence building measures. >> about two years ago, we had a session at csis which was attended by a cyber note from

the pentagon, someone from the goldman sachs and the pentagon gentleman said that the record had been 6 million attempts of intrusion in a single day. and the goldman sachs fellow said, we've reached about 1 million. is there any way of figuring out what percentage might have been successful out of 6 million and 1 million? >> no. i've seen this ad that begins by saying this building is attacked 6 million times a day. and it's the pentagon. now, if your definition of an attack is a ping by a computer, that's not my definition of an attack. i think we may use the word attack in that context, i think it loses all meaning. and the number of attempts i think has absolutely no correlation with the number of successes.

>> my question, if you have any idea for how does the law of war potentially move from conventional to cyber war? target distinction and proportionality. i'm not sure i fully understand how it fits outside a kinetic environment. >> you do have to ask yourself if there is a cyber attack on you, why should you be limited to a cyber attack in return. and if you're not -- from a military perspective, it seems to me that you shouldn't be. that you'd want to be able to respond kin etically to a cyber attack. but once you've done that, i don't know where proportionality goes. it's very hard for me to make those distinctions. we do have in the laws of war that say we're not supposed to attack certain kinds of facilities. certainly civilion facilities in general but certainly hospitals and others.

and that's fine if you think you can control an attack. if you take out a power grid, it's going to knock off the electricity going to hospitals. now, if you're going to try to not do that, i don't know how you take down the power grid. you leave the power grid up but only the line to the hospital is running. i think there's serious questions about how the treaties we've already signed have meaning in cyber war. and people only are beginning to think about that. >> just came from a discussion and in which the legal adviser of one of our allies, close allies described their national security strategy statement and it included in the four areas that they're concerned about, cyber issues. and in outlining five

challenges facing the international community he mentioned the gring use of the elect ro magnetic field. what is, is that the same thing or is that? >> no. there's a whole group of people who think there are electro magnetic weapons out there, and we need to worry seriously about those. and i think they somewhat exaggerate. i think the effects, however, can be the same, which is to wipe out computer memory. and the thing we really haven't all internalized yet, peter, paul, and mary our people our age is that every in our soit depends upon computers. and that airplanes now are just a bunch of software, trains, everything we do all day long, electric power, the water we get, everything is dependent

upon a computer controlled network. and even though people may tell you that these computer control networks are air gapped or not connected to the internet or inacsetible for attackers, any time any cyber war unit or even sophisticated hacker has tried to get in to these air gap networks, they have. the pentagon's secret network, the sipornet supposedly air gapped, has been penetrated according to the pentagon. and the control systems for the power distribution grid, which they say is separate from the internet, people have penetrated by moving from the internet to the corporate intranets of the electric power companies and from there to the networks that run the power grid. so the thing we really have to come to grips with is that everything that we do all day long is now dependent upon

computer networks operating. and it's not just cyber krms who are taking advantage of that, and it's not just cyber spies who are taking advantage of that. it is beginning to be militaries who are taking advantage of that and the defenses we have deployed do not work. until this country comes to seriously understand that, we will continue to be vulnerable. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> as you know, this is cyber awareness month. i think dick is definitely doing his part to make us aware, and i think he has raised a number of issues that will give us lots of things to think about. again, please go to our website, www.aba in the dot org

forward/nat security. and also, all of our application process for our annual convention. but we don't want you to go away empty handed because we all know you how much you like attorneys, so we are giving you the community source law book. so if you have any time to look up the laws, this is something i know you will cherish for a long time. >> thank you so much.

>> still to come this morning on c-span, a news conference on the release of nearly 400,000 military documents. at 7:00 a.m. it's washington journal. a look at main 2010 campaign races at the state and national levels. then on "newsmakers," chairman of the financial crisis inquiry commission on what led to current u.s. commission difficulties.

>> this week, two former parliamentarians, one british, one american, compare and contrast the house of representatives and the house of commons. on the rules that run parliament and congress. tonight on q and a. >> it's time to get your camera rolling for this year's student cam. c-span's competition.

make a five to eight minute video on this year's theme, washington, d.c. through my lens. tell us about an issue, event, or topic that helps you better understand the role of the federal government in your life or community. be sure to include more than one point of view along with c-span programming, the deadline is january 120th, and you'll have a chance to win the grand prize of $5,000. there's $50,000 in total prizes. open to middle and high school students. for complete details, go to student cam.org. >> yesterday, the website wicki leaks released nearly 400,000 classified military documents on the iraq war. they reportedly revealed details on thousands of previously unreported deaths and alleged tor tur by iraqi authorities. its founder was among the panel to talk about his group's

findings. this is an hour and 15 minutes. you will have seen the print of course in television coverage this morning. those speaking this morning are the editor of wicki leaks which he founded in 2006. it has won a number of awards. in june 2009, they won amnesty international's u.k. media award. and july this year, he won the sam adams award for integrity. he is joined by kristin

hoffmanson who became actively involved on the collateral murder video earlier this year and has traveled to baghdad on a fact-finding mission. he has 20 years experience as an investigative journalist with channel 2 news. he has been awarded twice iceland's highest journalism award. since 2003, john has been coordinator of the iraq body count project, an ongoing human project since the 2003 invasion. he is a consultant and director of the oxford program and shares chairs the advisory group. he is an honorary professor at

the school of politics and international relations at royal hollow way university of london. the body count data has been used by an extraordinary group of people, the "new york times," the "washington post," alja jeera open democracy, the guardian, the world health org saying, the international criminal court, and the european union's joint research center and the brookings institute in washington. and at 10:25 we'll also be hearing from phil shiner, leads the team of public interest lawyers. he has been practicing in the u.k. since 1981 and has written extensively on human rights law. in recent years, he has acted in some of the most important judicial review cases to be brought in his area of expertise, and in march 2010 he led the team to success in european court of human rights in a particularly important case. he was made solicitor of year

in 2008 and was in the sunday times top ten solstors the same year. so i think we can now start with julian. >> thank you. because we don't have much time, i won't speak for long. but this disclosure is about the truth. philip, the great investigative reporter, an australian, who for the past 30 or 40 years has made the u.k. his home, has said that the first casualty of war is the truth. the attack on the truth by war begins long before war starts and continues long after a war ends. in our release of these 400,000

documents, about the iraq war, the intimate details of that war from the u.s. perspective, we hope to correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war, and which has continued on since the war officially concluded. in that material, the deaths of some 109,000 people are documented. internally declared 66,000 civilians. working with the iraq body counts, we have seen that there are approximately 15,000 never preevelsly documented or known cases of civilians who have been killed by violence in iraq.

that's should not make us blind to the small human scale that occurs in this material. in fact, it is the deaths of one and two people per event that kills the overwhelming number of people in iraq. following our reloose of the afghan war diaries, we thought we would try and pull together a broader coalition, not just involving print but one that has the emotion nalt of tv, journalism, and extra research from other groups so we structured a collaboration between our three previous

print partners and new groups the bureau for investigative journalism, iraq body count whose knowledge of death in iraq is unsurpassed, sbc, swedish television, alja jeera, channel 4, bbc radio, and i'm sure i've missed some others. le monday. that collaboration seems to have worked. and we'll see over the next two days what's to be made of it. but, so far, we can see a fairly strong response. we have seen, as of 3:00 a.m. this morning 1500 articles and of course all around the world we can see the result.

we made a promise to our sources who go through incredible risks sometimes to get us materials that we will do justice to their efforts and get them the maximum political impact possible. and while i'm not sure that we have achieved the maximum possible, i think we're getting pretty close. and with that, i will introduce you now to kristin. >> thank you. when wicki leaks announced the release of the diary, the organization was described as sensitive and harmful. those overblown statements were echoed in most of the media without any criticism or

critical question. three months have passed now, and there have been no reports of any harm in relation to the release of the afghan war diaries. this has even been acknowledged by the pentagon. last week some news organizations sent by robert gates this was about the same time that gates and pentagon spokesperson were sending out strongly worded statements in that. however, it is acknowledged that the afghan documents has not revealed any, quote, sensitive intelligence sources or methods, inquote. last week, a top nato official reiterated in a statement to the press that he had not seen any harm as a result of the release.

the contrast between these statements should be a reminder that people should not accept condemning statements against wicki leaks without question. in relation to the afghan files, wicki leaks wits held one in six reports, 15,000 in all, for line by line reviewing. that work is now finishedor and the report will be released soon. this time, wicki leaks took a new approach. it used electronic reduction methods combined with tests done by groups of people. it is an approach that has been perfected by a group of people contributing to the process. it can best be described as a reverse approach to reduction. at the outset, everything in

all reports deemed harmful redacted until proven otherwise. from then on, words, phrases, locations, operations, et cetera, were uncovered or unredacted step by step. the work in the passing weeks has, therefore, been focusing on minimizing the reduction. along the way, batches of documents were taken out and tested by a group of qualified volunteers and further tests were done on the 390,000 documents. we are confident, now, that the documents in the highly ry dakotaed form contain no information that could be harmful to individuals. having said that, i would like to ask that every system can contain flaws. but the likelihood of any flaw in our approach is purely minimal. the end result which we are

presenting is still in a highly redack ted. despite, the war log is easily readable and can be data mind for new stories and angles for those interested. we also look into the possibility of providing news media and academics access to unredacted parts of the document upon request. further more, it needs to be emphasized that we aim to continue on the track of further minimizing the redactions. but being a small organization with limited resources, this could take some time. >> thank you. you'll see on war logs the statements that he spoke of. that consits of the entire

redacted collection. you can search for key words. we also partnered with others to produce a system where people who have information about these events can comment on them and write them, go to the website and have a look at that. there's a lot of obviously a tremendous worldwide interest at the moment, so those systems may be slow. but if you persevere across the day, you will find them to be quite useable. it's what we used partially internally and the iraq body count also has a system which they'll describe.

>> in any disaster, finding out who died and how thigh died is the overriding public concern. the sens years, the public does not have a full account of the cost of the iraq war to the iraqi people. what we have instead is an incomplete patchwork of stories pictures and data, often published one day and forgotten the next. the victims of this war, their families, and the publics whose taxes fund this war, deserve better than this. iraq body count has been working on a daily basis since march 2003 to ensure that no fact about the civilian deaths that is uncord is then lost from view. we carefully monitor, compare, and analyze published reports mostly provided by press and media organization such as represented in this room. in this way we have been able to build and keep in the public

eye the most detailed and comprehensive list of civilian deaths to date that exists. in fact, the world's press and media have by default been the front line data gatherers of this war. without journalists and without the organizations for which they work, the world would know little of substance about the iraq death toll. such, yesterday's release reveals that there has been another frontline data gatherer, the u.s. army. day by day, secretly, soldiers all over iraq have been writing detailed reports of the violent deaths they caused, witnessed, or are informed about. dates, times, precise locations, names, ages, and occupations of victims have all been stored away in these logs. it is very good that this data has been collected. but it is wrong and ub justifyable that it has been kept secret for so long.

iraq body count has started the huge task of integrating the new information into the paxwork just as we would for any other source brought to our attention. in the few weeks since we've had access to the logs we've only scratched the surface. but by matching these logs, we have a clear emerging picture of what these logs contain as a whole. and the reports on our website give the full details. but let me take you through the headline findings. i and my colleagues will be available to answer further detailed questions during and after this press conference. based on our careful ansiss, we believe this will brick more than 15,000 previously unreported deaths. to add to the 107,000 which are already in the iraq body count data base. 15,000 is a huge number. it's equivalent to fe