Whatever it may be you know, it is wonderful, frankly, its you get paid to do what you love to do. I am in government. What i wanted was intellectual stimulation. Does the world look different from this Vantage Point than it did in government . Gen. Petraeus it is a different perspective. All of this as the director of the cia, it is a financial investment. Ever think, gosh, i wish i had known that when i was at the cia . Gen. Petraeus well, sure. Knowledge of ath country or a particular industry. Of course the world has turned over a certain amount since i was director. We will talk about some of the most significant developments. Geopolitics has become vastly more important than it was when i was in government. Do not get me wrong. There are plenty of challenges. At but we will get back to this theme again and again. The rise of china. The fact that china is not only our biggest geopolitical competitor, but it is and was our biggest trading partner. That is the most important trade relationship in the world, bar none. Ins all china, all the time different respects. We will get to china, but first, breaking news. Announced wemp has are withdrawing American Forces from syria i believe, actually the news reports i saw out me of the military outposts, American Posts have already been evacuated. This is a part of the world you obviously know very well. You served for quite a long time. What am i supposed to think . The press lost my email and phone number. Reaction, frankly was to share the concerns that have senatorced by mcconnell, senator lindsey graham, both the norm us, strong allies of the president , the former ambassador to the u. N. Nikki haley. I say that with a caveat because it is not precisely clear to me what it is the policy objectives the nor specifically what policy is. This . G a buffer is will there be refugee camps. Will there be refugee camps . It appears that there will be zone with turkish kurds that could be quite disruptive. Descriptions, i cannot tell right away. Furtherdid not offer clarification. They seem to be warning the turks, as the president did. Without real specificity on that particular policy initiative, it is very hard to evaluate what the implications are, but among the implications, in addition to displacing some people and replacing them with others, could be that our partners, the syrian kurds, who have fought to died in large numbers defeat their Islamic State and eliminate the caliphate, knowing there are probably 30,000 of aremic state forces, they still around the iraq and syria area, but those kurds may take their eyes off the remnants of isis, which are trying to establish an insurgency and carry out terrorist activities. It also may take their ir for have to take their i off these of family camps members of the Islamic State fighters. The one most significant is up to 70,000 family members. Mostly wives and then their children of Islamic State fighters. And that is a huge challenge. This is a big conundrum because countries most of these came to syria from another country, theunderstandably, countries are reluctant to take them back, if they will at all. There is a lot of Unfinished Business here. One of the lessons i think we have learned i will go into the five big lessons we shouldve learned from the last 18 years of war but one of them is you do not take your eyes off this fall. Implieso that, defeat they cannot accomplish their mission without being reconstituted. As we saw iraq, if you take your eyes off al qaeda and iraq, they reconstitute themselves as isis and gain a lot of power. There are two different kinds of arguments, even injustice past afternoon, as people have argued about why this is a bad idea. One is the one you laid out, which is you take your eye off back, it isis comes becomes destabilized in a variety of ways. Gen. Petraeus there is also something about the commitment from the United States. That is another factor. That is without going to say. You mentioned earlier, talking about kkr facing Reputational Risk. Gen. Petraeus yep. How important is consideration should be americas Reputational Risk . The reason i ask that is i think it is fair to say one of the things that makes this president unusual as he does not really think that Reputational Risk, in the sense we have been using it, matters a lot. That is to say, reputation for fidelity, for a certain kind of commitment to allies, to following through, for staying the course, all of those things. If we were to make the case for reputation, how would you make it . Gen. Petraeus it is by no means unique to this administration. We could go to the previous administration. We had a redline that turned out not to be a redline. That is serious. The Prime Minister of singapore told me that is not just have ramifications in the middle east and europe come of that has significant ramifications out here. We have more than occasionally had more expansive rhetoric than it turned out we were reeling we were willing to see through to conclusion. That is a pretty substantial statement made by the superpower of the world, and, again, we did not make him go. We did not even have a safe zone, much less other initiatives. We perhaps could have been firmer with russia at various times. Perhaps so with china on some issues, as well, while seeking to coordinate with them, collaborate, and have a mutually beneficial relationship. By the way, that would go back with respect to the administration that you and i served in together, where there were opportunities and now there is a lot of revisionist history about the relationship and those early postwto days for china. And opportunities that might have sent messages very early on about subsidies not being allowed and emotional property transfer, and all these other issues. Again, there was a shrinking from that. But this is a narrow Reputational Risk that i would like to hear you say a few more words about. That is the risk you incur when you walk away from an ally like the kurds. The argument would be, well, they are pretty perfect and their connections with the pkk and so on, but if i understood you correctly, you talk about the moral commitment we have to them, is that correct . Gen. Petraeus i dont think it is just to them. I think we have that to some other partners we have been working with. This is the realist thinking, after all. This is paul nitzes he was your first dean, wasnt he . He was one of the founders. He was a somewhat different character. Gen. Petraeus he was, but we all know about paul nitze known for this and that. Again, i think known for a realistic appraisal and International Relations and security situations. I think you have got to be fairly clearite about that. About that. Eareyed and you have to be clear with your rhetoric. If you do make a public commitment, and you are the superpower, you need to follow through with that commitment, unless there is some explanation about why the context has changed. So it is measured in what you do. We have repeatedly, in the post9 11 period, i would argue with all of the three post9 11 administrations, and considerably more expansive rhetoric than it turned out we were willing to actually put up. Transition tothat the question of lessons, if you think there are any that we should take away from what some people call forever wars, iraq, afghanistan, and the broader and more diffused conflict against al qaeda and analogous movements. You indicated five big takeaways. Would you tell us what they are . Gen. Petraeus sure, and i would be happy to go into some specifics with iraq and the catastrophically bad decisions we made in the first few months of iraq if we want to get into that later. Strategically we get the bighave to ideas right. Strategically, there is a fourth task, and the first task is unique to a strategic leader. There is usually only one unless you have coheads or cofounders as kkr does. The bigk is to get ideas right. If you dont get the big ideas right, Everything Else is felt on a shaky foundation. The fact is, and i have noted, the surge of iraq was not what mattered most, but it was the surge of ideas, which the big ideas were 180 degrees front from what we were doing prior to the surge. This is a fairly transformative, a moment of change leadership, as they say, to go from consolidating on a big basis to living with the people because that is the only way you can secure them, to handed off to the iraqis, to taking it back, to releasing detainees, to stopping releasing them, until you have a Rehabilitation Program and a variety of other for tolerating reconciliation to embracing wholeheartedly, and then more determinedly, just very, very huge increase in the intensity of the operations to get irreconcilables. You have to get the big ideas right. By the way, you have to have a formal mechanism where you sit down to determine how to refine them and do it again, and again, and again. I can give you lots of examples. I will come back to basic leadership at the end. Gen. Petraeus to talk about, i think, the big ideas that have emerged from the past 18 years of the war, continuous war, as are as follows, it is not a question of if, but of when areas will be exploited in the world. Number two, you have to do something about it. This is not a problem you can study until it goes away. You can engage in paralysis by analysis. It does not go away. Moreover, rules do not apply in these areas. What happens there does not stay there. They tend to spew violence, instability, extremism, and a tsunami of refugees. Not just in neighboring countries, but as in the case of thea, libya, and some of others, all the way to western europe, causing the most populous challenges since the end of the cold war, so you have to do something. Number three is the u. S. Generally has two leads, but we want a bigger coalition and that coalition should include muslim countries for whom this is an existential struggle, not something less than that. Generally has to lead. If you look at the extraordinary predominance that we have in the systems that have come the coin of the realm in these fights, in. Articular the drones it used to be predators and reapers. Think about it, 150 people in eyel are needed to keep one in the sky 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the blinking eye in the sky, then to analyze the intelligence and make sense of it, and so forth. We have six to seven times as many of those lines as all of our partners put together. Dont get me wrong, dont confuse these with the thousands or tens of thousands of drones that are out there, everything from what launches like this to bigger ones. These are the ones that really, really matter. These are the ones that personally allocates to subordinate units, and the same is done in the pentagon for the whole world. Industrial the ability for intelligence, the enormous precision you nations, the aircraft, and so forth. Keep in mind, our drones are willing to launch stuff from them in addition to her, since assets that we can hang golf them, and few of our allies are willing to do that or can do that with the ability we have. Number four is you have to acknowledge a real paradox, and that is you cannot Counter Terrorist like al qaeda and the Islamic State with just counterterrorist force operations. You cannot just drone strike or delta rage your way out of the problem. If that is all you can do, that is what you do. You have to realize all you can do is disrupt with that. If you want to truly deal with the problem, you have to have a comprehensible approach, a comprehensive Civil Military campaign, such as the one i was privileged to oversee during the surge in iraq, and this is a but without us doing all of the fighting on the front lines, the restoration of basic services, the political reconciliation, the reestablishment of rule of law, and local institutions, markets, schools, and health clinics, and repair damage and Everything Else, it is crucial that we not do that because of lesson number five, and that is that this fight is not the fight of a decade, much less a few years, it is a fight of a generation or more. Therefore, you have to have a sustained commitment. We know in a democracy can only sustain a commitment if it is sustainable in terms of blood and treasure, the expenditure of those. There was no way we can sustain what we did in iraq when you have 165,000 americans and tens and thousands of coalition, plus , 200,000 or so contractors, probably, or 150,000 u. S. And coalition in afghanistan. Those were not sustainable. Those were necessary at the time because we did not have a lot of the assets we were able to bring to bear now, but we figured out how to do this. I think this is a hugely significant breakthrough that we are now able to carry out these kind of campaigns. In syria, we only have about 200,000 225,000 troops on the ground. Yes, there is support from various other locations. Iraq is certainly below 6000 then may be below 5000 at this point. Afghanistan is 13,000, 14,000 americans, several thousand more coalition, so maybe 20,000 overall. That is a hugely reduced number, therefore, hugely reduced expenditure in blood and treasure. That is, i think, absolutely crucial, in particular, because we do have to acknowledge the single Biggest Development strategically is the rise of china, and we do need to do the rebalance to asia, like the previous ministrations initiated and this administration has continued. I want to get to china. I want to come in on one point that you and i discussed earlier. For those of you who do not know me, it would be surprising that i would stand up for the president , what i was going to say to you is doesnt the president have, in his unique way, a kind of common sense point . We have been fighting these wars away, years, they are far we smashed isis on the ground, the war in afghanistan executives going on forever, other people have a bigger stake in this than we do, not only the whyls, but the europeans, should we waste our blood and treasure . But the point that i would make is if you strip aside the rhetoric, which doesnt appeal ofsome people, it is a kind man in the street, person in the street judgment about the conduct of war. One of the things i have been hoping to draw your out on his what is the difference between that kind of judgment . There are elements of common sense to it, i think you would agree, and what you have to offer, what this school has to offer, is the kind of educated judgment, which can take you to a different place. I was wondering if you could ruminate on that, the difference . Gen. Petraeus first of all, i have sorta offered the five lessons, but if you sort of except those, the policy it indicate would as Brian Crocker used to say, you can leave the movie theater, but the movie continues to roll. We found that out the hard way, after he pulled all our combat forces out of iraq, only to find out several years later we had 5500 troops on the ground. There was an irony that we had removed them because we cannot get a parliamentary approved status of forces agreement, and at the end of the administration, we had 5500 troops on the ground without a status of forces agreement. Who argues, had we left 5500 troops, it would have prevented the Prime Minister of iraq from doing what he did, which is basically to undo all that we had achieved during the surge together and then sustain for a good 3. 5 years afterward, of which was most significant which was not driving the violence down by 90 but ringing the fabric of society back together, which he ripped apart by going after the senior sunni ofders, he being the leader the shiite majority country. And i should also add, nobody understands the frustrations more than the individual that commanded both of them at their peak and spend nearly seven of my last 10 years in uniform deployed, and who wrote more letters of condolence to americas mothers and fathers than anybody else, at least anybody else in theater. Would allably, we love to do nationbuilding at home, as the previous administrations president argued. The problem is there are five lessons that i think are the result i would like to think of considered judgment, and analysis, and have become the big ideas and you approach this particular situation and this particular threat. And i tend to think they are somewhat undeniable in that every time we have denied them, toally, we have found out our disappointment or horror, that we have to go back in and keep our eye on these guys. Do you worry about the ability of people like you, or me, to persuade our fellow citizens of that kind of thing . At the moment, it looks as though the other kind of argument is much more successful and persuasive. Particularly those of us in science, and i want talking about the argument of iraq and afghanistan, but more broadly, what are the things one of the things we take away from thisera of populism is world has not been particularly effective at persuading fellow citizens to think in more or less the ways that we would like them to. Gen. Petraeus again, i think for understandable reasons, it is very easy to argue for something that the people would like to see. Again, this is also not i can to that is why we cut taxes. Well, what a wonderful idea. There is the matter of a fiscal deficit, but as the result of recent tax cuts and budget caps, 3 trillionted in of deficit spending over a tenyear period, and that is over what we were already planning to run. Again, that is a very appealing idea, so how do you do it . You have to try to be as persuasive as you can. I certainly tried to do that. Pluses and one of my minuses and some of the eyes of the folks in the scarcity was that i was the most accessible general officer, certainly during the post9 11 period. Then you getwas labeled a celebrity general later on, and that has its downsides on people tell you there is room inside the beltway for only one superstar, and it is not going to be you, but you live with that. Usin, i think the onus is on to try to persuade people. Again, i have often said the big applaudedally are not by whom you applaud the big ideas or whom you share them, it is just the big ideas. In this case, i like to think the big ideas are reasonably persuasive. I have written these. Withe gone public these in the Washington Post two years ago or so. In an age of populism, in an age of how many characters are in a ieet im not on twitter, must confess, but i have people who send me stuff on twitter you have to be able to compete with those who are really good at that, but how do you counter some of the challenges of the social media age . To beare only beginning seen now when it comes to the fake videos that are going to be produced that are getting ever , and they aree ever more refined and, again, realistic. It is going to take a huge effort. I will tell you that when we were doing this urge iran, we put an and normas effort into our communication strategy. The big idea and we had a whole series of big ideas. We had three pages of counterinsurgency guidance, which i wrote personally every month or two. I just hit that send key during that 9. 5 month period. It is pretty profound. You want to beat the bad guys with the headline and be first. Keep in mind, the bad guys have cnn bureaus dialed in their cell phone, and as you are fighting your way out of the city, they are already dialing in and saying the americans have just committed an atrocity. We are fighting to get the full motion video pulled down to race it over to them and show that, these guys shot first. Let us explain it to you. So dont do the headline until we at least had a chance to talk to you because you want that headline. You dont want to be the one underneath it that says americans commit an atrocity. You want it to be americans operations to the press will come back and bite you in the backside. We found individuals found it difficult to come up to the podium and explain right after took place that day. Instead, we would start off with happy talks. They would say 360 people were inled in these baghdad, their version of a Shopping Mall or center, it was just a mile long, as you recall, just the back streets, and there were three suicide bombers one day, and our spokesman went out and started talking about the presumption of the Soccer League and that the Amusement Park was coming back, and i said, no, you say we had a horrible day today in baghdad. 160 innocent civilians were killed in horrendous, horrific suicide bombings. Here is what we understand to have taken place. Here is what we had sat down with our iraqi counterparts to initiate to try to mitigate the risks of that in the future, and this is in more details to follow. Again, you have to really get serious. We have people watching the televisions there fulltime. We have people watching print media and that days version of social media, which was still developing. 24 by seven, everyone of them, so you could immediately push back. We also had a very substantial u. K. Public relations firm working for us. We made our own videos and so forth. And these were realistic. These were not happiness in the midst of what was going on. Im going to ask you two more questions because i know lots of people want to ask you things. First is about china. You mentioned china, china, china. Obviously, china is both a competitor to the United States and a critical partner, but also a global force. Gen. Petraeus i have begun talking about the arrival of rise of opposed to the china because it is already here. Youont talk about what think american policy should be, but how do you see this pattern of relationships playing out over the next decade or so . What do you think the relationship is likely to look like, rather than what you think the United States should be doing about it . Gen. Petraeus as a former economics professor, obviously i should begin by saying, it depends. On the one hand. Gen. Petraeus on the one hand, no, it does depend. It depends on what chinese leaders are willing to do. It depends on what american leaders are going to be willing to do. It depends on the strategic relationship between our two countries. I think we desperately need future dialogue, the kind that Henry Kissinger would be carrying out, but it is difficult if people are changing jobs fairly frequently. It does depend very much on all of these different dynamics. And i have to Say Something about what i think our Foreign Policy should be because i have written about this, as well as at the center for harvard, it is titled coherence and competitiveness american Foreign Policy imperatives, and it argues what we should have for china is a very coherent approach. It is very clear that is the number one priority. Everything else is not the main effort. They are all supporting efforts. It should be comprehensive, not just all of our possible tools, not just unitary, trade, economic, diplomatic, social, you name it, all of that, but all of that from all of our parsable partners and allies are possible partners and allies, as well. I think you would agree that you would not pull out of the Transpacific Partnership as an example. I got it that the other candidate ran against it, as stateand the secretary of promoted it, but im fairly confident there would be fns to get to it because that was more important strategically than economically. You would certainly point out to your nato partners that they are not spending 1. 5 in one case, much less 2 of gdp on defense, even though that one of them is running a fiscal surplus. To limitknow, you have that because you need all of these nato allies with you. You need all of your asia pacific allies even more so. If you want to make it a reality and not just the new name for old headquarters. Trulyve to take steps to operationalize that. You want all the g7 countries with you, so be careful how you interact with them. Do you think this will be a more conflictual relationship in the future . Gen. Petraeus that truly depends on both sides. Again, there are legitimate issues. Very clear beyond the u. S. Side, and they have accumulated over time. Let me say up front, i very much want to see this the government beneficial be a mutual relationship. I think there have been more concerns here. My hope is there can be some reestablishment of some degree of trust and confidence so that at least it does not turn into an allout cold war. I would contend we are already in the early stages of a tech cold war. I think that is actually happening, and i think that probably is going to follow through. I think are too many realities there. Look, there is not a World Wide Web anymore. There are 1. 3 billion people behind the great firewall of china. There will be more of these. Russia will adopt Chinese Technology and so forth, so there will be countries that take hours,e it or weston, there will be countries that will take it, and there will be probably a fracturing of the worldwide web further and of the i. T. Space, as well. And then there will be something. N between somehow keeping again the challenges their biggest trading partner in many cases is china. Are in a difficult situation here. It really depends on decisions that are made and on are pursueds that at what is quite a fragile time. Im not certain we are going to resolve all of the issues the u. S. Trade representatives list, which was quite a comprehensive list. There is a big issue here as well, i think one of the biggest of the big ideas about the world we have the return of history. A little journal called the national interest, which only had 10,000 subscribers of the time. Brilliant essay. His argument is history as the between contending systems and you had this u. S. Led western democratically elected government, liberal democracy and capitalist economics, freemarket economics , competing with the soviet union and its system and partners in the warsaw pact, but in particular the soviet communist party. Predicted that this was going to collapse under its own weight. Also confessed more recently that history is back with a vengeance. Very oneparty system that has enabled china to achieve results economically ,hat no country has approached especially a large economy in a four year period. There system of governance and they have a economy, albeit with a system that includes substantial state owned as state owned enterprises. Against the u. S. Led liberal democracies of the world. Many are experiencing a variety of populism, the golden age of democracy i would contend, with exception of japan and india. Certainly the u. S. , u. K. , germany, france, spain, italy and on. Allof these considering of these experiencing considerable elements. Im going to ask you one question and then we will open it up. I want to get back to your idea of strategic leadership. Your point of that kind of leadership as opposed to other kind of leadership, it begins with big ideas. I think retrospectively its Pretty Simple and straightforward. Once somebody has them. This is all accepted, and even those on top of me with the this was not too universally known. Even when it came to some of the more controversial, i think everyone realizes at a certain point on the ground we have to approve security. You cant have 53 dead civilian due to civilian bodies violence every hour and expect anything useful is going to be conducted in the parliament and the schools. You had to do that. Here is my question. We know how it turned out, the ideas, which are in one sense simple, you can articulate these in a way a 19yearold can understand. Why does it take somebody like or some other startek other successful strategic leaders to say, that is pretty straightforward. Why is it so hard . Inertia is bureaucratic and momentum. Kodak, which has thousands, not just hundreds, but thousands of , whyal photography patents they didnt change the big idea when they did. Then they are out of business. Its not enough to get the big ideas right. You have to formally sit down and force yourself to ask how do we refine the big ideas . At least one hour every month, all of the lessons were kernels of these different teams all over the battlefield. Source ofust one intellectual challenge for me plannersing down with for another source or variety of activities. Head byt get hit on the newtons apple fully formed. More likely you get hit on the head by the kernel of a big ideal and you have to shape it. That shaping process is generally best done in an inclusive way, welcoming way. You want everyone to feel like they have the opportunity to contribute rather than what people do if they are outside the tent. It is generally iterative. It should be something that continues. I mentioned i had another set for afghanistan. This was dynamic. It wasnt revolutionary change. But i would capture a new way of freezing something. Walk, the big ideas was get out of your vehicle and walk. There was one that said promote initiative and explained we want leaders to feel that in the ,bsence of guidance or orders create that kind of culture, that kind of organization. That then the preface side that learns the fastest typically prevails. You have to promote that, you have to force that, you have to drive it as a strategic leader. I worked hard at the cia. You are driving the campaign. There was an actual possibility there was a closure in the senate that would circumscribe all of the sources. You just have to drive this personally very much. You are conveying all of that. In hindsight always appeared terrific. Love the example of netflix. I think hes one of the great strategic leaders in the world. Jeff bezos would be another jack mom. People. E extraordinary netflix sat down in the beginning and after blockbuster that, theydnt buy offered blockbuster to buy them for 50 million, they turned them down. The first big ideas is we are going to put movies in the hands of customers, and we are going to put blockbuster out of business. To do it, oversee the execution. He has mechanisms that are similar to this. He gets down here in two years later, how are we doing . Great. Blockbuster is going out of business. Wheres the last blockbuster . Area or again, which is a famous contrarian place and refuses to let it die, and there is one in alaska somewhere. Here and says its going great. Idea was broadband speeds are now faster. They communicate it, oversee it. What do we do now . Lets develop our own content. Series that great have been here. They say its going fantastic. Now amazon and hbo and everybody is producing content. The first one had that had brad pitt and it was horrible. Stan has a sense of humor. To be the most forgettable role he ever had. They were doing these crazy things they imagined military people do, they dont. Brad pitt devastated didnt hold out and play me. Had the Great Australian actor from gladiator. You get the idea on strategic leadership. These all appear obvious in heise in hindsight. Manual, of course, this is all common sense. Then why are we doing what we are doing . Why would we miss this escalation in the wake of bombing in the summer at the mosque . We continue to withdraw from the communities and posture to go home. Thats the process with big ideas. For way toogoing on long. Im going to ask to wait for the are,phone, say who you what your affiliation is, and asko and actually ask a question. Year. A second thanks for being with us tonight. I wanted to ask about africa. East africa has become an arena of extremism and competition i seen great powers, and a lot of parallels to competition taking place in the middle east over the past two decades. I want to ask how you think the u. S. Should respond to or engage in this competition and how we can do better than we have done in the middle east . I think we should engage more. I am heartened to see the International Development finance corporation. More importantly to see the amount of resources double from billion. N to 60 they should also coordinate with the other major donors, japan, the u. N. And others so that you increase the effect. Its a place to have a coherent and comprehensive approach, noting this will not be the main effort, which is going to be with respect to china. This is actually a petition with china as well. Is an area where there are extremists, where there is a variety of other challenges, whether it is inadequate governance, corruption, lack of rule of law, what have you. Kind ofloggers for the approach we used in the past, it doesnt mean you have to be in conflict with china all the time. That is a big take away. We are in a better age as well. Destined for war without a question mark. All of those cases are prenuclear age and the stakes are quite a bit front. Of the success is just showing up, and we havent been showing up in all of these different locations. It is very frustrating i will acknowledge. Youe are moments where literally had to shut down a because of the lack of integrity and part of and the risk was so significant. We did do the biggest investment in africa. We bought the biggest rose grower in the entire world in ethiopia. All of my west point classmates thought i lost my mind. It went from 8000, 9000 to 12 or 13,000 at the end. You can do some substantial investments or other activity. You have to have a strong stomach for some of the challenges you are going to encounter. A little bit forward. There he is. Work ugh physically i i was think and of this kind of relationship between the china and u. S. For a long time. Competitionience between china and the u. S. , from , i find American Students skills are not that strong with the chinese students. Having this kind of basic sign is extremely important to having innovation in terms of technology of the future. What are your ideas on how you attract thisow to market all around the world . A populist professor just one the nobel prize, so we are still generating a you. Go blue jays. Its actually a very good question. Im fairly serious about stem talk and all of this. We do quite a bit of investing in a variety of technical areas, on a personal venture capitalist as well. This is already over 1 billion, which is exciting. Im keenly focused on this. You have to have a comprehensive approach. We have to do a better job in the u. S. Of making people believe this is something they want to do. There are issues with Public Schools we need to address. I think its not wrong to argue we are leaving 40 of the American Students behind to some degree. Some of the challenges we have in the Public School areas, i think we need to continue to provide student visas to attract the best and brightest. Also we should lift the limit, which are the smart people visas. That means a legal pathway for unskilled workers vital to our agriculture construction, hospitality sectors among others visas. H one bc h one others all depend on those. Making it easy to keep the people here. I would argue if somebody is coming to a Stem Technology program and get a phd, there should be a green card stapled to the acceptance letter. Certainly should be the case if they are accepted at hopkins and i thinknd harvard area youve got to have a comprehensive approach to this. There are a lot of areas we have not taken some of the steps. Over here. Inks for limiting it to one person at a time. We will probably take two more questions. They are being dutiful. I wanted to learn about your read on what is happening in the short to mediumterm. A lot of americans will want to start investing. We will take one more question. Prepareuld be wise to for the moment when investment is possible. Not the least of which are sanctions. A colossally bad investment environment. Serious corruption. Illegal activity by the rulers of the country. I think what is going to have to happen in venezuela is the country is going to have to collapse. Path to ae a negotiated outcome when you have a regime. Is not just saddam hussein, his sons and a handful of other one and two members. This is an entire military superstructure. Every element is far better than i unfortunately tied into this. There are serious issues with illegal narcotics and every possible activity that can generate hard currency for a regime that is being strangled by sanctions. Its highly unlucky they are going to give up power. You get rid of the leader and everyone else is sort of ok, you can keep them around. Vastly more than these others put together. It has to collapse. Then we need to be ready very quickly to provide a lot of different humanitarian assistance and that may require a lot of other forms of assistance as well. Last question over here. Any person who has the guts to wear a red pocket square i had the guts to rebel against the iranian government. My question is that recently business around people put out a tape but ive a statement for said thetion that purpose of the corporation is maximizing profit. You dedicate your life to public good and now you are at the corporation. There are some grievances with corporations such as google that are doing business with the Chinese Communist party. If you agree with that navigate, how do you public good and maximization of profit for the shareholders . That is a complex issue. Believed in doing well while doing good. You have to give good returns or people are not going to give you their money. This is millions of people, money entrusted to us. This is the retirement service, probably the endowments, sovereign wealth funds. This is a serious responsibility. To doingite committed that while doing good. Good means you dont break the law, dont violate some social norm, what have you. We think that is the right thing to do, we also think it is the wise thing to do from a business perspective. I understand why they took place. I firmly do. I was inside that special ops Communication Network at the time. I really think they are wrong. I also think they dont work that well. Those, iou dismiss argue the price youre going to pay for whatever you might get for using those will vastly the valley of what you have. If you dont do good eventually you are not going to do well. Its well over a billion dollars, still climbing, where the intent is to still do good while doing well. There are responsibilities to a variety of different stakeholders. Into the each is of this, this gets quite serious. Should a Sporting Good store sell automatic weapons . Should it highcapacity magazines . There are lots of these different each is. Weighedave to be against the various stakeholders who are affected by this. People will reward a company for doing what you might see as the right thing. There is still going to be a lot of debate about what does this actually mean. Thats already ongoing in a firm that owns 100 Large Companies around the world. Many of those you know and used, i believe in what we do. To help something grow to build value ultimately and do return more to our investors than they provided to us. Debates on howof do you operationalize that egg idea. You have got to be careful. There are a variety of different responsibilities you have, not just to shareholders and investors, but to other stakeholders as well. That is one once again where you have to have a comprehensive approach. Let me end by saying thanks so to my favorite dean, someone with long hope would be a dean at some point. He is leading a great Strategic Studies Program as well. I look forward to a lot of other initiatives i know you are going to pursue as the strategic leader of this great institution. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] Canadian Party leaders, including Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau take part in a two hour debate ahead of the october 21 election. Today. Verage begins past leaders let china freely plunder the United States economy and take the crown jewels of american industry. Are finally responding to years of chronic trade abuses by defending our workers with tariffs and anything else that is necessary. Nobody is going to steal our businesses, nobody is going to close our factories, and nobody is going to close our plants anymore, they are all coming back. President trump has popularized the debate over tariffs in our country once again. How long have terrorists been the subject of big political debates . A topic ofn discussion from the beginning that tariffs make great rhetoric, really power people up. One can argue that the United States was founded on a tariff battle, on opposition to english tariffs. We are going to spend some time we started asking our questions started asking questions ourselves about tariff baits, but we bring the audience along to learn about the role of tariffs in american history