[inaudible conversations] our second panel of the day will tackle the dangers of biotech, biological warfare agents and biotech innovation. Addressing these issues requires focused on both on the Intelligence Community but also development of national and international strategies, consensus on laws, standards and authorities. We have an Awesome Group to shed some light on these issues. Moderated by my good friend frank says no, George Washington university, dr. Charles, the honorable senator Joe Lieberman the we are thrilled to be able to get back on campus and doctor william roper. So over to you guys. Thank you, frank. [applause] good morning, everyone. We are delighted, i think we are to be here afterward the conversation such a delight but i think it will be. Its one that i i think were l looking forward to. I i thought maybe what would do before we actually dive into the topic itself is to connect each of you with the topic area and your areas of interest and focus. Charles, europe bio scientist what else can kills about what you do on a daily basis . Well, im a scientist who explain Scientific Concepts and technology to nonscientist. I dont actually practice sites in a lab anymore but i use my skills and background to write and communicate for the policymakers we need to provide about implications of those technologies. With a focus on National Security. My area is in bio weapons and my background is in microbiology. Senator lieberman, we all know you from your many incarnations, campaigns. But you had throughout your career a very serious focus on National Security, now, in fact, will talk about this, you are also focused on biological crimes and terrorism. Tell us more about that. Thanks, frank. Just thinking, charles said he was teaching science to nonscientist. When it went to college there was still a science requirement but they had a special chart science for nonscience majors. I did one of those, too. Its like physics for the intimidated. [laughing] i took a course, half the year was astronomy, half geology and, of course, we called it rocks and stars or stars and rocks. Anyway, so for the last three years ive been privileged to cochair with former homeland secure to secretary tom ridge. A Blue Ribbon Study Panel, bipartisan, bio defense. This was not created by executive or congressional branches of our government that sprang up because of concern individuals, particularly a think tank in town called the hudson institute. At a asked tom to chair it, and while i was happy to do because of involved in national and homeland security, i always avoid about the threat of both bioterrorist attacks but also the very related in some sense similar risk of Infectious Disease pandemics, which we probably wont talk much about today. So for the last three years weve done a series of reports and, unfortunately, the conclusion is that the threat of both bioterrorist attack and Infectious Disease epidemics is real and growing, at a government is not organized to protect us adequately from it. We will talk about all of that. I was trying to find the most interesting profile of you, and i think i did, from foxnews not too too long ago. Ropers resume reads like a character back story from the big bang theory. Graduate summa cum laude from georgia tech with a master degree in physics, a doctorate in mathematics at oxford, rhodes god, trivets color, president ial commendation for founding and directing a tutoring program the served 400 georgia schools, and he is a published poet and essayist come Second Degree black belt, tae kwon do and is performed in a chamber choir. [laughing] [applause] its interesting today the secretary defense tells the world what you do. For a long time the job i do in the Defense Department was not something we could talk about publicly. So ill be very interested to discuss that with you today, especially as it applies to biology. Its very interesting winter brought out from behind the door, and there is no paper trail about to unwind and get a news article that pulls together your 18yearold college of because are still is a description on the internet with your 38yearold modern still. Suffering much of frankenstein of the two worlds. My job and pentagon is very simple. Its to get the Department Ready for the next war. Theres been a lot of special efforts of the past decade to do with terrorism and thats not going away. We havent had a lot of thinking about how to get the military has been relatively predictable but unstoppable of the last 25 years, how to get get ready tol with modern competition, modern warfare. And bio continue that very strongly because it is a new kid on the block. It is not something that has been at this level of maturity with his level of investment from private sector for medical research that could create new Strategic Effects for Foreign Governments, Foreign Countries that dont have the same ethic standards that we have. My fear and bio is will be playing defense while the rest of the world may choose to play offense, and defense is always harder. Well have to start earlier. Lets dive in. The issue of the biothreat is really reflects a twosided coin. It in many cases is direct result of the opportunities, the breakthroughs that come from biotechnology and bio discovery. I just very quickly would like to ask each of you, when you think about biotechnology, where do you see the greatest breakthroughs . Before we go to the perils im just interested in what you see as the opportunity. I think speaking broadly, even look at the news and you see the headlines and whatnot, those approaches potential enable the creation of a lot of animal models to study diseases and pathogenesis in ways we couldnt do before because we had inadequate model systems. And those models come scientist need models to test hypotheses and basically discover, make new discoveries. Those models have been lacking. There were few but there were not as good but now with these tools we have the potential to really improve our ability to make the models and make the models faster. That will enable to experimentation to occur to build that knowledge in science that can be misused but can also be used for great things. Senator. Let me say a word about the two sides of the coin first. This is not new with human history. Weve got a long track record of people taking advances to improve the way to live and then using them for warfare or some other you can go back to the creation of fire which enable people to do a lot they couldnt do before but also enable them to hurt each other in different ways. You can take it right through todays headlines with the extraordinary growth of information, technology, social media. Now we find that hostile countries use facebook, twitter, et cetera to try to control our elections. Pretty amazing. And unnerving. So were dealing here with a problem that the human race has faced before. But as the answers have suggested, biotechnology evolution is moving not only to different areas but rapidly, incredibly rapidly. Also beginning to use information technology, cyberspace. So what are the really great potentials . Great potentials, in some ways you could say this is going to be the century of biotechnology, positively speaking. Things will happen as result of biothreat technology that will cure diseases that are shortening our lives, that will enable us to live better in many ways. Just a quick example of the Infectious Disease, a pandemic fear, you can imagine a case, you know, next year is the 100th anniversary of the influenza epidemic of 1918. Between 50100 Million People died in that epidemic, pandemic. And we were not anywhere near as globalized. So now biotechnology, just as was said through genomic sequencing, editing, et cetera, developments, you could step in quickly to try to figure out a medical countermeasure. Thats the bright side of what was quite bright. What excites me is anytime youve got to field that about overlapped before, thats exciting. Thats as exciting as as a refm to scientist that now has the government bureaucrat. I would lump to be at the intersection of biology, Computer Science which is what gene editing represents the upper lump to be at the intersection of analogy and designbased engineering which is what some of the, the recent nobel prize in chemistry is given for the ability to be able to image molecules at this of molecule level, the atomic level. That would be exciting to be a a researcher. You have people working together who havent worked together before. Biologists who dont understand Computer Science and compare scientist who dont understand biology. I think it will accelerate research. There would be greater leap ahead on scientific fronts. The scary site is we will be producing data, new results, new technologies, new findings at a rate of the policy and government wont be able to keep up with. It goes back to the early point of if we are primarily playing defense on this and the u. S. Will be, defense means well have to be better, faster, stronger than any Foreign Government that may be tempted to make modern biological weapons or future biological weapons the next class of strategic weapons. I worry because i find the u. S. Government is not good about recognizing a longterm trend or the slow ticking clocks are eventually going to go off and making sound investment overtime to get ahead of them. If we think about some of the bioTechnology Breakthroughs, we know they have led to vaccines, hundreds of them that have been developed or in development. Much more rapidly to the digitization of biology. I was talking with food expert who was talking with taking literally a gene from a a came, putting it into rice so that it needs less water. Logical. Humpy rice. Producing Technology Breakthroughs are more available to people saw this effort is going on. I want to ask as we turn to the threat side of this with the proliferation of these technologies and access to data and information around them, how much more vulnerable are we and to what . I can address one element of that in the sense that while technology is becoming more democratized or available, what you have to marry up with that is knowledgebased and skills it actually use to technology in a way you want to use it, to achieve some outcome. Scientists have the ability to troubleshoot problems with biology that arent just something you find on the internet. Theres certain knowledge that comes with being a scientist. It does temper which are synced a little bit but on the flipside, its true as this knowledge and approaches proliferate, that discoveries made in medicine could be picked up by a bio weapon youre in some dark corner order that we to do what . To do anything with a evident by the creativity of the individual who is applying to some and. What is a scenario . Theres of right of things to worry about. I think thats what its tough for us to pull the trigger on getting it started, is what is the top priority. I could imagine that actors in future think i would like to edit your gina. Not in with her do anything today but in a way that will let me commercial and acting the way that i want. Basically, a long ticking clock, a long fuse bit of tnt that i know will go off that would be a huge psychological impact. That would be a strategic class of weapon in my opinion. I worry about artificial biology. I worry about taking biological mechanisms that been involved for billions of years that are well adapted to live in a world around us and giving them features that would never are likely never happen unless we get in and influence and not being able to contain a potential like leak or contamination. The whole idea of how to do research will change when you start mixing the artificial and rita. Biological machines, thats [inaudible] thats where a lot of recent research go in and try to see the basic mechanical mechanisms that make molecules work. Thats what the recent nobel prize were given about. We are really where our counterparts worker were trying to find wheels and levers and pulleys but not at the stone level there were trying to find about the molecular or atomic level. Once were able to engineer those, maybe future militaries have huge components that you cant even see. So we are back to offense will always be easier than defense. So if thats a possibility, in the not too far future, then its an Strategic Investments picture were not caught offguard. Before we go on, senator, i want to come to you but your job is to imagine huger wars, right . When youre thinking about that what does it future war that you think about looks like . Let me play what a foreign country, not the u. S. Will do. I might decide as opposed to going into Nuclear Weapons which i i may decide are too difficult for me to make or too costly or that i dont have that Technical Research inhouse. I might decide to go down this biological path because it may be cheaper, faster. I could always couch it under the auspices of medical researc research. You are one step away from hurting yourself. I worry about that because its a kind of development that would be hard to put your finger on it and say that is surely for mal purposes because of the always be the flipside of, as the senator keyed up. I worry about back in the future. I the future where the significant human performance, and hence that which again we will have lots of ethical barriers in the u. S. But other countries wont. And how do with our operators, as also as they are, one of the great privileges his job is getting to work with our operators, and while i could work everyday despite all of the things i worry about, but i dont like the idea of them going against the deck that is continually stacked against them because of enhancements. I think those of the first areas that you will see people think of. The artificial biology and the biological machines will be a step beyond. That is me we shouldnt be worrying about them and investing to do with the consequences. Senator. Well, just to really, right now we have a pretty good reason to believe that our countrys that dont wish as well have biological warfare capacity. You could name the russians, the iranians, the north koreans, the syrians we know. So, so the short run danger here that we talked about in our own investigations is that, and nonstate actors who have been very clear, terrorists have been very clear they are working on biological warfare capacity, probably at a level that is relatively primitive compared to what we have just been talking about but still capable of doing a lot of damage and taking a while for us to detect. Beyond that, i was thinking as listening to my colleagues that i spent a fair amount of time on cyber to get at the last four or five years i was in the senate and what was clear to me was, no spies anybody in this room, we were way ahead in our offensive cyber capacity we were way behind in our defensive capacities. And i think thats where we are now in terms of the misuse of biotechnology. We still invest more in biotechnology and any country. Most of it from the private sector but a lot of it assisted by government. But we dont invest hardly anything in coordinated defense to the misuse of biotechnology, and obviously there are other countries including china, particularly both for commercial and potentially belligerent uses that are investing a lot of money in biotechnology. Let me ask you about something that was quite controversial and notable at the time, and this is a piece from the bulletin of the atomic scientists that i pulled this from people in the director of National IntelligenceJames Clapper testified about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, about genetic editing. The headline here how genetic editing became a National Security threat. Director of National Intelligence jane clapper sent shock waves that a National Security secured with his assertion in his worldwide threat assessment testimony to the Senate Armed Services committee that genome editing has become a global danger. He went so far as to include it in the reports weapons of mass destruction section. He said since the discovery of double helix and all the rest, exceeding arguably any other technology in human history. Biotech is a weapon of mass destruction . I think the statement is leaning towards biological weapons or future biological weapons could become the next strategic classic weapon, the way when Nuclear Weapons were first made we realize these are very different than a conventional bomb. Whats different about them and what a think will be scared to think about policies and laws that govern them is that this s a strategic weapon that in many cases you could reverse the effect of, that you could pull the trigger and then unfolded trigger. I think on pole the trigger strategic weapons will have more likelihood of use. What are you talking about exactly. Was if you could edit the gino to putting things that are harmful for the person or people that are targeted, then in three you can and do those. Youve got the poison and the antidote. The way a Nuclear Weapon has no antidote once you pull the trigger, you have to do with the consequences and is consequences are dire. So its the scalability, that capability, its the reversible of the strategic effect i think will be very difficult and challenging for us here because it will feel like it has the effect of weapons that you cant take back but it will have that take back ability. That means well need to think hard about what that means for warfare, and we are, i could think hard about what it means a war to keep up with the site and to the point earlier, a lot of the Defense Department is well trained in things we built in past centuries. So how greater his incentives work and fighters were and still works and subways work but adopted were pushing people are in biology, not pushing hard in Computer Science. And you can detect these things that it would much harder to detect gino editing that can produce a high degree list. Im using lehmans term here, to some extent its just the next step, its not really related but it will be with the unconventional threats were facing in our time. We are most people today in many ways, not of traditional attacks biplanes and battleships, et cetera, but by enemies instead of walkup to people at a train station and knife them or fly planes into world trade center, et cetera. This will be terrifying because it will be essentially invisible. We had some programs now on pro biowatch. Our panels conclusion is its way beneath what we need to create a system in which we can accurately detect and attack as its going on. Unless a, fray, to go back to what you said, just looking at history thinking about the enormous potential for biotechnology is for bad purposes here its not hard to imagine the not too distant future a, for want of a better term, i call biotechnology arms race. We are not really ready for a yet. Charles, as a scientist and what of the printer issues that come up, regulation of science and surveillance of breakthroug breakthrough. There have been discussions. Theres been a huge pushback from the Scientific Community. Howd would make sense of this and what do we need from the perspective of your watching National Security . I think balance is important to balance between the concern of accidents if youre doing experiments that are perhaps on the edge while youre studying disease processes or Infectious Disease in particular, the flu research that was done a few years ago in ferrets with avian flu really kicked off a lot of the discussion in this regard, dualuse research or concern issue. That something that santa flooded through the Scientific Community as a buzz phrase. There are real concerns. There are some experiments to answer questions and pathogenesis is research that you might need to do that are a little risky but they would enable you to better understand what makes this virus particularly transmissible . How would can we develop a better plan . How do you balance that against the need for security is a challenge. I wouldnt claim i have an answer to that, but its something that needs to be thought out pretty carefully. You dont want to hinder your own defense during the process. Not to make the problem overly dire, i mean, the solution to these ills without religion. Theres going to be a huge emphasis on making new biotech the next medicine at a gene level and at a small nano level. I see a lot of hope if the government starts encouraging startups who are trying to work in dismisses to work on things like jean monitoring that can be done and extensively by people at home. Especially if the same monitoring has a lot of medical applications. So the dual use of the technology is a strength if we have a National Strategy for how to interweave medical research to make sure were not blind on the thing so we will need for National Security applications. The vision for most companies in this research is that eventually this while tech is cheap enough that youre doing it at home on a routine basis and thats why theyre so for being able to detect these type of attacks in future as long as were pushing Protection Capability and response capability faster that its ill uses. This is a perfect setup to the Blue Ribbon Study Panel you participated in that had a gathering just yesterday. Yes. The panel, you must not prepared to a dinner preventers of biological crimes, terrorism, proliferation warfare. That said, did lincoln enjoy the show, right . Having the surveillance model scribble to bring this home, thats a good thing. Id like you social media to make a save. We know theres a flip side to that. What did your panel this session, part of ongoing work, was on attribution. So lets say we have a pretty good recently i bio terrorist attack has occurred. Its important for our government to be able to figure out, ive is first we want to treat people and a whole set of other questions about whether a Public Health system is really prepared to do that adequately, but then you want to find out to the best of your ability who did it. This has parallels you need to find a fast. What else theyre planning to do and in a way one of the members of our panel is a former prosecutor approach to this from a criminal law perspective which is reasonable, you have to hold people accountable and how are you going to deter from happening again, but the probably more relevant questions will be in the case of a bioterrorist attack, can you gather enough information to tell the National Command authority, the president , who did this . And then to enable the president to be able to decide how to respond. And are we prepared for this . No, no. We have some capacity and theres a lot of people thinking about it, working about it. Theres some groups both at the fence and state pick incidentally, the Intelligence Community, we have talked about this, cia part sponsored in a way. This is a world of science complicated. But honestly once again we wee going to need a whole level of intelligence here that will be just critical. I mean, without it we wont be able to rapidly dash it will not be easy but we need to be into labs or whatever, businesses even. We just have to be gathering information so we know who has taken that turn from good biotechnology to bed. Charles . What i would add to the comments is, you face sort of a multifaceted challenge in and an attribution scenario following some biological attack. You have evidence that might be microbiologically nature and the way you analyze about to contribute to an attribution investigation might be some scientific jobs that have been at you get because people have thought about that particular problem set. They dont give grants in that area. Grants are focused and human health and other areas. Thats one element but i would also caution its not merely the analysis of the microbiological evidence for say that would give you attribution. Its part of a larger picture, a puzzle, if you will about the pieces of information if you think of it as a traditional whodunit kind of problem. You have other intelligence sources you can rely on, yet the analysis of the physical evidence to generate leads for an investigation and prime the Intelligence Community to look under rocks maybe they have looked at her yet. All those things contribute to that puzzle, but i think in the area of the scientific challenges that are a lot of questions that are unanswered for how do you do analysis of particular types of evidence. What does comparison of viral sequences by you . You can survey sequence a lot of things and determine a lot of differences but can you make comparisons that are meaningful that lead to a trial back to a potential perpetrator . I agree. Totally agree which is why ended up talking about the importance of intelligence, which is a way to have an Early Warning parleys some base of information in the case of an attack we can go back and look at potential sources of that attack based on intelligence more than action what happened in the attack. Back up to your questions. Ill get to your question in just a couple of minutes. I think the key is what do we incentivizing the government . This research is going to have broad funding from Venture Capital is because there will be huge payback. Already does. And will continue to have it as long as and it would be global and it will be done by multinational corporations, cross borders. My view is whether the government can do when do in me money being spent is incumbent money, the two tried to great plains or channels where outside money flow sasse, gets to results, its to profitability earlier. My opinion on this is want to be going all in on Early Detection of the of these three big veins with talked about, gene editing, artificial biology or biological machines. We will not be able to build a a wall to keep it out. Thats a different cut a technological approach. In my view that is probably a deadend before you even begin. But we saw the trend happen in the last century when cancer went from being basically a death sentence to something thats very survivable because we shift emphasis for Early Detection which allowed better Treatment Options to come forward. Predict the analog will happen here but we need to incentivize investment and industry that will get us that detection of the winged cultural awareness for what this means. That means the government that is much, much smarter on the site and implications of what weve been talking are you making this a priority . This is a big priority for me this year. Every year i take on something that is new and a wild west for the department. This is an area in everything i read unexcited when think that personal application engines a link longer, living better but then when i flip it up at put y day job hat on, i worry. I worry because what you are saying is you are as a speaker realtime raising this as a priority at the department of defense in your sort of michael is to get depart the leadership more aware, not necessarily getting thin the details of the science, but telling them what the implication is and where the trend is. We need to make investments, r d funding which is significant, 70ish billion per year. We need to make smart choices in buyer every may need to shift resources from areas of research in the past that are no longer i just want to ask you one more before we go to the fore. What are the actual realities of a sort of real life xmen . These augmented genetically altered, Super Soldiers, super athletes, run farther, jump higher, need less sleep, feel less pain. Is that something that you think about . Is that real . I had to think about at sxsw this year because someone asked if we were making a human swim fast as a shorter i told them we were not but i would volunteer to be that person, and you didnt invite him to washington . Michael phelps, shark week. Thats hard for me. That kind of, not in my timeframe which is thinking about the next war, but i but n think about modifications that make people more alert, that allow them to have better Attention Spans to do with more data that avoids fatigue, that avoid the need for rest immediately they give People Better stamina. And all of those things to get those approved to go out in the battlefield for the u. S. , there is a mountain of laws and policy makers and reviews and safety checks that have to be is one of the hardest areas of research. Research. If you want to change the mrd, the meals ready to eat his unit, thats harder changing a major weapons system in my opinion. So how were going to do that against countries that dont have those policy implications, and maybe poling directly to just let the wild west happen, scares me the most because i dont like when the slope of development is very different between us and the rest of the world. It probably will be an biology for the foreseeable future. I would add one facet to that. If you look at where we are now, were at the level of pharmaceutical intervention for enhancement. Thats enabled by our understanding of various physiological processes. These genome editing tools enable us to build better models and animals or he cant ethically do experiments like that in humans, we will learn more. The first thing youll see is more a proven in the pharmaceutical aspects of enhancement. Lots of Science Fiction is written on these things, too. The actual genetically engineered individual has the powers of the xmen i think is a little farfetched, unless you can find biological corollaries for it. If you look at the xmen characters, a comic book nerd myself in my youth, characters like storm who can control the weather. Really not a a biological corrr for that. Looks great on the big screen, cool to imagine. Something like wolverine, he has fast wound healing. That process is obvious biological corridor. So well studied process and we still understand it fully. Complex interaction, extracellular matrix, although i kind of thing. But understanding that process will enable better interventions to promote faster or promote wound healing where it normally would be difficult to occur such as severe burn cases. I see those advancements on the horizon more so than a c the superpower, Super Soldier or the xmen. I want to go to the full and your questions. I see one over here. Go ahead. Get in as many as we can. This is john with the advisory council, and i appreciate the corollaries to government deficiencies and information technology, and a study of ten years looking at the impediment. Maybe not able to overcome these red tapes that dod has today. If we dont fix that with the same problem npr progress and ingesting commercial innovation about technology . Also an orderly to defend ourselves that one of the things we found in our study of the current state of bio defense in the American Government that they will not be shocked or this, disorganized. Spread that the government. Maybe not x men or women but to move in that direction and another words to bridge the gaps and inorganic material editing going on inevitably some countries are going to do it in dont worry about roles but the other side of a rulebased society like ours is that we get in the way of each other and we and up not achieving our goals. We have seen now that the olympics and looking at teams. You see this collision of rules and yeah. Another question. Im sorry i didnt see you. The lights are in our eyes. My question is with a food change is an aspect for daily life of any country. And yet i dont see the fda or any agency doing more rigorous control particularly with water, particularly on vegetables with vegetables imported from china. We dont know what sort of fertilizer they used so i think this occurs variously in the food chain. Thats interesting. We cant make the fundamental sensing unit of why logical change Weather Modification or artificial feature if we cant make it cheap enough to make the attachment to your smartphone because its tailorable and its something that will hit us in our personal lives. The fortunate thing is that cheapness is with the medical community wants. They want to get you where you can consume the science so whats really neat is its a National Strategy to basically make that Consumer Investment improve our lives would not leave us with gaps in National Security and five years and the government has been not nearly enough compared to the senator here but it shows me we are not good at this kind of strategy. We are not good a grand strategy. Think this technology will force us to have one though. Just to make sure we dont get any tonight so another area this panel has look death which is bio terrorist attacks on our food supply. We are still looking at the introduction of pathogens, synthetic pathogens into for instance poultry in america which is to humans and also in our agricultural industry. As you start to get into racing Safety Standards with food coming in, think of the screaming about globalization but it is a real concern. As i study this and i must say im a little surprised and grateful that we havent suffered a biological attack by terrorists yet, thank god. When you think about it its not easy but its less daunting than other types of attacks. I worry about things like defending the food supply and less about whats grown coming in and more about the attacking of the genome of corn. Without them there is no economy in any country and these are things that can be attacked. I think it was alluded to before but we have a convergence of biology and Computer Science. It then becomes the possibility of essentially hacking into the biology and distorting it to our great harm so there are a lot of ways it could happen but personally and more broadly. I would add one element of hope to that in monitoring the food supply for pathogens and whatnot. One of the chief things we detect in sequencing technology and if you look at that the commercial drivers faster better cheaper and smaller so ultimately if you have an attachment on your smartphone you can perform those kinds of activities. We are not there yet but if the drivers continue that technology will become more diffuse and if its available to agricultural inspectors and others who can scream things looking for things that are out of the ordinary. So there are a lot of good drivers out there. The mic is on its way. As someone that isnt really a scientist my question is more on the strategy part. As major powers continue to invest in biotechnology and it becomes a part of the arsenal of most major powers how do you see it in use strategically . Do you see it being kind of fight Nuclear Weapons where its used as more of a deterrent or used only covertly or do you see major powers using this type knowledge he openly to harm other people . I can address that a little bit and perhaps how you might want to think about it. Instead of questions you might want to ask. If an adversary wants to pursue a biological weapon to add to their military toolbox what might they want to do with it . That they wouldnt deal to do with any other Weapon System that would provide a certain scenario and then you have to gain that out. Thats one way to approach it. As you do that you start to narrow your field of the possible. As i said earlier bio threats are potentially limited by the creativity of the biologists and its difficult to anticipate. Again its predictive based on where the science is going but i predict there will be a class biological weapon or capability in the future that will designate strategic nature so depending on the category of cyberattacks and creating an existential threat to the nation or nations for which it is projected. We work on policies and strategies of deterrence so that those weapons are never used and how to draw that line is going to be the difficult thing. It will be hard to draw for cyber and hard to draw for biological. I think the other kinds of biology like improving our performance and improving our health it will be a class that will define it as being okay. Gentlemen im sorry we are almost out of time here in this scary conversation. I would like to ask you to leave us with a look ahead. What is it that you feel that most needs to be happening within the Intelligence Community and the government. If we have a scorecard and we are going to be seeing ourselves prepare for some of these very frightening situations. One of the areas we look at is how do you stay current on these technologies and imaginary vocations but part of that involves our ability as an agency to interact with academic scientists who are on the cuttingedge of these things. People in industry and whatnot. They have things that concern them. We might not have thought of that and how do you make those connections happen. Its an area where i think there could be improvement. We need chief scalable detection of biological meddling that can be pushed out. We need to encourage this. Senator we will give you the last word. Thanks. A stunner panel and we need to get our act organized we couldnt think of anybody better and possibly create a position at the National Security council and to adequately fund intelligences in this area to continue to create a positive climate for private Sector Investment in biotechnology. At the strategic level there is now a biological weapons. Mansion. People argue it hasnt worked very well but the standard doesnt work for everybody. It doesnt work for some and the question is does it cover bioTechnology Weapons . To me by a Technology Weapon is a biological weapon so its covered but i think it would be a constructive move if the u. S. Would open discussion about more specifically about the threat of bioTechnology Weaponization in the world through the Bioweapons Convention and begin to put it on the screen at least for civilized society. Are we going to do that . Yes or no . Policies arise behind the times. We need to have policies that were updating more frequently because when they are made 50 years earlier Technology Allows capabilities that couldnt be imagined decades before. Thats not only true biology but it true of any. The 9 11 Commission Report says at the beginning what we experience among other things is a failure of imagination and this is an area where a failure of imagination is frightening. Thank you very much for this conversation. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] i personally think that our leadership is a tremendous job but i do think we have this real breadth and depth of talent within our caucus and they do think its time to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders. I want to be a part of that transition and i want to see that happen. I think we have too many really great members here that dont always get the opportunities that they should. I would like to see that change. Would nancy pelosi win the caucus leadership challenge now she were. I dont know but there are a lot of members in our caucus in i just dont know what the answer to that is. By saying its time for generational change what you are suggesting is win or lose after next year its time for her to go . I dont want to single her out. Steny hoyer, jim clyburn all three of them . Guest i think its time to pass it to a new generation. Their contributions to the congress and to the caucus are substantial but there comes a time when you need to pass the torch and i think its time. This was not just a case of setting aside an already natural landscape and leaving it alone which is again but we tend to think of when they think of part protection. What he was doing was making nature out of what at the time was mostly old sheet metal. Theres a big grassy area in the federal part called thes meadow and thats why, because they were on it. Its a type of preservation. Slave houses or buildings that are to the landscape so thats one way of preserving them. Through my database is a way to share information and get it out there. A woman named sandy irwin who ended up on the front page of the post and yelling at these freshmen plead to wind up against the wall with their chin stuck in like this and that photograph ran everywhere in the world. Im convinced that the story helped me get a job at the post. Now remarks by caa director mike pompeo and a Panel Discussion about potential National Security threats posed by north ko