Im responsible for your safety tonight. Follow my instructions, please do that, please sit down. The exits are behind us. Other people are here to help him. I come back for everybody. Over here to the right, two lefts when we get to the screen, i ordered ice cream. Nothing was going to happen. This is an extraordinary evening, general h. R. Mcmaster gave us the opportunity to celebrate. A remarkable institution, National Security council, four gentlemen, i got three or four more in the audience. My goal is to help all of you understand how the institution works and some of the big question, i will try to be the moderator. The first thing i want to ask you, the National Security council sits at the fault line of american constitutional governance. There is no question congress has a right to oversee the actions of departments like the Defense Department, the state department and no question the press, the right of privacy in his decisionmaking, we call that executive privilege. The National Security council sits squarely on top of that. You are there for the president to helpful the government together, you are coordinating the activities of agencies that have accountability to congress and i want each of you to reflect on that in your personal experience. I can interrupt you anytime. I will start with you, h. R. Mcmaster, on this question. To ensure that Congress Fulfill its constitutional role which is vital to our democracy because it represents the American People but also congresss role that is critical in the unwise policies and across the administration to access the great work in your staff. Departments have the primary responsibility to interact with the hill but what we attempted to do is have conversations with senators, congressmen and staffers about key policy initiatives and early in the development of integrated strategies. We found that helpful because a lot of the topics we are facing require legislative revenue and resources. Our emphasis on early consultation from the nsc. Obviously continued coordination between relevant departments and the hill and relevant committees. Each of you have administrations with contentious relations with congress. How does this issue, they would want to know what you are saying and thinking but you have an obligation to the president s advisor. I think the most important thing for the National Security advisor in the nsc on matters of interNational Security to project an image of bipartisanship and my relationship with president obama i ask for that latitude to resist putting a political spin on big issues until they are developed and obviously it is political decision. During my time, we decided to combine Homeland Security and National Security into one staff and that was a big difference in terms of the size of the staff but the bipartisan approach is extremely important. In my military career i had the good fortune of spending a few years on capitol hill. As a marine Liaison Officer my motto was due for the majority what you do for the minority and vice versa. I found out when i became National Security adviser all of a sudden i was a democrat and didnt know i was. You have to get through that and you can only get through it by working at it and making sure you reach out to both sides, extraordinarily important on security issues. The National Security advisor is not confirmed by the senate and does not testify on the record before congress. My predecessor spent a lot of time consulting informally on the hill explaining policies and all the rest, an important part of the job. I learned everything i know about being National Security advisor from the man in the front row, one thing, i worked for him when he was National Security adviser the first time, we served together in the tower position and one of the most important things about the Tower Commission established by president reagan in 1986 in the wake of iran arms sales was to stay off of an effort by congress to take over the National Security structure, said the number of people, the organizational structure and lead the charge to frustrate that effort because it is not just an issue of privacy but separation of powers. If the president cannot gather around him or her a staff in which he or she can have great confidence, the president is not going to be able to carry out the constitutional roles where the president has a lot of roles and leadership. It is a fundamental constitutional principle that needs to be observed and it is subject to struggle because in times of war president s get more power, Congress Takes it back. It is very important for the institution of the presidency to preserve the group that is able to support the constitutional role. Nobody had a bath with 4 difficult relations with congress than richard nixon. How did you balance your obligations to be his advisor but the accountability to the congress . The question of accountability arises in two ways. One, how congress can control policy and some of it is carried out by the nsa. Some measures that have to be taken, essentially secret mode, openings of negotiations, the exploration of new avenues. That is the basic problem. The administration in which i served during the vietnam war, you cannot say bipartisanship was at a type, some of the people who started us into that and the Peace Movement so passions were great. And president nixon had a combative side. What we did is two things. As a matter of principle, president nixon did not permit that his Staff Members could testify before congressional committees or could be subpoenaed by congressional committees. We agreed with senator fulbright that we would have private meetings, he would invite me and members of the Foreign Relations committee to drinks in his house and i would come periodically and brief them so no formal record was kept of the briefings and it was not a subpoena. We invariably briefed the leading members of the senatorial committees. The problem was there was a philosophical difference and the country was so deeply divided at that moment it was very difficult to find places for bipartisanship. One party has started, the other party inherited and the party that could have revolved had a shift inside that party so they objected in principle to the policies they themselves had advocated. I dont say that as a criticism. That was the fact of the situation. Even in the nixon period, we we made strenuous efforts to evolve the congress in our decisionmaking. The key issue comes down in continuous debate to the operations of the nsc become so pervasive that they act like a department. There is a category of decisions which i most would believe have to be done to some extent secretly. And to permit exploration. But then when it becomes a day today occurrence, trouble arises whether there is still congressional control. I most of the time, the nac has stayed on the right side. But one could argue that if the nsc as an institution conduct and continues negotiations that go on over several years, it is really doing, taking steps that ordinarily are under departmental and congressional control. You have anticipated the next question i was going to ask because there is a critique in washington these days the National Security council has become operational, taking on the activities of the departments rather than being coordinating advisor. Each of you dealt with that criticism. Henry has given his thoughts. How do you think about that. Part of the bargain about the National Security advisor and nsc not being Senate Confirmation her testimony and the like, it needs to be respectful to find its role so it does not preempt the role of departments and agencies or cabinet secretaries. Did not get too public in terms of what they are doing. We learned in the iran arms sales and irancontra the dangers of having an nsc that runs operations. On the other hand, i i would suggest simply this. The nsc spent a lot of time developing ways of building policy options for the president. I think there is our role for the nsc not in running operations, not displacing the department but to make sure once the president makes a decision and sets a policy, that the departments and agencies are implementing that policy effectively. Its not the substitute but it is to make sure that their implementing the president decision and hold them accountable. I think thats kind of a new frontier for the nsc, and something i think we need because the greatest policy is no good if it isnt implementing and isnt causing effects on the ground to advance the interests of the country. I think the biggest cancer in the nsc is when it crosses over from the institutional to operational. We have to guard against that. Its not easy. Technology is a doubleedged sword in this case, where Technology Allows someone on the nsc, if he or she wishes to, to pick up a a telephone and calln operational commander on the field in afghanistan, and thats a a problem for every administration. Thats not just one administration. As as a marine officer i was one receiving end of direction from direct from the white house as a captain. When i was in an operation in cambodia, wellintentioned staffer decided he wanted to talk to captain jones, and he could do that. But that is the big problem, and its one of the jobs i think the National Security adviser or whoever else can convey is under no circumstances will you do that, under no circumstances. Because once you open that door then you do get into running, micromanaging and running operations, and that something that the nsc should guard against, absolutely. H. R. , can i put you on the spot. Was sure perk levies its been a great gift to study the nsc from a Historical Perspective and then to learn from those who are here and especially general scowcroft has been a tremendous role model and mentor for me as well. So much of his work is very relevant to this question on emphasizing the role of the National Security council, incarnating in integrating across all the departments and agencies to provide options to the president. Once the president makes decisions, to assist with a sensible implementation, execution of those decisions. Recent years, for whatever reasons more and more authorities have been a centralized within the National Security council and it did cross i think a line between a coordinating and integrating organization into an executing arm of the government. So consistent with president trumps guidance we have devolved responsibility and authorities back to the departments where it belongs, and emphasized that coordination and integration role. One of the ways weve done that is with the time we saved and not calling up captain jones or his equivalent, what weve done is applied that time to reestablishing our strategic confidence to think longerterm and to involve the head of the departments and agencies, state department in particular, to play a foundational role in framing problems, in viewing situations around the world that affect our National Security through the lens of vital interests, and then based on that framing, to establish longterm goals, and more specific objectives associate with those goals. Then what happens is the principles issue guidance to the departments and agencies which then allow them to get to work and to actually start doing things. If its already within their authority to meet whatever the principles guidance is. Then we bring those decisions to the president that require his decisions. The approval of that framing and then ultimately we deliver to the president and integrated strategy. Much as we did as many of you watched us do it on the cuba policy which is probably the most public one. There were policies on iran, for example, which you will hear more about this week. And i could go on and on, but i think what has helped us has helped us address this potential of centralizing too much control in the nsc, making the nsc to operational is to focus more on the development of these integrated strategies. We knew the National Security adviser, you had a staff that was 40 or 50, not exactly sure, i think it was like 42, 45, Something Like that. Weve seen big staffs in the nsc in recent years. I mean, is this a simple question . More people are looking for things to do. They take on command. I know, h. R. , you started with the idea can all of you talk about how big a step is and how influential it is given its job . Please, h. R. If you are talking to kissinger you can probably get away with 40 or 50. If you are me in my need more help, right . We should remember you probably need a few more staffers if youre not henry kissinger. We have made a conscious effort to reduce the size of the staff and to make sure that form follows function. As we devolve, as a get of management of tactical issues, then were able to reduce. We have reduced significantly the numbers of policy people and overall staff. It was over 400 or so at its peak, we are down to about 360 0 something epic that sounds like a lot. Of those 360 its about 160170 policy people. The rest is the white house situation room which runs multiple shifts and information technology. Those who manage the president s travel and visit a foreign leaders, so theres a large administrative component. Its not as big as some of the numbers you hear talked about. What has contributed to the growth over time as well from 50 or so, the 167 is emphasis on Homeland Security, especially after the mass murder attacks on her country on september 11, 2001. The National Security council has a blended step that also includes the homeland Security Council. Does that mean we can get smaller . No, we cant i think. The emphasis is to have the right people with the right expertise and because of the coordination and integration efforts, the right personality a lot of times to lead by charm and bring people together around these important issues. I think we are in a good place now in terms of the size and effectiveness, especially the extremely talented as all of you know, the dedication and talent of the people on the National Security council, its astounding. It just makes you proud everyday when you interact with your teams there. But it did grow for a number of reasons. It is getting smaller again but the numbers can be deceiving in terms of policy. We didnt start with a fixed idea of the number of people that should be on the staff. I think one of the problems is, what do you define as National Security . When we started in the nixon administration, we concentrated on a number of key issues like russia, and opening to china, four or five key issues, and we left most of the others up to the departments. Then gradually over time the line between strategy and daytoday policy got eroded, and so that was self to be a greater need for white house supervision. Theres a reason for this. In the ideal world, the people who lose a debate accept it and march along. In the world that i knew which i know has improved since then, the party that gets overruled tends to think it was misunderstood, and that there is a need to carry out the implementation as close to the original overruled. As you could find. So theres a tendency for the departments to slide over into the preference of their members. This is of course maddening to president s whose secretary has settled something and then they gradually slide to come i think his accounts to the fact that more and more got but that function which Stephen Hadley mentioned, to add to policy formulation, the need for supervising implementation, because very often the difference between success and failure is in the nuance, and if you screw that up, even a a grt policy decision can fail. It wasnt the desire to improve, and, of course, i must say from a historical point of view, relations between the operators and the receivers were never better than when i had both jobs. [laughing] which actually was not a good system. Jim, you brought up this question about how technology is changing the nature of the National Security council. I think when, andrea, i think i remember you telling me that when you first opened the channel to china, it was a typewritten note that went through mail channels and it took a while for you to even horrific out there. Is sitting with piece of machinery on their belt that is, or Computing Power than dod used to have four years ago. Our First Channel to china on the chinese side was a handwritten note that was delivered in pakistan and brought to washington by a pakistan diplomat in a sealed envelope. And our reply was typed on paper that had no watermarks on it, and came back the same way. So each exchange took a minimum of nearly three weeks, and in real time was two to three months between these exchanges. So now jim has talked, he said experience where its a battlefield commander can get a phone call from the president. This is hard to running National Security council with that kind of immediacy. How did you deal with it, jim . If i could just make a comment on the size, just to go back for one more second on the previous guess i feel pretty strongly about this. The size of the National Security council is not whats important. Its what the National Security does, National Security council does. If you look at the range of issues that the president has to deal with, every single day, just in the seven days since ive been gone, i know h. R. Deals with about twice as many issues every day then either steve or i had to do on our watch. So the size of the National Security council has to be adequate to the task and that means you organize yourself on functional directorates and geographical directorates that makes sense. You have to have that kind of knowledge. On my watch we combine the homeland Security Council in the National Security council, that i will tell you that on my watch the National Security council was severely underfunded, severely underfunded, grossly underfunded. The only way to fight that was to get detainees from the agencies. Steve and i talked about this. On my watch the National Security council was roughly twothirds detailees and onethird former personnel, and guess what. After the first year, those djs went back to the agencies and you had to rebuild them. Detailees. The National Security council has to be organized and the size, i frankly dont care what the size is as long as it does what it needs to do. And secondly, it has to have in this day and age where big issues are problems of multiple agencies and departments, its no longer just a Defense Department and a little bit of the state department. Its treasury, energy, commerce. Its everything. And they are at the table and if youre going to run an organization that seeks to be the ringmaster, if you will, to make this thing work, you have to have adequate size. I think you have to have them there on a permanent basis. I think the ideal, i think dk lees are good but we had it wrong. Dk lees. We should at twothirds personal for policy and onethird dk lees that can be rotated. Thats my opinion. On the question, john, that you raised, thats the National Security adviser has to figure out what it is the president needs to know. And, frankly, in this day and age with the pace of technology contributing to the immediate knowledge of whats going on in the far corners of the world, we dont have the organization to keep up with that on a 24 7 basis. Jokingly, when i was National Security, we would say we need important cyber National Security, we need one when one half of the world is asleep and we need one when one half of the work is awake. We need people are working issues so that when the shift calms you are actually transitioning with knowledge and youre not spending the whole waking hours of your next day trying to catch up with whats going on. Because if thats the conundrum you are caught in, you have no time to think strategically and less you build that into a National Security council and you have a senior director who has the staff that do nothing but think about whats coming over the horizon. Technology, its another example of technology being a double edge sword but it does multiply the task of what you tell the president during the pdb dramatically every day. Dwight eisenhower really did have two indices. He had a military background said ij three and a j5 for people who are not familiar, j3 is responsible for daytoday operations, fighting the fight. The j5 is responsible for Strategic Planning, looking downstream. Eisenhower had two staffs and he spent as much time with each of them as the other. He gave priority to it. I know h. R. You had your j5, putting together a National Security strategy. How do you distinguish between strategic longrange planning and the daily fight . We do have a Strategy Team led by Kevin Harrington as well. We try to do that i developing a system that emphasizes Strategic Planning and then that same team, unlike the Eisenhower Administration which had a Planning Board and the operational control board, the same directorates have oversight for implementation. And so what we found is with the initial strategies that weve developed that we really need principal to become involved about six months into a sustained strategy to assess it and then to recommend adjustments unless the situation changes fundamentally such as a kurdish referendum or an event that really causes us to review the assumption on which that strategy is based and to make recommendations to the president on that to adjust based on events. What we found is immensely important to have strategies in place, because otherwise the tendency is to respond to events without fully understanding how to try to respond to those events in a way that advances toward a clearly articulated goals and objectives. We have not separated execution or implementation, but coordinated at the nsc from the planning effort. What we do have are at least two organizations that look longterm all the time. Could ask each of you, steve, john, i dont think any nsc staff has all the. I think what h. R. Is doing a step in the right direction, but its the old problem if all you do is manage crisis, all youre going to get is more crises because youre not putting in place the policies and strategy to face the future and avoid the crisis. On the other hand, as joe manchin a number of issues that h. R. Is dealing with is overwhelming. Mentioned here peter is here. He can talk about it. We tried of a strategy still those integrate into our staff. Peter and his people would show up when we were talking about a daytoday problem to to get longerterm strategic perspective. Really, i found the best time i could do, meet with the team was saturday morning because thats the only time things get sort of quieted down. Theres a terrific resource thats available, and that is you are pressed to have time to take the longer view but, of course, we have a robust think Tank Community here in washington. One of the things that we did was come up with sort of ten things that might go bump in the night and be a problem for us. And peter went quietly to a number think tanks and said if you would do a study on the longterm implications of ask my think i know some people in the white house who would be interested in reading it. I think there is actually a real opportunity for using this think Tank Community as well as the Intelligence Community and policy Planning Communities to make the intellectual investment and looking over the horizon and trying to talk about some alternative strategies. Its a partnership that it dont think we have taken full advantage of. Jim . I completely agree with that. Having the privilege of working in a think tank like csis, i think theres great value to asking the think Tank Community to take on some of the Strategic Issues that are coming out but are not quite mature but they are watching and thinking about. Its a force multiplier and its something that should be used, i think. Just add on. I think its important to have this focus but as steve has mentioned to organize properly for it as well. Its outreach to think tanks to bring outside perspectives and what one of the contributing a lot of the advice i got from any of you as i took the job. But its also helping the departments and agencies maintained a longterm perspective and to help integrate their longterm planning. What we did to organize is create a deputy National Security adviser for strategy, dena powell, who is our main bridge into policy planning at state into osd policy, and brings those teams together around lower collect National Security challenges so that we are ready to frame these problems, get guidance from principles, that there are been talking about within their departments. Its not a meeting thats held in say iran or russia discussed. This is something that dina has really led across departments and agencies so we are ready for that framing discussion. Henry raised a very interesting issue which i would like to bring us back to it, and that is when he talked about the necessity of government doing things in secret. But we are a democracy where ultimately policy is a public debate. How do you feel about, obviously the government has to have secret channels where it can initiate but it has to be grounded in something we talk to the American Public about. Henry opened the door on this, and again i just, h. R. , if you would give us your reaction, jim and steve and then ill come back to henry. Do you want to start . No, i had a practice that i had no secrets from my nsc principals. There wasnt anything i was doing that condi rice secretary of state and updates, the secretary of defense, didnt know. And it was fine because thats the way the president wanted it. So i think that is an important piece, and we have the kind of relationships where i was very comfortable doing that. I also wanted them to know what i was thinking, to get a sense of the kind of advice i was giving to the president so if they had a different view they would have an opportunity to present the other side. In terms of the congress and the public, i think one of the things we have to distinguish between is the thematics and general direction of policy from sort of operational and execution details. And i think the public and the congress, once you start with thematics, they have an inexhaustible desire to go all the way down to detail. And its a mistake. I think what weve got to do is make that distinction thematics, broad policy, whats the context of whats our object is whats our basic principles of our strategy . And then let the professionals do the implementation and execution, where some secrecy is required because your strategy will not succeed if the enemy knows what youre going to do before you get there. Thats a a distinction we lostd we need to try to discipline, we need to reintroduce into the system. One of the things that technology does allow for his very classified communications with friends and allies. One of the things im not only enjoyed the most but i found a very productive is engaging other National Security advisers on a weekly basis with one to two hour video teleconference on a regular basis. That had a very unified effect on the big issues, you could talk with pretty high level of confidence. I dont recall anything that was ever discussed on those video teleconference is ever being revealed in public. Buy them or by us. And more countries decided to adopt the National Security adviser in the government. The uk didnt have a National Security adviser officially designated until 20092010. And more countries have since come on i think sure h. R. Has more interlocutors to deal with, but but i think you have to be careful to make sure that when the National Security adviser is using those channels that theres immediate feedback to the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and other departments. Thats a metric that absolutely you have to live by because otherwise you have fragmentation. And the big risk for a National Security adviser is, if he or she doesnt do that well, you become competitive with another department and thats absolutely something you cant tolerate. The real to limit is the more people you can bring in, the more expertise you can bring in, the better because gidget deborah perspectives pick that allows you to understand that of the tools you can bring to bear to help solve problems. But in recent years in particular the problem of leaks has become a real challenge to National Security. I think whats very important is everyone thats involved in these policy discussions understand the sacred trust that is placed in them. And they realized the speaking to the media about government deliberations is treasonous when it involves National Security. Then i think with that confidence established, the more transparency the better i think in terms of common understanding across departments and agencies. Thats the balance you have to strike. Let me make a philosophical point here. In conventional wisdom, it is of course desirable to have transparency, and secrecy is supposed to be bad, and sharing knowledge is supposed to be very good. But if you ask yourself how history is actually made, if you turn it into a bureaucratic effort, a lot of people get informed and you may wind up stagnating and being paralyzed. The absence of creative policymaking is to go down a road that is in a lonely fashion. Theres a spanish proverb that says, traveler, there is no road. The roads are made by walking. And this seems to me to be an aspect of policymaking. And if one becomes too obsessed with clearances, which is on one level of way of feeding everybodys ego, and nobody is willing to walk on unfamiliar roads, then youre in great difficulty. Of course a president or a secretary of state, when he pursues secret avenues, will have to testify them an immeasurable time. But when president bush said Brent Scowcroft to china after tiananmen, if that had been made as a public discussion there would have been endless debates. And after he had been there and work out some principles, those principles could then be discussed and become part of the political process. So the art of conducting the nsc, in my opinion, involves a combination of making sure that there is the needed level of transparency. But also there is an element of creativity. One of the realities in my observation is that the operators always have, have the floor, because they have immediate problems. And the thinkers who want to do something have to establish themselves. And so almost every president has somewhere along the line felt it necessary to employ emissaries, channels, separate channels. So im a great admirer of the current security advisers so this is not directed at current events, but if youre thinking about the role of the National Security council, there is a ay element to reflect on. How to strike that balance between the operation and division . Im going to ask i think the hardest question. Henry, im going to start with you. America, because such a dynamic and fractured society, we have so many different traditions in our country. Its hard for us to develop a sustained geostrategic strategy. Something that carries over from administration to administration to administration. Youve talked about how we get excited with our missionary impulses, and take on new goals but we lose it in the politics. How do we develop, what are the necessary preconditions for establishing a durable National Strategy that would transcend over multiple administrations . Henry. I think one of the biggest differences, maybe the biggest difference, between the United States and other great countries is that we have never had the experience of a direct National Danger to our survival, except in the civil war when it was domestic. For the greatest part of our history after the first generation, we could conduct Foreign Policy as observers, and as fixing immediate problems that impinged on us. So we tend to think of foreignpolicy as a series of fixable problems. And while you take say the chinese, to them, foreignpoly is a continuing process. They dont think that you can fix a problem. A fixed problem is an admissions ticket to another problem to them. And its one of the problems with our president s talk to the chinese leaders. So not having had that danger but now we are living in a world of permanent danger because of new technologies, and in which the judgments we make it not to be addressed only to an immediate issue but in shaping and shaping the future. Thats a new experience for americans, and we dont have Trained Personnel in that way that it had to do it for a sustained period of time. So some of the images one can make up american foreignpolicy are very understandable. We have been a beacon whose internal performance which shape the world, and so we can to think if we can reshape the domestic structure of other countries in our direction, that will come to be. Now we have to learn that we have to make progress in stages, and then we have to learn the nature of nuance. And considering we have to start all of this from scratch, its amazing what we have achieved. Theres no other National Security adviser in the world today who has the assignment that the american National Security adviser has. So yes, i tend to criticize our failing strategic view, but it also got as to where we are. Now we have to change it, to broaden it. Thats a big challenge. And the nsc advisor now has to deal with all our current problems. And with that new problem, and thats a huge problem. Do any of you care to steve. Well, i think its a problem. I think if you look back and you say where have we come closest to doing what henry has been talking about, i think it was probably a managing the cold war and managing the response after 9 11 to the terrorist attack on the United States. I am somewhat silly with both of them. I think the cold war is an example where we had common policy across a number of different administrations. 9 11 and the response was more difficult. We had a lot of Division Within the country, but but i think te formula is the same. To pick up henrys point, getting a vision endorsed by the president that seems to fit the times and be a strategy, and then taking that strategy and having a National Debate and discussion and involving the congress. And i think we succeeded in the cold war with the tactics, but the basic strategy had a lot of bipartisan support, was maintained over five administrations. After 9 11 we had huge debates about the balance between what we need to do to safeguard the country and within the law what we needed to do to ensure that we stayed the cab society, open society would want to be. We had a lot of struggles about that in the courts, and the legislature in public opinion, but we have sort of come to a consensus. We are still strongly about the details but it was interesting theres a lot of continuity in terms of data with the war on foreign policies for the bush administration, the Obama Administration and now the trump administration. In our own untidy way, its a difficult but we have been able to do it. And i think theres been a lot of continuity on china policy, for example. But it is hard and it takes work. Jim. I think we are one of the few countries that publishes a National Security strategy on a regular basis. I think thats an extraordinarily good thing to do both classified and unclassified. I think the departments that come the individual departments ought to publish their own strategy to support the National Security strategy. I think that makes eminent sense. It provides for the information for the public and unclassified sense and it protects you from revealing too much in a classified setting. I think thats a very good thing to do, and it keeps people focused on the long ball instead of the short game. We are at the end of our time but i do want to save just a minute or two for general mcmaster. He is currently the custodian of this remarkable institution. Probably no other Single Institution in america is as important on a daytoday basis than the National Security council. We are now at 70th anniversary anniversary. You are currently the steward. What does your vision and how do you look at the future for this, h. R. . And we will wrap it up with that. As dr. Kissinger mentioned, the stakes couldnt be higher. The our new dangers to National Security. Its clear in the middle where the middle last century that the age of greece he could it was over, what we see now is this democratization of destruction, new threats emerging, new battlegrounds involving very sophisticated campaigns of subversion, use of cyber capabilities, for example. So that really requires us to really focus on our strategic competence. In recent years i think you can make the argument that we have swung from maybe Unrealistic Expectations about the degree of agency and control we have over very complicated situations, to almost defeatism and withdrawal from certain contested spaces and battlegrounds. What the president directed us to do is approach the National Security challenges, the problems and opportunities, from a perspective of pragmatic realism to prioritize the safety and security of the American People, to emphasize the connection between security and american prosperity in new ways such that reintegrate what we are doing, Economic Perspective with what were doing from a military and diplomatic perspective, and new and different ways, to emphasize peace through strength, to explore new forms of deterrence against a broad range of actors that can do us harm, despite the oceans on either side of our continent. But that also demands american influence in recognition that its americas partners and allies and likeminded nations that give us our unique strength and influence across the world. So these are ideas that underpin the development of our integrated strategies, and certainly will underpin the National Security strategy as well. I would just like to say, first of all, thank you to john and csis for this tremendous opportunity. And i would like to thank in particular former National Security advisers from whom i have learned so much and benefited from your kind advice and mentorship as i took on this job in a quite unexpected way, from a cold start. So thank you, john, and thanks to all of you. If i let you say thank you with your applause, weve got a bunch of people here who have worked on the step of the National Security council in various positions, various times. Could i just ask those of you who have ever worked on the National Security council him raise your hand. All right, thank you. [applause] and i would say thanks to all of you [applause] [inaudible conversations] today on cspan2, a hearing on u. S. Transportation infrastructure. Live live coverage of the house transportation and infrastructure subcommittee at 10 a. M. Eastern. Cspan, where history unfolds a daily. In 1979 cspan was created as a Public Service i americas cabletelevision companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. The computer hacker conference defcon released a a report on e vulnerabilities of u. S. Voting machines and other election equipment. Defcon and Atlantic Council hosted a panel of Computer Security analysts that discussed the report and allegations of russian interference in the 2016 election. This is an hour and a half [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. Im fred kempe, president and ceo of the Atlantic Council. Im