Transcripts For CSPAN3 NYU Law School On Role Of Congress In National Security 20240713

Were waiting for the conversation on the role of congress and National Security and Foreign Affairs to get under way shortly. The u. S. House is in recess right now. The chamber will gavel in at about 6 20 p. M. Eastern when andy biggs is expected to bring up his resolution to condemn and censor chair adam schiff over the current impeachment inquiry. A vote related to that resolution is expected shortly after that. You can watch that live coverage on cspan and at cspan. Org. Okay, thank you. Thats exactly right. Now we have to recognize the Senior Member here. Well, it is a treat to welcome former colleagues, current colleagues ive worked with, every member of this panel in some form or another, inside and outside of government. Its a treat to welcome everyone here on behalf of the center of law and security on the nyu school of law that i am privileged to serve as a distinguished senior fellow at. Welcome to this program and welcome to my colleagues. This is really a treat for me to be joined together with you once again to talk about a really important and timely subject, the issue of National Security and how the executive branch and the legislative branch address some of the most Critical Issues of our time and i will do some very brief introductions in a minute, but you will understand the theme here is every single one of these distinguished Public Servants served in the executive branch and the National Security community and the searching top ic for today s how has that service informed your view as legislators and how can we be best poised from both branches to confront some of these most thorny issues that we face. So thank you one and all for being here. Very quickly we have to my far left, no pun intended, will herd, represents the 23rd district in texas, elected to congress in 2014. He serves on the House Appropriations committee and the Permanent Select Committee on intelligence. Most importantly for this panel before serving in congress he served as an undercover officer in the cia, the middle east, and in south asia, and, near and dear to my heart, my cochair on the aspen Cyber Security group. Hes one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful members on Cyber Security issues and the issues of emerging technology. Were very fortunate to have him here. Next to congressman herd, alyssa slotkin, representing the 8th district of michigan, elected to congress in 2018. Representative slotkin serves on the House Homeland Security committee, before being elected representative slotkin worked for the cia in the middle east and served as acting ining secu where we spent many hours around the situation room table this will not be like that. And, last but not least, congressman kim, andy kim represents the Third District of new jersey, elected to congress in 2018, representative kim serves on the House Armed Services committee and the house Small Business committee. Before being elected representative kim worked on the National Security staff, again, with yours truly, as an expert on the middle east, south asia, afghanistan. Served as a strategic adviser in afghanistan alongside generals David Petraeus and allen and so we are very, very lucky to have all of them here with us today and the citizens of texas, michigan and new jersey are very fortunate indeed. I will be your moderate for for this. Im lisa monaco. I should have done that at the front end n. Addition to my service at nyu i was president obamas Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser. So lets get started and get rolling. I know some of you have to leave a little bit early to do the peoples business. So crossing the divide, thats the title of our Program Going from the executive branch to congress. I will lob a softball at everyone and try and get your response to this. Youve all served in the executive branch. Youve all served in the National Security community. You made the pivot to the legislative branch. How has that informed your service in being a productive and effective legislator in the time of tremendous National Security tumult . Ill start with you, will. Sure, lisa, thank you. Its a pleasure to be here with my esteemed colleagues. Were lucky to have this kind of experience here in congress at an important time. As an operator within the cia, youre the collectors of last resort and our job is to inform policymakers. We are very clear our job was not to suggest or project policy. The transition was interesting for me because for almost a decade it was doing the things that we were not supposed to be doing. But having granular understanding of these position s, living in india and pakistan for two years looking at these issues from a different perspective, understanding how these foreign issues impact and spending a year and a half in afghanistan where i managed all of our undercover operations, you have a working knowledge of the topic thats important. While isis was not a thing when i was in the cia, al qaeda obviously was. The same principles and theories in dealing with al qaeda is what you can do with isis. My job was to talk to a lot of different people to try to understand. To find the truth, talk to enough people and where everybody overlaps, thats as close to the truth as youll get. So you have to act as a case officer for any members of congress . Well, i have had more surveillance as a member of congress than did i in the cia. At least in the cia i knew who my enemies are. When i came in i won in 14 so starting in 2015 being a young junior member, right, the number of folks who had been around here for a while, that come and seek you out for advice and perspective, that has happened more in my time in congress than i expected when i first got in. While everybody may not understand what should we do next in syria and what should we have done, they may understand and recognize that its a problem. Great. Hello, everyone, and, thank you, lisa. Im thrilled to be up here with my colleagues. The biggest thing that was a transition is that the executive branch is a chain of command organization and the legislative branch is 425 entrepreneurs and nobody is each others boss. The only people who can fire us are the people in our districts, not anyone in leadership, not any committee chair. I am still adjusting to that culture, i would say. You can have vociferous debate on a policy issue, and we certainly did. I worked in the bush and Obama Administration, vociferous debate on what to do. If you cant work it out, it moves its way up the chain and ultimately there are Decision Makers more senior than you that make a decision and you all go on with your lives, you can say i didnt win that battle or i did but we have a path forward when we move forward, with 435 entrepreneurs its a huge game of consensus building, constantly using your relationships to meet people and say do you want to work on something together . Do you care about this issue . Im interested in doing something for parents with autistic children. Are you interested in that . Its a consensusbased thing which can be harder and less clear. And then the culture one degree down from that, in the executive branch you may meet some characters from time to time but there is a real mission focus. Everyone comes to the table and says, okay, were doing this for a specific reason, i know the mission and im trying to get it done. I used to say to the people at the pentagon if im leading a meeting and a bunch of my staff, if im running a meeting and there was one person around the table who started talking about, well, i should lead because im really good at this and i should have that portfolio because me, me, me, me, that would literally be a reason for me to be like if its about the you and not the mission, you can get up out of here. But in congress then somebody else says, what about me . In congress thats every meeting. Theres always somebody, well, im great at this and should lead on this. Culturally its been difficult for some of us to really transition and i think its important and all of us have this back ground of having the mission focus and change on that mission focus. We bring it which is a good thing even if its a cultural adjustment. Thank you. A couple things to build on. One aspect of this that was incredibly important to me and i think probably shared across this table the three of us all served in National Security in nonpartisan ways. We were career Public Servants in our different institutions and i think thats something that ive been wondering about coming into this body of am i able to approach National Security with the same lens . For me i actually feel like i have been able to more than i netly was expecting to do so. Armed services committee, if you were to print out a transcript of the hearings, blot out the names and you wont know who is a democrat or a republican based on the questions that theyre asking. I think theres a certain professionalism that im happy to be a part of, trying to find ways to broaden that out. I think coming from my background, i had a very specific expertise in iraq, afghanistan, counterterrorism issues. So while im somebody who worked in the National Security space, i cant claim im an expert on latin american issues or things i may come into contact with in congress. I have a deep Network Across the field of a lot i have worked with that can really help me get up to speed faster than some of my colleagues. My interests in building out this kind of catalog of experts outside of capitol hill i think is something im trying to build upon. Also, because of my previous experience, i just we have, and im sure the three of us can all say to this point there are certain fundamental tools of National Security i dont think are utilized as well as they should be on the hill. For instance, we just dont have the ability tofor the level of situational intel and to utilize that in the way we used to get briefed every day and have a certain amount of Situational Awareness to build off of. Here everything is reactionary. You rarely go and read intel unless something horrible has happened in the world and you need to figure out what did we know two weeks ago. I dont feel that puts us in as strong a position in congress if everything that were doing is much more reactionary. How are we going to be able to do our oversight efforts . For me as lisa introduced, i worked in afghanistan eight years ago, and itches the guy that was in the room helping brief the members of congress on that front. It was very interesting for me two weeks ago to go back to afghanistan, get a briefing in my old office and sort of be on the other side of that. How did those people do . They did very well. More importantly, how did you do . Its one of those things where you have a better sense of when youre getting talking points told to you. After having written them and gone through those and delivered them and it helps me just try to figure out ways that i can get at a deeper truth, be able to expose that, and i think that gets to the final point which is a part of this job thats different we have to speak more human about National Security and Foreign Policy. Thats something i wish everybody does. Cut out the acrow niacronyms, ge point. I did a town hall how do i talk to people in south jersey, the jersey shore, on why they should focus in on whats happening after the war and talk about it in that way. I hope it will make that dialogue richer in our country. Thats a good pivot to current events. Lets get into some of that and lets start with some news of the day, syria. Youve all, i think to varying degrees spoken out against or expressed concerns about the decision to remove troops from syria. So im interested in your unique perspectives on that given the roles youve had and whether the reports most recently that those troops are not being removed entirely from the theater but, in fact, being moved to iraq. Does that change your view at all . And is there Anything Congress can do about it . Thats a kind of compound question. Lets start with you, alyssa. Sure. Im sorry, representative slotkin. Thats quite all right. So i will be honest, ive been surprised how much this issue has resonated even in midmichigan. The issue, i think, of the president having a conversation with the turks, with president erdogan, and then removing our forces, forcing the kurds to sort of flee the area where they had been working with us has resonated with people not because people have a ton of detail on who is involved with who and the history there but because i think theres a firm belief the american handshake has to mean something, and that loyalty has to mean something. And the pictures starting with or ending with today where we have American Military vehicles being pelted with fruits and vegetables as they cross into iraq, i just dont remember a time when ive seen that in my lifetime, and i have my husband was in the army for 30 years. My stepdaughter is in now. Those are wrenching pictures for us. But i think the thing that concerns me the most, we have a situation right now with the kurds that is devastating, but when weve shirked our responsibility it sends a message to every future partner and ally that they should think twice about shaking the hands with the americans. And i try to remind people why was it that we were working with this kurdish group. What are the origins of it . And the origins of it are the iraq war, which i did three tours over there and americans said very clearly i think both sides of the aisle they do not want American Forces on the front lines in long entrenched, expensive wars in the middle east. And so we shifted our strategy to work by, with, and through allies and that whole proposition is that we go to these other armies, we go to these different grums aoups and if you fight as the infantry we will provide overhead intelligence and support. And that is the bargain that we struck with these kurds, and that is the way we keep people like my stepdaughter out of fighting again in places like syria and iraq. But if that whole concept just has a big hole punched in it, our ability to make those deals and to have those conversations in the future goes down and the likelihood that when theres a real threat, it will be American Forces out there again goes up. And so i think it has been a seriously, seriously devastating week for American Foreign policy or a couple of weeks. We are all talking about sanctions packages. Theres a couple of different packages. I personally am in favor of humanitarian assistance for the kurds, in particular for the kurds in Northern Iraq who are receiving a lot of their cousins who are coming over the border. Im going on a codicil that is going to the middle east, that are having these conversations with senior leaders. Unfortunately, fortunately, in our system, the president has a lot of power over Foreign Policy. And congress can sort of come in behind and deal with the money and the sanctions, but there isnt a ton we can do, and we end up watching scenes with everybody else like we saw today. Anything you want to add to that . Sometimes we forget, weve got to go back to september 10th 2001. I was in the headquarters of the cia, and i remember, in august, analysts being like, somethings going to happen, but we dont know what. People sleeping in their cars, their offices, trying to figure out what happened. And then we know what happened on the 11th, and a lot of people have forgotten that, right . The reason that weve had to be in afghanistan and weve had to be in places like syria is to prevent another day like that from happening. And on september 12th, if you would have told me, and i was the fourth or fifth or sixth employee in ctcso that prosecuted the war in afghanistan, after 9 11, if you would of told me on the number 12 that there would have been you were crazy. And the reason we havent been able to do that, while we havent seen that, is because the men and women are diplomatic, or our Intelligence Services, theyve stop that from happening. Thats why we are there. Ive made it very clear, these terms of this peace deal, i thought it was more of a surrender than a peace deal. I think this is a terrible decision thats the deal between . Between us and erdogan, right . We still havent seen all the details of that deal, and why is it bad we screwed our friends, and its not just the u. S. Handshake not counting, this is all for all western alliances. I was in paris, the ministry of defense, 12 hours after the tweets that were sent about this deal, and i can tell you our partners in france had some opinions on this topic. They are part of the coalition against isis. They are, they have 1300 troops. They have been intimately involved. And so if your friends dont trust you, and your enemies dont fear you, its a pretty bad situation to be in. I can make an argument that this recent amounts meant by the japanese to not participate in the u. S. Led effort to protect ships in the middle east is probably a bad indication that either they thought it was going to be too much of a pain in the rear, or they didnt or whether they could count on us, and is that an indication of how our allies are concerned with us . We are creating a humanitarian crisis in that part of the role that has dealt with too many humanitarian crises. We have spent years in treasure Building Infrastructure in that part of syria, and we left it when we bombed it. That doesnt make any sense. What can we do now . Unfortunately, congress has a lot of power to prevent action. Congress has a lot of power to defund stuff, right . Congress has power to approve stuff. But its really hard to compel action when there is inaction. And the broader question we should be asking ourselves is not just removal of troops from that part of the region, but what about all the inaction that led up to . It why had we never addressed the issues that turkey actually has had. They have some legitimate concerns. Why did we not establish a no fly zone in that region and make sure our allies were going to be the ones responsible for making sure that that would ultimately happen . There was a lot of questions, things that had not happened until that point, which we should be talking about to ensure this doesnt happen again. And lets hope this is not a precursor to afghanistan. Because if something similar were to happen in afghanistan, it would be more disastrous then this move in syria. So, andy kim, you served in afghanistan. You also were intimately involved in the design and planning around the counter isis campaign. And the deployment to iraq. The president of iraq now is a kurd. How should we be thinking about all of these reverberations, right . To represent slotkins point, what is our handshake mean to the leadership in iraq . Thats right. I think for me, five years ago, we were working on this, we were working with those early phone calls with erdogan, we were saying we were going to work with the kurds, we knew that this was going to be an issue that wed have to come to reckon with at some point. I never imagined that it would unfold in the way that it has. I was in turkey just literally days before those tweets came out, and i think one thing that struck me in hindsight is that it just felt very clear afterwards that our ambassador, and other professionals working on this, had no idea this was coming. And i think that begs this question, where are the professionals in this process of deliberation and policymaking . Thats something that worries me. We had the National Security council, it was set up for a reason. It was set up to help institutionalized a process to think through very big issues, and do great challenges that we face. And its meant to try and make sure that we are aware of the consequences and thinking through the scenarios, hopefully with people who are experts. When we have the ambassador out in turkey, an extraordinary talent, just decades of service to our country, and it felt like he and others, not that they were in the process, but their expertise was not being utilized to help our country decide through these steps. Thats one aspect of it. To get it closer to the point you were referencing, this is something thats deeply personal to me. I wrote my doctoral dissertation in large part on u. S. Policy to the kurds during the eighties and nineties. Documenting the abject failures that we had with the massacre period in the eighties, and then the post 91 gulf war, where for a while we allowed the use the hussein gunships to mow down our kurdish partners in the north. I also outlined in detail the decisionmaking process that went into operation provide comfort, which was one of these moments where the u. S. Did step up for the kurds and really put ourselves in a position to try and help them. To see a situation of our own making that really feels similar to that period in some ways is very, very fresh training, and deeply disappointing. And i think it very much gets back to our kurdish partners in iraq, and elsewhere, just about how, in many ways, its how far theyve come in terms of setting us up, and there is occurred that is the president of iraq, i think they understand how fragile that is. And how dependent that is, that status is, upon what the United States is going to do. I just feel like weve set back that relationship right back to the eighties and nineties, that i studied before, and its so deeply disappointing to see that. Im going to shift the current event conversations back to something more domestic, and thats Election Security. Representative slotkin, you serve on the security committee, one of the biggest issues we have a cybersecurity, and will hurd, as mentioned, youve been focusing on these issues for many years. Whats the most important thing that congress can do and that we as a country should be doing now some nearly one year out from 2020, and to address what the intelligence professionals and National Security professionals all agree is an ongoing complaint interfere in our democracy and to make sure that we are best poised to respond to that and protect ourselves . Id love to start. Its how do you handle this information . So i held the first hearings on 2016 Election Security before the 2016 elections were over, in the summer before the elections, i was calling for ambassador kyslyak, the ambassador, to be kicked out of the country, because what people had already known at that point what the russians were trying to do, and robert mueller, in the hearings said, i asked the question, was this a onetime event . He said, its happening right now. You are the only person during that hearing to actually ask him that. Well, look, you go back to the classically trained case officer, and thats what you do. And so, how do you handle this information . Hailing disinformation overseas a lot easier because this information is about part of covert action, counted covert action, and covert actions responsibility to the cia, but the cia cannot conduct covert action in the United States of america because the National Security act of 1947. So who is responsible for dealing with that . Now social Media Companies you can look at the Tactics Techniques and procedures that some people are using in order to do this information, highlight people that are promoting this information, but you want the media to know that this is wrong where that this is this information and the media plays a role in it and we know how to deal with misinformation and the way you handle extremism is a saint where you handle disinformation, so that it is slightly different but it is who is responsible for that . Yes we can and defend the infrastructure and prior to 2016, none of the secretary of states wanted to have election infrastructure be identified as critical infrastructure, jay johnston made that decision, he took a whole lot of heat and then guess what, a couple of months later everyone was like okay. Everyone thought the federal government was going to take over this issue. I know, i lived. It you know, it you know it, so we can hard in those types of things we can make sure that the most vulnerable types of machines are not used but i can make an argument that is going into one county that is going to make or break an election not congressional seat, you go and have them not trying to be thinking about it and you go around and find out that people are going to freak, out right . So how do you deal with that aftermath and to be frank i dont think weve had enough conversation on who should be pulling wean on that and everyone has a role, media has a, role and that is how you counter disinformation, it is hard in the u. S. Yes i was one of the people that was very happy that they asked the questions of the bob mueller hearing because there was a group of us watching, who were watching this unfold and obviously had read the report and while the media and everybody else was so focused on what the report said and what the details were there was just painfully for people saying, what did we learn . And how are we putting forward a bill that will keep us safe in 2020 . I think it is important to realize that we actually, we have not passed any laws that make us safer and 20, our election system safer in 2020 and we were in 2016. So a group of us came together and started task force century. It was designed to do just that and to identify the legislation that would be needed to make a safer. We learned a lot of lessons, a lot of this is very difficult because of free speech issues but what we could all agree on regardless of political affiliation is that foreigners should not play a role in our political process, so while the content of messages and what onesided, democratic or republicans want to say is difficult to regulate, going back and looking at the originator, the purchaser of the content is the way we got to this problem. So a bunch of us cosponsored the paid ads act, which makes it illegal for foreigner to buy an advertisement for or against a political candidate in american election, it is very basic, but we have a suite of legislation, a lot of it has been taken up in the next ten, days which is coming back to the floor very soon, some of it is bipartisan, and some of it is not but there are a bunch of good pieces in there that i think any american regardless of affiliation should feel its the responsibility to push forward. We are seeing even in the headlines, foreigners should not be able to donate to political campaigns, its illegal to do that, there are a lot of things that it all starts with the originator we just cant have foreigners involved in our originator, there was more money for dhs, for election infrastructure so it wasnt a law that changed this, which is crazy that Vladimir Putin ran an ad saying that congressman acts is a turn back, he can do that which is why, so the funding in order for this was their. I would like to just assume out just a little bit here, specific to the election a side of things, i think my two colleagues laid it out but in general i think what we are seeing is a real need to get a grasp as a country and a National Security infrastructure on how the cybersecurity threats are Going Forward, this is something that as the congressman was mentioning this is spread out over so many different agencies and departments as the Armed Services committee, one aspect of it that i have dug in to detail is on a cyber calm colocating with and i say, it shows how complicated that partnership is, you have a fuel headed as a head of any say as well as cyber calm commander, a lot of these things really blur across, there are some aspects that they were doing for Election Security that certainly has been good for me to see how engaged they have been and getting more so. But just in general, have approached the Cyber Threats its something that i think folks are really struggling with. In my district, when you say cybersecurity, there is thinking of anti virus, they are thinking of fraud or things of that nature, but the level of ways that these are in speed in the way they, are i think its alarming when you see the bigger picture, and the fact that we cant have a sense of whats actually happening, there is no radar system that can really a multitude of attacks that are happening across the board, this is something that just really requires a paradigm shift and how we approach National Security the same way that the advent of artillery and aircraft added a third dimension to our warfare, this is something thats adding another dimension that really is different in many ways, it collapses time and space. We are as close to russia in cyberspace as we are to canada. The time is something that doesnt exist in the same property to be able to do that. It requires a lot of innovative ways in which we can try to understand the threat, as well as how quickly we can build a response, and we are just not there yet as a whole. I think we are going to continue to do with the Different Things we are doing on Election Security, but we have to wrap our heads around what it is thats going to be our posture writ large on cybersecurity before we start to have a meaningful impact, in my opinion. Lets add on one thing and he said, he talked about the complexity. We can do some very basic things. We all knew growing up as kids, dont get into a car with a stranger. Asterisk, unless its uber or lift. Why are we sharing stuff on social media for people that we have no clue who they are . Right . So that is what is allowing some of these messages to have the velocity, right . I dont know who said, it alike and travel across half a world before the truth puts its shoes on. Those are some cultural issues and education issues of just society, in that we have to focus on these as well. Sometimes, thats even more difficult and trying to design that radar system for cybersecurity. There is a Civics Education piece to this thats sometimes getting lost. I would love to have representative hurd on my bill for Digital Literacy, teaching Digital Literacy to our young people. Absolutely laughs representative hurd will have to leave in a few minutes due to a prior commitment, but i want to ask a question and get all your perspectives on this. I want to switch gears a little bit weve been talking about the institutions involved, the executive branch of congress, on these issues. As we know, sometimes the executive branch acts and debates chooses the best of many bad options, right . Thats oftentimes what many of the executive Branch Decisionmaking is, sometimes its a failure to act or refusal to act or enacted by congress. I think thats a fair statement, and some instances. The question is, what can congress do, what should be the role in asserting itself in Foreign Affairs. You can make the argument that congress has retreated in some degree, certainly in war powers issues and a pining on the president s power to use force abroad, etc, kind of not weighing in. The syria discussion is a nice little role reversal on that. So what can congress do to reassert itself, if in fact you believe it should be reasserting itself . I will answer this and run. Its a weak branch of government, and i think it should be in every area, and i think unfortunately, Previous Congress is before any of us probably thought about going into congress, has ceded a lot of that authority to the executive branch. I think, one of the important things we should be doing is passing a budget, right . This is or passing appropriation, to be more specific. I think we should be doing two years appropriations, so you can use those out years to do the true oversight that is required in making sure these things are happening. But we alluded to this at the beginning, and elicit was, right there are too many people in charge you think that theyre biased idea is its difficult, but i have seen, since my class, the 2014 class, and the last, two both on republican and democratic sides, you have people that have a bias towards action, because theyve had other careers, right . You dont have people that are professional politicians coming in, and so the newer members are that way. When you remember start getting into these leadership positions, i think thats when you start seeing the body as a whole change. And i also think that structurally, we need people that get reelected for solving problems, rather than talking to the edges. So if more districts were like mine, which is truly 50 50, then you will get a certain kind of person up here who knows how to try to be focused on getting things done. This election cycle, about 40 seats are going to be competitive. 17 years ago, that number was close to 80. Ten years before that, that number was in the mid one hundreds. So, structurally, how our elections set up . Thats influencing the broader behavior of this body. I think its important, and you are seeing over the last couple of years, congress exerting more of a role in Foreign Policy, in advocating with our allies. We sometimes forget, and and he said it when he first started, we have to educate our constituents on why these constituents are important, why a mother who is worried about putting her kids through school, or worried about an elderly father who has dementia, why should you care about syria or yemen . And making that case so that more people get involved. Its tricky, its not going to get solved in the next month, but this is, again, i feel good about the number of people in rd thanks very much. Thank you. applause so in terms of congress is role, i have a brother, his name is jonathan, i have three brothers, and he was the much mischievous one, and the one who was always getting into trouble. When we were kids, from the very beginning, ten years old, if he was in trouble, and everyone was saying, jonathan, why did you do that . We need you to come up here and clean it up. He would just casually dance backwards out of the room. That was his move. And i feel like thats what congress has done on their constitutional responsibilities, specifically around the authorization of military force. It was a. He would dance right out of the room. And he looked so funny doing it that you couldnt be totally mad at him. In this case, i would say, congress is role should be a, to go back to basics, and do the things that you are constitutionally authorized and required to do. So authorizing our countries wars, and appropriating our budgets in a timely fashion so that we can plan appropriately. And, certainly, the idea that and we know why they dance out of the room, they do so because of the iraq war. They dance out of the room because they had a vote, and some people lost their seats. And they had a vote, and some people are still paying for that vote today. And some people are still campaigning on that vote back in 2003. And since then, when politicians realize it was politically controversial to have to vote on war, they just gave up that responsibility. So thats deeply disturbing, and one of the things in the Armed Services committee that andy think about and work on all the time. Then theres category b, which is maybe not the things that are written into the constitution, but there are things that congress should have a voice on. So, the conduct of our wars, the strategy of our wars, are we succeeding . How many troops are we positioning overseas, and are they effective . We have a responsibility for oversight not just of war but of any type of military action certainly military exercises certainly, but also i would argue, any large Foreign Policy initiative, we should be exerting ourselves. And then, politicians should, the legislative branch should actually educate themselves on these things and have some sort of facility with these issues if they are going to be a leader, there are a ton of our peers where this is extremely new to, them the whole Foreign Policy world and just like i have to learn a ton about the inner workings of the pharmaceutical market, they need to learn a ton about our wars and the places we are engaged. I do think it speaks to a point that will raised, that andy mentioned, in a certain way and i feel always obligated to say as a midwesterner sitting in a room full of Foreign Policy people, i had the luxury for seven years since world war ii where the National Security elite in washington, whether you are a democrat or republican had basically had the arrangement where this Foreign Policy group makes the decisions on what the United States of america is going to do in the world and i am telling you after the iraq war and certainly after of canada stand, at least my part of the world is no longer willing to sit down and accept whatever Foreign Policy adventure one administration or another can can come up with. We have to shift our thinking as a Foreign Policy community, the question is not how come people in michigan do not care about what is going on in afghanistan or some part of the world, the question it should be is what have you all done to make all you do and care about relevant to the country, who are defending the vast, majority the soldiers, in the marines, the sailors, so you have to think how many times have you gotten in a midwestern college, how many times a beer have you thought about communicating you are important issue that you care about to people who have never, ever, engaged on Foreign Policy and seen how your approach works, have you ever translated that paper or that article that you wrote into something that makes sense for people who literally wake up in the middle of the night because they cannot pay for their sons insulin, that is what i would challenge this group to do as one Foreign Policy walk who happens to be from a part of the country where people are much more focused on other issues entering why the Foreign Policy elite keeps screwing it up, democrat and republican over and over again. Going off of something alyssa said earlier, i dont think i ever heard someone say describe this, but look. I guess she was being charitable. I do think that a lot of the challenges i see it come down to infrastructure, including what we can do, better just to start at i think, i agree with elissa in terms of how things have gone, i always have this line i like to say, lets not play Police Officer where we all just chase a, ball you dont need this many responses to everything the president doesnt every single issue that is out there, letters find some ways to break down based off of portfolios, base of of expertise, things of that nature that we can draw upon and when there is a situation for instance a couple of months ago when the crisis in iran was heating up, this was a situation that i had worked on a lot, with elissa and lisa. I was just trying to figure out who asked the pentagon what they are doing, who asked the state department, who has the information we can share, i just dont think that all of us need to be reinventing the wheel and every single aspect and i know that this is something people have tried before but certainly something im trying to take on a, board i was recently named the cochair of the National Security tax force, for the house democrats, and trying to figure out what we can do there to coordinate messaging and information that is out there. Also to what elissa said, the tool box that we have, what are some things we can be doing . For instance i think a lot with the trade war, it is a perfect example where our congress has authorities there that they are not utilizing, things that we can do to really try to take back the congress is role in dealing with tariffs and taxes these are the types of things that are important, the last thing i would say is that having worked at the pentagon, the state department and at the white house National Security council in certain roles especially at the white house, i did see something i hadnt seen in a lot of other jobs when i was more junior in my career which was a real constant communication between highlevel officials at the white house and pentagon and elsewhere and then members of congress and senior staff on the, hill i think that was really, important so even when its not about passing this piece of legislation are taking this i could see how conversations with members or others were, shaping the discussions that were happening in the situation room and elsewhere, and then having that type of war daily contact, building those relationships are important but i think that comes back to what i said earlier, when we are not able to stay on top of the intel, not able to have that level of Situational Awareness i think it puts us at a disadvantage, if youre only calling the pentagon after some type of attack or only kollie after a failure in the diplomatic channels we are just not doing our job, so we need to think of how to front that. It is interesting you were both on the front tenth of oversight request and the pentagon, and white house has your review and also just talked about this, they need that Congress Needs to be engaged in needs to be engaged on how the policy is getting, educated has your role on congress changed since you switched ends of the pennsylvania avenue . I dont know that it has changed, i just know the game, you know, i came up and i think i testified wonk 40 times in front of the Armed Services, committee and the, senate so i feel the difference but i remember coming up and saying, okay i really prepared and really knew my stuff and then you get these weird left field, parochial questions from members of congress and you say, i have to get back to, you i dont know exactly where they remain sir that are fighting in iraq so i will find that out for you, you know you had a lot of these. Procurements in the other. Office yet you had some very parochial questions and i think the freshman class has really helped brought in an deep in the questions on National Security in our committees so i still ask about things around a military facilities because it is a chemical lets they draw my military facilities. My perspective is just better informed, so when we read a letter to the head of the pea frost Law Task Force the guy whos in charge of figuring out to do about environmental cleanup, i know what they are doing when that letter comes over, it is taken a while to come from the executive secretary and we have to someone else his office, by the time eastern secretary maybe gets a hold of it it might be three weeks later, and then theyre figuring out how to answer it they put the task into the system, so im not willing to wait, im know the systems are not willing to wait, so you followed up with a quick phone call to the boss in saying just fyi i said to a formal letter on this and you sort of know the tricks of the trade on oversight which i think helps, but yes, of course i remember being on the other side and reignite, oh my gosh are they asking for more information and now im one of those people. laughs yeah you know i agree with a lot of thats, the fact that we bring a lot of, that we have a certain amount of fluency in the bureaucratic languages helps us understand where to put our energy, for instance i dont point so much energy in terms of having questions for the records because ive been on the receiving and i know how it is not necessarily my opinion and thats where you get some of the answers that we want, trying to figure out what are the places we can try to have an impact and try to be able to draw that out, so that is something i am still thinking through, i think for instance with the that is really fascinating for me to go through on the congressional side having been on the other side of that as well, im sure he elissa felt the same way. Just fyi now that we know how it works, the pentagons budget is drawn up and edited in a 21 hour hearing where we stay up all night, 21 hours straight, you have access to a restaurant but your team brings you snacks and you just do it all in one night and you know, are you gays at youre best at three in the morning, i mean its not. We started at 10 am and we finished at 7 30 the next morning, so we were having a good discussion about Nuclear Weapons at like two in the morning or Something Like that. So just to know that as a pentagon assistant secretary, the budget is everything, the language in that budget dictates your whole life and to think that it was sort of being done in a 21 hour hearing when we are not our best was a shock to me. It was, i think that knowing both sides of this has been really helpful, one thing i did want to say because i think that elissa hit a lot of the, things but just in through here and it is necessarily fit to every aspect for one aspect of this that i really wanted to figure out Going Forward, what role weather for the congressional side or elsewhere are we talking to our International Partners as well. I think it is something that i havent quite gotten a sense of yet, i meet with ambassadors and some delegations coming in, but for instance i have a lot of folks and ive worked with in syria and iraq and ive been hearing them for the last couple of weeks and seeing what ideas are out there i think there are some avenues in which we need to make sure that as members of congress and people in the positions that we are at that we are being part of that broader discussion, not only in our country but internationally as well, there is so much that is being looked upon right now from the rest of the world and Big Questions and theyre asking like, does this, president does this Administration Speak for america . I think it is important that they hear other voices in the midst as well, i think that the congressional delegations is one aspect of that but i know that these are highly choreographed in often exercises in those types of ways but one thing that is different going after afghanistan, turkey and some other engagements ive had is there is a difference in which i can approach things where i am no longer speaking on behalf of the state department or the white house National Security council, things of that nature, it is not it is much more opposition aware my coming out from, this my expertise, my experience and things that i know but really putting me in a position where it pushes me beyond some position points where we had he said thats above our upgrades are not gonna wait on that one and we no longer had that luxury and if you hear people trying to use those tapes awards that means they are trying to duck away from a tough question, so we need to be able to make sure that we are taking those steps and having those conversations. There is one question i was gonna ask you about the role of congress with our allies, especially as many of our ally relationships are under constrain today, im going to take this prerogative to ask a compound final question, because i know that you guys have to get to votes at 6 30 so my last question is this. You both have served for the National Security communities, we have talked about those institutions, some that you directly served in ad been under attack and the phrase a deep state used to be used in relation to Foreign Military Intelligence Services and authoritarian regimes and now it is being used as an epithet against career National Security professionals, so i would love to get to reactions to that as a former korean security professional and is there any thing that congress can do in the area of reform and is there a hope of returning to a level of bipartisanship on National Security that seems to be dwindling. Yeah i will jump in, this is something that is very personal to me in terms of how i came about my career, i was very deep believer in being a public servant, having worrying under the Obama Administration and i always had the saying that the last place it belongs is in the situation of National Security, i simply believe in that, i have colleagues where melissa and i worked, together and i still to this stage dont know if they are democrats and republicans, thats the way it should be, because we were measuring ideas based on the merits of the policy in our sense meant of the consequences and that is the Foreign Policy i still believe, and i still deeply believe that it is not an oldfashioned way that is no longer possible, so that is why i was responding about, what is the role of our professionals, of what is the role of Career Public Service who in my opinion are the standing hand to help us navigate between pendulum swings on the political front, as i said, i feel like ive been able to work here on capitol hill with a greater level to be able to do that, i am grateful for, that but i still see the pressures of the politicization of our National Security across the board, i think that is ultimately one of our existential threats to National Security and it is moving in that direction and people, when we feel like our professionals are not being law looked after, when their advice is not been heard or not being part of the process that could potentially have a huge impact Going Forward in terms of our ability to brigade professionals and how folks take on these jobs, someone asked me about this at a town hall and i said, they dont necessarily think the impact is going to be felt immediately necessarily but a annemarie that five years from now when we see the young generation of National Security officials decide that they are gonna go into the private sector elsewhere, they are welcome to do but i just want people to feel like this is a place where they can be heard, this is a place where you can build a really robust career without having to delve into the politics so much, that is something i hope we can continue on. I think weve had a tough couple of weeks, maybe a month now for our Civil Servants and Intelligence Officers who have also had an amazing month for our Intelligence Officers and Civil Servants, the picture of the ambassador walking into the house with her sunglasses on and who set food our youth, answering questions seriously and honestly, to me that is something we should all hope to emulate, she is taking a real risk and she came out and did what she thought was right, the whistleblower, whoever that person is, i mean i knew the minute i read that whistleblower report that it was a cia analyst. You and me. Both that is how we are trained to write, the writing style of that document is how we were traded our four Month Training Program and whoever that person is took enormous and continues to take part enormous professional risk in order to come forward and say something, so well it is been a tough couple of months it is also been an example to maybe young people that being in the civil service. It is a place where you could still be a real patriot they cares about the values of the country. What i would say is that as soon as we started hearing these reports early on in the Trump Administration of large numbers of Civil Servants and leaving the government i called a former undersecretary from the state department and said what is the mechanism to bring these people back if under a new administration they want to come back . The good news is there is already authority on the books and you dont need a new law all you need is a new secretary of state and a new director of cia or whoever to call back these people and offer them that same jobs with the same great and ringette is extremely important because we are going to want to bring our best and embrace this back, we are also going to want to get those young people who maybe had been at the state department for five years and say to take the job somewhere else because they dont want to be part of something going, on we cant allow the hollowing out of our civil service, the good thing is whenever we have a new administration, whether next year or in five years we are in a have a mechanism to bring people back that is efficient. Ladies and gentlemen you have witnessed the value of having someone with this type of experience, who have served at the executive branch and now have come here to continue their public service, to be practical and have for say it and really think about the national interest, first and foremost, so thank you very much for your public service. applause now a discussion on how companies can protect themselves well sharing information with other companies or individuals through the internet, this is part of the Cyber Security discussion hosted by billing tin cybersecurity, we will also hear from the Deputy Principal cyber adviser, this is just under an hour. He