We have to recognize the Senior Member here, and treat to welcome current and former colleagues and i have worked with this panel in some form or another inside and outside of government. It is a treat to welcome everybody here on the nyu school of Law Community where i am a distinguished fellow. Welcome to the program and my colleagues. This is 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 that the theme here is that every single one of the distinguished Public Servants served in the executive branch in the National Security community and the searching topic for today is how has that service informed your view as legislators and how can we be best poised from both branches perspective to confront some of the most thorny issues that we face and so thank you one and all for being here. Quickly, we have to my far left, no pun intended, will herd. Represents the 23rd district in texas, and elected to congress in 2014, and he of course serves on the House Appropriations committee and the Permanent Select Committee on intelligence, and most importantly for this panel before serving in congress, he served as an undercover officer in the cia and in middle east and south asia and near and dear to my heart he is a cochair of the Aspen Institute and one of the most thoughtful and knowledgeable members of cyber technology, and emerging technologies, and so we are fortunate to have him here. And next to him is congresswoman slotkin who was represented in 2018, and she serves on the House Armed Services committee and the House Homeland Committee and before elected, she worked for the cia in the middle east and served as acting assistant secretary of defense for the interNational Security affairs where she and i spent many, many hours around the situation table. This is not going to be like that. And last but not least, congressman kim, andy kim representing the 3rd district of new jersey and elected to congress in 2018 and representative kim serves on the armed house Services Committee and the house Small Business committee, and before elected he worked on the house National Security staff again with yours truly as an expert on the middle east, south asia and afghanistan and he served as a strategic adviser in afghanistan alongside generals David Petraeus and john allen and so we are very lucky to have all of them here today and the citizens of texas, michigan and new jersey are fortunate indeed. I am the moderator for this. Im lisa monaco, and in addition to the service at nyu, i was president obamas Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism adviser, and so lets get started and rolling. I know that some of you to leave early to do the peoples business. So crossing the divide. That is the title of the program, going from the ek executive branch to congress and i so will lob a softball to try to get your answer to this because you have all served in the executive branch and the National Security and made the pivot to the legislative branch and how has that informed your service in being a productive and effective legislator in the time of tremendous National Security tumult. I will start with you, will. Sure, lisa. Thank you, and it is a pleasure to be here with my esteemed colleagues and we are lucky to have this kind of the experience here in congress at an important time. As a operator within the cia and you are the collectors of the last resort, and our job was to collect information to inform the policy makers and we were clear that our job is not to suggest or to project policy and so the transition was interesting for me, because for almost a decade is doing the things that we were not supposed to be doing. But having granular understanding of the positions, living in the india for two years and then living in pakistan for two years after that, and looking at the issues from the different perspective, and being in new york city, and doing a lot of intraagency work and understanding how the foreign issues impact the domestic agencies and spending a year and a half in afghanistan where i manage all of the undercover operation, you have a working knowledge of the topic that is important. And while isis was not a thing when i was in the cia, al qaeda was, so the same principles and theories in dealing withal a qua with al qaeda is something that you do use with isis. As my job as a coordinator is to help people understand, and the understanding of where they overlap is as close to the truth that you will get. So having that background experience, i have brought that to my job up here in washington. So you have to act as a case officer for any of the members of congress . Well, i have had more surveillance as a member of congress than i did in the cia. So at least in the cia, i knew who my enemies were [ laughter ] and so, you know, so, yeah, but the other thing they have found interesting is when i came in, i won in starting in 2015 of 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 in perspective and that has happened more in my time in congress than i would have expected when i first got in. So while everybody may not understand and be able to give you an answer on how what we should do next in syria and what should we have done, they may understand and recognize it is a problem. Great. Hello, everyone. Thank you, lisa, for having me. I am thrilled to be up here with my colleagues. I think that the biggest thing for me that is a transition from the executive to the legislative branch is that the executive branch is a chain of command organization, and the legislative branch is 435 entrepreneurs, and nobody is each others boss, and the only people who can fire us are the people in our districts and not any member that we see and not anybody in leadership and not any committee chair, so i am still adjusting to that culture i would say, and because in the executive branch you can have vociferous debate on what to do on a pollicy issue and i worked in the bush and the Obama Administration and vociferous debate of what to do and if you cant work it out, it is working up the chain, and ultimately decisionmakers more senior than you that make a decision and you go on with your lives, and you say, i didnt win that battle or i did win that battle, but we have a path forward. And with 435 entrepreneurs, it is a huge game of consensus building and constantly using relationships to meet with people and say, do you want to work on something together and do you care about this issue. I am interested in doing something for parents with autistic children, and it is a consensusbased thing which is much harder and less clear, and the culture is one degree down from that, and you know in the executive branch, you know, you may meet some characters from time to time, but there is a real missionfocus, and everybody is coming to the table and says, okay, we are doing this for a specific reason, and now the mission and im trying to get that done. And i used to say to the people at the pentagon if i were leading a meeting with my ds and running the staff, and there was one person around the table who started to talk about how i should lead, because i am really good at this or i should have that portfolio and me, me, me, and that would be literally a reason for me to say, if it is about the you and the not about the mission, get on up out of here. And in Congress Somebody else says, what about me . And in congress that is every meeting, always somebody who says i am great at this and i should lead on that. And so culturally, it is difficult for some of us to real really transition and it is important to have the missionfocus and having training on the missionfocus, because we bring it for the jobs as legislators which is a good thing even if it is a cultural adjustment. Great. Thank you. Yes, a couple of things to build on. I think that one aspect of this that was incredibly important to me, and probably shared across the table is that the three of us all served in National Security in nonpart san ways. We were a career Public Servants in the differing institutions and something that i have been wondering about coming into this body, can i approach National Security with that same lenses, and for me, i feel like i have been able to more than i was necessarily expected to do so. The Armed Services committee for the most part if you were to print out a transcript of the Armed Services committee hearings, you could blot out the names, and you wont necessarily know who is a democrat or a republican based on the questions that they are asking. I think that there is a certain professionalism still that i am happy to be a part of and trying to find the ways to broaden that out. I think that coming from my background, you know, i had a specific expertise in, you know, iraq, afghanistan, the Counter Terrorism issues and while i have been working in the National Security space, i cant claim that i am an expert on the latin america issues or the things they come into contact here in congress, but what is helpful is that i have a deep Network Across the field of the experts that i have worked with whether at the white house or elsewhere who can help me to get up to speed on this issue perhaps faster than solve to colleagues, but the interest of building out this catalog and the network outside of capitol hill is something that i am trying to build on. And because of my previous experience, we have, and i am sure that the three of us can all say to this point, there is just certain fundamental tools of the National Security that i dont believe are utilized as well as they should be here on the hill, and for instance, we dont have the ability of the level Situational Awareness of the intel to utilize it in the way that we were briefed every single day and to have a certain amount of the Situational Awareness here, and here it is reactionary, and it is something that you rarely go to read the intel unless something horrible has happened in the world and what did we know two weeks ago, so that is not putting us in as strong as a position here in congress if everything that we are doing is much more reactionary, and how do we do the oversight efforts and it says for me, in some instances that as lisa introduced to work out in afghanistan eight years ago, and i was the guy that was in the room during the codels there to go back to the briefing and interesting to go back to afghanistan two weeks ago and get a briefing in my old office. How did those people do . Very well. More importantly, how did you do . Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, it is one of those things, where you, you will have a better sense of when you are given the talking points given to you and having written them, and gone through and, so it is going to help me to find ways to get a deeper truth and expose that. That is to the final point that is a part of the job that is different is that we have to speak more human about the National Security and Foreign Policy, and that is something that i wish that everybody across the National Security space does, but cut out the acronyms, and get straight to the point. And when i came back, how do i talk to the people in the Central Jersey and the jersey shore of why they should focus on what has happened after a 18year war, and we have to speak human about it in that way, and this is something that is going to hopefully make that discussion dialogue very true in our country. That is pivot to some Current Events and lets get into some of that. And the news of the day, syria, and you have all to varies degrees spoken out against or expressed concerns about the decision to remove troops from syria. So unique perspectives on that with your roles and that they are not moved from the theatre but to iraq. And does that change your view at 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 groups and say 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, you know, cousins who are coming over the border. You know, im going to the middle east on the 31st to have these conversations with senior leaders. Unfortunately 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 with sanctions, but there isnt a ton we can do, and we end up watching scenes with Everything Else like we saw today. Congressman hurd, anything you want to add to that . Sure. Sometimes we forget, we got to go back to september 10th, 2001, right. I was in headquarters of the cia. I remember in august analysts being like, something is going to happen, something is going to happen. We dont know what. People were sleeping in their cars, sleeping in their offices. We know what happened on the 11th. A lot of people have forgotten that. The reason that weve had to be in afghanistan, the reason 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, fifth, sixth employee in ctcso, the Counterterrorism Center special operations division, if you would have told me on september 12th there would not have been another attack on our homeland for 17 years, i would have said at that time you were crazy. The reason we havent seen that is because the men and women, our diplomatic corps, our intelligence services, our military and federal Law Enforcement has stopped that from happening. Thats why were there. Ive made it very clear, these terms of this peace deal i thought 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. And again, we still havent seen all the details of that deal. And why is it bad . And elissa outlined most of them. We screwed our friends, and its not just does the u. S. Handshake count. This has impacted all western alliances. I was in paris in the ministry of defense 12 hours after the tweets were sent about this deal. I can tell you our partners in france had some opinions on this topic. Theyre part of the coalition against isis. They are. They have 1300 troops in that region. Theyve been intimately involved. So if your friends dont trust you and your enemies dont fear you, its a pretty bad situation to be. I can make an argument that this recent announcement 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 didnt know whether they can count on us, and is that an indication of how our allies are concerned with us. Were creating a humanitarian crisis in that part of the world that has dealt already with too many humanitarian crises. You know, we are weve spent years Building Infrastructure in that part of syria, and we left it or we bombed it, right . That doesnt make any sense. So 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. The broader question we should be asking ourselves is not just removal of troops from that part of the region when he did it, but what about all the inaction that led up to it . Why have we never addressed the issues that turkey has had . Why did we not establish a nofly zone in that region and make sure our allies are responsible for making sure that would ultimately happen . So there are a lot of things that hadnt happened up to that point which we should be talking about to ensure it doesnt happen again, and lets hope this is not a precursor to afghanistan. If something similar like this was happening in afghanistan, it would be even more disastrous than this move in syria. So kim, you served in afghanistan. You also were intimately involved in the design and planning around the counterisis campaign and our deployment to iraq. The president of iraq now is kurd. How should we be thinking about all these reverberations . And to representative slotkins point, what does our handshake mean now to the kurdish leadership in iraq, where we have to be . Thats right. I think for me, you know, five years ago i remember when those early phone calls with erdogan, when we were saying we were going to work with the kurds. We knew this was an issue that wed have to come to reckon with at some point. Id never imagined it would unfold the way 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 just begs this question of, where are the professionals in this process of deliberation and policymaking . And thats something that worries me. We have the National Security council set up for a reason. It was set up to help institutionalize a process to think through very big issues and great challenges that we face. It is meant to try to make sure that we are weighing the consequences and really thinking through the scenario, hopefully with people who are experts. When ambassador satterfield in syria. Just decades of service to our country. It just felt like their expertise is not being utilized to help our country decide through these steps. Thats one aspect of it. To get it closer to the point youre referencing, you know, this is something thats deeply personal to me. I wrote my doctoral dissertation in large part on u. S. Policy to the kurds in the 80s and 90s, documenting the abject failures we had during the massacre period in the 80s, then the postgulf war where we allowed hussein gun ships to mow down our partners in the north. I outwliened in detail the Decision Making 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 help them. To now see a situation of our own making that really feels very similar to that period in some ways is very, very frustrating and deeply disappointing. I think it very much gets back to our kurdish partners in iraq and elsewhere just about how in many ways for them its how far theyve come in terms of being able to set this up and the fact there is a kurd that is the president of iraq, yet i think they understand how fragile that is and how dependent that status is upon what the United States is going to do. I just feel like we have just set back that relationship to the 80s and 90s that i studied before. It just is so deeply disappointing to see that. So im going to shift to something more domestically oriented. Thats elections. One of the biggest issues we have, cybersecurity. Will hurd, as mentioned, youve b been focusing on these issues for years. Whats the most important thing congress can do and that we as a country should be doing now one year out from 2020 and to address what the intelligence professionals and the National Security professionals all agree is an Ongoing Campaign to 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 disinformation. So i held the first hearings on 2016 Election Security before the 2016 elections were over. The summer before the elections, i was calling for ambassador kislyak, the russian ambassador, to be kicked out of the country because of what at that point we had already known the russians with r tryi were trying to do. Bob moo bob mueller in a hearing, he said its happening right now. I should note youre the only person who asked about that. Im a classically trained case officer. Thats what you do. But how do you handle disinforming . Now, handling disinformation overseas is a lot easier because disinformation is a part of covert action. 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 disinformation, to highlight people that are moting disinformation. But do you want the federal government to tell the media that this is wrong or this is bad speech or this is disinformation . The media plays a role in it. We know how to deal with disinformation from a violent extremism perspective. The way you handle countering violent extremism is the same way you handle disinformation, just the payload is slightly different. But whos responsible for that . Yes, we can defend digital infrastructure. Prior to 2016, none of the secretaries of states wanted to have election infrastructure be identified as critical infrastructure. Jeh johnson made that decision, took a whole lot of heat. Then a couple months later, everybody is like, thats probably a good move. Everyone thought the federal government was going to somehow take over this issue. I know, i lived it. You know it. So we can harden 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 going into one county thats going to make or break a congressional election, you go in heavy, not try to be sneaky about it, and you go around, find out, people are going to freak out. So how do you deal with that aftermath . And to be frank, i dont think weve had enough conversation on who should be pointing the lead and that dhs has a role, state department has a role, local folks have a role, media has a role. And thats how you counter disinformation in the u. S. So yes, i was one of those people very happy will asked those questions about the bob mueller hearing because there was a group of us watching, a lot of us with National Security backgrounds, who were watching none fold and obviously had read the report. While the media and everybody else was so focused on what the report said and what the details were, there was just painfully few people saying, what did we learn and how are we putting forward bills that will keep us safe in 2020 . I think its important to realize that we have actually, unless will is going correct me, and he should, we have not passed any laws that make us safer in 2020, our election system safer, than we were in 2016. A group of us came together, a bipartisan group, and started something called task force century. It was a task force designed to do just that, to identify the legislation needed to make us safer. We learned a lot of lessons. A lot of this is very difficult because of free speech issues, you know. But what we could all agree on, regardless of political affiliation, is that foreigners should not play a role in our political process. And so while the content of messages and what one side, democrat or republican, want to say about the other is very difficult to regulate, going back and looking who the originator, the purchaser of that content is the way that we got at this problem. So a bunch of us cosponsored something called the paid ads act, which makes it illegal for a foreigner to buy an advertisement for or against a political candidate in an american election. Its very basic. But we have a suite of legislation, a lot of it is being taken up in the next ten days through the shield act, which is coming to the floor very soon. Some of it is very bipartisan, some of it is not. But there are a bunch of good pieces in there that i think any american, regardless of political affiliation, should feel is our responsibility to push forward, and you know, were seeing even in the headlines, foreigners should not be able to donate to political campaigns. Its illegal to do that, right . Theres a lot of things that it all starts with the originator. We just cant have foreigners involved in our lecks. And i would just add an asterisk on that. There was more money for eac, for dhs, for election infrastructure. So it wasnt a law to change this, which is crazy that if Vladimir Putin wanted to run an ad saying, you know, congressman x is a dirt bag, you know, he can do that. Which is wild. But the funding, money was there. I would like to just kind of zoom out a little bit here. Specific to the election side of things, you know, i think my two colleagues really laid it out, but in general, i think what were seeing is just a real need to get a grasp as a country, as a National Security infrastructure on what the cybersecurity threats are Going Forward. This is something that as congressman hurd was mentioning is just spread out over so many different agencies and departments. As part of the Armed Services committee, one aspect that ive dug into deep is on cyber com, colocated with nsa. It shows how complicated that partnership is. There are a lot of these issues that blur across. There are some aspects that theyre doing for Election Security. That certainly has been good for me to see how engaged they have and are getting more and more so. Just in general, how weve approached these Cyber Threats is something that i think folks are really struggling with. In my district, when you say cybersecurity, theyre thinking of, you know, antivirus, theyre thinking of fraud, things of that nature. Just the level in which these threats are occurring and the speed with which they are, i think, is alarming when you really see the bigger picture. The fact we really cant have a sense of how much is actually happening, theres no radar system or Defense System that can really have us understand a multitude of attacks that are happening across the board. This is something that just really requires, in my opinion, sort of a paradigm shift in how we approach National Security in the same way the advent of artillery and aircraft added a sort of third dimension to our warfare. This is something adding another dimension thats different in many ways. It collapses time and space. We are as close to russia in cyberspace as we are to canada. Time is something that just doesnt exist in the same properties to be able to do that. And it requires a lot of innovative ways in which we can try to understand the threat as well as how quickly we need to be able to respond. Were just not there yet as a whole. I think were going to continue to do the Different Things were doing on Election Security, but we have to really just wrap our head around what is it thats going to be our posture writ large toward cybersecurity before we can have meaningful impacts. Lets add one one thing. He talked about the complexity, but 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 wloilyft, right . Why are we sharing stuff on social media from people that we have no clue who they are . So that is what is allowing some of these messages to have the velocity, right . I dont know who said it, you know, a lie can travel across half the world before the truth puts its shoes on. So those are some cultural issues and education issues of just society that we have to be focused on too. Thats sometimes even more difficult than trying to design that radar system for cybersecurity. Theres a Civics Education piece to this that sometimes gets lost. I would love to have representative hurd on my bill on Digital Literacy and teaching Digital Literacy to our young people. Absolutely. Wheres my team . Representative hurd is going to have to leave in a few minutes for another commitment, but i want to sneak one question in so we can get all your perspectives on this. Weve been talking about the institutions involved on these Critical Issues. As we all know, sometimes the executive branch acts and debates the kind of chooses the best of many bad options, right . Thats oftentimes what some of the executive branch Decision Making is, and sometimes its against a failure to act or refusal to act or inaction by congress. I think thats a fair statement, in some instances. So the question is, what can congress do . What should be the role in asserting itself in Foreign Affairs . You can make an argument that congress has kind of retreated to some degree in certainly war powers issues and opining on the president s power to use force abroad, not weighing in. Although, the syria discussion is a nice little role reversal. So what can congress do to reassert itself if, in fact, you believe it should be . Ill answer this and run. Congress is a coequal branch of government. That should be in every area. Unfortunately, previous congresses, before any of us even 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 passing appropriations, to be more specific. I think we should be doing two years of appropriations. 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. The way and elissa was right. There was 435 people that think theyre in charge and think theirs is the best idea out there. To gain consensus on some of these issues is difficult. But what i have seen since my class, the 2014 class, and the last two, on both the republican and democratic side, 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. So the newer members are that way. When newer members start getting into leadership positions, i think thats when youre going to start seeing the body as a whole change. 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, youre going to send the kind of person up here that knows how to actually 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 mid100s. So structurally in how our elections are set up is influencing the broader behavior of this body. But i think its important. And youre seeing over the last couple Years Congress exerting more of a role in Foreign Policy, in advocating with our allies. We sometimes forget and andy said it when he first started, we have to educate our constituents on why these issues are important. Why should a mother whos worried about putting her kid through school or worried about an elderly father who has dementia, why should you care about syria or yemen . And making that case so more people get involved. Its tricky. Its not going to get solved in the next month, but this is you know, again, i feel good about the number of people that are coming into this office and getting frustrated with the status quo and wanting to get things done. So thanks. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Talk to you all soon. [ applause ] so in terms of Congress Role, i have a brother, his name is jonathan. I have three brothers. He was the mischievous once and the one whos always getting in trouble. When we were kids, from the very beginning, like 10 years old, if he was in trouble and everyone was saying, jonathan, why did you do that, and we need you to come up here and clean it up, he would just casually dance backwards out of the room. Like, that was his move. I feel like thats what congress has done on, in particular, their constitutional responsibilities, specifically around the authorization of military force. Yeah, it was this, like, dance right out of the room. He looked so funny doing it, you couldnt be totally mad at him. In this case, i would say Congress Role should be, a, to go back to basics and do the things you are constitutionally authorized and required to do. So authorizing our countrys wars and appropriating our budgets in a timely fashion so we can plan appropriately. And certainly the idea that and we know why they danced out of the room. They danced out of the room because of the iraq war. They had a vote, and some people lost their seats. They had a vote, and some people are still paying for that vote today. Some people are still campaigning on that vote back in 2003. Since then, when politicians realized 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 and i 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, you know, positioning overseas . And are they effective . We have a responsibility for oversight not just of war but of any type of, you know, military action certainly, military exercises certainly, but also i would argue any large Foreign Policy initiative we exerting ourselves. Then politicians should you know, the legislative branch should actually educate themselves on these things and have some sort of facility with these issues if theyre going to be a leader. Theres 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 where were engaged. I think it speaks to a point that will raised and andy mentioned, in a certain way. I feel always obligated to say as a midwesterner sitting in a room full of Foreign Policy wonks, weve had the luxury for 70 years since world war ii where the National Security elite in washington, whether youre democrat or republican, have 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 im telling you, after the iraq war and certainly after afghanistan, at least my part of the world is no longer willing to sit down and just accept whatever Foreign Policy adventure one administration or another can come up with. And we have to shift our thinking as a Foreign Policy community. The question is not how come people in midmichigan dont care about whats going on in afghanistan or whats going on in some part of the world . The question should be, what have you all done to make what you do and you care about relevant to the middle of the country, who are sending, for the vast majority, the sailors, the marines, the airmen. I think reversing that paradigm so that we think about how many times a year have you gone and spoken in a Midwestern College . How many times a year have you thought about communicating your important issue that you care about to people who have never, ever engaged on Foreign Policy . And seeing how your approach worked. Have you ever translated that paper or that article you wrote into something that makes sense for people who literally wake up in the middle of the night because they cant pay for their sons insulin . Thats what i would challenge this group to do. As one Foreign Policy wonk who happens to be from a part of the country where people are much more focused on other issues and wondering why the Foreign Policy elite keep screwing it up, democrat and republican, over and over again. Going off something that elissa said earlier, i dont think id ever heard anyone describe congress as 435 entrepreneurs. Im guessing she was being charitable. I do think that a lot of the challenges i see come down to infrastructure and coordination that we could be doing better, just to kind of start at. I agree with elissa in terms of how things felt. I always have this line i like to say, which is lets not play peewee soccer, where you chase the ball. You dont need 435 responses to everything the president does or every single issue thats out there. Lets find some ways to really try to break down, based off of portfolios, based off of expertise, things of that nature that we can draw upon. When theres a situation for instance, a couple months ago when the crisis in iran was heating up, this was a situation that i had worked on before, worked a lot with elissa and lisa on with. Whos asked the pentagon for what theyre doing . Whos asked the state department . Whos got this information that we can share . I just dont feel like all of us need to be reinventing the wheel on every single aspect. I know this is something people have tried before, but certainly something im trying to take on board. I was recently named cochair of the National Security task force for the House Democrats and trying to figure out what we can do on that front to just fry to coordinate messaging and information out there. Also, to what elissa said about the tool box we have. For instance, i think a lot with the trade war is a perfect example where congress, you know, has authorities there that they are just not utilizing, things we can do to really try to take back Congress Role in being able to deal with tariffs and taxes. These are the types of things that are important. The last thing ill say is that having worked i worked at the pentagon, the state department, usaid. I really 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 at the pentagon and elsewhere and 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 or taking this action, i could feel how conversations with members or others was shaping the discussions happening in the situation room and elsewhere. I think having that type of more daily contact, building those relationships are important, but i think that gets back to what i was saying earlier. When were 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 were only calling the pentagon after some type of attack, only calling the state department after some type of failure in diplomatic channels or Something Like that, were just not doing our job. So we need to figure out how to front end that. Its interesting. You both were on the receiving end of oversight requests, right, in the pentagon, in the white house. Has your view and elissa, you just talked about this, that there needs to be much more that Congress Needs to be engaged, needs to be focusing on how is the policy getting executed. Has your perspective on that role of congress changed since you switched ends of the pennsylvania avenue . I dont know that its changed. I just know the game. I came up and i think i testified 40 times up in front of the House Armed Services, the senate Armed Services committee, and now im on the Armed Services committee. I feel the difference, but i remember coming up and saying, okay, i really prepared and i really knew my stuff. Youd get these weird left field sort of very parochial questions from members of congress and youd say, ill have to get back to you. I dont know exactly where the apaches were made that are fighting in iraq. You had a lot of these procurements in the other office. You had a lot of very parochial questions. I think our freshmen class, to wills point, has really helped broaden and deepen the discussion on National Security in our committees because we do come with some background. Although, i still ask about things around my military facility. My perspective is just better informed. When we write a letter to the head of the task force, you know, the guy at the pentagon, the assistant secretary whos in charge of figuring out what to do about cleanup, i know what theyre doing when that letter comes over. Its taken a while to come from the executive secretary and move to someone elses office. By the time the assistant secretary maybe gets ahold of it, it might be three weeks later. Then theyre figuring out how to answer it. They put the task into the system. So im not willing to wait. I know the system. Im not willing to wait for that. Then you just follow it up with a quick phone call to the boss and say, just fyi, i set you a formal letter on this. 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 being like, oh, my gosh, are they asking for more information . And now im one of those people. Yeah, i agree with a lot of that. I think the fact that we bring a certain amount 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 put so much energy in terms of having questions for the record, qfrs after hearings. Ive been on the receiving end. I know thats not the best way to get some of these answers we want. Trying to figure out what are the places where we can try to have an impact, try to be able to draw that out. So that is something im still thinking through. I think, for instance, with the ndaa process, that was really fascinating for me to go through on the congressional side, having been on the other side of that as well. Im sure elissa felt the way same. Just fyi, now that weve learned how it work, the pentagons budget is basically drawn up and edited in a 21hour hearing where we stay up all night, 21 hours straight. You have access to a restroom, but your team brings you snacks. You just do it all in one night. And, you know, are you guys at your best at 3 00 in the morning . I mean, its not yeah, we started at, what, 10 00 a. M. . Then we finished at like 7 30 the next morning. Were having a discussion about lowyield Nuclear Weapons at 2 00 in the morning or Something Like that. So to know 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 21hour hearing when were not our best was a shock for me. It was. I think just knowing both sides of this has been, you know, really helpful. One thing i did want to say because i feel like elissa hit a lot of it, one thing i did want to say since were here, abut oe aspect of this i really want to figure out Going Forward is what role, whether from a congressional side or elsewhere, are we talking to our International Partners . I think thats something i havent quite gotten a good sense of yet. I meet with ambassadors, with some dell gragegations coming i. But for instance, i have a lot of folks ive worked with in other countries on syria and iraq, and ive been hearing from them over the last couple weeks. Just seeing what ideas are out there. I think there are some avenues in which, you know, we need to make sure that as members of congress and people in the positions were at, that we be part of that broader discussion thats out there, not only in our own country but internationally as well. Theres so much that is being looked upon right now from the rest of the world. The Big Questions theyre asking are questions like, you know, does this president , does this Administration Speak for america . I think its important that they hear other voices in the mix as well. I think the congressional delegations are one aspect of that, but elissa and i know that these are highly choreographed and often exercises in those types of ways. But one thing that is different this time around going out to afghanistan and turkey and to some of the other engagements ive had is there is a difference in this i can approach things where i am no longer speaking on behalf of the state department or the white house National Security council. Its much more of a position of where am i coming at . I draw upon my expertise, experience, what it is that i know. But really, its putting me in a position where it pushes me beyond some of those decision points before where we said, well, thats above our pay grade. Im not going to weigh in on that one. We no longer have that luxury. If you hear people try to use those types of words, that just means theyre trying to duck away from a tough question. So we need to be able to make sure were having those conversations. We are live on capitol hill this afternoon. The ceasefire in syria between the kurds and turkey comes to an
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