Good afternoon. And welcome to the National Press club, the place where news happens. Im the 2014 National PressClub President and a former Foreign Correspondent in and bureau cheap for the Associated Press in india, england, and japan. And i now teach journalism and the importance of accuracy at George WashingtonUniversity School of media and public affairs. Before we get started, i want to remind our inhouse audience to please silence your phones, and for our viewing and listening audience, please feel free to knoll program on twitter, at hash tag npc live. Accomplish for our cspan and public radio audiences, please be aware that in the audience today are members of the general public so any applause or reaction you hear is not necessarily from the working press. Before i introduce the head table, i want to recognize two very special tables on my right, your left. In the audience. Which are prized of the members of the channel press clubs American Legion post 20, which was founded on november 11, 1919, one year after the sign offering the armistice that ended the first world bar and for many years wag associated with general of the armies, john j. Pershing, who was an associate member of the National Press club and who served as the tenth army chief of staff, legionnaires led by post 20 commander and mcc member jim noone, mess stand and be acknowledged. [applause] now id like to introduce our head table. Please stand when i call your name, and to the audience, please hold your applause until all the head table members are introduced. On your right, kevin wednesdaying, retired u. S. Navy captain and a member of the mpc Headliners Team that plans these events. Brendan mccarey, managing editor of military. Com. Lisa matthews, Vice President at haig haiger, sharp, and cochair othe npc led hooners time. Ellen mitchell, defense reporter for the hill. Dot macione, defendant reporter for federal news radio. Yasmin, reporter for National Defense magazine. Josh rogen, columnest for the global potential section of the washington post. Skipping over our speaker. Eric nelson, a member of the npc board of governors, a senior productionist for the Associated Press and the npc Headliners Team member who coordinated todays lunch. Thank you. Jibbing michaels military reporter forasas today u. S. A. Today, and amanda, National Security recorder for cbs radio who comes from military family. David, the defense editor for the imagine national interest, and alfredo diaz, retired army master sergeant, veteran of the vietnam, iraq, and panama, and the Vice Commander over American Legion post 20. [applause] aid also like to acknowledge briefly Additional Press club members responsible for organize todays event, betsy martin, job donly and lori russo and Staff Members laura coker and lindsey underwood. With just over 1 million active and reserveit soldiers the army is oldest and largees of Americas Armed services. Its fiscal 2018 budget request is about 166 billion, including proposed war spending, in the context of a roughly 639 billion total pentagon budget request. The army faces a host of challenges today, and President Trump added a new challenge yesterday with his tweets barring transgender people serving in the military. In case you are not aware we have breaking news update on that story, which is the news that a little while ago, as we were preparing for this lunch, marine general joseph dumpford, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and who spoke at the National Press club few weeks ago, sent a note, wrote a message to the chiefs of the services and senior enlisted leaders that the military will continue to, quote, treat all of our personnel with respect, unquote. And two key paragraphs i will read out quote, know there are questions about yesterdays announcement on the transgender policy by the president. There will be no modifications to the current policy until the president s direction has been received by the secretary of defense and the secretary has issued implementation guidance. In the meantime we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect as importantly given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions. General joseph dunford, champion of the joint chiefs of staff. The armys ranks enlarged after 9 11, and then they shrank after the iraq and afghanistan drawdowns and now have begun to inch back up. The army wants to be sure if the units larger, theyre also properly trained and equipment. The army and other services have said theyre readiness, their preparedness to fight is not up to standard. The army want more modify but everyone agrees it needs to be well spent. The army has had trouble in particular executing large weapons acquisitions, and billions were penal on the crusader, comanche and future combat system programs, for example, with much less to show for than it had originally been planned. The army is battlehardened today but has mostly waged one particular type of war, counterinsurgency. While tomorrows fights may by markedly different in character. To stay ahead of the curve, the army is focused on keeping pace with rapid technological change. General mark billy is keenly ware of all these challenges and is in midst of addressing them. General milly became the 39th 39th army chief of staff in august 2015. Before that he led army forces at fort bragg in north carolina. He has held multiple staff and command positions in eight divisions, and an Army Special Forces units throughout the last 35 years. He has deployed to multiple theaters of conflict. He graduated and received his commission through the rotc program from princeton university. He holds masters degrees from columbia university, in international relations, and the u. S. Naval war college in National Security and strategic studies. He is the recipient of numerous military awards including the bronze star. They door numerous to mention but just look at his chest to see the wide range. General milly is a native of winchester, massachusetts. He and his wife have been married more than 30 years and have two children. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a major big welcome from the National Press club to army chief of staff, general mark milly. [applause] thank you. I love coming to the National Press club and getting Headline News as i sit right there coming out of my chairmans lips. Appreciate you doing that. And so thanks for the opportunity to be here. And i dont know how many of you know it but myron is a veteran himself. Served in vietnam, as a young man. On general west morelandsve in the area earlies of vietnam, 646667 time frame. So thank you also. [applause] and thanks all of you for being here. Im really here to talk about the new England Patriots and how they come back 283. We want to go red sox or if we want to talk bruins. Recent other news, probably not a good topic right now. So, kidding itch realize that everyone here is keenly interested in that which goes on around us, and im a soldier, public figure, chief of staff of the army, significant budgets, a lot of soldier, a lot of young men and women of our nation, and i feel an obligation to explain what we do why we do it, and answer questions for the American People and the American People often times get their news, get their view of us, the army or me military, through the immediate mayor its not exclusively through the media but one mechanism and i have an obligation as the chief of staff of the mayor to do that within bounds of the classification. What i want to talk today about, really four topics. I have 20 minutes and then we want to open up to q a and i wont be able to talk in depth in 20 minutes on these topics but throw them out there and if youve have followon questions ill be happy. But i want to give you my view, one mans view of the security challenges that we the United States and as a subset we the United States army are being challenges with around the globe today. Secondly i want to tell you a little bit about your army and the current state of readiness and talk about the future. Lastly i want to throw out a couple of miss about military operations myths about military operations that i think, anyway, are worthwhile to discuss. I do want to reiterate one thing up front. Its this issue of the transgender news that couple out the other day. I want to reiterate what general dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff dish know there are lot of questions but the military is the mail tear whoa has certain sets of orders and processes. So, to date, walking in here, have yet to simple implementation guidance, directives, from the department of defense, general mattis, and we grow up and learn to obey the chain of command and my chain of command, secretary of the army and the secretary of defense and the president. So, we will work through the implement addition guidance when we get it, and then well move from there. To my knowledge, the department of defense, secretary mattis, has not received written directives yes. I know theres a lot of churn out there about what was said the other day, but that where is we are right now, and general dunfords exactly right. Well act when we receive directives through the proper chain of command channels, and then well evaluate what we have and move out from there in me meantime, he is exactly right, and it should be no surprise to anyone but the entire capability and will, and with pressure it is clear that Russian Military capability is the only country on earth that represents a threat to the United States because they have the capability of Nuclear Weapons, and we do to, that constrict and destroy the United States of america. So, by definition is not ordinary capability. Other countries have Nuclear Capability but only russia has the capability to destroy the United States. In addition there are six capabilities i have been modernized in the last five or ten years, maybe 15. Then you get into will. Thats a much more subjective, capability piece you can do the math and figured out, but when you get into will or intent, that gets quite subjective. You are dealing with a higher order of estimates and judgments. All we know for certain from behavior is that russia has acted aggressively to its boundaries like camellia and other regions of the ukraine and elsewhere. We know they operate and try to undermine things like elections in European Countries and other countries, we know there is a variety of cyber activity that goes on and a variety of other sorts of non military direct action pressures that are done. A very assertive aggressive state. Then you ask yourself why, why are they behaving like that and you will get all kinds of debate and all kinds of argument and you have to try to figure out how to handle it. I would argue, and this is me, i would argue russia leadership is a rational actor. They operate off traditional costbenefit and it is my belief russian aggression, if you will, or further aggression can be deterred through the proper use of tools and russia does undermine the United States interest in europe and elsewhere, but theres also areas of common interest and russia is a state, because of the power in the system and it is a great power, russias date, and the United States need to carefully and cautiously and with delivery forethought work toward common objectives and prevent undermining of our interest. Thats a delicate balance. Done that before we have to continue to do it. That will involve assuring our allies and partners into turning further aggression. With proper methods and leadership, that can be properly managed. China is a different strategic situation. China is a rising power, significant rising power and i argue in chinas case, youre looking at a country that since the reforms of 1979 and over the past 39 or 40 years, china has advanced significantly in terms of economic development. They were showing 10 gdp growth and theyve slowed down to 7 but its probably, and this is open to argument, but probably one of the most significant, if the net most significant economic shift in Global Economic power in the past five centuries, really since the rise of the west. The chinese Economic Growth over the past 40 years is significant. What does that mean . Historically, when economic power shifts so significantly, military power also follows and i believe were seeing that today and were seeing an increase in the capabilities and capacities in size and strength of Chinese Military capabilities. Then you get back to will and intent. Whats their intent and purpose. What are they trying to do. They been fairly transparent. They have a think they call the china dream and their intent is to restore their historical 5000 year rule to essentially be the significant, the most significant power in asia and the global co eagle with the u. S. And they want to achieve that by mid century. There transparent, they write books about it and they like to do it peacefully in what they call a winwin strategy and if they cant do it peacefully, thats why theyre building the military. Standby, china is not an enemy but i want to emphasize that. Neither is russia for that matter. The enemy for me, enemy has a very specific definition and that is a group of people or nation states that you are curren currently engaged in Armed Conflict with. Thats the word enemy. Sometimes words like back it used loosely. Neither china or russia are our enemy. We are not engaged in Armed Conflict with them. Even if there are adversarial issues or some things that have happened that arent savory but theres a big difference, theres a giant difference between open conflict and those activities below open conflict. Competition without conflict is probably a desirable goal especially with those countries given the size, capacity, capability. Thats where were at and china is also a very rational actor. Extremely rational. Perhaps one of the most rational in the system. I believe through proper leadership, engagement and deterrence and assurance measures that we can work our way into the future without significant Armed Conflicts. These are Unanswered Questions and we wont know until we get there, but thats my estimate at this point. When you get to iran theres a different situation. We are watching that situation very closely. We can say with certainty that iran tries to undermanne undermine National Security interest in the middle east. They do that through a lot of terrorism and support of terrorist groups. We are always in a posture relative to iran and to support our friends and allies in the region and to be very wary of iran. The fourth country is the one in the news a lot and rightly so, which i think is the single most dangerous threat facing the International Community and the United States right now today. Its a nearterm very significant threat and thats north korea. I want to go into tremendous amount of detail. Much of it is classified but its clear, based on what happened over the july 4 weekend that north korea has advanced significantly and quicker than many expected. Their Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capability could possibly strike the United States. More to follow but the time has shortened significantly and north korea is a significant threat. The United States policy for many decades is, the objective have been that north korea will not possess Nuclear Weapons and they wont possess Nuclear Weapons that will strike the United States. We are trying a wide variety of methods in the diplomatic and economic sphere but the militar military, we fully support those and we want those to succeed. There is still time left for it to succeed. This is a Pressure Campaign and we are fully in support of the secretary of state and department of state in the ability to bring this to a peaceful solution. But, however, time is running out a bit. North korea is extremely dangerous and gets more dangerous as the weeks go by. The last one is the violent extremist and terrorist organizations. Frankly, theres a situation in afghanistan and iraq and syria and yemen and libya, west africa and each one has different factors and analysis and everyone is slightly different in some ways we can group them all into one. However, i would suggest we are in a very long struggle against violent extremist organizations and terrorist organizations that have a radically different view of the world than we do and they consciously want to kill americans, undermine American Interest and kill other locals and friends and partners not only in the middle east but elsewhere. We as the military are committed to help in that effort, our basic approach to that is to work by, with and through our friends in the region and to increase their capabilities and try to reduce terrorist threats to where local Police Forces and local Intelligence Forces can manage those at a local level. You see whats playing out against isis which i think has been quite successful and i think we will destroy the organizational entity called isis, it will disperse into some other form, but its current form of the caliphate with its traditional organizational structures, that is likely to be destroyed in the nottoodistant future but, they will disperse. All of these organizations can morph into different forms and they are all dependent upon a very radical ideology which will have to be destroyed, mostly by the peoples of the region to destroy that ideology. That is sort of the world in a nutshell, as fast as i could do it, and i know theres a lot of Unanswered Questions. Let me shift to israel real quick, you heard them talk about the army, we dont have a small army, but the . Size of forces, its a relative question. Its not an absolute question. The question of what you wanted to do, how big do you want it is relative to the task you wanted to do. The United States military is a Global Military and we have been since the First World War , and absolute certainty since the agreements at the end of world war ii which established essentially the international order, the rules and regimes by which the world runs today. For seven decades, the world has had a certain set of sets emphasizing things like free trade, international commerce, things like democracy and the liberal world order, things like human rights, theres a wide variety of things out there and then youve got institutions that rest upon. The united nations, the world bank, the wtos and all these things that were developed many years ago. That is essentially what people refer to as the world order. One of the significant roles of the United States military for seven decades has been to enforce that world order, to maintain it and maintain its stability. That is in our interest because in the first half of the last century, there was a bloodletting, unlike any that had ever occurred in the history of man and kind. Before 1945, hundred Million People were slaughtered in the conflict of war. Thats a horrible nightmare. My mother and father both served in the war. He was at the beach of iwo jima were 7000 marines were killed in 19 days, 34000 wounded. 24000 japanese killed on an island that was 2 miles by 4 miles. There were millions of chinese killed in battle and murdered. If you want a real trail of tears go to Eastern Europe and see what happened in belarus and ukraine and lithuania. Its horrific. Nine out of every ten jews that lived in poland didnt live and work to live in 1945. One out of every three male that lived in the ukraine or belarus were dead by 1945. It is a horrific picture that occurred. Those people in leadership positions in 1945 said never again. We cant keep doing this. This is insane. They said the same thing in 1815 and they set up the consulate of europe and that worked well for 100 years. They kept a long piece in europe more or less spread there are couple minor flareups but they werent continental wide until 1914. We tried again in 1945 to set up a system that would try to maintain global peace and prevent war between great powers and great power states throughout the world. That system is under stress, intense stress today. That system is under stress from revolutionaries and terrace and gorillas and from nationstates that dont like the rules of the road that were written and want to revise the rules of the road. That system is under intense stress and we are at 70 years and it has prevented great power war, similar to what occurred in the first half of last century. The question is how big army and navy do you want . , do want the system . , do value that system . Is that system worth preserving or not . Then you get to the size, scope of your armies, navies, air force and marine. Rightly or wrongly, fair or unfair, the role of the arbiter of that system has defaulted to the United States for seven decades. There are other countries, 60 or 70 that have aligned themselves with their militaries to us, and they make significant contributions, but it is the United States that has been the leader with that system. The status of the army as part of the military force that works through to maintain this stability of the military, we are a Global Military. We have about 180,000 soldiers in the United States army, active duty, reserve and National Guard deployed in about 140 countries around the world to help stabilize that system. Not all of them are in combat, most of those in combat are in afghanistan and iraq and elsewhere. Around the globe, 180,000. Thats about 20 of the army as a whole. The total army. The active army is less than 500,000 right now. Based on the tasks required, i believe we need a larger army and i think my teammates on the joint staff think the same of the navy, air force and marine because of the tasks required. Its not an arbitrary number. Weve done the analysis and we think we need to be bigger, stronger and more capable. You will never know about what the future brings. Its my belief we are in a fundamental change in the character of war. The nature of war is political. War is applicable act. Its an act in which you impose your political will on your opponent through the use of violence and thats what war is. And, war is always dealing in the realm of the uncertainty and friction and chance in human will. Its dealing in a lot of areas that are not particularly well measured, and thats the nature of war, but the character of wa war, the way you fight a war, the weapons you fight with does change and it changes frequently. There are a lot of different drivers and its changed many times in the past but i believe were going through a fundamental change in the character of war, how you fight wars. Theres a couple of things that are driving that. One is societal urbanization. Right now, we have a Significant Growth of urbanization, but now the curve is going exponential where we think, by mid century or so 80 or 90 of the earth population which is about 8 billion people will be concentrated in highly dense urban areas. What does that mean . That means armies in the past have been optimized to fight in rural areas, perhaps the sands and deserts of different countries, and weve optimized to fight in jungles or mountains and sub optimized to fight in urban areas. What that means, the urbanization, if war is politics and politics as people, the future battlefields are going to be in urban areas. Its not a probability, its a real certainty. He saw a preview of it played out in mosul. It is my belief that the United States army and probably most armies will have to optimize to conduct combat operations in urban areas. That is significantly different when it comes to the size of your organization, how you command and control, how you move, what are the weapon systems, whats the elevation of guns, whats the explosive power, all of those characteristics change when you shift the train from the open country of Northern Europe or the deserts of the middle east to highly dense urban areas. It requires significant fundamental change. Also theres a whole bunch of other factors driving change and the fundamentals of warfare. Technology. We are on the leading edge of a significant revolution in robotics and i believe that we are seeing those in the commercial sphere more. We verily seen them in limited use, people call them drones or unmanned vehicles, the navy is moving quick. The land domain is more complex. Eventually we will see the introduction of widescale robotics. Artificial intelligence, all areas that move, shoot and communicate are being impacted rapidly right now by technology, unlike a speed and scope of anything weve seen in history. The combination of drain and technology is significant and leading to a fundamental change in the character of warfare. I know they want me to stop and start going into questions and ill do that but let me throw out five minutes of war that are very prevalent. Myth one, in my view myth one is that wars will be short. There are wars that have been short in the past, but theyre pretty rare. Most of the time, wars take longer than people think they will at the beginning of those wars. Always be wary of the wars will be short this will be quick or a dustup, will achieve victory fast, be careful of that one. Wars have logic all their own and they move in directions that are highly unexpected. Be careful of the short war. Second is you can win wars from afar. Wars are about politics but thats what theyre about. There are about imposing your political will and there about people. I can tell you with a high degree of certainty, human beings can survive horrific things from afar. When my father hit the beach at iwo jima he was told all the japanese defenders were dead. They went under 66 consecutive days of on reluctantly, 247 bombing from the United States air force bases. Four days prior to execution of hitting the beach, we rolled up a fleet of 400 naval vessels. Thats almost twice as big as the United States navy, for one island and they bombed it was shells for 96 hours. There is no eight square miles of the earth that has ever received as much as the island of iwo jima. Almost all the japanese survived. Life wasnt good. They were drinking their own urine. They were buried deep underground and they want happy. I got it, but they survived and they were committed to their cause and they survived to the point that they could kill 7000 marines when they hit the beach. Look what isis has done to mosul. Their losing. They got pounded but it took the special commanders to go into the city, house pipe house, block by block, room by room to clear the city and its taken a while to do it at a high cost. One telling you is theres a myth out there that you can win from afar. To impose your political will on the enemy requires you, at the end of the day to destroy the enemy up close with ground forces, and im very wary of the win from afar myth. Third myth, special forces can do it all with the green beret. I love the special forces. They are designated for a reason. They do certain special activities, typically of a strategic nature. The highly trained and vetted, but the one thing they are not designed to do is win a war. They can do raids and train other countries, theres lots of things they can do. Winning a war in and of themselves is not one of their tasks. Its a myth that you just throw special forces out of and its magic dust. With love it because theyre highly trained and highly that it and quiet and out of the news but winning wars is not in their job jar by themselves. Last two, armies are easy to create. They are not easy to create. Theres a myth that you can bring kids into the military, marching them around a fields with six or eight weeks of training and you have an army. Wrong. It takes time to build armies, navies and marines, especially in todays world of complex weapons. The last thing i throughout there is that we in uniform sometimes propagate this myth that armies fight wars. We dont. Armies dont fight wars. Navies, armies, nations fight wars. It takes a full commitment of the entire nation to fight wars. We can do a raid real quick, thats one thing but war is a different thing and it takes a nation to fight and win a war. I will stop there. That was probably a little longer than you wanted but thats what you get in. [applause] i always tell my students, general, that its not the length of a story or the length of the speech, its the content, and speaking objectively, you gave us a hell of a lot of content and we appreciate it. For a few questions, we still have a few questions on the transgender issue and i would just like to ask. Let me turn to my answer. As the army faces problems, have they had problems of transgender individuals serving in its ranks. Ill be candid. There are a variety of issues. This is a complex issue and theres a variety of challenges out there that we have to deal with. We been working through it but this is not cleancut either way. The short answer to your question is yes, weve had to deal with problems, we dont get it in the media, we deal with it professionally and with dignity and respect to the individual and the institution. Did you have advanced knowledge the president would be issuing the ban via twitter. I personally did not but nor what i have expected too. I noticed thats been in the media out there. Like i said up front, its a chain of command. I render my advice to the chain of command which would be general dunford and secretary matus and they would render it back to me. No, the president of the say hey mark im doing this. But nor what i expect them to do and nor is there a requirement for him to do it. How did you learn of the president s decision. Same way everyone else did. I thought on the news, but again, were trying to make this out, some people are trying to make this out as if that is particularly unique. If i could count, if i had a nickel for every time i read decisions in the news over the last ten or 20 years, id probably be a wealthy guy. Its not particularly unusual to read about things in the media. Thats why my office i have like six dreams and ive got scrolls going every which way and im always looking for the breaking news. The people can say what they want about the media, but the one thing you are as fast. And accurate. Accurate sometimes, but fast all the time. [applause] what has been the main challenges so far in integrating women into the infantry and other combat arms . So this is a point of pride actually, we did a lot of intensive study, a lot of analytical rigor on how too do this. It took us three or four years of intense studies. We studied other armies, we did experiments, pilot programs, all sorts of stuff that we did, and today, the execution of that policy is actually working well to date, and what i had recommended and what we were granted, i said i recommended to do this, women in the infantry, there were others who disagreed or special forces in armor. I said give me three years, 36 months. Now that weve done the analysis, let me have three years to run this and see its impact on readiness and our war fighting capabilities. If i see a detriment in capabilities i will be the first one to come back to you and tell you we need to change that this didnt work. It was a great idea but it didnt work sort of thing. Thats kind of what were doing. We are in the first 36 months. Thus far it seems to be going okay. Its working well, but i comment on that because there are a lot of preparatory work that went into doing it. We have our first woman infantry command in the airborne division. We have a variety of women who have been commanded as if a tree officers and a couple principles we put in place but i wanted to narrowed focus. Its still an experiment. So for 36 months i wanted to narrow the focus to fort bragg and fort hood and thats where the women are being assigned and it gives them a variety of options at those two bases. They also insisted we have leaders first so the sergeants and lieutenants had to go into units first, female sergeants. The third one is the military should and is be standardsbased so there are standards of performance and standards of conduct and fitness and medical standards. If your meeting those standards then pass go, collect 100 and move out. If you dont youll do some alternative position in the military or will get you out of the military, but its a standardsbased military. You rise to the level of success based on your merits and your performance. Thats inherently, inherent of wearing the uniform and were very strict about it. Right now the women in the infantry have met the standards of the United States infantry. Its going okay. The numbers are very small. Frankly i expect they will be small for many years, if not forever. The Canadian Army has had women in the infantry for 30 plus years. They have a very tiny percentage of women, but it doesnt matter how many want to do it, i dont think they should be denied. My personal opinion as no one should be denied if you meet the standard, drive on. If you dont try something else. Could you fee say a few words about continuing efforts to reduce Sexual Harassment in the army and how is that going. Its a challenge, its hard, the numbers have come down which is good. Reporting numbers have gone up. Reporting in the sense of the way the system is designed to indicate that the women, its not just women by the way. There are guys who get sexually assaulted as well, but victims have greater confidence today than they did for five years ago in the chain of command and the victims advocates and the results that will come of it. Is it perfect . Not by a longshot. Theres still Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment in the military. Weve only got 15 or 17 of the military who are women although wes points last class i got admitted is 23 women, but, theres no excuse. To me it has to do with good order, cohesion, discipline. I think of it as blue on blue. I think of it if i was to go out and conduct a Live Fire Range with the enemy, shooting your fellow soldiers by accident is not a good thing. Serious consequences happen in chains of command where we have that in training or in combat. If you go out and sexually assault someone, you are beating up on your own unit. There needs to be, and there is, very serious consequences to the individual and the chain of command. The chain of command has significant multiples of these incidents, that speaks volumes to the good order and discipline of the force. Every commander knows full well they are responsible for everything the unit does and fails to do and theyre responsible for the order and discipline of the unit. If you have an ill disciplined unit you probably need a new commander. Some of the stuff is pretty straightforward, at least for me. Theres no room for it, theres no excuse for it, and there is no tolerance of it. Its just the way it is. Its the rules. According to the question that has been submitted, if secretary matus has said in response to a question, what keeps you awake at night and he said nothing, i keep other people awake at night. Do you feel the same way . Does anything keep you awake at night. Yes, general matus. [laughter] this nation, ive known him for a long time and many people have. Hes a national figure, et cetera, but this nation is truly blessed to have him as our secretary of defense. He is a remarkable individual. Hes competent and delivers and think things through. He promised us hed give Us Intelligence 40 hours a day with three hours of sleep and thats what he does. No he doesnt keep us up at night in that sense, but his quote is a great quote. To answer your question, do i toss and turn every night . No, but thats the literal answer. To take your question more figuratively, the one thing im worried about frankly, candidly, this situation with north korea is very serious. It is a very, very serious situation. Not only for the United States and south korea and japan but for china, russia, the global community, and its a very serious situation and its not going in good directions. Those of us who are old enough to remember, remember the korean war. What would you envision if there was a ground war with north korea, what would it encompass . Let me use descriptive words rather than specifics because obviously we have plans and Different Things that shouldnt be talked about in public, but a war on the Korean Peninsula would be highly deadly, it would be horrific. I think general mattis used the word catastrophic or Something Like that, and it would. Think about it youve got the city of seoul with 25 Million People in a greater metropolitan area, 10 Million People in the city itself. North korea has a wide array of rockets across the border, they have a sizable convention force and chemical capability not even including the Nuclear Weapon piece. I think the military would be destroyed . I do. I think the United States military, i believe absolutely that the United States military in combination with the south Korean Military would destroy the north Korean Military, but that would be done at high cost in terms of human life and infrastructure and there are economic consequences to a war on the Korean Peninsula. It would be terrible, however a Nuclear Weapon detonating in los angeles would be terrible, the comment that has been out there, there are no good options is a very apt. At this point, for lots of reasons, we can go back through 25 years of history dealing with north korea, but the fact of the matter is we are at a point in time where choices have to be made one way or the other. None of these choices are particularly palatable. None of them are good. The consequences of doing nothing is not good for the consequences of accepting them with a Nuclear Weapon that could strike the United States is not good. The consequence of Armed Conflict is not good for the consequence of a collapsed north korea is not good and theres a wide variety of scenarios. The idea of the downside of all these options are bad, is true. That doesnt relieve us of the responsibility of choice, and we are going to have to make conscious decisions that have significant consequences, and ill just stop there. Its not going to be a pretty picture. It will be very violent. Going from northeast asia to southeast asia, one of whom asked because tension between china and india on the indochinese border, do you have any comments on a possible usa role in that region . We are monitoring it, were tracking it, but no role that im aware of other than to try to encourage both parties to deescalate and reduce tensions. Six months into the administration there are still no army secretary. What is the consequences of that and how does it affect your job . We have an intent to nominate mark esper. His name is out there. We had two nominees, both withdrew for a variety of reasons, but its best to have a secretary, there are a variety of authorities that come with that but having said that, the way the system is built, no one man is indispensable so to speak so bob spear was designated as acting secretary and has been since the inauguration. Hes done a wonderful job and hes doing a great job. Hes an acting secretary. We are all acting in a sense that all of our timelines are constrained. It has not been catastrophic not having a section of the army. We will work through it. I figure its better to have one or not but lets no its not catastrophic to not have one either. We have two questions, similarly tied together about tank warfare. [inaudible] have an entire group of people digging deep into just that is you of new tanks. Its family of vehicles and must mechanism. Have tanks and war. Has icon to the way of the dinosaur . In 1914 there were guys around who were three and four star that had adamantly relied on the horse calvary and that didnt go so well for them. Our mechanized vehicles going the way of horse calvary and going the way of the dinosaur . I dont think so, but im skeptical enough to ask that. We have a good solid tank today. And one tank. The tank that you see today visually looks exactly like the tank from 1980 when i was secretary. It is not exactly the same thing. The insides of that thing in the firing mechanism than the engine department, the armor has all been upgraded and modified over the years. Having said that, we do need a new ground armored platform for our infantry and our tanks because it is my belief, at least in the foreseeable future, there is a role to play in ground warfare for those types of formation and the tank we have today, in the bradley for that matter, came online in 1980. Thats 40 years ago almost. I do think we need to do that. Some of the technologies designed to protect the systems, theres reduced crew with automated parts, but the real holy grail of technology that im trying to find on this thing is material, the armor itself because if we can discover a material, and theres a lot of research and Development Going into it, if we can discover material that is significantly lighter in weight that gives you the same armor protection, that would be a significant breakthrough. The last piece of technology is weve been using kinetic or powdered based ammunition for centuries. There are advances in non powder kinetics such as rail guns, lasers et cetera. The last piece is robotics. Every piece we developed, we probably make sure its dual use of the commander has the option of having that vehicle manned or unmanned. They can flip a switch and it can be a robot. Those are some of the technology we want to see get built into the ground vehicles, not just tanks. We have a little traditional presentation and then we will have a light question at the end. I think youll like it. General, well you have received many medals and awards for your distinguished military career, we have something we feel is very special to present to you today to mark your visit. Something that many other national and international leaders, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, a few weeks ago received and they have spoken at the National Press club, and they have probably display them in their offices and please do let me know next time you go into donald dunfords office, if you see the coveted National Press club. [applause] i was in his office just the other day and i did not see it. Actually, he uses it all the time. General, for our concluding question which is by tradition given in a lighthearted manner, we have an anonymous source, we dont like to use anonymous sources, but they tell us that you are a big bostons red sox fan so what you think about the red sox cutting third baseman Pablo Sandoval and will it affect the chances of winning the world series. It will have no effect, we will win the world series. [applause] general, you played ice hockey at princeton. Im pleased that our researchers get these things right. Back in april 2016 when you were visiting fenway park, you said you were supposed to get drafted into the nhl, National Hockey league. If you had to choose, where would you have signed. I did play, when youre 16 or 17 you actually have dreams so my brother convince me i was good enough to play in the nhl. I never was but i always wanted to. For some reason i think they drafted a different guy so i didnt make it, but if drafted the bruins, absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm thank you to our guest of honor. [applause] and one final request the general has another important engagement, more important in the National Press club i take it. We are told he has to leave promptly so could you remain seated for about 30 seconds while the general leaves and once again, thank you all for coming to the National Press club where i think it was demonstrated, thanks for guest of honor today that this is the place where news is made. Ladies and gentlemen, we are adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] we didnt cut our way to surplus in the 90s. We didnt tax our way to surplus. We had a situation where the Clinton Administration and the house came together to get some welfare reform and spending constraint to keep spending flat while the economy grew and revenues caught up to spending. Thats how you get to surplus and thats why you think youre seeing so much focus on this administration on getting Economic Growth. You cannot cut your way to a balanced budget. You cannot tax your way to a balanced budget, but you can keep the growth in spending and grow your way to a balance budget. Watch our interview with mr. Mulvaney tonight at easter eastern 8 00 p. M. Eastern. A surgeon stray from the frontiers of pediatric medicine. The conversations i hear are about putting things like medicaid and cutting the nih and doing all these things were on the cusp of such to terrific discoveries, and when you think about half of the people on medicaid, half of the beneficiaries our children. Whos going to get hurt . Why do we want to do that . Were not doing that to the elderly on medicare. Why would we want to do that. In fact, we ought to double down and really put more into our children. Watch the entire Program Saturday at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. Also on the tv on cspan2, sunday at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, David Goodhart on the road to somewhere, the populist revolt in the future politics. Can you see this in the contempt, after brexit, you had left wing professor saying why do we give these people about without some kind of iq tests. For more, go to booktv. Org. Former russian investor william router testified before the senate judiciary