Good morning, everyone. Welcome to brookings. We are here today to discuss afghanistan, as you know. In one sense, it is still a time of year. Hopeful. L 15 years into the afghanistan 9 11,n and 15 years after we know there is an ongoing very struggle throughout the broader middle east and in. Fghanistan is itself we are glad you came to join in this discussion. There are couple of words i want to say before introducing the panelists. The approach here is to have a broad discussion framed by each of them. We will talk amidst ourselves and then go to you for our question. All want to commemorate and and the victims of 9 11, this the families, soldiers and marines. In the and everyone else Intelligence Community who have worked so hard, offered a great sacrifice. It is just a day and moment to reflect and honor them since we are approaching 9 11. Second, in the way of commemorating big event, i want my colleague who has been the Communications Director who is leaving brookings after toda
I will just follow behind both comments. I could not agree more that the solution is a political solution and never were our recommendations with respect to the residual nato force intended theive the afghans capacity to wipe out the taliban. Our hope had been to give the Afghan National Security Forces , as well as the police, to give them the capacity to control the taliban and render their potential existential threat to the country, to level that to a level where it can be handled over a long period of time by t he standing afghan forces. And i believe, with the right configuration of allied capabilities, nato capabilities, for the right period of time, and with the right resources, i believe that Security Platform can be sustained, upon which then, as vonda has correctly pointed out, the the political stability can move forward. The Security Platform is irrelevant, except inso far as it creates the environment where political progress and stability can move forward, and were econo
Military. And we make a as you know, our Quarterly Report is the largest data call that goes out every year to the u. S. Government, or every quarter on whats going on. When we ask these questions, were not getting answers anymore because stick ka, because our resources in the field are not there to answer them. Youre on to a very important part that goes beyond the literacy issue. It goes to the heart of the issue and that is do we have adequate resource to understand the capabilities of the andsf. Thank you. Anyone else want to comment on that . Compared to two years ago i think if threat to our personnel who are serving in afghanistan has grown. And im particularly concerned about our embassies wity and th inability of our personnel to move around the city of kabul or even well or anywhere else. So my first question is, do you think that the danger there has increased, and what if anything can we do to mitigate those concerns . So, since the drawdown of u. S. And Coalition Forces, t
We recognize, we cant do it alone. This goes to the staffing issues. Theres going to be in National Guard component. Theres going to be another sector component to it. The dhs component to it. A Law Enforcement component so bringing the whole Community Together for response to Cyber Threats is a great lesson out of the ukraine. Two things i wanted to put a fine point on. One, the physical cyber convergence, the attack surface growing exponentially. When we Start Talking about the internet of things and the internet of everything, making security into the design of architecture becomes that much more important. Secure coding and the like. And i might note that one of the greatest deterrence and ive been an outspoken critic that we havent really articulated a cyber deterrence strategy and i think we in essence blame the victim. We blame entities rather than penalize and put pain and cost on the perpetrator but thats a longer conversation but maybe one of the best deterrence is the abilit
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, adam, and thank you everyone for coming here. I look out in the audience and see all kinds of friends and colleagues out here. I so appreciate you coming, im going to sippingle out one person from the voice of america, alan high, who is great history from voice of america kept me from making an error in the speech im about to make. I need to thank him right now. Second, id like to acknowledge my predecessor as the director of the voice of america, david ensor, who has been as helpful and warm to me as any human being can be in helping prepare me for this big job. Please to acknowledge david ensor, who is now at the atlantic council. [ applause ] so as adam says, if you want to know my biography, just flip the page over and read it yourselves, but id like to tell you a couple things you might not know. Im of an age that i was part of a movement that cheap airfares and curiosity about the world sent all of us out around the globe. You know, migration