Transcripts For CSPAN Former Natl Security Adviser McMaster

Threats. We share these ideas with policymakers from both parties, administrations, congress, the media, and the security community. Focuses on military and political power and cyber power and economic power, all are doing cuttingedge research and analysis. These are staffed by thought leaders of varying backgrounds including academic, military , and we are proud to have them as colleagues. You will hear from the chairs of our three centers, all who have atved by providing analysis critical levels, h. R. Mcmaster the chair of our military and pluto power chair, he previously served as the National Security advisor to President Trump. Dr. Cement their adage thentha rat edge, she is present the chair of the Advisory Board and she secured a skit served as a cured advisor to Vice President cheney. And the chair of our economic and financial power chair served as the Deputy Assistant to the forident and deputy advisor combating terrorism. Adversaries are determined to reshape the world order and to diminish and displace the United States in any way they can. These nations and nonstate actors employ hybrid end to grays own tactics, operating against the United States and our allies in new domain such as race and cyberspace, and these new forms of Economic Warfare. In some cases, they wage their campaigns using sophisticated asymmetrical capabilities below the threshold of war as the United States has defined it. They believe operating this way will enable them to achieve incremental but over time substantial progress without eliciting a consequential response from the United States. Often foundhave too they cannot compete effectively until they use a holistic strategy. America has powerful tools and weapons but must be employed better than they have been today if we are to defeat the threats and overcome the challenges opposed to our National Security and prosperity if we are to deter our enemies and defeat those we cannot deter. This is one of many forums we host rat the year. For more information on our work and areas of focus we encourage you to visit our website, fdd. Org. We take no Foreign Government or foreign corporate money and we never intend to. We are glad to be joined by a distinguished audience of , and representatives from the state department, pentagon, activeduty military personnel and a few members of the media. Event is being livestreamed and broadcast on cspan. I encourage guests here and online to join in on the conversation on twitter. Thank you for being here in person, or watching on cspan, or watching online. If you are in this audience, you are participating and in many cases helping drive the policy debates in what remains a free and open society. Im going to start the question and get a few issues on the table. The we will turn to you and journalists with us today lets talk about americas instruments of power. Two years ago, the National Security strategy that you oversaw said the United States was to compete with all tools of National Power. I think its fair to say that over the past decades the u. S. Has learned to use sanctions in a muscular way and i believe you played a role in that. The u. S. Has also utilized Cyber Capabilities to achieve ends that might have previously required economic pressure or military might and youve played a role in that. Bilateral and multilateral alliances to increase pressure on adversaries and the military has been forward thinking to ensure that we outpace enemies. I dont think it has consistent had the resources to achieve that mission. And my painting too rosy a picture . Is there more dismal picture . How have we been doing over the past two years . The essenceou raise of strategic competence, and is foundational to our ability to compete effectively against the adversaries you have mentioned. The competition is back with the powers of china and russia. We have a threat from nonstate actors, jihadist terrorist organizations, who want to kill our children and who are the enemies of all civilized people, hostile states such as iran, youve seen what theyve done over the past several months not only to attack broadly against partners in the region our partners in the region, but to keep burning the fires of the civil war. Which is also allowing groups like isis, al qaeda, and other groups to continue to portray themselves as patrons and arabctors of suni populations in particular. We have to integrate all elements of National Power to with powersctively and hostile states and nonstate actors. I would say we are doing better. What you have seen in recent weeks, months, days, i think is an under appreciation for the ofree to which all elements National Power have to be combined to achieve sustainable political outcomes consistent with our vital interest. For example when we talk about the operations that our military is conducting, they are not in and of as ends themselves, they are part of a larger effort to ensure the security and prosperity of the American People. And to do that by competing effectively against determined and often as we see, brutal enemies. Can you pick up on any of that, and i will throw in this edition, as our capabilities , i would argue so have the capabilities of our adversaries. China is well in advance of where was, taking over reefs, turning them into islands. We have deprived the islamic stillof territory, but it exists, and i would say that those who proclaim themselves to be fighting a jihad against us have spread around the world, in more countries, far from being defeated. How it canhas shown play we can rather well. ,t goes into the middle east its a quagmire even for us and putin says i am willing to show how to operate and let me show you what i can do. Are also notaries standing still. Thank you for having me come its an honor to be here. The map of the world is being reshaped by americas adversaries in many ways, physically as youve demonstrated, russia in crimea, China Building islands, isis has erased borders, there is a physical and virtual dimension, sam has done great work in that domain. The cyber world brings new communities, new borders and and youss communities, have also reshaped alliances that are not just being affected by americas adversaries but reshaped by how we think about power. Just to start off and take a step back, i think the map of the world is being reshaped as we speak. The challenge we have is to give life to the strategy that hr helped formulate. The problem, and this is the less rosy dimension, is that we are not good at combining elements of power but also thinking about how the asymmetric properties of the Global Environment or action taking place and how we operate in them. What we have done at our center is to think about how we use economic and financial elements of power that we have used quite well over the past 20 years to affect americas enemies, to bankrupt them, to dismantle Financial Networks that threaten us, to exclude illicit capital and rogue actors from the financial system. Thats the strategy we have used and the reason we have been successful in that regard is that we have had primacy and maintained dominance, because of the primacy of the dollar, the role of the economy and our ability to find the rules of the road, thats part of it. But all of that is being challenged by our adversaries. And we forecasted this in the creation of our center over five years ago, we were saying the realm of economic and financial power as part of a broader tableau of asymmetric power happening around the world. Our enemies are getting smarter and more nimble, they understand how to use the elements of the financial system, they are Getting Better at cyber tools and they understand how to use kinetic activity, drone warfare, other things in ways that make us more vulnerable, not just the u. S. But our allies. We have to think aggressively about how do we use these powers properly, strategically, sustainably. We think about how we use sanctions and financial regulations to drive the exclusion of rogue actors from the system. And we think about defensive strategies, because its the russians and the chinese and nonstate actors that are thinking about how to use financial and Economic Resources to influence, coerce, and shape environments. What does that defensive posture look like . And one part of the strategy that has not been articulated yet is how do we use positive economic power as a complement to what we are trying to do defensively and offense of lay to reshape the environment . Aboutomes up when we talk china in the one belt one road context, how are we investing strategically . How are we promoting the Good Behavior and alliances that we want to see . How we think about the use of the economic and financial power and that of our allies becomes a part of it. And i think we have not figured out as a country how do we stitch this together so we can compete in an environment where our state adversaries are operating in an asymmetric allying with nonstate actors, the russians with organized criminal and our works networks, china using cyber activists and hackers, the iranians attacking our interest and our allies interest, we have yet to figure out how do we deal aggressively in an asymmetric environment where in many cases we have predominant power and we dont know how to use it. I also want to emphasize the extent to which you have been instrumental in making clear the extent to which Cyber Weapons and Cyber Capabilities can impact our economic strength and our military strength. I dont think everyone has been aware of this. Its not just about getting your personal information so you can be blackmailed online. This is beyond that. 2015 we really started exploring the notion that we economicber enabled warfare, the use by adversaries using cyber means to undermine key elements of our economy and economic strength in order to weaken us strategically. To weaken our military, our ability to finance our military, our Innovation Base, and to weaken our ability to project power strategically. We were concerned that these episodes of Cyber Attacks that we saw, whether it was iran against the Banking Industry in 2012, what north korea did against a u. S. Company, sony industries, and what they have been doing in south korea for many years, what china and russia have been doing. We see this as episodic. We are we have seen these individually as acts of aggression but they were not being taken as part of a , this is to weaken our greatest source of power in the private sector. We are the number one military in the world because we are the number one economy in the world. The Innovation Base drives our position. We have been focusing on it, writing about it and understanding that the adversary understands it differently in beijing, moscow, we have great reports you can get online. Heartened when the notion of cyber enabled Economic Warfare was called out specifically in the National Security strategy. It was the First Time Ever our country at the highest level understood that type of intersection of our economy and our vulnerability to our economy and how that leads to vulnerabilities in the strategic sense. So here at the center for cyber and Technology Innovation we do two things, we focus on the adversary campaign plans, what they are going after, how they are going after it, why they want to undermine certain parts of our economy but not others, looking at what they are doing and allied nations in allied nations. Anding the bell on the hill the executive branch and dod and the department of energy because grid resiliency is critical for all of this. As well as the corporate sector. Easy for our corporate citizens to hide as we are all being hit, or what are we supposed to do about it. So we really opened their eyes to that. Livingond is that we are , i want to say frighteningly, in a pre9 11 mindset. Except where i look at it, its the cyber vulnerabilities. On the other part of the center, harden about how we can our defenses . Because as we get out there, as anybody understands our use of goodions and treasuries call out, right . Thank you. That thisuld know predicted the competitions you alluded to as well. Its a powerful tool, but im not going to say people in glass houses should not throw stones but we do need to harden our capital walls. Because we are out there. And when a country like iran, north korea, china, russia, looks at how they can undermine us, the cyber enabled Economic Warfare, getting into the supply chains which we will talk about in a little bit is key to their strategy. At the other part of our center we focus on what are some ways to harden the walls . We parted partnered with microsoft on a supply chain Defense Project for the pentagon. Real ways that can be piloted to make us stronger. Strength, talk about everyone nods their head, but i dont know if we know that means. It essentially means theres one guy in the bar you dont mess with, hes too tough. We could be that guy, im not sure that we are. Ran down to a u. S. Drone in International Airspace and attacked saudi arabia and energy Saudi Arabian energy facilities. Beenhina has for years stealing us blind, hundreds of millions of dollars in intellectual property, including military secrets, building their defenses and what have we done . And we got to the point where the nba dare not insult them. Russia has attempted to undermine us in various ways and attacked our electric grid. And north korea has been escalating its military tests. It may be that the president tried to use a positive economic incentive with kim jongun, i think kim jongun does not believe that fire and fury awaits him if he does not compromise and i think without that the idea of having a nice resort on the sea of japan will not do the trick. You, what iswith this a about our assumptions of American Power . Do we not have the tools . Are we not using them properly . How do we reinvigorate deterrence so that we can determine most of our enemies . That we have improved based on the recognition that we can communicate more effectively and im sitting next to two people who have pioneered in making us more effective. One really started our counter threat finance efforts as part of a way to defeat terrorist organizations who attacked our country. And samantha has opened everyones eyes to this new domain of competition and the use of technology to go after us in new ways to attack our National Security Innovation Base in ways that we thought were invulnerable or not that important. , think we are Getting Better but we have to recognize that we are behind. Wethe end of the cold war were flushed with a great sense of triumph, and optimism, and overconfidence, and even hubris to an extent. We thought these competitions were over. We had one won. And i think that complacency shifted after a number of strategic shocks, certainly 9 11 , but also the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. And the 2008 financial crisis. I think the emotional impetus behind our Foreign Policy shifted from over optimism to resignation, almost a sense of defeatism and believe that we cannot win in these competitions and in associated believe that our disengagement from these competitions was an unmitigated good. What these two approaches had, complacency and resignation had in common the failure to recognize the degree of agency and control the other, our adversaries, our enemies have over the future course of events. Wouldf these approaches i say were profoundly arrogant because they believed that the future course of events and our security depended on what we decided to do and did not but also that war other forms of competition are interactive. In the course of events is anything but linear. Its important for us to recognize first of all as americans what is at stake in these competitions, and why we must put together strategies that are aimed at winning, prevailing in these complex competitions. Atmay be that we have been war for longer than americans want, but i think for example in places like the greater middle east, centered on the syria decision recently or in afghanistan, we have to recognize what are the vital interests at stake . Whys it so important to us and our security . Once we understand that better, then we have to Work Together to craft strategies that are sustainable and do whats samantha has said, we have to break out of this pre9 11 mentality. We have to ask ourselves, what could happen when you have transnational terrorist organizations and jihadist terrorist organizations who are more potent and capable than before 9 11 . Remember it was the afghan from the soviet era occupation who committed mass murder against us on september 11. The al qaeda and the isis alumni are orders of magnitude greater than they were then. They also exist in Different Countries with more sophisticated means available to communications, more effective ways of young and Vulnerable People to their cause and thecalizing them, and democratization of disruption, in which they have access to destructive capabilities p