Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20150220

Here in san francisco. The manufacturing. The logistics. We work with Tech Companies and hardware startups. This is in exciting space to be. Back in 2000, you are mr. China. Are you mr. China. For anyone who has been in china, you know very quickly that you know very little about china. I know as little about china today as i did when i went the first day. It is such a big space and so complex. We had fantastic people on the ground who were able to execute. That is what we do. Does it matter if you are mr. China anymore . What has happened over the past decade is that you used to go to china and build one million things. A million routers ipads. Now you can just told one thing. What is happening that is allowing this to change . I dont think it is a geographic thing. I think we track data of our products that moved from production lines right through to the consumers home. We try to replace inventory with data. It is not necessary about making one million things, we just want to make what there is demand for. Sometimes you dont want to make a million things. He just want to make what people would like. When you shrink a supplychain, and in some cases some of the Bigger Companies would have a supplychain to take a product from a production line in china to a consumer in the western world and take up to three months. We can do it in six days. And we have done that for some retailers. We have taken a product reengineered the supplychain, and taking it from reduction in china to the retail source in six days. From production in china to the retail source in six days. We do it based on demand. So the these guys are probably going to be thinking in more entrepreneurial terms. What does it take to be a success in hardware right now . Is very interesting when we look at our startups. When we look at the applicants that supply to come into, we are looking for the same thing that any incubator or accelerator are looking for. We are looking for a great team. We look for in a team. You can have a great idea and products, but if you dont have a great team to deliver, it will not happen. We look for a great entrepreneurs. We have been fortunate to work with phenomenal entrepreneurs with startups. Recently i wrote about how you guys partnered with radioshack unit in my experience i have not been in a radioshack since they stopped giving out battery cards. [applause] i believe i still have some. You guys recently partnered with them. From my understanding, you are going to put items in stores. But you have essentially changed the entire supply chain for them. Yes. I spent 10 years in the retail business. Before i set up pch. In retail there are very different types of retail. Theres destination and highspeed retail. When you look at typical cell phone carriers stores, that is a destination retailer. If someone walks into a destination retailer, they are going to get a cell phone. That is what they want. The products that we work with that is not what we want sold. You want them sold where there is a better experience. Today Consumers Want to have a great experience. They want the entire experience if they are going to brian buy a product. We think that radioshack is a company that can actually do it. Joe and it seemed there have been phenomenal to work with. They understand highspeed retailing as opposed to destination retailing. When actually walk into a high street store like radioshack they are more open to browsing. That is where we can actually create a much better environment for startups to display product. To do that first the most important thing for me was that we created a lien supplychain. For our startups, they wanted to put into his inventory into Distribution Centers around the world. If the capitalist is tied up in a warehouse, then it doesnt matter if it is ecommerce or retail. Some of these companies have 20 30 warehouses. For a started to actually enter inventory in there, it is a huge risk. We have one center in china three hours from factories where we work, where 90 of the consumers apply the product around the world. We wanted a lien supplychain. We did not want to be in Distribution Centers. When you can send an astronaut to the space center in six hours, you dont need Distribution Centers around the world. So from radioshack Distribution Centers, etc. Any weeks to take a piece from when we look at the supplychain, we look at their end to end supplychain. It can take three months. We are not doing it for Radioshack Stores in about six days to the store. Across the whole range of products. Not just our own products but other products. That has released quite a lot of capital because it is coming in set of having it kind of in the channels direct to the store. I remember used to work in fashion. For 10 years you did fashion before you did this. It is not very similar, is it . Is interesting because the convergence of fashion and technology is an interesting space. Especially to highway one companies. At the end of the day, all businesses want customers of some sort. Lets talk about highway one. Highly one is an incubator that you guys just recently started. You are making money hand over fist selling products for Companies Whose name begin with a and l and e. Why did you do something for hardware startups . Product innovation and hardware startups are challenging. The companys popular five years ago, and the pace of hardware innovation is very slow because you have technology roadmaps. Product roadmaps. That can really slow down the whole bringing in ideas ready for a consumer. We find that actually working with this generation of why not entrepreneurs, but actually venture into the hardware space, they want to go into the market. We find that in this space, and experience is a phenomenal innovator. They will ask is, why not . Why cant i think it direct from production line to the consumer . Traditionally companies would not ask that question. They have too much experience. They were too conservative good we like the whole disruption that comes with the incubator space and highway one. And the way entrepreneurs think. They have a fantastic cando attitude. Bringing a product to market is very lean, and it is one that i think any company today, for me this is probably one of the most dynamic things we have done as a company. It actually forces us to be able to react to the startups and to be able to when they say when can we do it . You have to think ok, when can we . You have to ask questions that Traditional Companies would not. If these guys are the big guys, the old guys are exhausted. They seem exhausted. Sony is on its last legs. Samsung is hanging in there. What is the future for those guys, making 500,000 or a million units. Are they going to be able to sell those . What is the way forward for them . For us, being nimble is so important. You have always talked about the money curve and being at the high end of the curve is where we are focused. Engineering and product development. We have retail distribution relationships and the block where we actually sell products. We have been at the bottom of that curve and very focused. For me, we enable startups to take a product from a production line to a consumer, with the same service as a big Company Without having the burden and overhead to do it. To me it is one of the great enablers for hardware. Tell me about some of the highway one guys you have been talking to. Blaze is a bike like that he featured. Did you buy her company . No. Please is out of london. Fantastic entrepreneur. It came to our access program. As did little bits. Again, a great entrepreneur. They have these great ideas for products. They actually take the products and come up with the ideas. We love to focus on companies that understand design and that really invest in designs. We work with companies passionate about designs and brand. They are passionate about the consumer experience. We manage the entire process so we can delivered a great deliver a great experience. It comes down to parties of one. Anywhere in the world we can actually monitor a product that is shipping and manage the experience. We do it with a company like blaze. They were very focused on design. Emily was very focused on making sure there was a phenomenal design. What other cool stuff did you get to see . This week we are shipping a product, a raspberry pie computer. Again, these were all products. Did you and bill young go out and write the rain . [laughter] weve got lively, watching a watch today, for helping parents if they are living alone. If you want to help them extend their time in their own homes so they dont have to go into care. His is one of the best products we have seen for models for working at home remotely and families feel comfortable they can stay connected to their parents. That is a great one that Just Launched a watch connected to the hub and the family. So if they fall down, they press a button . Yes. And it is one that you can wear, a stylish one. And an intelligent George Foreman grill . That is another great one. There are connected scales for baking. To an ipad. What you like better, making a lot of stuff for Big Companies are working with these guys . I just love the energy that comes from entrepreneurs. That is what is really feeling innovation. The Big Companies are really attracted to these startups that we work with. Sometimes they are very envious of the process that we take them through. You are absolutely certain you are not being paid by Big Companies to destroy Small Companies . [laughter] if you want to nod or whatever. We are champions of innovation. So you are helping everybody. I have a couple of last questions. If you look under your chairs, there are apple iphone 6 is there. Is what i wanted to say. Liam does some work for these guys. We need to discuss specifically the iphone 6. You have one in your pocket right now. Are you going to give me one . The iwatch, do you have one for me . Cant hear you. [laughter] how does it feel to hang out with will. I. Am . Another hardware fanatic. What are all of these big guys, bono and neil young getting into hardware for . There is a huge interest in hardware. When i was in the fashion industry, i would go to a fabric mill and by small buy small roles of fabric. You could make any garment you wanted from that role of fabric. When i got into technology, i was so far from what you could do. You could never you had to mwait months and years for new technologies. So we saw innovation where it was a downturn in engineers here going into the garages. They were starting to prototype products. They had we noticed that they had tools for the fabrics of technology were changing. Today you have connected modules , which is phenomenal. You have 3d printing and androids. Now you have the fabrics to actually prototype. Everyone says there was a renaissance in manufacturing. We think there was a renaissance in prototyping. That prototyping generally came out of Energy Around creativity of fee is physical goods. That is where we actually play and what we look for his entrepreneurs i want to build companies around that. That is where we are always looking for. Today, you can sketch a piece of hardware and then in a very short time, you can produce a prototype. You can somebody a prototype and it is far more convincing than a powerpoint presentation. Liam casey, pch international. Thank you very much. Give this guy around of a pause. A plus. [applause] it would be kind of hard to believe almost that watching other people play video games could become a business where its almost a billion dollars. When i was a kid, they would have called that the couch. These guys have done it. Please welcome twitch founders, and our moderator. Thank you for joining us. The first question is, for the last couple of months i think the assumption was that you guys had been purchased by google. All of a sudden we get this news about amazon. How was getting that set up . Everyone assumed google is the way it was going to go down. It seemed like a natural fit. Why choose amazon . It is an easy assumption to make. Your natural assumption is. Amazon is really great fit for us for a couple of reasons. We pitched them, we talked to them about our future and talk to them. They pitched us on what they thought their future was. We got to get that meeting of the mines on gaming and where we got gaming was going and how we saw the future of the gaming industry. We really had the same vision. We also had a shared vision for it being twitch that did it. We assumed we would be a powerful independent rent. Amazon has a great track record of buying companies that way. Look at imdb which they bought 10 years ago. That mimi really except that that made me really excited to have that level of experience. What is the vision of what you think gaming will become . If you look at the history of gaming and go back to the very beginning, you have this very social atmosphere. People gained in arcades. He spent most of your time waiting are watching someone else play. That was the start. As you look at where video games have gone over time, we have gone from a social shared audience, interactive experience. It was to something you play at home. We see a reemergence of the arcade but at this scale that millions of times your than the arcade ever was. You can fill whole stadiums and get massive viewership online. We see that as the next phase of gaming. Single player, multiplayer twitch. We see it as a new mode you can interact with video games. Amazon really also sees that future. They see this feature off videogames as becoming increasingly networked and social. That was sort of the future that they bought into with us. Fun fact. The first story i wrote at techcrunch is how google would avoid ruining twitch. The issues gaming gamers had at the time, on reddit and twitter, was the content id system. Someone streaming play and playing their own music. A curated experience. They were worried that content id would he use all of their videos and ruined the appeal for their audience. Content id isnt necessarily a problem any any more now but as you guys are a multibilliondollar enterprise now it seems like it will be a big target. Are you guys letting people distribute copyrighted material . How will you guys deal with that . If you look at the situation they let you use upload videos through websites. Figuring we are in a fortunate position where because we have a very specific set of content we encourage, because we cannot limit that and stick with just gaming content we are urging and have to work with Gaming Companies excited to have people stream their games because they have a functional business model. It hasnt really been a problem surprisingly. We are a generalpurpose video platform. It comes up a lot. When you come with something that is specialized like twitch, you can really secure those rights. You do have a system in place for monitoring whether people are using copywriting material right . It impacts less than 20 of our videos. It is out there, but it is not so 20 of videos. You have a lot of people streaming. Then there are the big league of legends world tournaments. Where is the 20 impacting . Evenly distributed. Roughly. Once you get down to one or two streams, you cant get down to 20 . It is not let one is a fixed set of users. Video and demand is different from life. For variety reasons. Has you manage people expectations . I think everyone on the internet recognizes that music licensing is a real thing you have to deal with. They may not like it, but it is just a fact. So the other big thing when google was rumored to have acquired you guys, was the google plus profile. With that said, that is clearly not a problem now. Are you guys thinking of amazon ids . We are excited about the potential is we can work with amazon. There are a lot of obvious places about about synergy. Our attitude is not where we have to do xyz, now we had the opportunity. We can put our Engineering Team with theirs and get together. We can put together the music Licensing Team and have the opportunity to see if it will make sense for both companies. We will not force anything, though. Those are the back end of things. I think some people are concerned that twitch is going to becomepeople dont want twitch to become something where you see if the game is something you want to buy. I thank you become an native advertising are you going to become a native advertising platform . I would say we already are. We already are the place you go on the internet, our entire website and seven cents is a native advertising site for video games. We already tried. Our partners already use Amazon Affiliate links along with a variety of other places you can buy video games. They already sell videogames through their channels. We dont currently supported, but it is some thing where our partners have come to us and said, can you help me sell videogames more. I think we will be doing a lot more to aid our partners when they want to. There is a difference between that and becoming a storefront for amazon. If amazon wanted a storefront, they could build it themselves. But what they see is an Awesome Community of people who love video and gathered to celebrate that and celebrate the experience share the experience. If you make it into a storefront you destroy what is great about twitch. Am i going to be watching a stream and go on amazon later and say, you might be interested in this . We have not discussed data sharing like that. Who knows what the future brings but i dont think that i dont think it is that exciting. We start from, is it something that our users want and create a kid experience. If the answer is no, it is not that exciting. By the way, you can buy this right now with a discount, that can set that broadcasters want to offer. And viewers are probably like, we might go with that deal. But we will not force synergy data, i just dont think is that affected. Effective. It seems like amazon expects events again to get a lot bigger. Where is the growth going to come from . One of the most important things is, we have thrown a lot into pc. We have started growing a lot on console as well. The two xbox one and playstation for integration we did. Theres a huge room to grow on consoles because these new generations they dont have the problems the last generation did. We expend expect to see a lot of growth on consoles and continued growth on pc. We also expect growth on mobile as well. We are creating growth in the top mobile games as broadcasting from mobile platforms becomes more possible. To me it seems like that doesnt really appeal to me. What games do you play clash of cla ns . I was really interested in how i could build an empire better, and how i could make an army. Spend my research efficiently. There are people now who are in the top players, sharing strategies to play clash. And it is super popular. Just like any strategy game on the pc. It is not going to work for every game. If you play a game where you play your phone on your forehead and try to guess something, that is probably not going to translate very well. Let games like clash translate very well. But games like clash translates very well. As a result of that, you will see more and more mobile games on twitch. Along with the mobile, there is another big platform getting attention. Virtual reality. Especially with facebook buying oculus. Had you feel about Virtual Reality. Our rule of thumb is simple. Anywhere that you play video games, and had an experience, we want to enable you to share that. There are obviously technical barriers in sharing a Virtual Reality experience. But the players point of view is rarely the best view for watching. If you think about it like, you wouldnt watch football from ago pro strapped to the head of an nfl quarterback. Its much better to have a topdown view. Same thing is true for Virtual Reality. Eventually you might drop yourself into the world and watch it through Virtual Reality as well. Is likely that you will get a topdown view on a flatscreen, rendered separately from the Virtual Reality experience. We are exciting about that excited about that. Anyway there is gaming, we think twitch can be. The thing im thinking is, the consuls we had out today are struggling with getting 60 frames per second at 1080 p. Dealing with broadcasting and stream and maybe virtualreality, are those systems ready to accommodate rendering separately of you that is optimal for outside perspective . Knows. The new generation consuls work really well for that kind of stuff. They had true multicasting builtin, they have no trouble playing a game and streaming into twitch. I dont think there is a problem there, actually. The next generation is really prepared for streaming. With that said, going back to virtualreality and that experience, you talked about rendering separately. Is that something with mobile and the are you have to reach out to developers . Saying, lets integrate our technology and find ways to provide twitch experience technology . \ one is a viewing experience where you can enhance where it doesnt feel like you are watching with other people. Auditorium style, watching an eventbased content versus Game Companies that can go down the road and as you are watching a firstperson shooter, is not going to be the best viewing experience. Topdown may be good, but imagine being able to go into a game and move independently at your own collision. Volition. I think that is what is going to be fascinating. Couple that with the twitchbased phenomenon where the audience can interact, that will create cool experiences that dont exist today. I think we are pretty excited about it. I think the advances in virtualreality will come fast and quick. We will pay a lot of attention to that. The thing about that experience, like watching a Football Game with men and actually being in the space, it seems like that is the experience delivered natively. You are not necessarily watching a twitch stream. How do you get developers to be on board with making twitch a part of that experience and not trying to own it themselves . I think they are. You can watch and go to tv or watch as a spectator. What we built is something that is largely on top of that. It is more social experience. It reaches a broader audience. Part of the value of twitch is being able to reach people who dont play video games. Developing futures where features where it encourages people to watch content in addition to playing. That is what a lot of Companies Want to do with us. When you have those endgames spectator modes which are cool you dont have chat. You cannot do it from a web browser. You can watch it from your android. You cant stream it to your xbox or position. You have to be on the same platform. What we see is the wish it doesnt just come from one platform viewership doesnt just come from one platform. We actually found that when does get released, they grow the twitch audience because they become an entry point to learn about this. When you want the chat mode interactivity or want to get access to questions in a side channel next to the game, you come to twitch because we provide that experience. That is what we focus on. Speaking of chat and the community. That is a part of how you have grown. With that said there are people who stream and the feedback is not so positive. Also i dont know if you have been paying attention to gamer gate, but rhetoric that is not so favorable towards women is an issue in the gaming community. There are female streamers who are being abused. There are other reasons why someone would get heated on. How do you deal with that . You cannot police your community but , you cant make it so people dont want to stream. It is an inevitable problem when you let humans interact. It is unfortunate. But if that is the reality but that is the reality of interacting on the internet. It is a problem anyone faces. We get powerful tools to the stream or where they can moderate channels and set up special modes. They can prevent unverified accounts from chatting and control who has the right to speak in their room. It could be an experience they want to have. Some people like to have a freeforall. And they decided sent batteries set boundaries. Some people want a more controlled and polite experience. I would be one of those people. In that case, we encourage you to have moderators and force that as well. We continue to build more powerful broadcasters to create experiences they want to create. Along the same lines of and powering broadcasters, a lot of the celebrities i guess, actually have outside game sponsorships are getting scholarships. The thing about that, a lot of those sponges since are actually for competing stores that sell digital versions of games. Now amazon will compete with them. How do they feel about that . Amazon. Com cells xbox points. Sells xbox points. Amazon thinks about what they can do to attract the consumer. We will probably find a way to make it a winwin. Amazon is not the kind of company that believes in trying to set everyone else out and create this thing where no one outside her gets to sell anything to a customer. Ever gets to sell anything to a customer. I think that our view is we want to offer the best experience. I think that we really believe in, if it is good for the gamer in the long run, that is good for us. One of the things i noticed and it is pretty obvious, if you go to the main page it is like league of legends, 120,000 viewers. And then his it is a long tail of people streaming each game. In the long run do you worry about being overreliance on big competitive games . It is not quite as skewed as that. It might look like that. But there are 600 game flies game slots. And that represents a huge percentage of our viewership. But we have seen over time increasing diversity. Those gains continue to grow. Games continue to grow. But other games are growing faster. That means you are actually seeing more spread and what people are watching and more variety. We really courage everyone to think about what their audience is. When you have a big competitive title, your streaming outreach strategy is more obvious. If you are a game like minecraft, it takes more time to figure out how duly ill and awesome streaming experience how do we build an awesome streaming experience. We think there are huge potential in games like minecraft, and games that dont have a giant board component. Along with that, i guess were one running out of time. The world finals for league of legends is coming out. How many people do you expect to draw in. They have a pretty big barge across this year. Last year, online viewership was 32 million. This year, 60,000 physical attendees. The game has grown a lot. We did not think about International Growth as well. More and more people are paying attention to competitive gaming in general. It will be a pretty big number. There was a championship for nba finals game seven. Last year sony did a Big Playstation sponsorship. Can we look forward to anything for actual the super bowl gaming. Is there anything to look for . The industry is trending towards that. At any big, bigger sponsors want to get in on that. This year, who knows. All right. I will go about 15 minutes overtime. Thank you guys for coming. Walter, you have a new book coming out. It is called, the innovators. It is a book you started before you started writing about steve jobs. I started about 15 years ago when i was doing this digital media. I was surprised that i couldnt figure out how did the personal computer and original Mainframe Computers start, who came up with a logical circuit notions and how did the internet develop. It would be interesting to start gathering all of the people i was working with. Obviously steve jobs, and bill gates who helped with the personal computer. I started doing oral histories and interviews. I put it aside when i wrote a job a book about steve jobs. That made me more interested in going back to look at the intersection of the internet and personal computer. I have read the book. I finished it last night. I couldnt stop here it i really enjoyed it. I really liked the way you took it through you start way back. Is a lovely is an interesting and littleknown character. Lady byron was not particularly fond of lord byron. She has ada tutored only in mathematics as if that would be an antidote for becoming a romantic poet. She ends up with somebody who loves poetry and mathematics and technology. She is a symbol, as steve jobs was, as someone who can connect humanity to technology. Her father was a luddite a follower. But they taught them to do beautiful patterns. They said you can do that with calculating machines and do any sort of logical sequencing, not just of numbers but of music or words. She comes up with the notion of a computer. I wanted to start with her. Phonetically it pulls through, even with the personal computer. A lot of those concepts she laid out. They still ring true. Ada lovelace is the spiritual person who brings us at williams. One of the interesting things that happens when the web is created in the early 90s, we started pouring old wine into new bottles. We were taking a magazine and trying to make it a website. It was not what the internet was invented to do. But that was able to create bloggers. That was a simple way to bring a whole lot of people into the ability to publish. But also the ability to form communities. To me, we have the trifecta. That was something that helped take the web and make it more into an open Community Thing as opposed to something that publishing houses will pull out of magazines. You could publish a paragraph. You can interact with the readers. Anyone could do it. Suddenly you have this new before we realize, what do we do. If i could ask, one of the themes of digital success is as you watch here. Those who can make something much simpler. It starts with the videogame when you take space wars, this wonderful videogame created at m. I. T. , and said we are going to make it simple. And steve jobs who was working the night shift would come to visit and they would do reg out and other things. And you watch every step of the way whether it is the ipod which is fanatic. You took sections of the book and published them publicly to let those people comment on them. Kind of like a proofreading experiment. One night, i was writing the part about the real creation of Steve Crocker for the ad. It was there so preachers ares it was theres the researchers could collaborate. I thought why dont i try to see how that works on the internet today . I had been involved in wikipedia. I was saying, what if you tried it with a book . In the early days, we had bbs and newsgroup. I said, how would those tools compare the ones we had today . Put we put a draft of a chapter out. I did it on seven or eight places. Medium has a collaborative tool. Some people from the old days were saying, no, we didnt drop acid at first, it was later that night. Dan bricklin said here is how we did visit count visivou count. It is still in the rudimentary stages. This is kind of interesting. Lets find a way to you via the royalties and the Payment System. Have an easy Payment System so that people together can create a book with the author acting as a curator instead of controlling the whole thing. Then, say weve gotten this book, put up your original code for the darwin kernel that you put in the operating system, or for new limits. Show me the pictures and codes. All of that can be put into a collaborative space with an author trying to keep the narrative going but giving all of this material that was crowd sourced and having away a way. Even tim bernerslee wanted to have systems where everybody could collaborate but you could allocate the resources. Do you see medium as something you have been making a transition in paying people to create content for you , which takes you away from the pure platform approach. You have also been hosting publications that are creating these collections of authors that are writing on a central theme. How do you see the future of medium as the collaboration tool that can enable authors to do things like this . Collaboration have been it seems the beginning. From a very Broad Perspective our goal is everyone to share their ideas and stories all over the web. , but how can we make the whole better than the sum of the part . This was one mechanism we created to do that. It occurred to us early on but the internet has been great historically at bringing people together to create things that are better than what they could do on their own. You see examples of this commercially and noncommercially with wikipedia and open source software. Other types of this content is often that someone can create a blog and be their own writer, editor, designer promoter, but it seems like we can get more done if we take advantage of the specialization of collaboration. How can we use medium to bring people together to create Something Better than they can on their own . That the theme we are continuing to iterate on. We look at medium as a platform. We are here to help spur that platform along. The internet developed with two strength. One was publishing. The other was community. Those have had somewhat of contention. You thought of it as a publishing platform. Joining the publishing and community platforms, that is where the power lies in the future. That is clearly what twitter is. I came to twitter with an informationspreading mindset. I think jack originally was looking at it more as people keeping in touch with each other. That has bloomed into something very powerful. If you look at any major platform today, it obviously combines those elements. With blogger, we didnt have common for a long time because who wants to talk to people . I dont want to talk to people on the internet, i just want to see their thought. It turns out, people want to talk to each other. One of the central themes of the book is this myth of the Silicon Valley creator. You dissected over and over as each of these major inventions pushed the web or computer forward and break apart to show that there were many ideas and collaborators and scooby ideas together and coming up with the one that will work to push the idea forward. I think its one of those things where, versus twitter, there is constant talk about who invented what. The truth is that a lot of people did. Those of us who are biographers know that we have a dirty little secret. We distort history. We make it seem like there is a guy in a garage that comes up with a lightbulb moment. In fact, most of the innovation and disruptions of the digital age were done collaboratively by team. That is why we dont quite know who invented the computer. There were four or five teams working on it. These were collaborative efforts. Like with the internet. Leaving aside the al gore jokes there is no person who can say the invented the internet. Nick wilson there was that exchange in the twitter book of nobody invented twitter. One of the cofounders said they invented it. The answer is no. Years and years ago, when i was just coming out of college, i wrote a book with a friend called the wise friend. I want to get back to that because collaboration is the key to creativity. Innovation is a team sport. We biographers have to get away from saying, here is the lone inventor. Going back to blogging, it was very clearly a series of incremental steps. I certainly didnt invent blogging. There is Little Things we stumble upon that become very common and become part of the fabric. They occur to most people working in the internet at the same time. It is the next adjacent thing to what we are all used to. It is much easier in the headline to say soandso created this. On the cover . Who do i put on the cover . It is actually more interesting to try to show for example on the computer here it computer. You talk about this guy vincent who was at iowa state in the basement of the physics will the. He created electronic circuit. He could never get the computer working. He gets drafted into the navy and nobody knows with this machine is and they throw it away. At the same time, there is a whole team at the university of pennsylvania led by eckert and motley with these six women who were doing a program. 20 engineers. They built something that worked. It shows that the lone inventor cant do it in the digital age. Even sometimes when you have a team, it doesnt work either. A team without a visionary. Vision without execution is just hallucination. If you have a lot of execution but you dont have a visionary driving it, then it becomes barren. When you look at the transistor driven by two or three visionaries, or the original computer, you have to have the right combination of visionaries and a team that can execute. And timing. If you are a startup trying to bring something to a market there are so many things today that you can look back 10 years ago and say, oh yeah, that company tried that but it was too early. Right seeds have to fall on fertile ground. Ripe seeds. There is one thing i saw you mention which was very interesting. You mentioned the concept of an environment or community convincing itself its revolutionary by saying it is over and over again. That reminded me a lot of Silicon Valley. Everybody gets up on stage and says their product is going to revolutionize tech. Du think they can self manifest that by saying it . The word innovation and the word disruptor have been so used that they sometimes get drained of their meaning. There is a wonderful book, i tried to read about the scientific revolution. The book is by steve shape and. It starts by saying that there is no such thing as a scientific revolution that here is a book about it. If you look at the way things are being changed by the confluence of personal computers, mobile devices, and network such as the internet, that has so disrupted things, it is like the combination of the steam engine, the loom, and the other things that created the industrial revolution. Thank you guys very much for coming up here to talk. Good to see you. About whether the u. S. Should arm ukraine in the conflict with russia. After that, a look at the white house summit on combating extremism. First remarks from president obama. And then secretary of state kerry. On the next washington journal, the Natural Resources Defense Council discusses the train wreck that caused a oil fire. After that, our visit to historically black colleges and universities concludes. Washington journal live every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. You can join the conversation with phone calls, facebook comments, and tweets. On friday, president obama addresses the winter meeting of the Democratic National committee. The threeday conference focuses on the strategy after the losses in the midterm elections. Live coverage starting at 11 10 a. M. On cspan. Keep track of the Republicanled Congress and follow its new members through the procession. On cspan. Cspan2. Cspan radio. And cspan. Org. Next, a debate about arming ukraine in this conflict with russia. Two former u. S. Ambassadors took part in the event. They spoke for about one hour. I think we will get started. Good afternoon and good morning everyone. Usually my day is done by this point. Thank you all for coming to see what i think is going to be a really important and engaging conversation. To introduce myself, my name is david grain. I host a show on npr. I traveled often to ukraine and covered a lot of the buildup to the conflict in the news that we are all following right now. To the conflict in the news that we are all following right now. This is such an important question as to how the United States and the west should deal with this crisis, specifically the topic we will be covering is whether the west should arm ukraine. As we think about this conflict, there have been so many lives lost. As we have conversations about the politics, it is so important to keep that in mind. The voices we heard on the air this week on our program. We spoke to a woman a few days ago, she does it work in de anesk. She was describing the bunkers were families have been hiding for weeks on end. People were coming out for an hour or two at a time thinking this was a moment where hes had come to check on their homes. They lit fires in their homes to warn them because there was that level of optimism that they would be home soon. The violence has raged on. Katerina told us her apartment with shelled and her friends would have been killed had they not gotten up to take a phone call when the fire hit. Yesterday, we saw that automatic and painful pictures that traumatic and painful pictures of the army is being withdrawn. The military under darkness trying to escape after being circle. It reminds me of something the president said when he visited in fall. Imagine these boys underequipped and often unprepared. They are the only thing that stands between the new cold war. Here is what is at stake when the west tries to deal with this issue. I want to introduce four panelists who are appear with me. To my left is john. He is a former u. S. Ambassador to oak rain ukraine. Thanks for joining us. Farther to the left, stephen. He is the arms director at the brookings institution. He is also a former u. S. Ambassador to ukraine. Thank you for coming this morning. To my right two voices who will be speaking about why arming ukraine is not a positive move at this point. Jeremy shapiro to my right. He previously served as a member of the secretarys cabinet. Thanks for joining us. Finally, eugene. He is the director of the russian Eurasia Program at carnegie. He is a former National Intelligence officer for russia and eurasia. Thanks for joining us. Before we get started, i wanted to see a show of hands in this room if you believe that arming the Ukrainian Military, making that decision as the United States, is a good idea. Raise your hand. A little less than half. A lot less. [laughter] weve got some work to do. Good luck. We are going to start with each side talking for about five minutes and making the case. After those 10 minutes, we will open it up to a 20 minute discussion up here. I will ask some questions. I hope you will address each other. After that for 10 minutes, we will open the floor to your questions. My only request is that it is actual questions and not lectures from the audience. Then we will have about 10 minutes to hear both sides wrap up. I would love to see where the audience stands at that point if you have been able to convince the room. Why dont i begin with the two former ambassadors to make a case for arming ukraine. President barack obama and angela has said there is no military solution. The goal is not a settlement but instability. To create difficulties for the government in kiev. The west has responded with economic sanctions. They have not yet achieved their political goal which is to bring about a change in russias force towards ukraine. Ukraine gave up the worlds thirdlargest nuclear arsenal. We also recommend providing light weapons. We were told that three quarters of the weapons in the ukraine army dont work. We are not talking about troops going into ukraine. Ukrainians are fighting to give themselves the ability to inflict greater cost against russia. Gluten putin cares very much of the impact of war on russian opinion. The russian government has tried to hide the fact that the russian army is fighting and people are dying in ukraine. Arming ukraine, with the goal of getting the russians to change, is part of an overall strategy that includes helping ukraine with financial support, economic sanctions, and holding out for the prospect of a settlement. Arming ukraine will get the russians to switch that settlement. The risks are manageable and the risks are in action are much greater. Its not just about ukraine. It is about broader european safety. Mr. Putin has stated that he wants to reinstate the roles in europe to the cold war rules or there will be no rules. He read your the borders of georgia by military force. He is doing the same to ukraine. He sees the Counter Intelligence office. He is threatens because you get them he has threatened cant extend people argue that our providing weapons to ukraine would only get mr. Putin to escalate. We hope it would deter him. He has a problem at home with russian casualties in ukraine. If he escalates and takes more casualties, he will have less military force. We have to demonstrate to him by sanctions and by providing arms to ukraine that there is a heavy price to pay. We will take that extra minute. We are going to be very efficient this morning. We will work on it. We share your angst and frustration. In our view, two wrongs dont make a right. There are three fundamental flaws. One, lets make no mistake. What you are arguing for is a war against russia. We are confident that russia will retaliate. Thats a major flaw. Second, there is a fundamental conceptual flaw. You have argued that there will be a fire break. There will be no boots on the ground. Thats a very uncertain way to deter someone. It signals that you are not prepared to escalate. Three, there will be boots on the ground. The proposal calls for not just dumping weapons, you will have to train ukrainian troops in the use of these weapons. You also calls for the security in kiev to monitor the use of these weapons, to make sure they dont fall into the wrong hands. That is a highly questionable proposition because once those weapons are out of our hands, we cannot monitor them. The idea of sending u. S. Military personnel into this known, this zone, you could be facing a black hawk down situation. Then we will have to figure out how to rescue them. To close and turn it to jeremy, two wrongs dont make a right. Thanks. To some degree, this comes down to the question of whether we think sending arms to ukraine would cause the russians to escalate or to back down. It seems to be the idea in the report that the increased casualties will cause the russians to back down and abandon their fight in ukraine. It is true that the russians have been hiding their casualties from their people. Of course, there is a dynamic here. If americans send arms ukraine that will be used in russian propaganda to free up the domestic constraints. It will be portrayed as a war of the west against russia. On a certain level, it will be. That will almost certainly cause the russians to escalate. The question is, are we ready for that . Are we ready for the idea that we need to go to war against a Nuclear Power for the sake of ukraine . This seems to me to be a proposition that people arent really considering. It is also important to understand what this proposal would do to ukraine. David opened with some very touching stories about what the violence is doing. We know what sending arms into a civil war situation like this does. It escalate the violence. We have all sorts of Academic Studies on this. They show quite clearly that when you send weapons into a war zone like this, the violence increases, the conflict lasts longer, and more people die. Lets be clear about what we are doing. We are escalating the war and we are causing more violence and death. I think that is a serious decision. Another point brought up is whether the United States owes this to ukraine. We have this budapest memorandum that steve mentioned which is supposed to represent some sort of guarantees. I have read the budapest memorandum. It is not gripping but it is interesting. I am at a loss in there to understand where the United States has to jump to the defense of the ukraine. The memorandum does not mean that the United States is willing to come to the defense of ukraine it is attacked militarily. United states doesnt have a commitment to defend ukraine. I think we need to do as so often dont is called something by its name. The russians have invaded ukraine. We need to a knowledge that. That doesnt make ukrainians an american ally. It doesnt commit the americans to defend them. It doesnt mean ukrainian state is any less corrupt or dysfunctional. A lot to talk about. I think there are copies of the report we are talking about in the room. You are both involved in this. I would like to start their. Rre. There are some very strong words to propose that the words in this report could lead to a black hawk down situation. Is that a legitimate concerns . I think that is not a serious argument. The United States military is already going to be training Ukrainian National guard units in the far western part of ukraine in the polish corridor. You can do training far away from the fighting. Western defense at cachet istachets are going into the battle areas and taking steps for protection. The bulk of the assistance proposed in the report is nonlethal. This would require americans on the ground. They dont necessarily have to be trained in ukraine. We have been told that you can train somebody to fire this thing in about two hours. Even if there would be american trainers on the ground, you can sure that there is not a real risk . The report makes clear that you would train them away from the conflict area and that you would not provide the weapon unless they demonstrated that they were capable of using it. Does that answer your question . No. Once we turn these weapons over to the Ukrainian Military, there is no way to monitor them. We have seen in the last few days a very poorly organized retreat of the Ukrainian Military. It was a situation where if we had provided weapons to them, we would not have been able to ascertain the use of these weapons. It is very likely that they would have wound up in the hands of the separatists or the russians. Are you saying this is a different argument . This is about weapons going into russian hands, not about americans being at the front. You cannot train without u. S. Troops there. You brought up the point of training at a faroff facility, you cannot monitor where those weapons will go. There have also been numerous stories reported about corruption in the military. There were stories about ukrainian soldiers volunteering to serve that have to buy their own equipment. How can you be sure that the weapons wont end up in the wrong hands as a result of some corrupt and poorly managed military . The report was clear in that saying that this military assistance will not help the ukrainians to beat the Russian Military. It cant. That is not something he can conceivably achieve. It is meant to scare the russians into backing down. The question is, will it do that . That seems to be a very questionable proposition. There is also another fundamental flaw with what you propose, john. Russia has attacked the peaceful vision that has been fundamental since the cold war ended. You are proposing to fight the Russian Military with the hands of ukrainian soldiers without in sort of a Remote Control situation. I want to get to a broader discussion about putin and europe. We saw this retreat which was incredibly dramatic. Their trucks were coming under artillery fire. There were live lost. It was a mess. Tell me why having javelin, antitank missiles in place help the ukrainians get out sooner and not stay to fight the battle. The fundamental problem with Ukrainian Military is that when it is organized, the rationale is to uphold the center. This is a question of tactical issues. Antitank missiles would of been very useful against russian tanks that were at the battlefront. Some of the nonlethal systems we advocated what allowed ukrainians to target the artillery that were pounding them. There are problems in the Broader Organization of Ukrainian Military will take them time to work out. In terms of the tactical situation, the kind of assistance advocated in that report would have had a Significant Impact on that turnout. Did ukrainians may not be able to beat the russian army but the question is about making aggression so expensive to the russians that they stop. If you drive up the cost, you flip the benefitcost calculation. I cant say the weapons wont wind up in the hands of separatists. If you want the images, the ukrainians brought a lot of their heavy equipment out of there. It is a difficult situations because they were surrounded on three sides. They got a lot of this stuff out and they destroyed most of what they left behind. They spent the last six weeks sending heavy arms, tanks, missiles into ukraine. We are proposing a small counter to that. A counter that couldve made a difference on the ground. We want to enable the aggressor to counter more easily. This would not have been the battle it was if we had sent american weapons in six month ago. The russians would have asked related the russians with escalated and it probably would have been a worse battle. This is the fundamental point. If we are thinking of increasing the cost to the russians through this effort, we have to have a sense of what costs they are willing to bear. I think the russians have been very clear that they view the ukrainian battle at the next essential one. They have a lot of escalation options because ukraine is close to russia. It seems that they are willing to do them. We do not have that kind of interest in ukraine. We are not willing to go up that ladder of escalation. Is steve is of the view that a few more russian casualties are going to increase the cost to the russians to such an extent they are simply going to back down over what they have defined as the next essential it do for them, i am confused by that reasoning. Over what they have to find as an exit stencil issue for them over what they have defined as an existential issue for them they will take the risk of escalating casualties because they were part of their country under control. You use a very powerful term. Yet made the argument that you made the argument that this is nonlethal. I want to hear you explain why you think these steps recommended in this report would take us to a proxy war with russia. Sending antitank weapons to be used by the Ukrainian Military against russian armor would be viewed by the russians as a move by the United States to oppose russia in what russia considers to be a conflict of paramount national interest. The United States would be and a standoff position, fighting a war three ukrainian soldiers. I am not even sure what the question here is. In the russians view, Even Economic sanctions are considered warfare. They will see it as what is going to be, proxy war. We are using ukraine to fight russia. Even if it is very limited if you are putting u. S. Trainers in place to train ukrainians on weaponry that the west is providing, that takes it to another level. Russia will see this as a major step. A couple of points. They claim american soldiers will be captured. It is possible they will consider this a step up by the United States. We have done this in the past successfully. In afghanistan. That did not lead us to nuclear war with russia. We didnt have to backtrack out of afghanistan. This is something which does not necessarily lead to a great escalation in u. S. Russian military confrontation. Is that a fair model, afghanistan . Yes. The New York Times reported on the history of supplying arms into civil wars like this. They found in the 67year history that it essentially never worked. It always escalated the conflict and lengthened it. That is why we saw proxy wars around the world during the cold war in places like angola vietnam, guatemala. They found one example where they said it mostly worked. That was afghanistan. Unfortunately, that also led to 9 11. Partial success. I think the point here is that we do understand these dynamics. We have seen them many times before. If we do this, the russians will certainly escalate. They have many answers to these weapons. When they escalate, we will be confronted with a choice. Should we counter escalate and send in the next weapon and advisers . Or should we back down and do so in a very public and humiliating way . That is a choice i think we should be avoiding if we know we are not willing to escalate. Can i Say Something . Once those weapons are out of our hands, they are out of our hands. Long after the war was over, we were trying to collect the stingers that we could not account for in afghanistan. It is not a good example in this circumstance. I want to talk about putin if we can. A city in eastern estonia is a most entirely russian speaking. A fear is that putin is able to use russian speakers and take them elsewhere. Bringing article five into question is a possibility. I think we can all acknowledge the possibility is out there. Why is the argument that putin must be stopped here and that the way to do it is to give Ukrainian Military more resources . Why does that argument not resonate with you . Because we have made a commitment to estonia, lot the other, lithuania, other nato allies. We have to cleared many times over that they are covered by our defense guaranteed. We have not made that commitment to ukraine. The text of the budapest memorandum suggests this. I would like to come back to the memorandum. Jeremy, you pulled that out of context. The budapest memorandum was on security assurances, not guarantees. We were not going to provide the ukrainians a guarantee. The 82nd airborne was not going to comment there is a violation of that memorandum. Maybe in negotiations we say one thing and walk away from it. The problem for the bush and clinton administrations was getting a hold of nuclear weapons. We wanted to make sure those weapons were eliminated. This is part of that agreement. I think there is a certain amount of u. S. Obligation. I would like to respond. If we are ukraine now putin pay the higher price for achieving his objectives. We are demonstrating to russia more determination in the Baltic States. We need to demonstrate that we are serious in the baltic. One way to do that is being serious and ukraine. We have a couple of minutes left. I want to challenge the arming side on one point. There seems to be an assumption or expectation that this step could at some point lead to putin losing Political Support in russia. Is that a fair assumption to make . It seems his support is incredibly strong. He is good at planning the west. When these steps play into his hands and allow him to blame the west even more . The funny thing about authoritarian regimes is that they are stable until they are not. Support has gone down after the annexation of crimea. The money classes in russia are very unhappy. Foreignpolicy professionals are very nervous about what he is doing. Russians dont like that their economy is in the toilet. They dont like that russians are dying in ukraine. If there are more russian body bags, mr. Putins support could diminish. Polls consistently show that the russian population does not favor the russian Army Fighting and ukraine. I think there is a huge amount of evidence. You saw what happened when the first soldiers were being buried. I heard from a friend who lost their leg in ukraine that he was told if he said how he lost his leg, he would lose his disability. The example that stephen is citing also demonstrates that mr. Putin has been capable of suppressing evidence. We need to acknowledge the dynamic of the United States getting openly involved in this war. That will change russian domestic policy. One of the things that works very well in russian domestic policy is the american bogeyman coming to get you. When the president of the United States stands up and says im sending weapons to oppose the russians in ukraine, that is going to free up president putin from a lot of the constraints you just mentioned. I think it is very important for the United States to demonstrate its commitment to the baltics. The question is, is defending and ukraine useful for that . It is not optimal terrain. It is not the same commitment. It doesnt illustrate our commitment. It is working with an ally that is very difficult to work with. In estonia and latvia we have been preparing that the fence for a long time. We have seen in the russian efforts in ukraine the limits of what they can accomplish with hybrid warfare. It worked to a degree in some places but not in others. It didnt work in cities where they didnt have the support. That is the case in estonia and latvia. I think those have better defenses. The red line doesnt have to be in ukraine. The russians are weak. It doesnt matter if the russians want to take over all of Eastern Europe. They wont be able to. We need to worry about russian weakness and when they will lash out at us because they feel threatened. That is a dangerous proposition. Could i give you 30 seconds to respond to the notion that russia is weak . There is no question that russia has an economy based on hydrocodones with oil prices low. Why do we want to make it easier for us to move beyond ukraine . Even if they escalate for them to achieve their objectives in ukraine, they lose more men and material. I want to open this to all of you. It looks like no one is interested. If you dont mind, keep it relatively brief. Make it a question and introduce yourself when you get up. Thanks very much. I am garrett mitchell. I want to pose the question this way. It was napoleon who said once you start to take the ammo, take the ammo. Once you start to take vienna take vienna. My question is, given the current circumstances, why isnt the greatest interest in Americas National interest and foreignpolicy interests and natos interest to not play halfheartedly in ukraine but to put troops in those nato countries that the ambassadors say he is headed for so that they understand that there are red lines we are willing to draw. They are in the nato nations. Unfortunately, ukraine will help them in it is important, it seems to me to not draw faint redlined red lines. Is this a faint red line you are proposing . I dont think so. I think you can do both things. We are reinforcing nato states in the baltic region. That is regardless. The provision of weapons on the low end of the scale when you look at the entire range of weapons that could be provided i dont think that draws a red line. Ukrainians are going to fight on whether we help them are not. I think it is a certain u. S. Obligation to help, and i believe back against the russians now has been in effect for years. If putin decides these kinds of hybrid tactics work in ukraine at acceptable cost, he can apply it somewhere else. I just dont see this domino theory working like that. They we dont thought support ukraine than the baltic region will fall. That is what it sounds like to me. To answer your question, you are asking why shouldnt we put more troops in Eastern Europe . Well you have to have a different structure in europe. Im saying, lets not pretend. I think we are drawing a very faint pink line and no one will read that clearer than putin. At some point we have to face the facts in ukraine, continued to do what we are doing in a nonlethal way, but make it very clear, unido, that we have troops. If putin has his eyes on those countries, he is nuts. I agree we should be reinforcing that. I think we should be helping ukraine. And the billion dollars or whatever can be very productively spent, assuming there is the right situation in ukraine to begin to rebuild the military and lunch launched the force they have been delaying for a long time. Essentially, you need to equate military with the money you propose. Along the line with what nato allies having Eastern Europe. Another country question . Young woman in the aisle right here. My name is mary jane. You both spoke very eloquently about the position of putin, the position of russia, as well as the request the west. What about the people of Eastern Ukraine . What is their desire, do they want the Ukrainian Army in their territory . One of the reasons why the kremlin launched a hybrid war is because of the expectation of the civil war in the east flopped. Cole demonstrated up through last spring that most of 25 of people were interested in joining with russia. Kremlin had to send an fsb colonel, because as he complained to the kremlin, the locals will not fight. Eventuallyof course there is a lot of suffering in the east right now. There are refugees. There are twice as many idps in ukraine than russia. Most of all, they want fighting to stop. But if you look at any poll in ukraine taken before all this, there was no support i have of people. Even in crimea, to lead ukraine and become part of leave ukraine and become part of russia. I think one of the problems in a war situation is we quickly lose any hold on being able to understand the people on the ground. There is so much propaganda from all sides. It becomes very difficult for us to know what they think anymore. Their views change. There is a lot of sense that people are very angry for the tactics the government has used. But we dont really down the degree know the degree to which that is the case. I think the fundamental point which we see across the world is that people on the ground generally want the war to end. They care more about the war ending than anything else. What we know about this proposal from so many other examples, is that it will not cause the wars to end. It will cause the word to escalate. It will cause the war to spread and cause more suffering and death. I think the war is not ending. Last tuesday, chancellor merkel brokered an agreement that most would agree is significantly disadvantageous to ukraine than the one signed last september that the russians violated. Yet we had an agreement disadvantageous to ukraine, and what happened the Night Saturday when the ceasefire was supposed to begin, the russian separatists went right on fighting. The reports stayed that offense it continues. It is a fair point, steve. We dont have a good solution for ending the ukrainian civil war. Or the russian ukrainian war if you prefer. You can call it whatever you want. We dont have a good option for ending it. I think that is a real problem. It doesnt seem a good response is to expand it. With it as bad as it is, we know from experience, it could be worse. We have seen worse examples and greater escalation in places like syria and bosnia. Even in chechnya where the russians demonstrated the types of tactics they are willing to use. This war could be a lot worse. That is essentially what this proposal will do. It is very hard to end. I take that point and i think there is a lot of difficult negotiations that need to go on. I dont see why making the war worse is a good way to end it. Can we make a deal we only have three or four minutes. Thank you very much. Thank you for organizing this event. First, there is no civil war in ukraine. There is no civil war in ukraine. There is war which was brought by russia from russia. Is a conflict which will was inspired by three men and russian troops. Second, without any weapons well second is that for the time being, nobody provided ukraine with weapons. In spite of that, putin and kremlins escalate with everyday situation. First it was crimea, occupying. Then forced referendum. Then annexation. Then aggression in the eastern part. It was the attempt for the ukraine to diplomatically solve the issue. Then it has been violated. Russia has flooded the occupied area with hundreds of apcs and rocket systems, and in this case is just curious to hear that they have not been provided with defensive weapons. What is more without any weapons, kremlin will every day escalate the conflict. This is not only against ukraine. This is war against europe. This is were against europeans and democratic values. That is why ukraine needs weapons. Second in order to stop aggression today and not to wait for tomorrow because the situation will be even worse. Thank you. Thank you. You guys can respond to that. Then we will close. I think that as the ambassador says, ukraine has the right to defend itself. It has the right to request weapons. Im not sure what a defensive weapon is, but it has the right. I am very sympathetic to their plight in the face of russian aggression. We should be clear it is russian aggression. I think also the United States has the right to decide whether it makes sense from an American Perspective and from a larger perspective, as to whether to provide those weapons. The United States does not have a commitment to ukraine. The United States would only escalate this war if it provided it and created much greater suffering in ukraine, and it would create a lot of risks for it self credibility is not at stake in ukraine. It has many options for dealing with russian aggression, should it come to the nato state. To me, it is more than strange that those who would risk of war to protect the independence of Ukrainian Foreign policy would deny that same right to the United States. It is a u. S. Sovereign decision whether to provide such weapons into a war. We need to make that decision on our own. I think the ukrainians dont get a vote in that. Well, i cant make the point Strong Enough to read reiterate. It is an american decision, not a ukrainian decision. Ukraine has the right to defend itself against aggression. No question about it. But we have a say here as well. It is us at stake. Some would disagree with jeremy. I think we have our credibility on the line as well. But there are different ways and other ways to defend our credibility and show commitment to europe other than providing weapons for a conflict that neither ukraine nor with weapons have a chance of winning. Again, putin has demonstrated he will escalate to keep on fighting. There are many things we dont know about what he wants to do. Basically, the one thing he has demonstrated, is that he is prepared to escalate and prepared to make sure that the separatists are not defeated. We are not prepared to go to the same lengths. I think it is the most important thing to keep in mind is considering providing a little bit of defensive weapons to ukraine in these circumstances. Also, europe is not on the side of sending weapons to ukraine. Chancellor merkel was has risen to the challenge like no other leader. She has made it clear she is opposed to it. Let me make three or four points. First of all, yes this is an american decision. But i think the decision should be to arm ukraine because that would increase prospects of a settlement. Ukrainians are going to fight with or without american arms. But i would not so easily dismissed the group. There was a commitment there certainly not on the level of a neato treatment, but things were said to the ukrainians to get them to get rid of 1900 strategic weapons then. Third, Bally Technologies there is a risk of escalation, but i think it is grossly overstated. There is a risk of escalation but i think it is grossly overstated. Aggression by the russians means more aggression. There are more russian involvement in casualties. It becomes visible to the outside world that support for sanctions include worsening since. Chancellor merkel is your 10 days ago. She says she does not favor providing arms. She also had the opportunity to say that if you do this, it will disrupt transatlantic unity. She did not say that. She also did not say you americans should not do that. She did not give the president a green light but she certainly did not give him a red light haired the last word is yours. We have seen multiple escalations. Before we provided weapons. Providing weapons with respect to escalating further. If he does push back he will pay a price. Two, this makes our defense in the Baltic States easier. It also sends pidgeon caution about kazakhstan. Putin cautioned about kazakhstan. Three, there is no humiliation for the United States to provide ukraine, there is no humiliation