Condition, the family of tech and publicpolicy under policy issues in the United States and around the world. These policy briefings provided opportunity to hear directly from our nations top scholars on the pressing issues facing the road during this difficult time. As we all unite to confront the challenges of the worldwide pandemic, conversations like this have never been more important. We will be taking on these questions today so i encourage you to submit yours using the q a button located at the bottom of your screen. Todays briefing is from condoleezza rice, the senior fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, she served as a 66 secretary of state of the United States the first africanamerican woman to hold the post, she was also president george w. Bushs National Security advisor, we look forward to her next director of the Hoover Institution this fall, welcome, thank you for joining us. Good morning. Youre an expert in the International System, how do you think the International System is responding to the pandemic. Good morning and welcome to everyone to our webinar, the real story is the International System is not responding its individuals countries that are responding. We see the triumph of poverty we see it now, maybe not surprising when people are frightened or something or unusual and or have any experience, people tend to go back to what they know best in particular democracies, these are the leaders that they can hold accountable and the response has been country by country, we see it and travel bands between countries and we see in the fact that individual countries that are deciding the pace of rate that they are going to tell people to shelter in place, you see the National Healthcare person or the National Healthcare expert that is their next to the Prime Minister or next to the president so the International System really has not been on point, its really been individual countries, that cuts against the grain the way that we thought about globalization and a particularly cuts against the grain and maybe we can talk about this like in york where they have tried for decades to create a borderless territory in europe where there is one path forward where people move easily from country to country and now we see when it starts in italy, it spreads quite quickly in europe and we see individual countries trying to get out. Lets talk about how International Institutions respond, people have commented on the world that the un is playing and the World Health Organization, we have a question if nato should be doing more, it seems there is an instinct for people who believe in the Global Community more global institutions to do more. Is that a realistic expectation or how should we think about that. I think theres unfolding faces, that is okay, right now the response is countries are trying to take care of their own. They are doing so by making sure that they get their citizens back home, that is one interesting response, lets get all of our citizens back home where we can take care of her own, they are responding with a travel ban and airlines are basically not flying between countries. But i do think the time should come relatively soon when we see International Institution plays a bigger role, particularly the g20 which is the 20th largest economy in the world can take a role in helping to coordinate an economic response in the way that they get after the financial crisis of 2008 2009. Certainly when we think about the effect of the pandemic on developing countries it is going to be important to leverage all the work that we have done over the last couple of decades to improve the healthcare in those countries, one interesting approach to the United States can use, we have a huge network built up because of the president s emergency plan for relief starting with president bush, continued by president obama, going to President Trump where we help developing countries can build Healthcare Systems and the networks to distribute even way out in the countryside, those are the kinds of things that i hope countries will band together, it is kind of interesting, this is the exact opposite response that we had after 9 11 when after 9 11 countries realize that it was a borderless threat that in fact you had to share information, you had to share intelligence information, you had to share law enforcement, we had within a very short period of time away to track it across borders, hopefully once we are through the really frightening part of this countries will start to band together to think about how to get a response and also to not let it happen again. Timing is reporting. Right now it is totally understandable that Prime Ministers, president s are going to concentrate on what is happening at home. Lets talk about the role of the u. S. Response in the position a commonly expressed what should we be doing more to make the world a more response to the global pin democrat what do you think the United States response, is it inadequate. Right now the United States is trying to save new york, is worrying about whats going on and thats understandable, but is not that we have done nothing, in fact the administration has made available in millions of dollars for covid19 response in developing countries, im quite certain that our embassies in places like that we are trying to help other countries with the response. We also as i mentioned, we have the eighth Emergency Network which helps countries that are in the developing world to respond to the crisis. In time i think the United States will take a bigger leadership role but for now the foreign assistance should be welcomed in the fact it will not help right now to call together a big conference to talk about response to the virus, it will not be helpful, it will be helpful in a few months to do exactly that and also to try to help the world plan better for the next time around. If you are joining us, im tom gilligan and this is the hoovers virtual policy breaking with congressma congresswoman r. What are the important similarities or differences between then and now. One of the unfortunate similarities because it was also hard to get information out of china during the sars outbreak, we knew something had happened and it was very hard to get answers out of china on what had happened and that is unfortunately a recurring pattern this time around and possibly the most troubling aspect of this crisis it is kind of in the nature, it is in the nature of the chinese system and authoritarian system that controls information is power. Control of the narrative is power so we should not be surprised that when this outbreak happens in wuhan that they silenced the positions of medical students to sound the alarm, can you imagine those people being silent in the United States in any country in germany or brazil. Somebody wouldve picked up the story in the press and it wouldve been known that there was a problem the chinese did what authoritarians do, they gathered, they silenced those who were trying to sound the alarm and they wanted to have time to develop the narrative that it would be that will be blessed by china which had to go all the way to beijing before you can say anything they will be a reckoning for china with its own population which is angered by the lack of information and certainly the International Community should raise with the chinese a very strongly why we always get this response. Let me push you on that, we have all the questions about china, let me combine a couple, gina asked which stations and how should china be held to account for this, roger says in your opinion, what is the proper response to china and the ccp leadership who critically have information about the wuhan virus and why the hundreds of thousands of deaths cost trillions of dollars. There is a public part of this in a private part of this, the public part of this over the next month is to just let it be known that china responded in the way that it did or did not respond, let me put it that way, the chinese are going to create into a counter narrative. When we found out about it we got on top of it, look at how quickly through social distancing in quarantine and look how quickly we recovered and by the way you help the rest of the world by sending ppe and by sending help and aid to all of the world, they are going to try to shift the narrative from their initial responsibly to not fessing up to what was happening to we got on top of it and help the rest of you, thats how they will shift the narrative, dont let it happen, we have to have an honest assessment of how this happened, where started when it started, when the party knew and why they did not get on it. Thats a public part, the private part, you have to look at the chinese and say you cannot be doing this, you have to be a more responsible partner, for more responsible power given your weight in the International System you are not a developing country that when something happens it does not have an impact, your people travel, your people work in other countries, there are a lot of Chinese Workers apparently in italy at the time, was that the transmission, we dont know for sure but if were going to get a handle on how this thing moved, the fact that china is such a big player in people traveling and working elsewhere is a big part of the story, i think there is a public acknowledgment of what happened and also the private conversations with the chinese about how we dont let this happen again. Interesting. Unnatural question arises, is it enough to get them to have a more correct attitude to rout td the World Health Organization in their Scientific Data that has an impact on the rest of the world 40 have to couple was sanctions or tariffs or trade or how would you the former secretary of state think of Something Like that. I would try the first route first. If you keep the focus on how this started, they will actually be embarrassed on that. I think if you let them skip the narrative to everything that theyve done sending out the ppes, i would really keep the focus, i call these meetings and they will try to veto anything that comes out of it but i call the meeting and i say we will share the United States will share the information and maybe you can bring the europeans or others along and will share how we think the started and i would try that Campaign First because i dont really think the u. S. Economy and everybodys economy is going to be recovering, theyll think we want to shock the system more with more sanctions and more trade wars and the like when is trying to recover so i try certainly to try that method first of lets call it calling names in sending a message that what they did was unacceptable. Heres an interesting question that i think is about deterrence and how our adversaries use the circumstance, it is from jessica, irma government student at texas in austin, i was wondering what do you think russia is learning about how the u. S. Handled this kind of crisis. Very good question, early on the russians were saying we have done this so much better because initially their numbers were low and while the number started to go up youre not hearing that so much anymore and youre starting to get stayathome orders and all the things that youre seeing in the rest of the country, im told by others there being issued by the mayor of moscow and the Prime Minister and president putin has decided to take him self out the bad News Business of this. And that eventually, of course i can tell you when its over he will take credit for whatever happened. But i think the russians who initially wouldve set our system is so much better and theyre still learning that their system is not that much better, there are two different russians, there is one russia of citydwellers who circulate, travel, theres also a russia that is full of villages that will probably see none of it because people do not seek relate and it has to be a little bit with which russia youre talking about. This pandemic has the longrun impact, tell us what do you think will be the impact on globalization, Global Supply chains, the Free Movement of people around the world in just the trust that is necessary to sustain a system like that. You said essential words which is trust, are people going to trust that it is safe to circulate again and that makes y take some time before people want to travel outside of their own countries, were learning we can do an awful lot through virtual means and we could do a lot online and we might see for a while that all of those conferences that were used to going to with huge numbers of people might not take place for a while, i certainly hope in time what we built over decades and decades and decades that people do travel and they do circulate and do study together as we see in universities that were not going to see the putting up a wall because we have this particular experience. That may be an initial response but here is where leadership by the United States in leadership by the other Major Economies through something could start to send signals that despite what we had to do in this initial phase, we had to shut down for very good reasons, we dont want to stay this way, we want to be opening up of people doing business across borders, we do want the students studying in Different Countries so we keep continuing to get to know each other better. Those messages will be very important, im concerned about what the United States will experience in terms of foreign students, its not just stanford and harvard that have borne students, if you go to the small colleges in the midwest and big states there are a lot of foreign students and will have to send out a message that we want them to come back even if theyve gone home that we want them to come back and i think this is a place of messages will be extremely important, in terms of Global Supply, i think youll see an impact, there is already in Congress Several bills about china and supply chain in the first is going to be about how dependent we are on china in the pharmaceutical space whether its the ingredients or for the fact that a lot of generic are made there because of cheaper conditions or how dependent majors pharmaceutical companies are on assembly and manufacturer in china, there are those that think that we need to bring that capacity back to the United States because its been shown to be strategic and shown to be a matter of National Security that we control our own supply chain on the pharmaceutical and medical side, that will be difficult to do but i think you will get a lot of pressure, on broader supply chain thats been going on for some time because of the extended trade war, companies have been reevaluating their supply chain, i saw Peter Navarro said we may even bring Companies Huge benefits to bring their manufacture and supply chain back home, they may not stay in china, the likelihood is to go to other places, vietnam, the indias think theyll be a major beneficiary, but i think theyll see major reordering on how Companies Think about the supply chain, this turns out to be very secure and they will take that message. David asks about that actors, and maybe to take a vantage of the covid19 to advance their own interests, is this realistic and what are the more dangerous threats to deal with or consider. A dangerous threat one thing that you worry about is that actors will try to take advantage of colors of destruction the ohmmeter leaders on the covid19 crisis or maybe not paying attention. I will tell you after 9 11, the very first thing that i did what i got to the bunker was to get to the state department to send out a table to every person in the world and that the United States of america is functioning and thats a message to your friends, theres also message to your home to not try anything, its a different situation but im quite certain that our intelligence agencies, our defense agencies, the pentagon, they may not be on high stages of work but there on higher stages of vigilance. To make sure that nobody is going to try to take advantage and im sure theyre walking the north koreans like a hawk, im sure theyre watching the rain is like a hawk because you do not want anyone to take advantage but while the other others and probably members of the National SecurityCouncil Staff are worried about the crisis we certainly have people who are trying to make sure that no bad actor takes advantage of us. Tell us a little bit about the developing, what is going on there, how is the pendulum it going and what is our relationship with them over the years to come. The biggest impact has been in big cities where people circulate, places i south africa which is the economy that is integrated through the International System and where people move around a lot, i think people have been a little surprised at the fact of an explosion of the virus and a lot of the developing world and it may well be the lack of testing or the lack of reporting that is the reason for that but theres other theories, for instance is it because the population of the developing world content to be younger, they may be asymptomatic but youre not getting the catastrophic effect of the virus because we know it affects older people more than it does very young people, and very young populations, they have been through a lot of pandemics, if there is something to lean up there in terms of the system and immunity that we dont fully understand im not the theory. I do think that the one thing that we should be focused on is through the emergency plan that president bush signed it another ministrations have continued, we really helped a lot of developing countries build up a Healthcare System and we helped them build the a pretty good Distribution System even for places that were far away from the city to deliver, to the degree that those are still in place we ought to be encouraging countries and we were not the only ones, the global age did some of this on the g20 countries, the European Union countries help to build the systems, we should be really helping to mobilize just in case you get a pandemic outbreak in the developing world. I know that you read henry kinzingers wall street journal last week which basically predicted it was used dramatically, warren has a more pointed version of that with the following, after the world watched the recent response to the pandemic and ill add with china merging with the economic power, is this crisis the end of the western huge entering him natunitgets it right after trade anything else. There have been a lot of times when we started slowly, world war ii, we started slowly. Pretty soon the great capacity of the country to put women to work with them and had gone to war, the ability of individuals to try this and step up immobilized with what made us able to ultimately defeat the german war and you see some element of that now as a privatesector steps up, i saw interesting that people are making masks, everybody that has a sewing machine is making masks and selling them on various sites, will probably have more masks than we could ever need, ordinary people can go out and have a walk, the ability to have a response of chaotically but maybe ultimately effectively is something that we should not underestimate and as for china, we have to go back to this scenario that the trend to build, that system should have responded to both people who are trying to sound a warning alarm early like the young doctor, instead they silenced them, they threatened them, they arrested them and that is what caused it to spread. If we let them turn that into a narrative, you are now giving up mass in the world, yes it will have an effect. There are some backlash to the diplomacy by sending out the supply and its coming from people who are reminded them that they might not have needed the masks had it not started in wuhan. I go back, this is not the first time weve had this problem with stars. This is going to have to be a time when theres a wreck and for china and to the United States yes, he is right, we shouldve responded more quickly but now that we are responding, were seen the strikes of her decentralized. Im getting a lot of questions about china and the World Health Organization in taiwan, john asked the following specific question, do we now have leverage with the chinese relative to their isolation of taiwan. This is a very important point, it is something when i secretary of state we fell on hard times to get the chinese to allow taiwan to be omitted to the w. H. O. Because he said as the health organization. We dont have to suggest that taiwan is a separate country and want to be part of the Health System of the world and they would not budge. You are seen that story to why the World Health Organization shut down the young woman who is trying to question about taiwan and if china has made it in one of the most important efforts that they shared taiwan never gets represented in anything that might suggest its not part of china and the World Health Organization was responding to that in the way that they answer the question, yes it is time to have that discussion, also we need to take a look at whether the World Health Organization has been politicized. It has not responded particular well, it seems to accept initially the chinese argument that there was no human to human transmission with the disease but of course a lot of people thought there was not human to human transmission but it has not been to my mind a very effective response, its important to look at it and by the way there are organizations that seem not to get politicized. An organization that i think has been very effective at not being political and therefore being able to operate in all kinds of cases no matter what the circumstances, we need to take a hard look so the w. H. O. Can look at that. I think were all puzzled about why the United States was not more prepared for the pandemic then we were, robert asked the following question, george w. Bush asked for the country to compare for a pandemic in 2005 at the National Institute of health, and government help us understand your experience and what happened. They read a book about the 1918 pandemic and then he Read Everything that he could about pandemics and he came back and he said we gotta get prepared because it wont come one way or another, my colleague who is a Homeland Security person said ive been dealing with terrorism, do i really have to deal with pandemics, he was right. What happened was often when we have Something Like a pandemic like sars, its like its mobilized and then we tend to forget and ten to go back to where we were. Maybe we need this time to learn this time for what we did, we created the National Counterterrorism center which institutionalized that ability to deal with terrorism and by the way the systems that were built in other countries, i think after this is over, we need to look at whether we need more permanent structure on the pandemic side, i have colleagues at stanford in biology that will tell you that we will continue to experience this and not just this pandemic but the bus maybe winning, maybe we need more permanent structure and ill be a little bit sympathetic with those who are in position because you can never quite plan for what you actually experience, if you had said this is a pandemic that is not going to affect children, practically out all, you would not have got that, the next crisis, the next pandemic will be different but i do think some more permanent structures to deal with may be necessary. We all read in the newspapers and the news reports about the uncertainty associated with the origin of the virus, thomas has a question to get to that, is there an inkling at all that this couldve been other than an unfortunate natural biological event. Let me just say that, i dont believe it was an intentional way or that it was a form of bioterrorism, i dont think there is any reason to believe the chinese wouldve had endangered their own population in their own economy for that matter or in that way. There are some inklings out there that there was a lab that was engaged in experimentation in the neck sars pandemic so it was for good reasons that they were doing it, there is a news report out today and one of the major papers that some people in the state department who are actually serving in china visited a lab and said the practices dont look very good, there are inklings here in their as the questioner said but i dont think that we know after, this again is a conversation to have with the chinese into put together the testimony of people who might have been around and watch the transmission, what the market in the place that is happening, this is the place of the chinese could really come clean and help a lot. But i dont think it was intentional, mightve been something other than a wet market that remains to be seen. Connie asked a question to refer to your experience of secretary of state and i dont think she means asking you to assess secretary pompeo, if you are currently the secretary of state, what would you recommend of the first steps to keep the u. S. Economy going as it relates to relation to the other country. The question of when the u. S. Economy is going to be going again is one that the president , the governor are going to have to weigh the healthcare advice and the advice that theyre getting from their Health Systems and their experts against the continued shutdown of the economy which is starting to have huge effects on peoples lives and i dont have anything particularly to add to that except to say everybody is going to want to see those economies going again and it will affect the u. S. Leadership how quickly we come out of the economic recession that is not being predicted by any number of people, i will say the signals we send about how we intend to come out of that crisis are important signals. Do we signal that were going to engage in more trade war with people. Do we signal that theres more sanctions coming, these would be elements that i would think would dampen the sentiment for economic recovery in ways that we dont need a particular point in time, its another reason i keep mentioning the g20 because the g20 is the largest economy, they actually did get together after the financial during the financial crisis of 2008 2009 and put out principles about not engaging in Protection Measures and to be fair some still engaged in protectionist measures but there were the signals about how to come out of this together because the truth of the matter is the u. S. Economy cannot fully recover in isolation given the nature of globalization so just sending a signal that were not going to engage in trade war even if we want supply chain to come home or manufacturing to come home, i think that could be an Important Message to the world and pretty early on if you can start some discussions about what trade policy or trade agreements you might restart with the uk or others. Here is another question which asked you to rely on your experience but this time as a leader in education sector, this is reynosa from the uk wants to know what do you think the impact of the pandemic will be on Higher Education system. That is really a question that we need to give a lot of thought to as leaders in the academy. We have known for some time that Online Learning was coming in ever larger we am known for a long time that our students are much more proficient at the Virtual World than those that we teach them. And now that we have said we can learn online and essentially as well as you can learn in the classroom practically with larger classes, what do we want the role of Online Learning to be in the context of a broader educational experience. How much do we want to be in huge classrooms and some of the disciplines, they might be better off to do personalized learning where they can learn at their pace i know i wouldve benefited in geometry because i never got it and maybe going back over four or five times online i wouldve gotten it. I think its up to educators to say we told you to study online, lets understand the experience and see how it fits into the broader educational experience, it cannot replace the one on one or the 20 on one small seminar we dont think. But our students are very adapted to the Virtual World, universities with the graveyard, this is going to change who we are, how we deliver knowledge and i hope are ahead of the curve, not behind it. Youre a student of liberty in governance and democracy and there are some interesting questions i want to ask you, katrina asks do you think this virus will have a negative impact on the democratic processes in developing countries and i presume she means is marked tendency for authoritarianism and can the United States help mitigate this. Absolutely there will be authoritarian he will try to take advantage of this and say i am able to control the circumstances that youre going to do better to control the environment to try to control what knowledge people get, yes there will be that but i really do believe authoritarian generally show them they are not very good at governing and that there are people that will see that in those of us that care about the threat of democracy across the world and those of us that care about those people who want the same rights that we have should be preaching that message and we should be storing up Civil Society to deal with the problems of these countries and a lot of these places, Civil Society is against complete authoritarianism, both of the people in their small group in womens rights or for environmental sustainability in these countries, thats the kind of defense, major effort to shore up Civil Society would be very helpful against what the person who asked the question is right, there will be authoritarian to try to use all of the tools whether tracking or the like and Contact Tracing for instance that you can see, Contact Tracing in the hands of democracy, Contact Tracing in the hands of authoritarian regime is another so these are things to definitely watch out for. Daniel asked that question, he said what might the longterm impact on u. S. Liberty be, will some of the strictures remain in place after the star has been diminished, any Contact Tracing you mentioned, the use of technology, et cetera to trace people and find out what theyre doing and what the temperature is, the ability for state and local officials to tell people stay at home, ive discovered something about our democracy and the power of governors in the past month, will that continue. Its going to continue for a while and i think if you asked the great majority of americans they are voluntarily willing to be told what to do, that is only going to go on so long, weve already seen a little bit of slippage but in a crisis like this it is always been the case that we look to authority and we are more willing and other times to limit our individual rights and liberty for the greater good, thats what were doing right now, that will not last forever and its one reason i think governors are starting to think about what release valves can they used to give people the sense that they have control their own life again, that would come to things like Contact Tracing in google and what facebook is doing, a lot of that will be voluntary, you can say you cant take my temperature but i say well then you cannot go in here and infect other people, some of this will be voluntary but also this, i worry not at all about the permanent loss of our liberty on giving the measures that were taking right now because we have so many institutions in so many levels and a free press and Civil Society that will be a check on how long these authorities can control what we do, it will, it is already a conversation about whether certain liberties are being abridged, that is our great protection and authoritarian systems nobody is having that conversation and in our system you will have it, one other point, we balance security and our liberty across institution and the presidency is always going to be as the commanderinchief and the protector of the country more concerned about the security in congress will pass laws to determine how much the stays in place and how much does not and ultimately we have the court, i guarantee you somewhere along here somebody is going to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if they think their Constitutional Rights have been violated so we have the protection of institutions that i think will function just fine, for now we are doing something quite amazing, the chinese can order people in their penalties for not following, we are basically asking 300 million americans to make good individual choices on behalf of the greater good and i have to same pretty proud of the way that were doing it right now. Thank you for your comments, we reached the end of the hour and i want to close by putting pressure on you, you been in government during tough times, 9 11, stars, the great recession, youre bound to learn some lessons about resiliency inbound to learn lessons about governing and conflict in closing, what can you share about our current times and what kind optimism can you leave us with. I can say ive seen so many times how resilient the United States is, first and foremost because we have so many sources of resilience weathers individuals who have taken on responsibility of making sure the person might be elderly getting their groceries, whether its the people who are making masks and selling them on the internet, whether its the people who are in healthcare workers and First Responders who were taking their own lives into their hands to go into serve and we owe and are enormous gratitude to them that they are there, the volunteers from Health Systems around the country who went to new york to help under the circumstance, the government cannot order that, that is what resilience needs to come within, we have a resiliency of innovation, the multiple efforts to get a vaccine, the multiple experts to get therapeutic that might help treat the disease for those who are more catastrophic, and a resiliency of a system that does not put all the pressure on washington but were governors and multiple healthcare officials are trying to make good decisions for their citizens, i have seen the resiliencys before and i want to repeat something i said before, sometimes it takes us a while to get going but boy and we get going in the private sector gets involved in a way that they are, this is a pretty resilient society, pretty resilient country because it has so many sources of resiliency and finally when we get through this i think we will go back out into the world and help others to be resilient which is a lesson of the compassion that we have in dealing with the aids epidemic and ebola and i think will be there to do it again. Secretary, thank you for todays discussion, it was really fun. Hello imad goldman a reporter with the New York Times good to see you thank you for being here. We know a lot about you. You have been on a book tour or maybe a redemption tour