Transcripts For CSPAN Rep. Michael Turner On Military Intelligence Reform 20221006

Service along with the giving you a front row seat to democracy. Congressman Michael Turner Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee talks about ways to reform the committee and how information is shared across intelligence can. He is meeting with former Intelligent Community members counsel. Good morning and welcome, of Atlantic Council. It is my pleasure to welcome you to todays event on intelligence, community, and Intelligence Committee reform. The Atlantic Council is delighted to host this latest installment in the house of Intelligence Committees beyond the skiff scif this is where members of the committee are speaking on key Company Issues in the public setting. I would like to thank our distinguished panelist whom i will introduce in a moment for participating in our audience and for joining us here at our headquarters not just in the United States, but around the world. That is one thing we learned todays event is where thats consistent with that. And consistent with that mission, the center also has a forward defense practice run by clementine starling and it is designed to shape around the greatest military defense and intelligence challenges facing the u. S. And its allies and creates forwardlooking assessments to the trends, technologies, and concepts that will define the future of warfare and the future of the Intelligence Community as well that is what 20 years and after the tragic attack of 9 11 the u. S. Intelligence community and the entire u. S. National security focus on counterterrorism. But today, the House Permanent Select Committee is undertaking a number of initiatives to adjust the committees work towards strategic collection of analysis that focuses on the Great Power Competition with china. And russia. Congressional support is essential to helping the Community Meet this challenge including by helping the now 18 18 components of the Intelligence Community or needing and synchronizing their efforts effectively. The Intelligence Community has the responsibility to work with the rest of the congress to use legislative and budgetary tools to ensure all that elements of the Intelligence Community are enforced and they have the appropriate authorities and they are fulfilling their statutory roles by countering the threats posed by u. S. Adversaries. Mere privilege today to have a distinguished panel of intelligence. Experts and formal officials to discuss these topics. Moderating the panel will be mike the representative of ohios district. Congressman turner is the ranking number of the house of the Intelligence Committee. He has served in Congress Since 2002 election. And in that time, he served in leadership roles including as Ranking Member of several subcommittees of the house including House Armed Services committee and as i mentioned earlier, the parliamentary sediment. The Panel Includes carrie dane former member of congressman matt craney and carrie being served as a deputy undersecretary for intelligence and security from 2017 to 2020 overseeing the defensive Department Intelligence agencies. The National Security agency, the national geo space agency, and the ash office. She is the director of the Aerospace Security project csis jane harman served as a u. S. Congressman from california during which time she was also Ranking Member of the house of the Intelligence Committee. She has a lot of expertise in this and after her time in congress, she led the Wilson Center as resident and now the distinguished fellow they are. Joining is virtually matt you are in new orleans right . Thats right. And my sons are off the screen here. And he is the initial counsel for new orleans we are glad you are here he is the acting director and started his career at this eia and now focuses at the cia and now focuses on deterrence. And finally glenn knight serves as u. S. Congressman from virginia including amber ship of the how farmhouse Services Committee he now leads this senator serving the president ceo. That is a lot of firepower and i know we are going to get some great insights to the super panel. This panel is public and on the record. We encourage our audience on zoom to ask questions including using the q and a at the bottom. You can hit that to try to raise your hand and we will see if we have a chance to into questions we will work on this as we go along. Please be sure you identify your name and affiliation with your question as this is an on direct event. We encourage our audience to join twitter using forward defense. Congressman turner thing to you and i turned over to you. Thank you so much i want to thank you personally for hosting this. This gives us an opportunity to do outreach to get perspective of those individuals and experts in the Atlantic Council but our ability to take their expertise directly by Getting Congress to policymaking and joining this scope center have a great history of not only in the think Tank Community to encourage expertise but also to work with congress to ensure that expertise is actually tied to those policymakers. We thank you for that heritage. Thank you for having us today. This is part of our beyond the scif series. And discuss things that we need to take up in the Intelligence Committee. As ive discussed with each of you, it is our goal on the Intelligence Committee to turn it back to a focus on National Security we gone through a period that has been tumultuous in the Intelligence Committee and we have been looking at formulating a Mission Statement so that our Mission Statement will be how do we take policymaking and decisionmaking and match it to the need that relate to actual intelligence information that we have. We do not want the Intelligence Committee to be a bunch of people in the basement under the capital. We want to learn how we can best utilize that information to ensure that policymaking is served. And in making that shift to National Security, we would like your advice and expertise what are things we need to focus on in National Security . What you think the Intelligence Community has done well in and has neglected. And as you know, after 9 11, we reformed the Intelligence Community but we did not reform congress. So we have to discuss how do we break down the barriers so that intelligence is utilized across committees and all is he making and decisionmaking. We have under unbelievable distinguished career and it will be unique in perspective and help us have this discussion. We want to talk about what should we do, how should we do it, and what are our areas of focus. We are going to talk about the intelligence products in the Intelligence Community and how we tie them mystically outside the federal government. How congress ties to the federal gun itself in intelligence. And congruence in and of itself. And utilize intelligent so you can make better decisions. I want to start with the legislation that jane had accomplished when she was in congress and that is reducing overall classification act. You were very concerned that we were not taking intelligence and getting it out of the federal government and local communities. And then to Law Enforcement said that we can make certain we are safe area to get started your view of legislations accomplishment over a decade since that occurred are we doing better . Do you think intelligence is serving domestically outside of the walls of the Intelligence Community . Thank you. In a word about fred. I spent a decade as the president ceo of the Wilson Center. I called the Atlantic Council a frenemy and that was a affectionate term. Two people are missing from this discussion both inactive here in the past years. Who i think everyone is the greatest National Security advisor on the planet and the other is something you and i work very closely with a democrat and california. In california. She had roles at the state department and cared a lot about the subject she worked on. And you, he overlapped in congress and since congress, the thing about you that is so marvelous is that you are to your poor bipartisan focus on how do we solve hard problems for the country . And the number of people who still want to do that is not the long list that we should have. So on this topic, first of all, with 9 11, i was not the Ranking Member yet of the committee but i was walking toward the dome of the d Intelligence Committee used to be howells in the howells in the dome of the capitol. It used to be howells debt housed in the capital. But all of a sudden it closed in the office close and we had no it back should bash evacuation plan in congress and we are were gathered around the front of the capitol for a while in until some of us picked ourselves up before we went to the headquarters of Capitol Police and we finally got the capital reopened we never should have closed it in my view. And we went on and for a long while, as you point out, we focused exclusively on counterterrorism and i think in many ways congress was disadvantaged and did not play the role it should have played. To congress, i did have a role as chairman of the Intelligence Committee of Homeland Security and focusing on how we get information to First Responders. It is clear that there still are threats from outside and also domestic threats. Who will protect us . It is First Responders and communities. What i saw so clear was that information coming up from First Responders to the fbi and other agencies was over classified. And we could not get information about what the real threats were endless they had super duper security clearances which every member does not have. The bill you asked me about it was the last bill i authored before i Left Congress and i do not think enough has happened with it. I still think we over classified in case anyone is missing this v, the former president this movie, the former president says he can classify things just by thinking about it. But surely if we are trying to protect the country we need to make sure from my view on a more systematic basis that we do not over classified based on reducing embarrassment or just because we are a big bureaucracy and we are protecting turf that we only classified to protect sources. Thats a great transition. Moving from counterterrorism and not leaving it behind. As you look at the portfolio of the threats that we have, what are the things you think we need to focus on more . Thank you for convening this. [indiscernible] getting outside the basement and having these conversations in soliciting and sharing your thoughts i think the initiative to doing that will be an important part to doing the initiative youre focused on. I think we should start on what we are trying to focus on vide classifying the greater sharing of information on internal customers whether it is we are in a different game than i was in Armed Services with you we work for just we were focused on counterterrorism efforts. And we were too focused on that to deal with todays challenges we are dealing with peer adversaries that are leveraging political, military, economic, tools of coercion and they are doing it and a highly coordinated way we have to up our game to win the challenge. We have to think about it in terms of your goal serving internal customers on the hill, i had the advantage before going to congress of having worked for two agencies in the executive ranch. We have a chain of command and you know who your boss is and they have challenges with sharing information. You have to find friends and allies and make decisions to work with individuals to share information its like you need an nsc function in congress to coordinate and share. That is the mindset i bring to the challenge but with tackling the overall goal, i welcome you to ship thinking about the function of sharing between committees so there is a better coronation. State sharing information is a whole challenge in our competition with china and with russia now with what is happening in europe. We have to move these levers at the same time but theres a third element on the table to consider. We saw with the russian invasion of ukraine this administration deployed public intelligence effectively sharing information with the world about the intent of his regime to move forces in ukraine. I think we need to lean into that strategy dealing with our competition with china. Countries that practice trade things that use corruption and court industrial espionage to try to give themselves a leg up, we need to be ready to expose that. But to do that we have to be ready to figure out as suggested, how to deep last declassify the right way you do not want to expose sources and methods but you want to share so that the world can get a better picture of what is happening. We are in a competition now with democracy versus authoritarian systems and in order to have democracy you have to put information out there and make it assessable. Thats a good point. I do think it changes the outcome rather than change the peoples behavior. What you think we should be focusing on maps . As the acting director of the scope i want to thank you congressman turner for hosting todays event. I think this is an important discussion. I would like to start with the points. First, this is already been mentioned but we need to reorient the Intelligence Community we built an intelligence apparatus that was well designed for exquisite collection and targeting of highvalue targets but that is not the kind of Intelligence Community we need for the challenges we face today. This is a longterm challenge we need to be thinking in terms of years, decades, analyzing trends, chinese influence in Chinese Military power. That is my first point. The second point, we should have a preference for and a priority on analysis over collection. I think personnel they need to be recruiting and training the kinds of people that do a different type of analysis. That we are grounded in. This is the Chinese Communist party and so on. A different type of analysis in the face of the past 25 years. Third and finally, we need to make sure that congress is asking them what the questions are relevant to congress in addition to my other roles i was recently appointed by congress to serve on a commission [indiscernible] essentially congressional consumer of intelligence products in that role. So questions like why is China Building up Strategic Forces and how does it think about using Nuclear Weapons or questions that are develop to us. Just he is very focused on export controls and securing supply chain and surpassing intelligence issues and supply chains and how they are effected. Affecting chinas ability from the u. S. These are some of the major issues that we should be thinking about as we think about providing resources and oversight and authorities to the Intelligence Community. That is a good point that we need different skills in facing russia and china. When you think we should be highlighting carrie . Thank you in particular i had the good fortune of working for you and when i think strategic thought, when i think about going out to the field and learning you can i learn that from you. Thank you. I work for you even though you were on staff. I would like to echo what others have said which is very much i encourage the committee to be laser focused on china and the competition. And technology. And really the fundamental question of how do you maintain a competitive advantage. Intelligence has been a competitive advantage for the u. S. At but in less you work on it, it read has a risk of fading. A couple areas in that, looking at our posture, capabilities, operations, these are muscles when you think about peers that have not been exercised in 20 years with operations and capabilities you will find the intelligence posture has been focused on counterterrorism but is not what is needing to be affected in a operational environment. What i mean by that . He have long enjoyed uavs going in and we are able to hover over compounds and monitor them. We have fixed Operational Intelligence sites in the field that send information back via Satellite Communications to fix issues in the u. S. No jamming of gps human operations in uncontested environments. All of that is changing and we need to be in that mindset. When your satcom is being targeted and you are operating on a wired surveillance city and all your digital footprint can be detected. So how do we inc. About delivering intelligence to the war fighters at the edge in a contested environment. The other piece i offered is, intelligence communities need to be thinking about the conflict below the threshold of our conflict. We are seeing the manipulation of information domain and china is stealing advanced Technology Intellectual Property and the one belt one road 5g efforts that they are making. The department of defense how many tanks and aircraft, but in a more competitive economics based what are the implications for National Security . And that is something the Intelligence Community can push on. On the technology front, the Intelligence Community has a manual labor intensive process. Technology exists today to be able to better automate that and create Analytic Insights out of that whether it be language, translation, eggs wording fullmotion video, exporting fullmotion video, we need to be figure out a sense of urgency that i think the committee is positioned to do. Integrating them into missions for analysts. That is an excellent point. We answered a question of what you need to focus on now i would like to answer the question and my question to other panelists. You havent asked arians to with this the relationship between the Intelligence Community we will only be as good as they are willing to share how do we enhance that and ensure the relationship works as we look to those challenges . I love this question theres a lot of work to do and there was when i was there. Let me make a few points about that. Right after 9 11, we all thought we america thought we would be attacked again. America was attacked and if you listen to the comments right after 9 11, it was all about america is under attack and all full democrats and republicans. And on 9 11 we got the capital open at 5 00 p. M. We stood on the steps of the capital and held hands and it did not matter whether the person was next to you was republican or democrat or a precious moment, the country came together. I think a huge problem here is the country has now splintered again including at least until your leadership lets give you credit. The Intelligence Committees and the partisanship of recent years, not this minute but a few prior years has hurt the ability of the Intelligence Committees to do almost anything. And that has been a gigantic loss for the country. I was listening to this list of things the committee should do and i suggest cautiously that it is a huge list. And maybe just trying to pull back a little bit. What is the role of the Intelligence Committee it is to do oversight over the functioning of the executive ranch. Intelligence enterprise. Oversight not to run the executive branch in intelligence oversight into fund the end the executive Branch Oversight those are huge assignments of themselves. I think those are the two lanes to focus on and there has been a conversation for years about whether the Intelligence Committee should have more say in funding because most of the funding for the Intelligence Community is in various places in the budget for our defense budget. And finding those nuggets and making sure they are right has been difficult at one time it was a proposal of having people on defense appropriations i did not know if that is still continuing. But it is a really good idea to connect funding to oversight which has been hard to do without the leverage of saying no, we will not fund that program because it is not modern and does not leverage technology. Oversight and funding and the last of the new word bipartisanship. It is a huge deal to keep the Intelligence Committees out of the to my mind, in normas sleep dysfunctional partisan atmosphere of congress. It is a shaman. I say the Business Model of congress is blame the other side for not solving the problem because if you work with the other side you are bipartisan and if you are bipartisan you have a primary in both parties and that is how you survive or dont in your district because so many districts are designed to protect one party. I am just saying that. That is something to your core, yes you are republican and that is fine but you need a Strong Republican Party to quote nancy pelosi that you need parties that are focused on working together sis to solve the hardest problems and these are the hardest problems. I agree. Carrie you have been in the department of intelligence and with that youve had to work with the relationship between the department of defense of intelligence and congress. What do we need to do to enhance that it is essential that congress has the right information and its incident essential they have to support. How can we make that relationship better . As a great question. Having seen both sides of that, i can empathize with both perspectives. If i can offer first i absolutely agree with congress staying focused and its oversight role. The privilege of supporting the communities committees here sometimes the bureaucracy cannot move on. If i think about examples here in the last 1020 years the congressional push getting theater Missile Defense and even more recently commercial Space Capabilities that the Intelligence Committees have been strong on those are areas i think congress is uniquely positioned to push the department on and create a sense of urgency because they have a broader perspective. In terms of the cooperation, i think its easy to put up a defense. And have a executive branch. How do we create the right venue for discussions. It is easy to throw out this is we cannot talk about it. There has to be away way starting with trust of bringing the members of Congress Giving them a more fulsome picture of the strategic choices that the are wrestling with. The budget challenges and dod in particular would be hesitant to say i cannot discuss that until the intelligence request comes out but there is a lot of value in having a better understanding of the pressures and factors that go into that decisionmaking. Youve been on the other side of this and you see where we are asking for information from the administration of whether or not we are being responsive where the democracy side against bureaucracies but at the same time, in order for us to do policymaking, youre saying our role is oversight speak a bit about the importance of congress and what is going on and how this relationship could work better. Its important our democracy cannot function without that information so we can do its oversight responsibilities. Having said that, i am struggling with the notion, up with a formal assess to make this work right instinct comes back to i feel like informal channels of communication are the way to go. Everybody hates this the back room that is out of the public view where deals got made but to some extent, some offcamera conversations between the branch would be useful i say this because i know there is goodwill you represented front the congress in terms of doing your job better. Theres also the problem once questions get asked publicly theres an adversary or relationship that develops and those are driven by other political questions. But i would say there is goodwill in the administration as well and i say that because ive been asked by members from three different executive agencies asking advice of how do we deal better with congress . They ask questions like we are getting this information request is a dead adversarial relationship . Nsa essay yes it already is, but if you get the request formally you are doing something wrong. What am i doing wrong . Youd did not what is your advice, develop back channel where you can share information. Try to share off the record some things that might help home the relationship. You will still have to deal with battling because it is part of politics that it could help with more people lean into the idea of informal information sharing. I think you are doing that already by asking the russian and reaching out. I would encourage friends in the administration to do the same. I would do want to take the opportunity since you called two highlight this partisanship question because i think it is fundamentally important to everything you are trying to accomplish. It is easy for our politics to drag us into polarized partisanship. The political culture almost demands this. As long as you try to say above that out of that is not always the decision of the chair Ranking Member. But several years back we made a decision a bipartisan decision to run the committee as best we could in a way that was sharing bipartisan and the administration together i think it is a good model i think you have done great work and reaching out and setting that tone as well. I want to give you credit for that as well. I think that is a Problem Solver for this equation. Can i add something to that . As we said at the Wilson Center, i am in violent agreement with everything that glenn pardon me, said. Oops. But, i think it is important to point out maybe this audience knows that, that the Intelligence Community does not make policy it presents information to policymakers so that we can make better policy in my view. Bad intelligence almost never produces good policy. Good intelligence hopefully does produce good policy. But its important for the Intelligence Community to know what it is. And not to overreach wide. You mentioned why. Overreach why. Mike is the Ranking Member on Foreign Affairs after this election, he made chair intelligence after this Election Year and other committees can look at a lot of the challenges and im not saying intel should not but im saying they should look at the gathering intelligence chinas preventing china from getting our National Security technology. Excellent. How can the Intelligence Community and the administration in Congress Work together that are on this issue of information sharing and in the partisan cloud that has been over the Intelligence Committee and how we may be able to shine through that. I want to come to the intelligence share but i want to come back to the oversight issue because i think that is important. To be important roles congress has played an oversight of the Intelligence Community over the years is wicking into instances of in years is looking into instances where we can learn lessons and strengthen the Intelligence Community. The one that comes to mind recently, not a shocking of course but the estimates of russias military capability for an invasion of ukraine has been reported that the Intelligence Community was, like many of us, thought russia would be able to take key of key of kyiv pretty quickly. And i think the administrations policy for if they wouldve viewed it that way for that it might take longer that they may have dealt with it differently. And that is one area that may be worth looking into in the next congress. On intelligence sharing, i discussion of sharing across and within congress between congress and the executive branch i would like to expand and bring out allies and partners i think everyone recognizes that our network of partners is one of our strengths in this area of strategic competition at the Atlantic Council working closes closely with allies is part of our mission. Too often, we are unwilling to share information and we make it harder to come to a Common Threat assessment. We are not telling them everything we know and it is hard to come up with comments strategies and policies that we cannot share information with them. And we are working on a project called no foreign to yes foreign to try to bring in those allies. And weve seen when the committee is not working from the outside, what are your thoughts as to what we can chain do to change that . I think nonpartisanship is an important part of what the Intelligence Committee should be doing and intelligence more broadly think you should say we used to say that politics stopped at the waters edge that is not the case some more. So i think the most important thing the Intelligence Committee can do is focus on issues and take out these big challenges that we have and i think if we are focusing on these issues, the risk of bipartisan consensus that china is the major challenge we are facing. So i think focusing on these big challenges where there is a bipartisan considered his there is a problem and we will do a lot of that work for us and it will believe us looking for partisanship. Can i pick up on the intelligence sharing and allies and cooperation point that was just made. You think about the foreign disclosure process today and how we do lines. It takes the analytic power and a finished document and then they go back and figure out what we can say and it its released and that is not timely. And as you look at the incorporation of technology we need to figure out how we get to a point where we are sharing in real time at a data level not just a finish written product level. I had a great conversation with australian counterparts last weekend they instituted in their Intelligence Community is guess forward that is their baseline and in order to create something that is no foreign they have to go to a higher level supervisor to get approval for it. Its a 180 degree way of thinking differently than we think about on it. And if i can jump back on this, it is important for house Intelligence Community committee to Work Together across title x and title 50. There are a lot of Department Capabilities out there and the other day, you want to make sure the taxpayer taxpayer paul is paid once i was in an administration we had senior policymakers asking i want to understand red and blue together in the Intelligence Community could only provide one half of the equation and then you had to have somebody else present blue. So how do we figure out from a commercial exact branch and how do we bring the two sides together into a cohesive assessment. That is so important, the Intelligence Committee focuses on what we are doing the Intelligence Committee oka says on what our adversaries are doing in the two pieces of information are essential to decide on what we should be doing. It is that the wall comes down. And pulling the appropriators to the Intelligence Community and we held a joint hearing between the Intelligence Committee on important issues of space we done hypersonic but these are areas where you do not have a full picture where do you start . One thing to add they are, searching a focus on china is right. And less of a focus may be on russia although as one of you pointed out, we underestimated or overestimated russias capacity. But north korea just fired missiles over japan. And weve got to remember that and theres other stuff going on in this world lets think about the Southern Hemisphere and what is going on there etc. So there has to be a rising focus as well not just on the topics that everyone thinks are the highest priority. I was going to ask. In the area of intelligence sharing with committees it goes beyond the Intelligence Committee to some extent, information is treated as not shared. And we are in a we have to move fast. And you cannot do that if you are siloing information. In your experience, you have seen congressman debates going on and you think this person does not have the full picture is that a danger . It is a danger i can only remember one instance where members of the Armed Services committee came in to listen to what was being said they are. I know there is always a time crunch every day a full schedule however, some crosspollination of this information is important because we are in a nation competition now we cannot just focus on our division of silos. And let me put one other thing on the table if i can at the risk of being hopefully constructively controversial. I think in terms of goals you mentioned the Intelligence Community community and you mentioned methodology and i think we need to figure out how to counter foreign disinformation more constructively. I think it will be one of the hardest challenges because and i believe that someday an american is going to receive the ultimate statement of work for solving the clock following question for how to address foreign efforts so in division of this country without it being polarized. That is a hard thing to do and can you grapple with this question and expand a very little time on whos fault it is and all the time of what we should do to solve it. But i think its important we reflect on that because we do not figure that out that is one of the most effective ways to harm us is to pray upon our distinct conditions. Thats an important point. This is a debate that has publicly so people understand what the dividing lines are. This is part of our oversight issue and the information sharing from the Intelligence Committee is going to be important for us to challenge this and work with you because you are right. There are foreign actors that attempt to to influence outcomes of our democracy and there are people who are overstepping in the Intelligence Community and areas where it is and effort and its quilters debate where debate needs to happen. And in the free debate of society that we have a democracy it is the important balance. We will turn to outside questions. I want to see if anyone has additional items on what we discussed the far end and we will turn to our outside. I would build off of that. I would hope that the congress can shape a discussion on this. This ties into the intelligent share with earners and collaboration of caught cross committees that we tend to protect this information rightly so, that have we reached a tipping weight where the cost or consequence of not sharing is causing us harm. And i think glenn make it made a point by sharing what we have on ukraine we impacted the outcome by d classifying those. I totally agree with that but that also is impressive because the Intelligence Community and the executive branch is doing so much better. Lets understand it was an effort, however it happened, to politicize the top levels of the Intelligence Community. That is over excellent people being appointed and confirmed to the top levels. It is something i worked on after two massive intelligence womans 9 11 and the other was met weapons of mass destruction that did not exist in iraqi. And that was the joined across these tell and just agencies. But we do finally have, i think, a wellfunctioning Intelligence Community in the executive branch. Now the challenges to make sure now the challenge is to make sure that we elect qualified bipartisan members to the committees. It is not go through the usual Committee Process in the house and im not sure how it works in the senate, but if you want good oversight, you have to put good people on the committee on both sides. And by the way, i am looking at it a super person playing the a role on the committee. And we will turn to those who gives give us questions from the audience. Our first audience questions he asked domestic terrorism have a greater threat to the United States International Terrorism and theres no bipartisan consensus on intelligence domestic threats and which groups are a threat how do we get to a bipartisan place where intelligence agencies should be flagged on . This is a question with i want to underscore theres a significant danger of us turning the Intelligence Community on our citizens. For democracy in the debate we need to have two support democracy. There are important things we need to look for. Glenn was identifying the issue of outside influences that were tipping to democracy. Internally, there will always be various in our judicial process and the criminal enforcement theres always going to be those elements that do not harm society. But we have to be very careful in this debate. Other comments . Yeah. We have to be very careful. Because we do not have a tradition of universal surveillance which is what china now has an that is not something we want to replicate. I often say that security and liberty are not a zerosum game they are a positive or negative sum game. You get more of both or less of both and we have to calibrate our policies to figure out who is around trying to harm us with a free society. One of the scary things in terms of the mass terror attacks recently is the average age of people perpetrating is 1820 one. And many of them have use guns that are prevalent in this country and im not getting into that debate but i am just paying, maybe we could raise the age we buy a gun to 21 may be that the deal with violence just a thought but my point is how do we find these people a lot of them are in their basements completely disinfect disconnected and will be spy on everybodys ace meant . Are there markers from School Reports maybe how do we get those though but how do we find a way to anticipate and do Mental Health counseling and all the conversations we are having but it is a very hard problem and it requires very careful analysis and i think that is what you were debating mike. This is why we need you and to focus and think ahead of these problems. A number of the questions focus on the challenge of recruiting individuals in the Intelligence Community. What initiatives need to be taken on by the Intelligence Community to get more individuals in the committee with the correct skills and priorities . Oh that is a tough question i wish i had great answers for it. I think part of the challenge these days is there are so many attractive options for really small smart folks coming in especially with stem talent and they can get paid a lot more by going to the private sector and what is the u. S. Government have to offer . I always go back to mission. I it is a focus on the substance division and the challenges. That is incredibly rewarding to be in that kind of government service. But i also think there is a recognition of the need to professionally develop these individuals they are are so many offer opportunities to learn incredible things in the Intelligence Community from operations to technology to learning about Foreign Countries to hitting the most explicit action to our capabilities. Young people do not stay in one one job for their entire career. That is the reality in this day and age so how does the Intelligence Community designed the professional development and promotion and brought opportunities to get them exposure to different aspects of the community. And hopefully they say in about the time they become seniors they have the breath of mission and community and challenge. I would answer that i think in the immediate timeframe we could do better with security processes to speed things up. You can have a Great Mission and he want to serve but you are told it is a couple years and you dont know how long it will be before you can start your work is people will go find other jobs. To make that more efficient rather than every five year kind of thing would make or since. I also think a big approach would be National Service and urging americans to join a Service Program and use that as a way to find good talent i know thats a longerterm solution that i think its one we should look at. On security one of the ideas we had is our show clearances we do not have to clear everybody to the same level. If you have somebody who is a native speaker of some dialect in some country that you need, that person can read cables but does not have to be the bigger pictures shared with him or her a student could do that for extra work after class. They like that where we get the advantage of understanding local dialects but we did not get a disadvantage of somebody that could from another country. Reaching into colleges is going to be important as we begin the process of giving people preclearance as they do not have to wait years for they get out they will come out with it. Do you have thoughts on the workforce . I was going to make the clearance point as well i teach at Georgetown University and i have many students interested in going into the universe the Intelligence Community and they have internships they are trying to figure these out weeks and my ahead of time and they pursue options and they are told it will be a year before clearance comes through i think that is probably the single most important thing you can do to get young people into the Intelligence Community. One of our audience members ask how the war in ukraine commercial sources of intelligence have included this losers of satellite imagery how does this trend impact the work of the Intelligence Community and committee. It is important. I remember the arguments about public sources. And saying you cannot they are worthless we have to have a high grade retracted collection of information. But it turns out, guess what . Often reading newspapers or looking at twitter feed is a better source for finding out what is happening than anything else. And one of the issues was, back in my day, collection of a photograph from satellites in a lot of commercial satellite and a lot of stuff get a high enough grade of information to be very useful and timely. So we do not have to do one offs but there is a role for the commercial sector and for public sources that really augments and in some