Strategic and international studies. Those still in the hall, come on in. Look forward to having you here. My name is john henry. Im president at csis. My role today is entirely ornamental. Just to welcome all of you and to say how thankful i am to matt greene is here, bill lin will be with us later. You have made it possible for us to do the Global Security forum and we appreciate the opportunity. We have got a real lineup to a real lineup. We have the chairman of the joint chiefs coming. All six of the vice chiefs for the military services pit it is going to be a good day. The first panel is going to be a Stellar Group and we want to say thank you to michelle and tom and jennifer. Thank you for moderating. Kari is the genius who has been pulling this together. She picked the topic gathering storm. It refers to Winston Churchills famous autobiography really of the interwar period and how it was building up to what became the tragedy of world war ii. We dont want to imply that we are heading in that direction but we want to recognize the severity of the issues in front of us. We have this ghastly illegal war in ukraine. We have tension in the taiwan straits. We have a war in gaza pit we have iran throws 300 missiles at israel. I dont remember a time when we have had so much uncertainty and risk in the world and we are going to explore that today. I went to say thank you to you for being here. It is going to be a good day. You all have to make it a great day by your questions and i know you will do that. Please welcome kari to the stage. She is the one who has made this happen. [applause] good morning. Director of Aerospace Security project here with an International Security program. A pleasure to have you here answer the many folks joining us online. A stellar day. I want to go back to the title pit gathering strength in gathering storm. There will be an open question throughout the day. Are we in a gathering storm but equally importantly and more importantly, how do we muster our sources of american strength working with our allies and partners to address that gathering storm . A couple other items. What makes today and this forum particularly special is not just the caliber of the discussions and thought leaders we assembled today but that it is open to the public. No registration fees. That is you are going to get a diverse crosssection today and online of government industry, media, international attendees. Also interested students from around the world and private citizens. Having forums like this to Exchange Ideas and have a thoughtful Public Discourse is important in these turbulent times. We will have double breaks throughout the day. Who have coffee on the second floor. Use the opportunity to network and continue these important discussions. I want to recognize the honorable bill wynd, ceo of leonardo drs and former dictator he former deputy secretary of defense. Generous support has enabled us to host this forum today. In case of emergency, familiarize yourself with the exits here and the stairs and follow staff. Please keep your conference badges on. That allows us to know you are here affiliated with the conference today. With that, let me welcome to the stage or first panel and ask them to start meandering up here. Our first panel is called ends, ways, means, letting you a strategy with geopolitical reality. Our moderator is jennifer griffin, chief National Security correspondent at the fox news channel. The honorable michelle flournoy, managing partner at west exact advisors and from underscore terry of defense for policy. And dr. Tom mahnken, president and chief executive officer for the center for strategic and budgetary assessments. Going to turn it over to you, jennifer. Thank you. I have been at the pentagon covering National Security for 17 years. Prior to that i was overseas for 20 years. Im so grateful to be here today. I think the topic that we have chosen for this Global Security forum about strengthening storms and storms on the horizon, i sometimes say it when im at the pentagon, i feel like a meteorologist looking at the horizon and im watching the storm and that storm and trying to protect as they are moving into place. Used to be reduced to look at one storm at a time and that is no longer a luxury we have. Im grateful to be joined by michele who is the cofounding and executive founder of west Exec Advisors trip she served as intersecretary defense for policy under president obama and prior to that was at the pentagon thinking about strategy for president lincoln. At one point she was the highest rank female at the pentagon. Now we have many highranking females at the pentagon but she broke through those glass ceilings and has been studying war and what it takes to defend this country and the world for some time. She is a great strategic thinker so im grateful to have her here. Tom of course is the president and ceo of center for strategic and budgetary assessment. He is a navy reserve officer, spent 20 years teaching at the Naval War College and he has been writing recently. A decade ago tom focused on strategy in asia, past present and future. It will be interesting to look back on what you saw at that point, where we are and where we are going. Two years ago, you wrote could america when a new world war . No light hope we are not facing a new world war but if we are, can we win it . You have written about the race for technosecurity leadership visavis asia and elsewhere and defense planning. As our defense planning match the challenges placed by russia and china at the same time . Thank you, handle. I would like to start with you both spent time thinking about strategy and policy for years and you were looking toward the future when you were at the pentagon. What did you get right and what you get wrong yet go what did you get wrong . Thank you for convening us. It is such an important discussion because i do think 20 years on, 30 years on, we will look back and see it as a time of profound flux in the International System and an inflection point. I think that going back to my First Service in the Clinton Administration when we did the bottom up review, it was the first time in decades had taken a clean sheet of paper to do building on the work colin powell had started in the Bush Administration but to really do a clean sheet check on our assumptions, planning and for sizing and shaping. The real shift was towards regional challenges like iraq, north korea and so forth. It was a different time. There was a time people call it unicorn moment. Coming out of the cold war, the u. S. Was uniquely positioned as a global power and influence. What has changed now is that we see the rise of revisionist russia even though by many objective measures, russia has long been in decline but we have under Vladimir Putins ambition to recreate the soviet sphere of influence and as we have seen in ukraine, the use of military force to impose russias will on other sovereign states. We also have a rising china that is made clear under president xi jinping they are prepared to use coercive and aggressive measures to unilaterally change the status quo and the rollss international order. Most disturbing in my view is the willingness of not only russia and china but other malign powers like iran and north korea to start to form at least alignments of convenience if not the beginnings of actual alliances. In that context, a lot of the world took lily in asia but a lot of the worlds powers are there want to sit on the sidelines and not be drawn into this competition with the United States between the United States and china or russia or their there is what has been called swing states in different context. On some issues they will align with the u. S. And europe. On others, they will align with china and russia. It is a much more fluid, complex and unpredictable situation. I dont think we force all that in the day. I think we thought the unipolar moment was going to last much longer than it did. That is when you were looking at it in 1997. 2001. Was there anything you did see coming that is playing out now that you werent about . I think we saw certainly as you fastforward to the obama administration, a couple thanks. Back in the days of clinton, we thought the best way to contain iran was iraq to iraq and i run workaday computing and containing each other. I think the choice to go to war in iraq basically removed the shell of containment on iran and we have seen the growth of iran s use of pop of proxies, blind and fluent malign influence which is still a problem today. I dont think we sold the need to shift chinas we saw the need to shift chinas strategy until the second obama term should the thesis was if we enmeshed china and of in our International Institutions and with investment and have them an economic stake in the rules based order, it will be a responsible stakeholder. And that was a thesis shared across republican and democratic administrations since nixon. We did not realize that was not realistic. The theory was not going to work until much later. The optimism of americans that if we embrace something, we can make it better. Tom, you were at the pentagon from 2006 until 2009. It was the end of the Bush Administration. What did you get right, what did you get wrong in terms of thinking of strategy and policy Going Forward . Even before that i would go back to my time serving in the office of in the 1990s. Even going back then kind of scary to think 30 years, there was concern about, interest in the rise of china and Chinese Military modernization. That was a hypothetical future thing at the time to by the time the george w. Bush administration came into power, that was a key concern. If you look at the 2001 congenital defense review which was completed just before 9 11, it had a focus on china and the operational challenges posed by china. By the time i. There, the time i got there, we were still concerned about china. The chinese had carried out their First Successful antisatellite test in orbit. We were consumed understandably so by the wars in iraq and afghanistan. That looming threat, that growing threat came in second place to the wars we were in and for understandable reasons. We also saw the reemergence of russia as a real competitor. It became manifest to us with 2 10 speech at with putins speech at the munich security forum. My boss a good day bob gates was also there. What year are we talking about . Tom 2008. The georgia war also in 2008 and the russians resuming the pattern of bad behavior they had fortunately gone away from for a number of years. There is increasing concern about those issues but we were fighting two important wars in the middle east. The middle east has been like a win myint old and us down preventing the pivot to like a landmine preventing us from pivoting to asia. That we are now seeing make a difference on the battlefield. What can you point to we have noticed . One of the things i was very early on as undersecretary, had the opportunity to press for the u. S. Support for the iron dome system in israel and the theory at the time was if we could create really effective layered air and missile defenses for israel and reduce the number of casualties they would suffer from either hezbollah attacks or hamas attacks or know that we have seen iranian attacks, it would create space and time for decisionmakers to have a more recent, careful response and it would reduce the escalatory pressures. I think we have just seen that play out. The fact that irans the biggest attack that israel has suffered was effectively made not effective. That bought time for the israelis for others like the United States to weigh in and for the israelis to take more considered action. The whole layer and a lot of people were talking about the iran durham that night but there were other systems. Remind us what role the u. S. Played in helping israel. We do have a Security Assistance relationship with israel. We have a 10 year number into my of understanding. At the time it was Getting Congress to help invest in that system as part of the layered defense. I dont know how many lives it has saved over the years, but it has also allowed for more decisionmaking in this recent episode just as we had hoped. What weapon systems would you point to that maybe you argued for that these systems take so long to develop, what are you proud of that was put into place while you were there . Tom one that proceeded briskly that had its origins when i was in the pentagon but had a couple of false starts along the way a longrange strike was the b 21 raider that we were strongly advocating. Went through a couple iterations. Weaving along very quickly moving along very quickly. Jennifer what difference will that make strategically . Lindholm for the United States, being on one side of the pacific and having interests on the others to being able to strike with precision over long distances is key. We are now in a large values of large volleys, having a Network Capability is important. Jennifer does china have that capability . Tom so far no. They are moving into the longrange strike is nice but that is not their comparative advantage. For us, Aviation Unmanned aviation is a comparative advantage. The u. S. Has been for the first century. Michele aside from a particular weapon system, i think the thing with of us have worked on overtime is as we were coming out of the wars in iraq and afghanistan, to really help the u. S. Military shift its thinking from being the dominant conventional force to preparing for a scenario in which it will be outnumbered in any asia contingency. China will always have a Quantitative Advantage in its backyard which means we have to think more creatively in terms of operational concepts, in terms of asymmetric approaches, how we take a legacy force, even those systems are arriving today. New aircraft carriers, fighters etc. , but the thing that will give us advantage is marrying those with new technologies that will enable new impacts and new concepts of operation. That was a real struggle. It is a mindset change. I feel it is still a struggle. There are points of light that are showing up. The replicative program is a great example. Michele it is the idea the department in a relatively short amount of time intends to field thousands of Unmanned Systems that can be teamed or operated by human beings to greatly complicate life and planning for the pla in the event of some kind of crisis with taiwan. Undersea Unmanned Systems doing various missions, various functions. It is going to make it much more for china to decide to use force and believe it can be successful against taiwan and will meaningfully contribute to deterrence. Jennifer what you are describing in terms of taking the notion of just your numbers and legacy platforms and using them creatively to get an asymmetric advantage, that is what ukraine is doing against russia. They are outgunned in terms of numbers and planes and artillery but they are using things in such a creative manner and i think that gets lost in the discussion as to what we are watching them do takes our legacy platform, diver them and have great impact in terms of being outnumbered. Tom i think it shows how innovation occurs. Innovation is always difficult. Organizations exist not to innovate. Organizations exist to execute existing ways of doing things. That is why we have them. It is usually under pressure as we see in ukraine, in israel over the years that organizations innovate because they have to. Because for now for better and worse, we are at a point where the u. S. Armed services are also in position where we have to innovate. Michele if we faced a massive drone swarm and attack, are we prepared to adequately defend our forces . That is a question being looked at very carefully in the pentagon. Jennifer if youre looking at the naval warships in the red sea, they are showing what it is like to be swarmed by those drones that the houthis are firing at their wedding lessons in they are learning lessons. I went you to look out into the future five years from now. What do you see perhaps that we do not come away needs to be done right now to be ready five years from now and is the pentagon doing it . Michele how long do we have . If we do consider china the greatest threat which i think is true, i think it is absolutely clear president xi intends to, wants to reintegrate taiwan with the mainland on his watch should he has made that clear in numerous statements. We should take him at his word. It is also clear he preferred to do it through economic and political coercion, shrinking taiwans international not use the military if he does not have to because that is a high risk proposition especially if the u. S. Will step in to help. However, he has also told his military he wants viable options. We dont know if it is for a blockade or invasion or both but he wants options by 2027 to by 2027. We have to be ready to be very confident in our deterrence, our ability to deny his success and our ability to impose great cost should he try. That is not a long time from now. These efforts like replicator, like other areas to rapidly integrate new technologies to create a resilient command and control isr system that is all domain from space to cyber to traditional domains of war fighting, that is a tall order to be ready by then. That is job number one of the department Going Forward. We can take a five year perspective on the middle east or russia and ukraine but i will see if you want to come back to that. Jennifer what are you seeing five years from now . Tom five years seems like a long way away it i lead an organization that looks two to three decades out. That future is now here. To put into perspective, we are in fiscal year 24. Fiscal year 25 will be beginning this fall. The pace that government is used to op