Hudson. I am the director of the center for political military knowledge. Today we are honored to talk about an important report, important subject, congressional efforts to oversee the Nuclear Security effort, more specifically a report copies of which are outside by the partnership for secure america and the Arms Control Association on empowering blueprints for a new generation. I want to welcome the cspan audience for joining us. To make everything easier if people can silence any cell phones you might have, that would be very helpful. The work we have been doing with the association, we collaborated with two organizations the last year and doing three events on the hill congressional briefings on Nuclear Threats and tools of the trade, encountering the threat and the global Nuclear Security architecture. The report and presentations we gave in congress, the Macarthur Foundation. The agenda for today, we have 3 presentations that will discuss the importance of congressional Nuclear Oversight in general, the key findings and recommendations summarizing assessing them and discussion about what more needs to be done and initiatives to pursue as we go further. Our first speaker will be doctor Andrew Semmel of the board of directors for partnership for secure america, a nonprofit founded by representative lee hamilton, us senator redman, advancing bipartisanship on contemporary Critical National security and Foreign Policy challenges since january 2008, a private consultant at a kf consulting. Before that he was secretary of state, in the bureau of nonproliferation, and impressive positions before that. After words the next speaker will be kingston reif, director of disarmament and Threat Reduction policy at the national nonpartisan Membership Organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of arms control policy. He is very smart, and then independent of the two organizations that have come in the report we have a special guest respondent and expert, Joyce Connery who has his extensive career in Nuclear Safety and energy policy. She is currently a member of the board of the Defense Nuclear facility. This is an independent organization in the executive branch responsible for recommendations, Public Health and safety issues at the Nuclear Facilities and National Labs and the department of energy and National Security council. Her views are solely her own and endorsement by the border the Us Government and in fact all of us with independent think tanks, and institutional position on these issues, we want to continue discussion and debate on important topics. Go ahead. Apologize for being late. Two things before i Start Talking about the report. Two other members, i want to mention jack brosnan, the project director. You can join in on some of these discussions once we get into it and i point them out for the work they have done. Second thing i want to mention is the great timing this morning. Congressman panetta and fleishman introduced the Bipartisan Legislation, a derivative of our study. The recommendations unusual Nuclear Security nonproliferation act, and reco report, with the house and piece of legislation. I want to talk, get my voice, and the study, and how we did it and what generalization the principal findings we derived. I mean the actual survey that we did. There is some hair. Greater clarity on Nuclear Security issue and how congress thinks about this issue and his Knowledge Base and what its priorities are and congress has a bipartisan history with good initiatives, interesting initiatives when we always thought about the reduction act and Bipartisan Legislation is passed in the early 1990s so congress is an important player and more. What we did was set out to focus on Congressional Staff. Congressional staff in part because Congressional Staff are more accessible and more assemble a bowl. Is that a word . They are willing to participate more than members arent Congressional Staff plays an Important Role in the legislative process in terms of writing legislation and coming up with ideas and so forth. No other country in the world, the role in which staff as far as i know staff playing in the legislative process. I talked to members, legislators in other countries who marvel at the Congressional Staff in the legislative process. An awful lot in terms of established record of mobilizing Congressional Staff and a running start. And composed of 3 different components. And and Congressional Staffers. Heavily involved on this issues. And getting clarity on responses, follow up and things like that. Is upset of the data we were able to gather and send out a survey to Congressional Staff, not exactly what i would call a random sample but gives us some credibility in making inferences from those data. These were directed at staffers who have some broad engagement on foreignpolicy and Homeland Security and that sort of things so we had those two groups of individuals and 127 samples if you want to call them, data sources. The third part of this methodology was to have a small focus group. We invited ten or so staffers for dinner and over with them, what we thought the findings were and have a discussion with them, most of whom have not participated in the survey itself. This is the way to enrich our understanding of data that we collect and give us more texture. These 3 components are the key methodology. Data were collected some time ago, fall and winter of 201718, last years midterm elections which changed the composition of congress. It was before the Nuclear Posture review was released so anyway, it was released so let me talk about a number of findings we had in the report, talk about 45 of them that are most interesting to us and hopefully to you. What did we learn . First thing we learned is the most important thing we learned and least surprising too. I spent 16 years in the senate and have some time ago before thinking of the battleship maine. Some understanding of the morays and norms, this is the most important thing we learned. Elicit some responses, when someone raises the issue of security in congress, talking about the threat of Nuclear Security what comes to your mind . Our findings provoke a variable scattergraham of responses. The single markets response, developed a word cloud in the report in which we take all words, responses that were elicited and according to their frequency the word would appear larger and so forth. That word cloud we found in response to this was there was no consensus of this issue of Nuclear Security is or was at that point and there was considerable disagreement, no understanding. I might point out what this issue was. Many of the responses, the Nuclear Security was a statebased threat. That is to say many staffers point to north korea, russia, china, some strengthening of pakistan and other countries, the bad actors and some discussion of Nuclear Terrorism in those responses and so forth and so on so basically Congressional Staff tended to view Nuclear Security more in threats emanating from other states, not as defined in the questionnaire, the interviews and in the digital questionnaire we sent out we had the standard iaea definition of Nuclear Security and the facilities, generic definition. I dont know, the emphasis in that time in the north Korean Nuclear program and others. There was a disorientation not focused on Nuclear Security, it was more statebased threats and that was not a surprise to me but very important finding in this area. A drive from the first, staffers we interviewed in this sample tends to view the issue of Nuclear Security according to work requirements depending on where you sit, the type of aphorism we use in academic literature. Many of the staffers on defense related issues on defense related terms, Armed Services defense appropriations focus on things like command and control, Weapons Development and the like. Those who work on energyrelated issues, energy and water, saw the issue on energy returns, Nuclear Safety storage, waste management, sabotage, and those who focus on foreignpolicy, the Foreign Affairs committee tend to see traditional terms of proliferation and things like that. So the responses to this question tended to break down on internal institutional lines depending upon work requirements of the individual staffer we talked about. There were talks about funding that could cut across all of these work requirements issue areas. Another finding very quickly, those staff, more years of experience on the hill longer obviously. People we described more directly engaged on the issue tended to give this area a higher priority in the realm of Foreign Policy and National Security. Nonetheless now we have an empirical face to say that is true. Our findings suggest more crosscutting working together on the hill across these three different issuers and caucuses and so on. Another finding pertains to sources of information that staff utilized in understanding the Nuclear Security issue. We asked to whom do you look before he you are more fully understanding Nuclear Security issues . The crs and government organizations and think tanks were cited as the most reliable sources for most of the staff. Staffers more directly and the aged in the issue on a frequent issue tends to be more towards think tanks and ngos. Those we describe less directly engaged turn to crs, Russian Research service and other sources like executive branch and Media Committee and personal staff and the like. I might point out working on the hill right now, about reliance on the executive branch and the media. Another interesting finding was how staff assesses the rule of congress, their own work environment, and the Nuclear Security issue. And and then a followon question. How much impact you think congress should have . So the with some disappointment what congress can do and the with some hope and expectation that congress should be doing more than they were, in fact, doing. This might suggest congress is underperforming on this issue, at least the sample that we took. So in many staffers doubted whether congress could take a lead role in some of these issues despite the fact that were historical examples. We interpret this in part to the fact there was lots of expertise, a loss of expertise among members, among staff on the at at the time we interviewed there was no Major Nuclear terrorist incident that galvanized interests and attention. And that there was very little constituent interest among the constituents of congress. By the way, on these issues we found, much to our interest, that they were very little difference between democrats and republican staffers. And those, no big Significant Interest between the house and senate, perhaps the size of the sample might be a reason for what we found. We asked the staffers about constituents very quickly, and we found very quickly that among the constituents, this is not hyperbole, not a big interest to members. There are some exceptions for members who had a Nuclear Power plant in their Congressional District or state or Nuclear Facility of some sort or something that might engender greater interest. But basically not much constituent concern. This issue gets lost in the flood of so many other things if theres not something to catalyze and draw interest. We also find, asked deciding standpoint for congressional leadership. We wanted to note knowledge they had about the past episode of predictors of the present and future, what they might do legislatively. The staff mentioned a few current members, some members who are part of the Nuclear Security working group in congress that was being created in the recent few years, but the dominant response among particularly those with longer tenures, longer years of service on the hill, was the nunnlugar bipartisan piece of legislation that having worked for senator lugar i know something about that and know that those two guys have been nominated at least six times for the Nobel Peace Prize for the effort. Finally, we asked staff what they thought, whether there were gaps in domestic and international Nuclear Security programs that needed to be filled given the threat to terrorism it impose. Virtually all of them said, of course, but we didnt find agreement what steps we created this word again in the middle of that big word cloud is the words not sure. If we had some of those were clouds around her, they are in the back i guess, not sure, and there was a scatter graphic of responses. We should be doing something but not quite sure what it is. It ranged a across a whole range of issues. Let me stop at this point in time. Ive been too much time. We can can back to some of these later. I would encourage people to start things thing but your qus and comments now after the presentations, we want to have a big discussion. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, richard. A pleasure to be at hudson. I thought i might follow andys opening comments about our report about the survey we did and talk a little bit about the policy context within which this is situated, challenges to congressional engagement on the issue of Nuclear Security, i i kind of status check on congressional and engagements as we sit here mid 2019 at the and some of the recommended action items we proposed and how some lawmakers have taken up and pursued some of those action items. The first the policy context. I would say the global Nuclear Security enterprise is at a key inflection point. The Nuclear Security summit process and use Nuclear Security and Threat Reduction programs have played a vital role in reducing the risk of Nuclear Terrorism. Separate report from the Arms Control Association and the fissile working Group Published flash of that result as could summit process states took 935 actions to significantly strengthen global Nuclear Security. This is not a a reason to be complacent about the threat of Nuclear Terrorism. Approximately 900 tons of inadequate protective Nuclear Weapons useful material remain in countries where there are significant threats. Several regions of the world are plagued by conditions that could facilitate access to fissile material and Nuclear Weapons by terrorist groups, notably south asia, north korea and russia. The complicated matters, the threat is not standing still. Advances in new technology such as additive manufacturing, cyber tools and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning appear post to diversify and increase potential Nuclear Security threats. A report published earlier this year by Harvard University warns highlevel political attention to Nuclear Security and overcoming obstacles has largely faded. International mechanism for foster Nuclear Security action and cooperation at that managed to fill the gaps, greeted by the absence of Nuclear Security summit and political disputes continue to impede efforts to sustain or expand cooperation in crucial areas. Because the consequences of a Nuclear Terrorist attack would be so extreme,