About his recent atlantic article aboutthe end of the 9 11 era in a few minutes im going to introduce been. Ben will speak and he and i will havea conversation. We encourage you to post questions through the two and a feature. And we get to the second half of the hour i will begin to wrap up our discussion and start posing some of your questions then and we will run about one hour. So i also want to mention next week, next wednesday in fact were going to do i think our last webinar for the summer. Which will be with our partner, peter singer of near america talking about his new novel burn in which is a kind of look into the future of warfare and cyber warfare in particular so peter does a fantastic thinker and writer and i look forward to seeing that so for today as mentioned ben rhodes. Ben is former Deputy National security adviser in the Obama Administration. Lcurrent cochair ofNational Security action. Cohost of pond save the world which i highly recommend. Both organizations and a longtime friend of ucla so then, take it away and i will be back to have some conversation with you in a few minutes. Thanks cal, thanks everybody for joining us for this. Ill just make some opening comments. Summarizing the argument i was making in this piece that can set up all kinds of directions that we can go in in our conversation. Just to situated, for me , what is the genesis of this idea about the end of the 9 11 era is everybody else, the extremity of the lockdown in early march and for me, it was, i was taking a walk with my daughters and we went down to venice beach which was completely empty, desolate which ive never seen before. And my daughter picks up a dandelion and i said makeawish and she said that her wish was to make the coronavirus go away. And for someone who worked in National Security for eight years in the white house, wh what really hit me about that moment is that this crisis, is something that has hit everybody in america. Including my daughter. She understood that the crisis we are in. Th in a way that terrorism never would have. No terrorist could kill as many people as this disease already has read no terrorist act could have the Economic Impact this has had. Perhaps the societal impact when we think about what the fallout is going tobe as were already seeing. And when you consider that we spent trillions of dollars preventing terrorist attacks relative to what we spent on pandemics, it hit me but it also wasnt a surprise. A pandemic is something people have been warningabout for many years. In the Obama Administration we dealt with h1 and one and we dealt with evil, more acutely 2014 and by the end of the Obama Administration we were seized with the fact that the dangers of issues other than terrorism far outweighed the risk of terrorism itself and ill come back to that in a second. So for me llits recalled a sign that isaw once in a tour of the cia operations center. That said every day is september 12. And i understood the mentality that led the agency to put that sign up probably on september 12. And i also understood that is kind of where america has been. Both the American Government and american politics and in some ways American Society more than we can ever since. I understood it i was in europe, i witnessed 911 and that Public Service led me down to washington with the 9 11 commission fora few years. Kind of deconstructing that event and what it meant for our National Security apparatus. I entered partisan politics largely because of the iraq war which was how we had gotten aresponse to 9 11 wrong. I went to work for barack obama who never would have been elected president were it not for the iraq war. So i was someone even before i enteredgovernment services been shaped by 9 11. And as i reported on the Obama Administration, i could see that many ways in which that presidency was shaped in partby 9 11. We entered office inheriting 2 wars in iraq and afghanistan with over 300,000 troops and massive counterterrorism apparatus that reshaped the Us Government to prioritize this one issue, terrorism above all else. E theres probably a bank shot to the financial crisis being inherited, the trillions of o dollars poured into counterterrorism in those years. And in the first obama term in particular, you can also feel working in National Security and the Us Government the kind of Gravitational Force of 9 11. So president elected to end wars that we did to move on 50,000 troops from iraq gets pulled deeper into afghanistan with the surgeon 2009. We had aggressive counterterrorism efforts in the first obama aterm. We had controversial counterterrorism efforts like the drone policy. The arab spring in some ways probably has some roots back into the post9 11 environment including the iraq war and the kind of hyperpolarization of the middle east from us military interventions and from the kinds of leaders in places like egypt and saudi arabia who in some ways legitimize themselves as partners of the us because of counterterrorism. At the same time particularly in the second term of the Obama Administration , obama was very deliberately trying to end this era and move into a new one and if you look at the signature components of obamas foreignpolicy in that second term each of them in their own way are trying to move up into a post9 11 world. A post post 9 11 world i should say. There are Nuclear Deals to avoid another war in the middle east that could have been precipitated by iran Getting Nuclear Weapons dealing withthat challenge diplomatically. The terrorist climate of course meant to signal that Climate Change was going to be the new focus of American Foreign policy and i think people dont fully appreciate how much work went into the paris accord not just in negotiating in the room in terms of using all of our bilateral multilateral relationships to prioritize Climate Change in the second longterm. The kind of to asia, the transpacific partnership, the focus of the asianpacific region was in many ways playing catchup to the rise of china which should basically i think then had been largely ignored by the after 9 11 so we were seeking to build an infrastructure in a specific region rise of china and shape rules of the road on everything from trade to technology to governance and in ways that were meant to influence chinas behavior. Even the human mobilization which i negotiated was meant to lowes a chapter in our history, tie up loose ends so that we could get past that and engage not just cuba but our own hemisphere. Without the baggage of history , not only 9 11 but a similar mindset of seeing. An island of 11 Million People and the same time that we were doing this we were told back by world events and also by american politics into this post9 11 era. Isis and its emergence in the second obama term obviously guaranteed we were going to remain militarily involved in the middle east albeit with a very different model and the post9 11 wars without large us Ground Forces present. But even that is interesting to look back on because isis and people of, terrorism and a potential pandemic, emerged at the same time and one so much more dangerous in a way than the other c. Evil law threatened to kill millions of people. And yet think about how much tension was paid to isis and our media and our politics versus evil. It just shows you how hard wired we had become as americans to the terrorism as an inextricably linked to our National Security, our concept of National Security in a way that we dont think about pandemics. But the on that, its not just for 9 11 and the center of National Security but its what its done to our politics and what so evident to me in the later obama years area particularly as pin the Republican Party and certainly key elements in the Republican Party. Kind of demonstrated almost all radicalization in a way around this kind of securitized us versus them post9 11mindset. There was this toxics two of issues, why didnt obama say radical islam, all of the then godly investigations of course. Demagoguery refugees, demagogy illegal immigration that all very much tied back to this idea of fear of the other. And you know, polarization or the purpose of security. It is very characteristic i think the post9 11 america and it shows you how, what might have started as a very legitimate fear of terrorism morphed over time into this us versus them approach to politics that into that current steps donald trump. And i think part of this to is the psychology of a nation that after 9 11 was promised great victory. I tried to imagine what it was like to consume fox news throughout the bush presidency. You were constantly on the precipice of a great victory in iraq and afghanistan and of those victories did not materialize and never will materialize and i think we haventthought enough about the country about the fact that we did not win those wars. When countries dont win wars often politicians look for people to blame within. Thats the most tried and true tactic of how these things happen in history so it became blame obama or blame the muslims of the United States. Blame people, blame illegal all these things kind of got melded together in the person of donald trump. And as a president despite his rhetoric about ending wars hes done quite the opposite. Hes escalated every war he inherited. There are 20,000 less troops in the us than when he took office because of the state were in with iraq but even more so the securitization narrative that i talk about. Either ms 13 has this focus. Immigrants of course is his focus, even recently antifa he wants to designate as a terrorist organization, the language of 9 11 weapon knifed in this mindset so here we are in the mold midst of multiple crises, covid i think perhaps the s most performative but an economic crisis and of course the response to structural systemic racism in this country and police violence. This is a time to i think for a fundamental transformation of how we think about National Security. The threats that we face, the challenges we have to deal with are not terrorism. Im not suggesting we dont Pay Attention to it but we measure it against Climate Change, against pandemics, against the emergence of new technology and how thats going to pose risks to privacy and Economic Security and when you look at the national authoritarian trend around the world that is challenging the very idea of democracy, the rise of china utis a part of that. And look at all that, were not focused on the right things w. Our eye is not on the ball here. And at the same time you have to fundamentally get our act together at home which ill come back to in a second. So ill close your because we can ask some of this into an a in terms of what does that mean . In terms of our National Security prioritization it means shale shifting to the things that i just talked about. That means resources. We have a pentagon budget that is way too big in my judgment. It makes no sense that we have a plan in the country to spend 1 trillion in the next decade modernizing our Nuclear Weapons infrastructure. What for . Why is that not being spent on the things i can prepare us for the world that we are actually facing. Why are we not investing more in researching the development of Artificial Intelligence when we are being beaten by china and health so that were better prepaid prepared to deal with things like a pandemic, our basic researchbased that helps us win the cold war has been fully neglected under this trumpadministration. These are the kinds of investments that were goingto have to make and its Climate Change , its an accidental threat to the climate which is it is and the amount of money were spending on that challenge and support for other countries, or the development of new technologies that can accelerate our ability to slow global warming, that resource allocation has to shift. So does the personnel structure of the Us Government. The promotion structure, the experts brought in in the last 20 years. State dod and elsewhere,their focus and terrorism in the middle east. Theyre great people and they need to be part of the answer r to but we have to shift to this other issue set so its this fundamental realignment of what the United States thinks about his National Security and how we build our government to deal with that is whats required and thats not easy to do but one of the things about that in government if you can say what you think should happen and recognize that its going to take a lot of work to get there. A couple of things though beyond that, i think that we have to also recognize the change in mindset that has to take place. One of the things i talk about in pieces, the mindset towards government itself. Theres been this multidecade assault on the role of government, government is bad and bureaucrats are bad. I think we learned in covid thats your backstop against all of these threats that we are going to face and we need to reinvest in the idea of what government can do for people in this country and bring more people into serving government and try to reenergize t the United States to deal with this new set of challenges thats going to shape our world. At the same time i think we obviously have to deal with ourselves at home and in terms of Foreign Policy america is not going to have credibility understanding of anything in the world if where not seen as getting our act together at home. We can even try to do everything right at home, where making it hard for this people to vote, theres a connection between how we get our democracy in order at homeand what we do around the world. Where not going to be credible on Climate Change if we dont do something substantial and aggressive at home. Were not going to be credible in dealing with the regulation of new technologies and this information and Artificial Intelligence were not doing this at home with Companies Like facebook so we have to see that the line between what were doing here and what were doing around the world has to go away because these issues are all fundamentally interconnected and of course most profoundly as you take a little young people have reminded us the last few weeks if we are not seen as dealing with our own systemic issues involving race and immigration, how people are treated in this country we have no moral authority toleave the world. On the e other hand if were seen as correcting those issues r, if were seen as making progress that gives us a lot of leverage to once again have some World Authority so allthese things i think are very much connected. Ill just end before we move the conversation, one piece that drives this home is that when i taught at ucla last year i was teaching president ial speeches and i remember we read that speech that george bush gave to a joint session of congress after 9 11 which is a wellreceived speech at the time and i thought it was well done at the time but bush is calling for nothing ki less and americas entire National Purpose to a global war on terrorism. Theyre going to have to reorient all Government Society to the challenge and compare terrorists to nazi germany and soviet communists. Reading that 20 years later, it was like reading another language. I understood but my students who are 19, 20, 21 it was like this document came from another planet and we have to reckon with the fact that we got the response of 9 11 wrong and its time to move on and that the National Purpose of this country has to be about bigger things than just fighting terrorism. And in government and National Priorities should reflect more the interests of those young people who are the future of this country then relitigating and trying to course correct and do one more search in the middle east. To deal with the fact that we got this wrong. Its time to move on. And in the strange tragic way , i think this moment offers that opportunity if theres a change in presidency certainly but it goes far beyond the presidency, this has to be embedded in lots of different aspects of american politics, government and society so ill stop there and look forward to the conversation. Thanks ben, that was fantastic way to open. Let me ask just in a very end viewpoint and you talk about that moment as being a particular opportunity and obviously in the pieceitself which i read recommend of yours. You did your remarks and you had the anecdote about your father at the end about the same message comes through and i guess i just wanted to get you to expand a little bit on what you think that particular impact of the covid moment is for your argument so in other words were we already and the end of the post9 11 era, covid just makes it clearor didnt really have kind of a causal impact. I think personally i think we should have been at the end of the 9 11 era about a decade ago and i thought all bothese battles and let the Obama Admi