Download the free app or wherever you get your podcasts. Next, a discussion about u. S. Nuclear deterrence options and challenges. Talking about russia, china, north koreas capabilities. This is hosted by the Exchange MonitorNuclear Deterrents summit. [inaudible conversations] right now, were going to have a session starting now and woven its way through the conference. So, if you want to take your seats i will have david and jeff prater introduce you to our panel. Here you go. Thank you very much. All right, well, thank you very much, nancy, and we want to thank everyone still out there staying until the bitter end and to hear what i regard not only a very important and phenal panel of the day, with four speakers that i promise will not just im jeff prater, and with me to moderate the q a today is my fellow cofounder and managing director, david charrington. We stood at the center to focus on educating policy makers, most importantly, new Congressional Staff on the u. S. Strategic Nuclear Deterrent and at the time we stood up the organization, the new programs. Its expanded with our podcast and i hope youre enjoying that hosted by dr. Adam louther. Reaching not only the United States, but to our allies. As the late secretary of defense under president trump, ash carter said, our strategic Nuclear Deterrent is the bed rock of our National Security, its what determines our theories on behalf of all americans and allies in europe and the pacific. From really repeating the horrific number of deaths and destruction that occurred during world war ii, where an estimated 75 Million People perished across the globe because we lacked an overafternooning strategic Nuclear Deterrent. But its the bed rook, the strategic posture report, we hear a lot of on this panel today is foundational and unique in this era of political division. Ordered by congress in the fiscal year 2022, National Defense authorization act, the 12 member Congressional Commission on the strategic posture of the United States was launched by house and Senate National security leadership, wellknown policy leaders with broad based experience and Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Weapons related issues. The commission was evenly split. Bipartisan between democratic and republican affiliations. They concluded their review with 81 consensus driven and nonpartisan recommendations. Now, i ask you in this day and age, when does that happen in government . Well soon find out how this unique consensus happened from the two commissioners here with us today. Madeline selected by the Senate Armed Services committee jack reed. Chair of the commission with vice chair and former u. S. Senator john kyles from arizona. The experience expands the decades that the Senate Armed Services committees and at departments of defense and National Security administration. Dr. Matt kronig who expands across many departments of defense, as well as academia. Hes talked and much about nuclear strategic deterrents. And the Atlanta Center for strategy and security and the councils director of studies. We will also hear, very fortunate to have them with us today, from two of the Senate Armed ServicesCommittee Staff that helped instigate this review and were the recipients last fall of the bipartisan and officially titled america strategic posture, the final report of the Congressional Commission on the strategic posture of the United States. Dr. Jonathan epstein is counsel for senator reed on the Senate Armed Services committee, responsible for oversight over the department of defense and department of Energy Program as well as the dod Missile Defense and space and nonproliferation committee. And served as the council for oversight for the department of energys civil and Nuclear Science based program. And last line before my colleague, is a staff member also with Armed Services committee and his areas of responsibility include nuclear forces, Missile Defense, nuclear propulsion, threat reduction, arms control and counter proliferation countering weapons of mass destruction and Nuclear Cleanup efforts. Most recent adam was principal or acting principal of Nuclear Matters when the office of the secretary of defense and before that served in several positions at the office of secretary of defense and joint staff and departments of state. Adam served in our armed forces as an Army Abrams Tank crewman. Please join me in welcoming our distinguished panel and well turn to madeleine for her opening remarks. Thanks. [applause] well, thanks, jeff, i appreciate it and appreciate the opportunity to be here today to say and congratulations to your hearty souls who struck it out on the last panel of the last day, on friday afternoon to boot. My congratulations to you. So i just want to start a little about how pleased i was to hear some of general cottons remarks in many respects, he is really embracing a lot of the recommendations that we made in our commission all right. As jeff said, it was a Bipartisan Commission and not only was it split equally six people nominated by democratic leadership and six people nominated by republican leadership, but very interesting, i think, in this particularly in this policy arena, in this strategic arena, also six women and six men, which in and of itself i think is not only commendable. It was kind of by accident and it goes a long way in terms of bringing some different views to the table. Why and how did we actually get to consensus, which is a question i think ive been asked almost as many times as how what our different conclusions were. And i think in some respects. So, we really were committed. All 12 of us really were committed to getting consensus to getting a report. There was nobody interested in laying down in the road and preventing a report from going out the door. We also started this adventure of ours with, as i like to say, our 12 ecclectic commissioners by spending a tremendous amount of time getting ourselves all level set in terms of intel and threat briefings. Weve spent a huge amount of time with various aspects of the Intelligence Community and one of the things we spent a fair amount of time time with, interestingly enough not just who is deploying which systems, but spent time with the department of energy, intelligence folks and got insight on the warhead side of this as well. We reached out to a lot of outside experts and had series of unclassified discussions on china, north korea and russia so those as well. We also had a lot of discussions or written reports, depending on the case, from our allies. At the end of the day, there were a number of things that all of us together were very, very much focused on. We understood our charge and at least, as we understood our charge, hopefully, we met the requirements of the committees. But our charge really was to conduct a review of the strategic posture of the United States, including a strategic threat assessment, a detailed review of Nuclear Weapons policy and strategy and force structure and factors affecting the strategic stability of new peer competitors of the u. S. And peer and near peer competition. One of the things that we were not chartered to do and did not do and have gotten a number of questions about it, of course, why didnt we cost out our recommendations . Well, there are a couple of reasons. You know, among others, we werent staffed to do that and it wasnt in our charter, but one of the reasons we were successful is our recommendations were about much Bigger Picture things. This is a long game report. This is not, you know, do these things next week. Its begin to take actions now so that down the road, as decisions are required, there is an ability to actually make decisions. There are people who can support them, theres the infrastructure to support them, and theres the investment to support them. Because without that, these decisions that are going to need to be made over the next couple years are just not possible. We also focused very much in terms of our allies and how important our allies are across the board and all of those really were concerned that we dont do enough as a nation with our allies. So, its more that we need to do. So, its more investment, its more joint r and d. Its more joint technology development. Its more having them incorporated in our planning and theres so much more we need to do with them. We also all agreed that innovation is absolutely necessary and not only innovation, but also how the Defense Department and how nnsa absorbs innovative thinking. Obviously, we were know the procurement commission, theres an entirely different commission working on that. But we did talk about and certainly share a lot of the concerns about how to improve not only the speed, but also the scope and the reach of the two departments with respect to startups and innovations which we heard in the earlier panel. The other couple things that i just want to highlight. This is a long game report. Our time frame was 2027 and beyond and one of the other things that we all agreed at the outset is we werent going to pick winners and losers. We knew if we got into a very specific debate we were never going to get out of that loop. So we focused on what was needed from 2027, 2035 and beyond and what are those capabilities. So we identified different sorts of capabilities, not specific systems. As a result of this, and you know, again, this is why we were not able to cost things, we did knowingly present a very big task to the administration because having decided that we have to be prepared for a twotheater simultaneous war, now making that force structure, both conventional and nuclear, to deter so it never goes nuclear, thinking about that force structure is an analytic task for the administration. It wasnt an analytic task for us, but having put that concept out there that we really have to think about two simultaneous wars is probably our biggest recommendation. Two more things and then ill close. One, i know theres been criticism of the report, somehow weve sanctioned an openended arms race in nuclear systems. Thats absolutely not the case. In fact, we did just the opposite. One of our big focus actually areas is really on the conventional side and how much more needs to be done on the conventional side to deal with two wars simultaneously because at the end of the day, if the goal is to prevent nuclear war, you have to prevent war and to prevent war you have to have conventional capabilities. And finally, we did, certainly, as mentioned earlier, we did put a lot of thought and thinking into risk reduction. Yes, we acknowledged and, you know, understood and nobody was particularly happy about it that Neither China nor russia are interested at the moment in doing any traditional arms control. That said, we were very strongly urging the administration, think tanks, others, to be very creative about how they think about risk reduction. How we think about norms. How we think about other creative opportunities that might get us to improved strategic stability. Not just treaties and part of that, too, is also the research and development because if we get to the point where we have a treaty, that treaty has to be enforceable and those tools to enforce those treaties are going to have to be in place. Some of those tools take years to develop and so having the research and development that would support future arms agreements, whatever they look like like are also important. Anyway, i think ill probably close with that. Its sort of a one over of our 81 recommendations. Some of those recommendations, i think, we probably all know wont get implemented and one of our recommendations is for congress to get annual budgets done on time. And i guess that laughter certainly wanted to just put it out there. So, with that ill stop. Thank you,. Thank you, david and jeff for hosting this important event. Its an honor to be here. Thank you all for sticking around. And thanks to madelyn for chairing the commission and my fellow commissioners. Its opinion been an experience. We really did have a terrific chair and we had some difficult conversations, but she was always there to keep us on track. Thank you for your leadership. So i want today spend my time talking a little more about the substance of the report. I want to talk about the strategic environment, the recommended Nuclear Strategy and then the recommended adjustment to posture. So we Start Talking about the strategic environment and we say that this is in some ways maybe the most difficult Nuclear Threat environment the United States and its allies have ever faced and that for the first time in u. S. History we have to deal with two near peer Nuclear Armed powers, russia and china at the same time. So in the past, we could consider china, north korea, lesser included cases of the russian threat and given the trajectory of the china buildup thats no longer the case. How do we deter two armed revisionists, autocratic powers at the same time. A difficult environment. On the strategy we say that needs to be the goal and the goal needs to deter russia and china at the same time and youve had and we argue to do that, the fundamentals of our Nuclear Strategy should remain the same, that the major roles for u. S. Nuclear weapons of deterring adversaries, assuring allies, achieving objectives as deterrents fails, those remain the same. And then also, when it comes to what is at risk, that traditionally we point out during the cold war, that the United States held at risk, that we think adversary leadership values, themselves, their militaries, their nuclear forces, ability to command and control their military and holing those targets at risk remains the goal. Now, there have been some outside experts that say given this environment. We need to fundamentally change our Nuclear Strategy and maybe think about socalled Counter Value target and we reject that in the report and say our Nuclear Strategy has worked pretty well over the past 75 years, so theres no reason to reinvent deterrence theory or tragedy. Instead what needs to change is our forces and our posture that we need to adjust those to deal with the two peer environment, and so, i just want to highlight some of the changes that i think are most important and if you havent read the report, i have some copies, you can find it online, but page 48 and 49 layout some of the key changes to Nuclear Posture and ill just mention some. Prepare to upload some or all of the nations warhead, plan to deploy the fentanyl icbm and increase the plan number of Long Range Standoff weapons, increased the plan numbered of b21 bombers and tankers and expanded force would require. Increased the production of columbia ssbn and trident missile systems. Pursue the feasibility of fielding some future of the icbm force and mobile configuration, exercise upload and warheads on existing deployed systems. So as you can see, were not recommending an immediate buildup in the size of the strategic force, but as madelyn put it, we need to give future administrations options to do that if they think thats necessary and given the way the strategic environment is developing, that maybe necessary to deal with the increased number of targets presented by china and so on. And we also talk about the importance of having the president having flexibility options and nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons and we welcome developing and employing Theater Nuclear systems that are having the following attributes that are deployed and deployable in asia, survivable against attack and a range of explosive yield options, including low yield and so on. And then also, i think there are some important recommendations on Missile Defense. We argue that the United States should continue to have a homeland Missile Defense capable of staying ahead of the north career and thats debated as the Nuclear Program has green and we argue that staying ahead of that threat is important. And then also, we recommend whats changed to what has traditionally been u. S. Missile defense policy in the past and weve said that its only to deal with rogue states. Not for russia and china and in the report we recommend having homeland Missile Defense system capable of deterring coercive attacks of russia, not large scale russia or chinese attack which would not be possible, but the ability to deter and defeat limited coercive attacksment attacks. So i think those are highlights of the report and our understanding, the administration is taking it seriously and i hope that we can maint