Kelly to our campus. We are looking forward to hearing his Strategic Vision for the department of Homeland Security. This will be the first public address of its kind that secretary kelly will have given since his swearingin on january 20. We are honored that he chose George Washington as the venue for this major speech. We are frequently ranked as the most politically engaged student body in the nation. That means our students are actively involved in dialogue, all across the political spectrum, and i am delighted a number of our students are able to be here today. We talk about giving our students a front row seat in the theater of history and this is a , good example of what that means. We are glad to be supporting veterans actively in the Yellow Ribbon program for a number of years now. Currently we have 1800 veterans and their dependents being educated here. But specifically on the topic of todays conversation, i want to talk about our longterm involvement in Homeland Security issues. First of all, let me say that all four of secretary kellys predecessors have visited our campus as he is doing today, and the speeches from people like secretary kelly really i think highlight the work we do in this field. The faculty at George Washington have been working in the field since before september 11 attacks in 2001. And we have unique efforts in homeland, cyber, and counterterrorism that put George Washington in the spotlight of these fields. Key leaders of those efforts are with us today, and in particular i want to mention the director of the George Washington center for cyber and Homeland Security. And i would now like to invite Frank Cilluffo to introduce secretary kelly. Thanks again for being here, and please enjoy. I know you will benefit from his presentation. Thank you. [applause] mr. Cilluffo thank you dr. Knapp, and before i introduce secretary kelly, let me thank for his 10 knapp years as president of George Washington university. He has led it ably and has been an incredible proponent of research, academia, and also the marriage between policy and research and academia. So thank you, dr. Knapp. He will be stepping down at the end of july. It is a distinct privilege to be able to host general kelly today. I mean i see so many leaders in , the Homeland Security space in the audience here, and as president knapp mentioned we had , the opportunity to host all of his predecessors, but in this case, we have the first secretary with operational experience. I mean, all i have to say is he is a marine, right . What else do you need . He served ably in our Armed Services for 40plus years in. He joined he enlisted in 1970, went back to get his degree, and then came back to the marines as an officer. And he has moved up the ranks and served in so many various leadership roles, both in command roles, in staff roles, as well as education roles since we are here at George Washington university. So really excited to hear from general kelly. He is a patriots fan. I will not hold that against him. I am a red sox fan. But thrilled to be able to have general kelly join us today. Thrilled to have the opportunity to be able to hear more in terms of the Strategic Vision of the department and the priorities he is setting forth for the men and women who are charged with the awesome responsibilities of protecting our homeland day in and day out. I think it is important to recognize and provide some context around these issues, and ultimately we are a university, but we want to make sure we are empowering and arming our men and women with knowledge to be able to fulfill their objective. So really is a privilege to have the opportunity to host general kelly today. He is the fifth secretary of the department of Homeland Security, oversees a workforce of 200,000 plus people. Has done so ably. He is here to discuss not only the priorities to the homeland but also to recognize that Homeland Security starts overseas. And i might note, we have a number of executives, including ambassadors. I see the estonian ambassador, my friend upfront i see japanese , executives, belgian ambassadors, and many others who have been able to join us today. Secretary kelly, the floor is yours. I look forward to hearing your comments and then engaging in a q a. Thank you. [applause] secretary kelly thanks very much, frank, and president knapp, thanks for the kind words and to gw for hosting this event today. When i retired from the marine corps 45 years ago and more my , biggest fear at the time was to be offered another fulltime job, particularly in the government. I certainly did not want to go up and down the beltway like i did so many other times. Did not like the bureaucracy, but here i am today. But when i make my way up 95, every day the first thing i do , is read the clips that are taken out of various publications around the country, and i read about frankly what i do or what i have done, what i have said, and i most importantly read about my people. It is one of the first things i do every day, and the other one is to read the daily intelligence briefing. In one, as i say, i read about my people, my institution, and about me occasionally, but more importantly, i read in the intel what we are actually accomplishing during the course of a day. Theres a big gap between the two, what is reported in the press, in the media, and i mean no disrespect, and what we actually do. I will try to set that straight a little bit here this morning. I will start with something that does not make headlines which should. I could not be prouder to serve alongside the men and women of Homeland Security, and we as a nation owe them a gift a debt of , gratitude for taking on some of the toughest and most important jobs in our country. When you are having your morning coffee, the coast guard is typically pulling a fisherman out of his boat, capsized in some pretty heavy seas, and while you are deciding what you want for lunch, the federal Law EnforcementTraining Center is teaching Law Enforcement officers how to respond to an active shooter. When you are scrolling through facebook, our science and Technology Director is hoping local bomb squad defeat ieds. While you are zoning out on your Homeland Security officers and professionals and investigators are closing in on a dangerous child predator. While you are Binge Watching mad men on netflix, tsa is stopping an actual madman from boarding a flight to disney world. While some members of congress or state and local politicians or members of advocacy groups read or listen to partial and oftentimes inaccurate media reporting on some alleged incident at an airport, in a courthouse, or at a border crossing, and assume the men and women at dhs are intentionally abusing innocent individuals while they break or ignore, that is to say while my people break and ignore u. S. Law, they make the assumption that my people are doing it wrong, as opposed to making the assumption that my people are doing it right, working within the law based on their training and just who they are as americans. That is the ordinary day and one that simply does not make the paper. Every day in a million different ways, dhs employees are making our country more secure. They are standing guard against all the hazards we face as a nation. They are enforcing the laws the congress has passed because we are lucky enough to live in a nation of laws. We do our job so you and your families can live a peaceful life, a safe life, in a free country. But make no mistake, we are in fact a nation under attack. Were under attack from criminals who think their greed justifies raping young girls at knife point, dealing poison to our youth, or just killing some of us for fun. We are under attack from people who hate us, hate our freedoms, hate our laws, hate our values, hate the way we simply live our lives. We are under attack from failed states, cyber terrorists, vicious smugglers, and sadistic radicals. Were under attack every single day. The threats against us are relentless. When people think about dhs, they think about how we respond to terrorism, and that is fair. This is our Foundation Given our origin story and critical to what we do. But our jobs are to secure the nation from the many threats we face from all hazards. But one of the greatest hazards is from transnational criminal organizations. Like terrorists, tcos inflict unthinkable brutality and regularly behead their victims. They intimidate, kidnap, and torture those who try to bring law and order. They buy, sell, and exploit desperate people for their own sick purposes. They destroy their own communities and bring great shame on their countries of origin. They are utterly without laws, conscience, or respect for human life. They take the form of drug cartels or international gangs, like ms13. They share their business dealings and violent practices. Their sophisticated networks move anything and everything across our borders, including human beings. And we have set out to stop that movement to the greatest degree that we can. Human smugglers take thousands of dollars from truly desperate people, people overwhelmingly trying to escape a lack of Economic Opportunity, in many cases rapes and violence in their country, and send them on a course north on a network that rivals dantes journey into hell. Along the way, these desperate people are often beaten, raped, starved and robbed of what , possessions they brought with them. The smugglers make few guarantees, and they offer no refunds. Special interest aliens. Not every person moving along these networks is an economic refugee or trying to escape poverty. We face real threats from socalled special interest aliens that move at great expense from vast distances from outside the western hemisphere along a network into the United States. The special interests, if from parts of the world where terrorism is prevalent, are nations that are hostile to the united takes. States. These individuals pay tcos huge sums of money to transport them from, for example the middle , east or asia through south and Central America and into the United States. We do not get to vet them. That is a critical point. We do not know their intentions. We do not know why they are here and why they are coming. They slip into our country unnoticed, living among us. We are blind to what they are capable of. But the damage tcos do is only part of the story. It is also that they move vast tonnages of cocaine and heroin, methamphetamines. They move these tonnages across our borders to feed both the recreational and addictive u. S. Drug demand. U. S. Customs and Border Protection, cvp u. S. , immigrations, ice, and homeland investigations are witness to the massive quantity of drugs that these organizations traffic into the United States every day with devastating consequences. In 2015, which is the most recent data we have, over 52,000 deaths from these drugs in the United States caused by these drug overdoses. It is the highest number of drugrelated deaths our country has ever seen. It is more deaths than the peak of the eighth aids epidemic in 1995. In a single year we have lost as Many Americans to drug overdoses as we lost in the entire world war i. Its almost as many as we lost in 12 years of fighting in vietnam. And that is just overdosed deaths. That number as high as it is says nothing about the longterm Health Damage to our citizens who survive. To say nothing about the human misery, the families ripped apart, and the extremes of crime and violence inherent in the illegal drug enterprise. And let me be clear about marijuana. It is a potentially dangerous gateway drug that frequently leads to the use of harder drugs. Additionally, science tells us it is not only psychologically addictive, but can have profound negative impacts on the still developing minds of teens and people up into their mid20s. Beyond that, however, its use and possession is against federal law, and until the law is changed by the United States congress we in dhs along with , the rest of the federal government are sworn to uphold all the laws that are on the books. Dhs personnel will continue to investigate marijuana illegal pathways along the network into the United States. Its distribution within the homeland. We will arrest those involved in the drug trade according to federal law. Professional,ms will continue to search for marijuana at sea, air, and land ports of entry and will take similar appropriate actions. When marijuana is found at aviation checkpoints and baggage screening tsa personnel will , also take appropriate action. Ice will continue to use marijuana distribution and convictions as essential elements as they build their deportation, removal, apprehension packages for targeted operations against illegal aliens living in the United States. They have done this in the past, are doing it today, and will continue into the future. Now about terrorism. The tcos have a devastating effect on our homeland. Yet the other aspect of the threat of force is terrorism. Of course is terrorism. For a brief moment after the 9 11 attacks, we came together as a country and stood shoulder to shoulder against this horrible, horrible threat to our way of life. But the years have passed and we have grown accustomed to it and now question all the security, all of the issues that we have put in place to secure the nation. Because it is a little bit of an inconvenience at an airport or a little bit of an inconvenience as you pass on to an airplane. The threat to our nation, our american way of life, has not diminished. In fact, the threat has metastasized and decentralized, and the risk is threatening us today in a way that is worse than we experienced 16 years ago with 9 11. As i speak these words, the fbi has opened terrorism investigations in all of our 50 states. And since 2013, there have been 37 isislinked plots to attack our country. This is all bad news, but it gets worse. Esther experts estimate that 10,000 citizens of europe have joined the caliphate fight in syria and in iraq. Thousands more from nations in asia, africa, the western hemisphere have also joined that fight. They have learned how to make ieds, employ drones to drop ordinance, and acquired experience on the battlefield that by all reports, they are beginning to increasingly bring home. As a coalition, we are against what is best described against conventional formations in the caliphate. The expectation is that many of these holy warriors will survive, come back to their home countries where they will wreak murderess havoc in europe, asia, the maghreb the caribbean, and , the United States. Because many are citizens of countries in our visa waiver countries, they can more easily travel to the United States, which makes us and continues to make us the prime terrorist target. Homegrown terrorism is a very, very difficult challenge. Few of the challenges we face from a terrorism point of view are even close to as difficult. Over the past few years, we have seen an unprecedented spike in homegrown terrorism. In the past 12 months alone, there have been 36 homegrown opened in 18es states. These are the cases we know about. Homegrown terrorism is difficult to predict, detect, and certainly almost impossible to control. And what is feeding the violence . Typically what feeds the violence is the internet. From anywhere across the world, terrorist organizations are sharing hateful propaganda with impressionable people. They published revolting howto manuals, teaching their followers how to build bombs and kill innocent people. They trade dehumanizing pictures of captions of people being , thrown from buildings, raped, victims being stoned to death. If you are a terrorist within in an Internet Connection like they one on your ever present cell phone, you can recruit soldiers, plan attacks, and upload a video calling for a jihad with a few clicks. And thanks to new and ever improving encryption devices and secure communication techniques, these individuals are becoming harder and harder, and i predict eventually, impossible to detect. Until community leaders, social service providers, teachers, Law Enforcement are more aware of their options to prevent that message of hate from taking hold, our nations youth are prey to these predators. We are under attack from terrorism both within and outside of our borders. These men and women are without conscience, and they operate without rules. They despise the United States because we are a nation of rights, of laws, and of freedoms. They have a single mission, and that is our destruction. And i tell you without exaggeration they try to carry , out this mission each and every day, each and every night. They are relentless. They cannot be stopped. Unless men and women like those that serve at dhs, our military, and our Law Enforcement are ever vigilant, and they are. Cyber for a minute. Not just bombs and guns are threatened against us. Another entire kind of conflict is taking place in the computer networks. We are under constant attack by a wide range of adversaries with an even wider range of capabilities in this realm. There are nationstate actors with extremely sophisticated tools. There are global criminal organizations that operate like a legitimate business right down to Customer Service support. There are even lone wolves that simply buy m