Service along with the giving you a front row seat to democracy. Congressman Michael TurnerRanking Member of the House Intelligence Committee talks about ways to reform the committee and how information is shared across intelligence can. He is meeting with former Intelligent Community members counsel. Good morning and welcome, of Atlantic Council. It is my pleasure to welcome you to todays event on intelligence, community, and Intelligence Committee reform. The Atlantic Council is delighted to host this latest installment in the house of Intelligence Committees beyond the skiff scif this is where members of the committee are speaking on key Company Issues in the public setting. I would like to thank our distinguished panelist whom i will introduce in a moment for participating in our audience and for joining us here at our headquarters not just in the United States, but around the world. That is one thing we learned todays event is where thats consistent with that. And consistent with that mission, the center also has a forward defense practice run by clementine starling and it is designed to shape around the greatest military defense and intelligence challenges facing the u. S. And its allies and creates forwardlooking assessments to the trends, technologies, and concepts that will define the future of warfare and the future of the Intelligence Community as well that is what 20 years and after the tragic attack of 9 11 the u. S. Intelligence community and the entire u. S. National security focus on counterterrorism. But today, the House Permanent Select Committee is undertaking a number of initiatives to adjust the committees work towards strategic collection of analysis that focuses on the Great Power Competition with china. And russia. Congressional support is essential to helping the Community Meet this challenge including by helping the now 18 18 components of the Intelligence Community or needing and synchronizing their efforts effectively. The Intelligence Community has the responsibility to work with the rest of the congress to use legislative and budgetary tools to ensure all that elements of the Intelligence Community are enforced and they have the appropriate authorities and they are fulfilling their statutory roles by countering the threats posed by u. S. Adversaries. Mere privilege today to have a distinguished panel of intelligence. Experts and formal officials to discuss these topics. Moderating the panel will be mike the representative of ohios district. Congressman turner is the ranking number of the house of the Intelligence Committee. He has served in Congress Since 2002 election. And in that time, he served in leadership roles including as Ranking Member of several subcommittees of the house including House Armed Services committee and as i mentioned earlier, the parliamentary sediment. The Panel Includes carrie dane former member of congressman matt craney and carrie being served as a deputy undersecretary for intelligence and security from 2017 to 2020 overseeing the defensive Department Intelligence agencies. The National Security agency, the national geo space agency, and the ash office. She is the director of the Aerospace Security project csis jane harman served as a u. S. Congressman from california during which time she was also Ranking Member of the house of the Intelligence Committee. She has a lot of expertise in this and after her time in congress, she led the Wilson Center as resident and now the distinguished fellow they are. Joining is virtually matt you are in new orleans right . Thats right. And my sons are off the screen here. And he is the initial counsel for new orleans we are glad you are here he is the acting director and started his career at this eia and now focuses at the cia and now focuses on deterrence. And finally glenn knight serves as u. S. Congressman from virginia including amber ship of the how farmhouse Services Committee he now leads this senator serving the president ceo. That is a lot of firepower and i know we are going to get some great insights to the super panel. This panel is public and on the record. We encourage our audience on zoom to ask questions including using the q and a at the bottom. You can hit that to try to raise your hand and we will see if we have a chance to into questions we will work on this as we go along. Please be sure you identify your name and affiliation with your question as this is an on direct event. We encourage our audience to join twitter using forward defense. Congressman turner thing to you and i turned over to you. Thank you so much i want to thank you personally for hosting this. This gives us an opportunity to do outreach to get perspective of those individuals and experts in the Atlantic Council but our ability to take their expertise directly by Getting Congress to policymaking and joining this scope center have a great history of not only in the think Tank Community to encourage expertise but also to work with congress to ensure that expertise is actually tied to those policymakers. We thank you for that heritage. Thank you for having us today. This is part of our beyond the scif series. And discuss things that we need to take up in the Intelligence Committee. As ive discussed with each of you, it is our goal on the Intelligence Committee to turn it back to a focus on National Security we gone through a period that has been tumultuous in the Intelligence Committee and we have been looking at formulating a Mission Statement so that our Mission Statement will be how do we take policymaking and decisionmaking and match it to the need that relate to actual intelligence information that we have. We do not want the Intelligence Committee to be a bunch of people in the basement under the capital. We want to learn how we can best utilize that information to ensure that policymaking is served. And in making that shift to National Security, we would like your advice and expertise what are things we need to focus on in National Security . What you think the Intelligence Community has done well in and has neglected. And as you know, after 9 11, we reformed the Intelligence Community but we did not reform congress. So we have to discuss how do we break down the barriers so that intelligence is utilized across committees and all is he making and decisionmaking. We have under unbelievable distinguished career and it will be unique in perspective and help us have this discussion. We want to talk about what should we do, how should we do it, and what are our areas of focus. We are going to talk about the intelligence products in the Intelligence Community and how we tie them mystically outside the federal government. How congress ties to the federal gun itself in intelligence. And congruence in and of itself. And utilize intelligent so you can make better decisions. I want to start with the legislation that jane had accomplished when she was in congress and that is reducing overall classification act. You were very concerned that we were not taking intelligence and getting it out of the federal government and local communities. And then to Law Enforcement said that we can make certain we are safe area to get started your view of legislations accomplishment over a decade since that occurred are we doing better . Do you think intelligence is serving domestically outside of the walls of the Intelligence Community . Thank you. In a word about fred. I spent a decade as the president ceo of the Wilson Center. I called the Atlantic Council a frenemy and that was a affectionate term. Two people are missing from this discussion both inactive here in the past years. Who i think everyone is the greatest National Security advisor on the planet and the other is something you and i work very closely with a democrat and california. In california. She had roles at the state department and cared a lot about the subject she worked on. And you, he overlapped in congress and since congress, the thing about you that is so marvelous is that you are to your poor bipartisan focus on how do we solve hard problems for the country . And the number of people who still want to do that is not the long list that we should have. So on this topic, first of all, with 9 11, i was not the Ranking Member yet of the committee but i was walking toward the dome of the d Intelligence Committee used to be howells in the howells in the dome of the capitol. It used to be howells debt housed in the capital. But all of a sudden it closed in the office close and we had no it back should bash evacuation plan in congress and we are were gathered around the front of the capitol for a while in until some of us picked ourselves up before we went to the headquarters of Capitol Police and we finally got the capital reopened we never should have closed it in my view. And we went on and for a long while, as you point out, we focused exclusively on counterterrorism and i think in many ways congress was disadvantaged and did not play the role it should have played. To congress, i did have a role as chairman of the Intelligence Committee of Homeland Security and focusing on how we get information to First Responders. It is clear that there still are threats from outside and also domestic threats. Who will protect us . It is First Responders and communities. What i saw so clear was that information coming up from First Responders to the fbi and other agencies was over classified. And we could not get information about what the real threats were endless they had super duper security clearances which every member does not have. The bill you asked me about it was the last bill i authored before i Left Congress and i do not think enough has happened with it. I still think we over classified in case anyone is missing this v, the former president this movie, the former president says he can classify things just by thinking about it. But surely if we are trying to protect the country we need to make sure from my view on a more systematic basis that we do not over classified based on reducing embarrassment or just because we are a big bureaucracy and we are protecting turf that we only classified to protect sources. Thats a great transition. Moving from counterterrorism and not leaving it behind. As you look at the portfolio of the threats that we have, what are the things you think we need to focus on more . Thank you for convening this. [indiscernible] getting outside the basement and having these conversations in soliciting and sharing your thoughts i think the initiative to doing that will be an important part to doing the initiative youre focused on. I think we should start on what we are trying to focus on vide classifying the greater sharing of information on internal customers whether it is we are in a different game than i was in Armed Services with you we work for just we were focused on counterterrorism efforts. And we were too focused on that to deal with todays challenges we are dealing with peer adversaries that are leveraging political, military, economic, tools of coercion and they are doing it and a highly coordinated way we have to up our game to win the challenge. We have to think about it in terms of your goal serving internal customers on the hill, i had the advantage before going to congress of having worked for two agencies in the executive ranch. We have a chain of command and you know who your boss is and they have challenges with sharing information. You have to find friends and allies and make decisions to work with individuals to share information its like you need an nsc function in congress to coordinate and share. That is the mindset i bring to the challenge but with tackling the overall goal, i welcome you to ship thinking about the function of sharing between committees so there is a better coronation. State sharing information is a whole challenge in our competition with china and with russia now with what is happening in europe. We have to move these levers at the same time but theres a third element on the table to consider. We saw with the russian invasion of ukraine this administration deployed public intelligence effectively sharing information with the world about the intent of his regime to move forces in ukraine. I think we need to lean into that strategy dealing with our competition with china. Countries that practice trade things that use corruption and court industrial espionage to try to give themselves a leg up, we need to be ready to expose that. But to do that we have to be ready to figure out as suggested, how to deep last declassify the right way you do not want to expose sources and methods but you want to share so that the world can get a better picture of what is happening. We are in a competition now with democracy versus authoritarian systems and in order to have democracy you have to put information out there and make it assessable. Thats a good point. I do think it changes the outcome rather than change the peoples behavior. What you think we should be focusing on maps . As the acting director of the scope i want to thank you congressman turner for hosting todays event. I think this is an important discussion. I would like to start with the points. First, this is already been mentioned but we need to reorient the Intelligence Community we built an intelligence apparatus that was well designed for exquisite collection and targeting of highvalue targets but that is not the kind of Intelligence Community we need for the challenges we face today. This is a longterm challenge we need to be thinking in terms of years, decades, analyzing trends, chinese influence in Chinese Military power. That is my first point. The second point, we should have a preference for and a priority on analysis over collection. I think personnel they need to be recruiting and training the kinds of people that do a different type of analysis. That we are grounded in. This is the Chinese Communist party and so on. A different type of analysis in the face of the past 25 years. Third and finally, we need to make sure that congress is asking them what the questions are relevant to congress in addition to my other roles i was recently appointed by congress to serve on a commission [indiscernible] essentially congressional consumer of intelligence products in that role. So questions like why is China Building up Strategic Forces and how does it think about using Nuclear Weapons or questions that are develop to us. Just he is very focused on export controls and securing supply chain and surpassing intelligence issues and supply chains and how they are effected. Affecting chinas ability from the u. S. These are some of the major issues that we should be thinking about as we think about providing resources and oversight and authorities to the Intelligence Community. That is a good point that we need different skills in facing russia and china. When you think we should be highlighting carrie . Thank you in particular i had the good fortune of working for you and when i think strategic thought, when i think about going out to the field and learning you can i learn that from you. Thank you. I work for you even though you were on staff. I would like to echo what others have said which is very much i encourage the committee to be laser focused on china and the competition. And technology. And really the fundamental question of how do you maintain a competitive advantage. Intelligence has been a competitive advantage for the u. S. At but in less you work on it, it read has a risk of fading. A couple areas in that, looking at our posture, capabilities, operations, these are muscles when you think about peers that have not been exercised in 20 years with operations and capabilities you will find the intelligence posture has been focused on counterterrorism but is not what is needing to be affected in a operational environment. Wh