Listen to expertise. We will see you in a few moments. Thank you very much. Next to be you in person. I think we are going to get going with the next segment. I am delighted to be joined by our colleagues. We have a lot to cover. It is a good think that i know they will have a lot to say. Please remember to keep in mind we would love to have your questions toward the end. I want to dive right in and i want to start with you if i could. I would love for each of you to give your reaction to what was shared with us. If there are areas of interest or confusion or that you think are important to be aware of, anything that really caught your attention. Mike thanks, melanie. I will focus on one issue because it is the issue that has troubled me with the National Security strategy and Foreign Policy in general, which is the potential to overdo the china threat. I dont think they do anything wrong, the choice of term pacing challenge is right on and he explained very clearly why it is a pacing challenge and they described specifics in areas that should worry us and that we need to take them seriously. We got involved to prevent Nuclear Catastrophe is the overriding concern and world war iii well underway, or at least on the doorstep. I think he is right from the pentagon point of view to take the china concern. Seriously. Concern very seriously. But i am concerned they may overdo it, that with the National Security strategy accuses china of genocide, think it is the wrong term. It is a human right of use, that is bad enough. Lets call it that. Lets not china doesnt go around threatening Nuclear Weapons on a daily basis, but Vladimir Putin does. So getting the balance right of which is the greater threat is quite important. The secretary convincingly argued the pentagon has to worry about both and i think the overall National Security strategy and overall tone of washington verge on overdoing it. Ive had some on this stage who have called china an adversary. I dont think that is the correct term. They are a serious rival. We should be working with allies in the region to try to steer china back towards greater compliance. That should be the purpose of our competition, as opposed to competition for its own sake. We slightly overdo the antichina rhetoric, not so much in these documents we discussed today, but the broader structure of u. S. Government policy and where the debate in washington is going. Melanie the concern is that to a certain extent, the general sentiment could drive policy in unhelpful directions in terms of the u. S. China relationships more broadly question mark mike broadly . Mike yes, and in some areas where administering islands where no one lives. We have been sworn by the white house that we feel the obligation to defend japans gleams claims to those islands. If the scenario begins, how strongly do we react in the military domain . That is the kind a thing or a think the temperature and the relationship could be relevant and im interested in keeping that temperature calm and coolish even the we are resolute. Melanie we believe the dark open for you to of her comments. While i have your attention directly, i am also very curious , given your expertise, about the Nuclear Posturing of the npr and what you see that stands out to you as notable. They very striking feature to meet was the extent of commonality and Nuclear Policies and forced posture from one u. S. Administration to the other. If you look at the 2010 to 2018 and 2022 npr, there are some differences. The Obama Administration canceled the Nuclear Cruise missile, the trump npr reinstated it, the biden canceled it again. There are a number of nuanced differences, but by and large, there is tremendous commonality. Each of these administrations recommended the replacement of each leg of the u. S. Nuclear triad, recommended an upgrading of the command and control medications system, recommended the refurbishment of the u. S. Nuclear weapons production complex. Each of these administrations and nprs rejected a shift in u. S. Policy on the use of Nuclear Weapons. I would characterize the Biden Nuclear review as a centrist, mainstream document, a strategic call will have criticisms. They will say the United States needs to do more to take on the challenge from the nuclear competitors. Aggressive swell also have a criticism. They will say the u. S. Went ahead with these programs and we will get into a costly and destabilizing arms race. I think the npr, the 2022 npr is representing a broad consensus in u. S. Inking. U. S. Thinking. I think it will received bipartisan support in congress. I think it will be wellfunded. A recent why is so much commonality between 2018 and 2022 is because of the external environment and the security environment. This is not 2010 and things have really deteriorated. I think the emphasis in both 2018 and 2022 on deterrence is a result and understandable a natural result of this change in the interNational Security environment. Melanie i want to respond to something mike said, juice russia and china are not the same. When the trump National Security strategy came out, there was a response to it led by the Academic Community saying stop calling china a threat. We are going to manifest this if we keep talking about and treating china like a threat. Something that distinguishes this national the set of policy documents is the lack of equivalence between russia and china, the extent to which they are not mentioned and the distinction made about the types of threats versus challenges that they pose. And then something that was said that this these are marked by continuity, especially the npr. I couldnt agree more that is exactly what is called for in the current climate, that anything that smacks of significant change could potentially be very stabilizing and while this isnt the classified or complete version, these documents are to our allies and adversaries and will be read as such. A couple of things that struck me from the npr is that we are dealing with a new and identifies an apples to oranges problem with the missiles. It mentions emerging technologies, new and destabilizing military systems and that we have to figure out how to create a stable balance, how to offset this, how to dig her to deter. There are problems that dont have an obvious solution and i think we will see the department wrestling with that going forward. Finally, i wanted to note there are multiple mentions of technology that appear as sort of acknowledgment or aware that technologies are making weapons and systems more lethal. We think investing in Nuclear Verification technology is important. We Value Investing in the next generation of technologists and arms controllers. It does not say how the department is going to go about implementing this on a strategic level. It is just lacking in that way. Lots of language, less verbiage and more of we are mentioning this and less of how this is going to operate as a strategy. Melanie you mentioned arms control at the end. I incurious on your read on how it addressed arms control given todays strategic environment and the challenges in that particular policy area. If you read the language of the npr closely, i think the language reveals an administration that would really like to make further progress in arms control that would like to reduce the role of u. S. Nuclear weapons and u. S. National security and Foreign Policy. It is an administration that recognizes the Current International conditions make those goals very difficult to achieve. The world has changed very much since the heady days of obamas prague agenda, which looked forward to a World WithoutNuclear Weapons. Many of the senior officials that served in the mama administration are serving in the Biden Administration, they recognize that the world has changed. Russia and china are expanding Nuclear Arsenals and they seem to be increasing their reliance on Nuclear Weapons, certainly russia is increasing its reliance in Nuclear Weapons. Both are acting aggressively and also north korea is acting aggressively in its own region. For arms control, you need a modicum of trust between the negotiators. But that modicum of trust has been completely lost. As amy mentioned, you have emerging technologies that are simply not amenable to traditional, verifiable arms control methods which increases the challenges to arms control. The Biden Administration in its npr makes the effort to be in the right place on arms control. It says we will place renewed emphasis on arms control, but it then goes on to explain why it has realistically low expectations about what can really be achieved. It is clear that the focus now of the Biden Administration is not going to be further nuclear arms reductions. It is going to be trying to stabilize emerging nuclear arms petitions. It is going to be to try to reduce the Nuclear Risks from these competitions to avoid Nuclear Escalation resulting from misperceptions, from accidents, from miscalculations and so forth. In the near term, i think the most practical thing the Biden Administration can do is to agree with the russians on reinstating the inspections under the new agreement. Because the pandemic, these inspections were suspended. I think that would be important but a useful step to reinstate these inspections and realistically discussions will begin on finding a replacement for the new treaty before its expiration in 2026. Right now it is hard to conceive of americans and russians sitting down but i think eventually it kill it can happen. China is a different story. There is a crying need to sit down with china and try to understand their strategic perspectives, allow them to understand our strategic perspectives and to avoid behaviors that could bring us into conflict with one another, even inadvertently. The u. S. Will continue to press a very stubborn china to engage in this bilateral strategic stability dialogue, and i hope they have success this will be a big priority for this administration. Traditional arms control and formal agreements on limitations and reductions of nuclear arms, you are not going to see that for quite some time. Melanie given what bob has described, do you see with china, particular portions of Nuclear Posture, enterprise in its entirety, areas where you would Pay Attention to trying to find those ways of Risk Reduction, and are there things that are particularly worrisome to you that you would think would be a good place to start . Amy we have decades of history negotiating with the soviets and now the russians, and many of those conversations for years were just on fundamental concepts like mutually assured destruction and what does deterrence mean and what is the critical nature of second strike capability. We dont have a history of sharing these concepts with the chinese are even discussing them. At the same time, you look at the u. S. Russian history of arms control, it evolved over time, not just with new technologies but with greater trust, allowing leaders to facilitate in place for onsite inspections, which was something ahead of the cold war that was inconceivable how an Inspection Team from your west and meet looking at your Nuclear Weapons. We evolved to a point of having inspections and tools and technologies and inspectors on the ground. To even get to a point like that with china, there would have to be a lot more infrastructure in place on the chinese side. I understand some of those conversations have begun between the u. S. And china for maintaining a secure stockpile, and a certain modicum of Nuclear Safeguards and those conversations should definitely continue. China has been clear and has no interest in entering into arms control situations and while numbers are well below those of the United States and russia, i think this is a prime moment to continue the dialogue. Melanie lets put these two documents in closer conversation, which is the department intended them to be. Mike, i want to ask you and then move on to the remainder of the team to talk a bit about what you see in the ndf or ncr independently or together, what does it suggest to you about structure and whether you can take that broadly, conventional nuclear or all of the above . Mike i will answer by reflecting on a point bob made about president bidens own personal desire to see Nuclear Weapons have a smaller role in international politics. I remember my semipersonal anecdote senator biden in 1990 passed at the Congressional Budget Office through a young man you may have heard of, jamie ruben, working for senator biden to do a study on u. S. And soviet Nuclear Force capabilities, now that the cold war was over. I recall i dont mind the details, and some of them were probably private but we had an option that postulated as few as 1000 warheads on each side and some people thought that was absolutely crazy talk. But other people involved in the discussions, including some close to senator biden, liked the idea of thinking about how we could cut by 95 . Everyone knew it wasnt going to happen right away, but that gives you a history of our current president and how he thinks about Nuclear Weapons. I have no doubt he would like to see them play a smaller role with the reality is it is fairly hard to see how you scale back. So on for structure i dont think there will be a big debate about change or reduction. We will see how we can get some kind of extension but even that is problematic when youve got different kinds of Weapons Systems and the inf treaty is gone now and we dont know how to think about the weapons, russia has more than we do and china is building up. Even freezing where we are will be hard enough. You can have a debate about reducing and using minuteman missiles as test missiles to try to extend out the lifetime of the Minuteman Program by a few years, but that is the biggest debate you can have on that topic at the moment. And the submarines to be safe. So i think you will not see a debate in the force structure structure. I dont think we need to have the ability to make 80 to 100 per year. Everything i year everything i hear is they are holding up pretty well. I would think about saving money there, but i dont how to save money on triad except for delaying the icbm replacement and i dont want to save money on commandcontrol commissions modernizations. We need those systems to be really resilient, better than they are today. Limited prospects for savings within the department of defense , accounts in particular, limited prospects for structure reductions and to cut back on the department of energy National Security ambitions for plutonium production capability. Melanie what about the conventional structure . Do you see anything in the nds and some mention of it reductions . In particular in the campaigning and the capabilities that will be for campaigning . Anything suggestive of a particular direction or change . Mike that is the best i have Heard Campaign explained respect your questions. That is a little bit of a missed opportunity with his National Strategy and it is meant to suggest that this is not meant to be a structure or budget document and i think it should be. The area i would have most welcomed some new thinking would have been with the navy, because if you think about the history of this debate, back in the mid2010s the out going administration, he asked manders to document how they were using naval assets and with the navy did was take that data and some it up and say, we need a navy that is big enough to sustain this current level of operations at a pace that is reasonable for our equipment and failures. That is how we built the vision for the 20 40 thinking. I might be slightly over simple fine, apologies to the navy if you do not think i am right, that is my understanding of how these ambitions were developed. So based on current Operational Requirements of 2015 or so with the navy. It is not the right way to do it. The outgoing secretary of defense mark esper and 2020 gave a speech where he outlined a vision for a 500 ship navy, but in fairness to secretary esper, he was going to do that by scaling back existing ships. Today we have 300 or so. The 20152016 analysis aspired to 355. That remains the number of record. Esper put the 500 out there and i have to give him credit as a former soldier, but he had to. It is still the most specific proposal on the books, but it is not official policy. I could go on, but i have going on gone on long enough. On one hand the navy is thinking too ambitiously thinking going from 300 to 355 and based on requirements that are not requirements but operational patterns. On the other hand, we may want to go well above 355 if we count unmanned underwater systems and the newer or erotics based capabilities that we probably should have, including some of them in the Western Areas to make sure china doesnt think it can take taiwan before we can get there. Melanie i want to pick off where mike left off