 All right, good afternoon everybody. Good to see you here and welcome to our conversation on defining the US and the changing world, which we concluded is something we should be able to settle in about 45 minutes, so that's about how long we're gonna be here, so thanks for coming for that. Now, I don't think I need to say much on it for this room because it's obviously an incredibly vital topic. Sometimes I think when you live in the United States and you're thinking about the rest of the world, you forget that one of the central questions where does the United States stand? And of course we've been through a series of tumultuous events in the last 20 years, from 9-11 to the US-China relationship as the century began. The US was working to help China enter the WTO 22 years later, there's a new rivalry. We've been through some tumultuous years in US foreign policy the last few years, whether it was COVID or Afghanistan. Through all this, the US remains the most powerful economic force in the world, the dollar remains the central currency of the global economic system, and as Davos is here to demonstrate on lots of fronts, we're dealing with all kinds of new and oncoming crisis, whether it be COVID or future pandemics or the food crisis that seems to be looming around us, as well as of course the Ukraine war. So today we're gonna try to talk about where the US stands amid all of these shifts, both in trade and diplomacy as well as politics, and also I hope where it should stand. Very pleased today to have a very distinguished panel here. We've got US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who's leading the US delegation at Davos this year. Seth Moulton, a Democratic Congressman from the Sixth District of Massachusetts. Henry Slaughter, who's the CEO of New America, the Washington think tank, and among other roles in your long career, was Director of Policy Planning for Hillary Clinton when she was the Secretary of State, and Tom Donilon, who's currently Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, but also has served a number of roles in a long career, including as National Security Advisor for Barack Obama. So I'd like to welcome you all. Again, I didn't introduce myself, but I'm Matt Murray. I'm the Editor-in-Chief of the Wall Street Journal. Just before we get started, I'd like to remind our online audience out there that if you're sharing any thoughts on the session through social channels, you should use the hashtag WEF22. Thanks again for being here. Secretary Raimondo, I want to start with you. We are nearly three months now into Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Can you talk a little bit about how you think you've seen America's security and economic priorities shift in those three months, and how they continue to shift right now? Yeah. Good evening. It's great to be here. Wonderful to be with all of you. And thankful not to be in boots. I think we can agree. That's a benefit of Davos and May, not boots, in any event, I would say a few things. First, I think it really drives home how high the stakes are. And that has never been lost on us, but there's a shared sense of how high the stakes are. And I think you see that in how quickly the world has come together to react decisively and boldly as against Russia's aggression. I think it underscores the vitalness of having strong relationships with our allies. So, and President Biden has been very focused on this from day one. He wants to shore up our relationships with our allies. As you know, I've just spent the weekend with the president in Asia, shoring up our allies in the Indo-Pacific. Week before that, I was in Paris with the USEU Trade and Technology Council. The fact that the United States was able to build a coalition with three dozen other countries in the matter of a couple of weeks to align our export controls and deny Russia technology is extraordinary. We have never before in history seen the US lead a coalition as it relates to technology and export controls that's that broad and that fast. So I think the point of it is allies matter. If you have that relationship continuously, then when something happens, you can swing into action. I mean, you could say this. Does it surprise you, in a sense, given how people were talking about the US and the allies or some of the challenges, the speed with which that came together when you look at it now? Somewhat, yes. Yes, I was obviously at the tip of the spear of that, trying to get our export controls to line up with other countries. We were prepared, as I said to you earlier, the United States was prepared to go it alone if we had to, but we didn't have to because all of Europe, Taiwan, much of Asia came along with us. The final thing I'll say on this topic of what have we learned and what's changed, war is no longer just about tanks and military equipment. Ground Zero is technology. The United States is hobbling Putin's ability to conduct war by denying technology. Semiconductors. You wanna talk about having an ability to have a military operation. It revolves around semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, which means it's time for the US to invest in that and lead in that more than we ever have. So when you think now, versus even three or four months ago, what are the top US security and economic priorities? Are they the same as they were, or have they shifted at all because of what's been happening here? I don't think they've shifted, but they've become so much more urgent. Right now, the United States Congress is debating a bill called the CHIPS Act. It's investments in basic research and development, investments in semiconductor production in the United States. They have been considering that bill for over a year. Pass the bill. Pass the bill. Imagine what would happen to the United States if Taiwan denied us semiconductors. We purchase 70 plus percent of all of our advanced semiconductors from Taiwan. That is an untenable, vulnerable situation, and Congress needs to pass the CHIPS Act immediately. So we knew that a year ago, but if we're gonna compete globally, we have to invest now in technology. Congressman, I think you and your colleagues are getting heavily lobbied here on the stage at Davos. I wanna- Well, the Secretary's right. We need to pass it, I think we will. But even if we pass that act, it's gonna help with domestic chip production. It's not gonna help us with the highest end chips. Taiwan's still gonna control that. So it's an important first step. It doesn't get us all the way. I wanna ask about a specific thing about our goals of you. You got some pushback from the White House recently because you talked about Ukraine becoming more of a proxy war with Russia. You got a little bit of pushback from them on that. Of course, Mike, I have two questions really. One, isn't there truth to what you said given what Secretary in Austin and others have been saying about the evolving US aims? But secondly, can you explain what you meant, how you see the conflict, how you see the US aims and are they the right aims and goals right now? Well, look, of course it's a proxy war in the sense that Ukraine is doing the fighting, we're providing all the munitions and much more technology and other things. And in so many ways, this is a battle between Russia and the West. The West largely represented and led by us. But look, I understand the White House wants to be careful about provoking Putin so they had some pushback. The majority of the pushback really came from Tucker Carlson who of course is a Russia apologist so I'm not too concerned about that. But look, I think that we're doing a few things absolutely brilliantly in Ukraine and I'd start with the alliance work which is just incredible. The way the administration has pulled everybody together. But when we think about the implications of this going forward and what this means for another potential real fight or proxy fight in Taiwan down the road, we have to have this all done in advance. We can't just respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, we have to deter and prevent it. That means not only providing Taiwan with all the military supplies that we're now rolling into Ukraine after the conflict started, but it also means preparing the alliances in the Pacific that don't really exist right now. That's why I think President Biden's recent announcement that he's forming at least a loose economic alliance in the Pacific is an incredibly important first step. I think a lot of our policy early on in Ukraine was all about response and not enough about deterrence and we've got to get that right for China. Do you, on the alliance and taking your praise of the administration, in a certain sense is Russia an easier thing to ally everybody around rather than other potentially harder causes. I mean, we had harder time with Afghanistan as Afghanistan went on. People are hesitant to talk about China too much, even if they do it privately. So how much does Russia point the way to the future and how much does it not point the way to the future? It's absolutely an easier job to align against Russia. We've had NATO in existence for a very long time since 1946 with that explicit purpose in mind. So we were a little bit concerned about how united NATO would be, but we had a very strong alliance with a very strong history of work together and cooperation throughout a lot of other issues including post-911. That kind of alliance doesn't exist in the Pacific. In fact, some of our key partners like Japan and South Korea don't even really get along very well. So there's a lot of work that we have to do. It's also, I think, it was very easy for Europe to see the threat that Russia presented when it invaded Ukraine. We've all learned, I hope by now, that if you don't stop Putin there, he'll go somewhere next. How do you get countries like Switzerland to be aligned with us if it comes to preventing China from invading Taiwan? That's much harder. We're gonna come back on the Asia. I wanna talk, Ann Marie Slaughter, the first more about Europe. Picking up on that thought, is this the beginning of a new era of US and European relations or is this a Russia one off? No, I think this is a new era in US-European relations, but less because of what the administration's done, although I very much also would applaud the administration's real kind of shula, their diplomacy, or it's probably finger-typing diplomacy these days in terms of pulling lots of allies together. But Europe has pulled itself together and Europe is at a moment when Britain is no longer part of it, very important there. That creates more space for France and for Germany. Germany, I mean, that was, I don't think the Biden administration expected the Schultz announcement, but that was Germany saying, wow, Russia's right there, we have to make a choice, but also saying, and I think people did not pay enough attention to this, a lot of the Germans were saying, we've gotta do this ourselves with other Europeans because we can count on the Biden administration right now, but we're not sure we can count on the United States in 2024. So when you say that, though, that's a key thing is that inconsistency on the part of the United States has been an issue, and to be fair, even before President Trump, it's been something people have talked about for some time and our panel's on defining the US role in the changing world, so Europe's pulled itself together, but what's the appropriate stance for the United States with Europe in a way that's consistent? What role should we play or could we conceivably be seen to play? Oh, I would say just more generally, the US should think of itself as an equal partner with Europe, that Europe economically is an equal partner and militarily, NATO will remain the primary military alliance, but Europe is trying to do much more on defense and to be able to have that particular European blend of military and non-military, military and civilian power, it's very striking that Europe is now talking about bringing Ukraine into the EU, that's been Europe's great sort of superpower in terms of integrating nations. Europe's talking about the Marshall Plan for Ukraine, not the United States, and as Secretary Ramondo certainly knows, Europe has an order of magnitude more trade with Russia than the United States does, right? So they take a bigger hit and they've got more at stake. Going forward, if I'm advising Europe, I think I say, you look, you really do want to realize the full potential of integration and being a superpower. If I'm advising the United States, I think we want to stand with Europe always, but realistically, and this also goes to the America we're becoming, a country that will not have a white majority, which means not a European American majority. It'll have lots of folks who are looking to Asia and looking to Latin America. I think we don't think of ourselves so much as the major partner, but the equal partner. Tom Donilon, I want to bring you in, particularly on a couple of economic questions, but you've obviously got a lot of experience, a lot of friends, but one place the US could be a leader with Europe and seems to be poised if it wants to, is on energy now, particularly with what's happened with Russia. But of course, here we have differing views on the energy situation we've got. Should we open it up? How do we balance that against climate? So is the US doing the right things it needs on energy to be a leader in Europe? Should it be doing more? Should it be doing less? How do we find the balance with that on climate? Well, I mean, one of the, the Ukraine crisis that has a global crisis with a lot of knock-on effects, right? And it has effects on commodities, on inflation, has effects on emerging markets, and it has had a serious effect on the geopolitics of energy. Essentially, I think we have the prospect here of rewiring the geopolitics of energy globally as a result of the crisis and the crisis in Ukraine. And I think a couple of things about it. Number one, the United States resources in this area, right, which are substantial and do give the United States strategic advantage has been important for us to be able to support Europeans as they decouple themselves from Russia, which is, by the way, I think gonna be one of the acid tests of the European Union and the Europeans going forward, is whether or not they can correct the mistake that the Europeans have made over the last decade, plus including, by the way, since even 2014, of becoming overly dependent on Russian fossil fuels, which has been a lot of leverage, obviously, in this, and this war has provided a lot of the revenue, if you will, for Putin's ability to carry on the war. So I think the United States energy position is an important strategic asset, at first point. The second is that there are short-term and long-term challenges, I think. You know, in the short term, we do have challenges as the European Union decouples itself from Russia, of providing backfilling the energy that Europe needs in the short to medium term, and oil and gas. And the United States can help, especially, in the gas front. It can help, I think, backfill with respect to Europe's needs, and that's important to do going forward. The energy transition is that. It's gonna be a transition. And the third piece of this, I think, is that this is an opportunity. It's an opportunity for us to get quite serious about investment in a cleaner energy future. So there are shorter-term, medium-term challenges that we have, and there are longer-term challenges and opportunities, I think, which this crisis presents for the United States and Europe to work together on. Are we taking advantage of those opportunities, Secretary, do you think? I think we're starting to. Yes, I do. I think we're starting to. I mean, I agree with Tom around clean energy. You're seeing a greater sense of urgency and momentum around making these investments. I mean, this is true in our politics, I suppose, to some extent, but why is it that clean energy and gas are oppositional instead of two holsters in the same set of weapons? Well, why does that seem to be the way that we frame the debate? Because what you're saying, I think, Tom, is we should be rushing, including bringing energy in right now for the U.S. for the short-term to build the void while thinking the long-term. Yeah, there's gonna be a rewiring, as I said. Essentially, that the supply for Europe in the medium-term, right, it may be a little longer than that, right, is gonna be from Australia and the United States and Qatar and others because it won't have that energy from gas from Russia. My own view is that it is a transition, Matt, right? And there is a transition path where you move from dirty fuels to less dirty fuels to clean energy. And natural gas provides, at this point, an important bridge fuel. Now, there's some controversy around that, right, because it will involve investing in infrastructure, particularly in Europe right now, in order to meet the needs. But there are practical needs here. We've had a war, a crisis. We're gonna have, actually, Europe move to a more productive stance, both in terms of its lack of dependence and the lack of leverage that Russia can have on them in energy, and also, ultimately, to a cleaner energy future. But yeah, I don't, I mean, I'm not in that camp that sees it as an absolute, you know, kind of either or. I think this is a process that we need to go through, particularly in light of the crisis, to get there. I mean, if you listen to Congress, we see it either or. And I'm not proud of that. I don't understand why you can't hold two ideas in your head at the same time, the first of which is that we should not be addicted to oil, and in the long term, we've gotta get off of it, and we can transition to a cleaner energy future, and that's very good for our national security. It will make us a stronger country. But in the short term, we should be buying oil and gas from Americans, not from autocrats. But Democrats are only allowed to believe the first, and Republicans seem to only be allowed to believe the second, and we really have to do both. Tom, I wanna ask you one more thing, and then I'm gonna come back to the secretary, but it's, it affects, it's tangential to your current job a little bit. One of the things that we saw here was a, I think everybody thinks a remarkable response by American and to a large degree Western companies isolating Russia very quickly. The secretary referred to that earlier. I think the speed and the scale surprised everybody. In some cases, might have almost awed them, in some cases of potential American adversaries. I think Larry Fink said in his annual letter that this marks a new era, a new era of combat, and really that we're seeing a swift change. What does the current state of U.S. economic might and the mobilization of that and soft American power tell you about the U.S. influence in future conflicts? Yeah, well, it's been very important, as the secretary said with respect to this conflict, the United States has been organized, been able to organize a multi-dimensional effort. And that's, and I don't think this happens without U.S. leadership, frankly. Even on the military side, you know, Emery, the 80% of NATO's kind of military might still comes from non-EU members, right? It needs to change. I said that I think that one of the acid tests for the EU will be getting off Russian oil and gas. Another key test going forward here, kind of correcting what has been kind of a cardinal fault, I think, is also getting right on level of military spending going forward. But I think it's not just the company's getting out mad, but I think it's a more general thing. I mean, the effort by the United States involved diplomatic efforts, right? To isolate Russia with very large votes, for example, with the United Nations in opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It involves military supply, right? This has been an important part of this. You know, if you think about why has Russia failed thus far to achieve its plan A, right? Which was to take Kiev quickly, right? Decapitate the government, put a new government in place that was more, it was beholden to Moscow and had that be their operation. That failed. The first plan failed. Why is that? It failed because there was poor planning on the Putin side who's become an increasingly isolated, I think, and poor decision-makers as a result. It obviously involved a better than expected, incredible efforts by the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian military, right? It also involved failure of the Russian military in ways that we can talk about, but it also required the United States and NATO and the world to provide the arms that were required to push back the Russians. And that had to be organized. Now, I still have in my mind, thinking about this, you know, the picture of Secretary Austin at Rammstein Air Force Base, right? You know, kind of organizing this kind of broad appeal conference, if you will, right? For providing necessary arms to Ukraine. And the last piece is on the economy. And I think you're right. Part of this effort has been to deny Russia the benefits of the global economy. That's essentially, I think, Madam Secretary, kind of the idea which is basically deny this actor, right, who has behaved in the most atrocious ways the benefits of being a member of the globalized and financial system in the world. And we organized that, right? And that shows you the power of the global financial system. If it's organized, but it's not unilateral. This is one of the most, I'll say one thing. You can never, these sanctions can't be implemented effectively unilaterally, right? It has to be kind of the entire West that's had to kind of get behind this. And for companies, I think you're exactly right. We say one of the surprises, at least for me, and I think for lots of people is it's six or 700 companies who were not mandated to get out, got out of Russia, suspended operations. I think that's because of the kind of the ESG right now, the ESG has become a really important piece of this in terms of reputation. And the last thing I'll say as you referenced it is that this will get a lot of attention, I think, in the East where other countries who may have disagreements, who may have what the West will think hard about what the West is able to muster. Madam Secretary, I want to talk about that. As you mentioned, you came back there, a couple of questions. But the first one is it's an important one, I think, here at WEF this year. Is globalization over, as we've known it, and is it different now? Or are there different globalizations? I mean, on the one hand you've got, as all of you have said, this potent alliance. On the other hand, some actors are gonna be outside it. And there is kind of some decoupling and competition going on, as we'll talk about. But the theory of globalization certainly doesn't seem to have brought Russia into the society of nations as it helped. So what is globalization now? I wanna start there and then we can talk about Asia. Yeah, globalization is not dead at all. I mean, I agree with everything Tom said, and I think that fortifying our relationships with our allies is more important than ever. Now it will look different, right? So the reason that I was just in Asia is because the president launched this Indo-Pacific economic framework. And it's not a traditional trade agreement. From World War II until now, when you say globalization, what do you think? You think trade, you think trade agreements. And there have been many challenges with trade agreements for workers of the United States and many countries. So yes, of course we still want trade and yes, we want to work across borders, but it's also time for new kinds of innovative frameworks so that our economies can work better together. For example, around supply chains. Trade agreements and globalization did not work very well during COVID when supply chains went down. We need, in order to have resilient supply chains, we have to have new forms of economic relationships with our partners and allies. By the way, part of the Indo-Pacific economic framework is a supply chain pillar. So no, I think we have to be innovative in the way that we form economic relationships with our allies and work with allies who share our values. So the subtext of the visit to Asia, and sometimes it was not the subtext as yesterday on the subject of Taiwan, is China. And I think everybody agrees, one, the US-China relationship is the most strained that it's been certainly in the century and has stayed that way. And second, it's pretty bipartisan feeling now in Washington to be concerned about China. It is the most important relationship in the world, the US and China. So the administration is there making alliances, thinking about how to help allies in Asia, but that relationship, of course, remains central. So where do you think the US-China relationship is and should go, and what does stability in that relationship look like? Yeah, so it is, as you say, strained. But again, in the same way when people say globalization, you think of trade, when you say the relationship with China, you think of defense. And I suggest we have to think a lot more about offense in our relationship with China. China spends more as a percent of their GDP on industrial policy than they do on their military. Think about that for a minute. They are spending more money, billions of dollars a year, investing in, strategically, in industries, in technology, in semiconductors, in artificial intelligence than they do on their military. The United States needs to pick up its pace investing in our workers, in our infrastructure, in emerging technologies, in talent, in semiconductors. So the relationship with China, I mean, we need to do that for America. But frankly, if we're going to compete in the global, you know, in the world, if we're going to have leverage with China and compete with China, if we're going to have our allies in the Indo-Pacific want to have a close relationship with us, we have to strengthen America, and that means investing in these critical areas. Congressman, do you think that, well how seriously do you take the concern that the US is in danger of losing? We think of as our technological or corporate edge that way because of the kinds of things the Secretary is talking about. I think it's a serious danger for exactly the reasons the Secretary said, and I couldn't agree more, Madam Secretary, that we need to invest a lot more in winning. And it's not just about building up our military presence, it's about winning the AI race. It's about winning the biotech race. I represent a district just north of Boston, which is the biotech capital of the world, our number one competitor is Beijing. And guess what? It's Chinese Communist Party federal policy to make Beijing win. We have an amazing private sector, but we don't have the federal government saying that we're going to win this biotech race, and we probably should. But to your core question though about globalization, I mean, I think globalization is alive and well, but it's becoming increasingly bifurcated in between the democracies that we represent in the West and the autocracies that China and Russia represent. China and Russia have little in common culturally or economically, but they absolutely have two common enemies, the United States and democracy itself. And so just in the last few months, we're seeing this increasing move towards decoupling our economy from theirs, making sure we have our own resilient supply chains. And we're also seeing, we've been seeing with China's Belt and Road Initiative over the past decade, that them trying to build those key alliances, though all the China, Africa partnerships and whatnot, they're trying to construct their own set of global alliances that are separate from our own. So that presents a whole new set of challenges for globalization. And it's incredibly important that we win this race because it's not just about us versus China. It's about ultimately whether democracy prevails over autocracy. Ann Marie, you have something to say, but I wanna ask you one thing about it. Does the United States show up consistently as a permanent presence around the world on these kinds of things? Are we there regularly, consistently with our allies? Obviously we weren't there from 2016 to 2020. And again, I'm a Democrat, we're all Democrats on this panel. Realistically, you have to tell anybody you're advising to give us about a 50-50 shot. At least that's not what I want. That's what I worry about in terms of 2024 in term. And it's not just about Trump. It's about a whole wing of the Republican Party that has decided that the things we held, that I always thought we held most dear in terms of being in the world are not as important. But I have to challenge what is a consensus here. And I was sitting here thinking, this is the difference between being an American and being a Russian or a Chinese, right? I get to disagree. Even with folks in my own party and folks I really admire. But I wanna challenge, I mean, we're defining the US in a changing world. It's also a changing US. I'll start by saying, I do not think the most important relationship in the world is the US and China. I think it is US and Europe for values, for finance, for trade, for military. Where would we be right now if we were not aligned with Europe? And when the United States and Europe together are aligned, we're over 50% of world GDP. And we can do anything, particularly in terms of all of our allies. Point one, point two, we have done, I was really interested to hear Secretary Ramondo talk about export controls. We've done a lot with our other allies. But if anybody listened to Ian Bremmer's panel yesterday, when he was talking to Alex Stug, the former foreign minister of Finland, and I forget who else was on the panel, but there was a prominent head of an Indian think tank who just said, you know, we're not buying this democracies versus autocracies. No way. And look at who abstained in the human rights vote. Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and to the point of Asia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. Those are countries that abstained from pushing Russia out of the Human Rights Council at a time when Russia is committing gross war crimes. I'd say the rest of the world, lots of democracies who we want to stand with us don't have as clear a view of what's at stake here as the United States does, and I think Europe does. I do agree very strongly that we need to be investing at home, that we do absolutely need to be shoring up everything domestically to play the role we want to play. But I would say, thinking about the role in the United States going forward, again, we should think about a very large, very powerful group of countries that have the regulatory power in the world, much more in the United States. And the last thing I'll say is, if you think, as I think, the national security threat in this century is not China, it is climate. Europe has a plan, Europe has a path, and we are still fighting about it. Okay, I'm overstating a little just for the sake of the panel. That's okay, it's okay. I'm gonna follow up on one thing. By the way, for the record, I'm the moderator, I'm not on the panel, so I'm a political independent, and I think that's important to me. That's wish is true. But so there's a lot of what you said, both about the global implications of climate, but also what's working and what's not. You've been thinking a lot about renewal. Obviously, one thing we're seeing is NATO is getting a big shot in the arm right now, but there's also an ongoing act of debate about a lot of other institutions. We saw what happened with the WTO and China, for instance. How seriously do you think we need to rethink some of the institutions that were set up after the war for the world that we're in today, and where would you focus attention if you do think we need to rethink that? What's not working and what needs to be fixed? Where do we start? I mean, look, in 2045, the world can't be run by the victors of World War II, and that's really how the rest of the world sees it, right? The UN Security Council are the victors of World War II, and that would be like our being run in 1945 by the victors in 1845. The UN knows that, and the UN's been pretty irrelevant in this particular conflict, at least if you imagine how the original authors of the UN thought about it. The other problem is, it's, I'm thinking about Layall-Brain or Spaghetti Bowl, it's just a mess. If you map global institutions on any big issue, take health, you've got the traditional ones, the UN ones, the regional ones, then you have all the public-private ones that come together, you have all these smaller initiatives, you have then the ways of N running the UN, all the G groups. So, effectively, you've got to align, you've got to abolish, you've got to rationalize, you can't, I don't think you're gonna reform the UN in some grand global concert, I just don't think that's gonna happen. I do think there are ways, and actually, investment has a lot to do with this, taking the institutions that work, particularly the ones that bring all three sectors together, measuring how well they work on very defined goals, and then putting the money there. Tom, as somebody who is in government, defending these, and now you're in the private sector and you're free to say what it was like, what's your response, what would you fix out there? Well, the most important thing that I would focus on for the United States is rebuilding its domestic strength, and any national. What does that mean? It means a lot of things, and any national security advisor would say that I think today, it means investing in, I don't get to why in a second, it means investing in core capabilities that we have. You look back and think what it's meant to the United States' prosperity and security to have been the tech leader in this world since World War II, and think about that and think about how to preserve that and extend that leadership is absolutely critical. We also have to think very hard about the health of our people and health of our society, I think is absolutely critical. And if you do a balance sheet on assets and liabilities of the United States, if you go, we have tremendous assets, we can go through them, but on the liability side, it is mainly about, I think, investing, it's about the health of our people and our society, it's about the health of our system and the ability of our system to recognize, take on challenges and do something about it. I think those are the critical, I wanna talk about, just pretend I'm talking about Anne-Marie's point on China version. You were doing, I was nodding vigorously. We're gonna talk about China and Europe for a second here, but I think as a national security professional, those would be the things I think that you would focus on first, on domestic. On the China and Europe piece, the world is not monolithic, Anne-Marie, I agree with that, and you can see that in the discussion about the Western response and pressure on Russia, and the world is gonna fracture as a result, I think, of this entire, ultimately the structure of the world will be a more fractured place, I think, and it is absolutely important for the United States to pay a lot of attention to the middle powers and should be an important thrust of what the United States does, but Europe is our most important partner, bar none, but I do think China's our most important challenge at the end of the day and security front. Now, we can have a conversation about climate, right? But that was, as you know, I agree with you on, but I think as a force to be reckoned with in the world and the main game there is, we have military issues, as Seth was saying in Asia, but the main game there is technology at the end of the day. So Congress, why don't we pick up on one thing if I can, because, and I wanted to do it, but when we talk about institutions, one of the things that people talk about a lot in democracy is where you sit, the Congress, and the political polarization and challenges we have here, and that's obviously a source of huge debate. It plays around the world in different ways. In some ways, the United States is designed to be a system of conflict and then work through, but first, what do you think the polarization in the United States, how does that play for us around the world and how does it affect our reputation? And second, realistically, what, if anything, could we do about it now? So candidly, the polarization is a big problem. And during the Trump administration, we spent a lot of time going around the globe with bipartisan codels to show our allies and our adversaries that despite what you might hear about going on in the White House and see on TV, here you have Democratic and Republican representatives from the House and the Senate saying that we're aligned on key issues. And going to Asia was a very important stop on those types of trips to really show that Congress will outlast this administration and we're aligned on key issues, like supporting NATO, for example. But in the long term, there's no question that this divide is a big problem, and I think that candidly, it's a huge weakness of the United States. There are reforms that you can make to Congress structural reforms to improve it. I think a different primary process, probably ranked choice voting, getting money out of politics. I argue that we should increase terms in Congress from two to four years, you're not spending your entire time fundraising, and I think you might even wanna consider term limits because it's amazing how much political courage people tend to develop when they're in their last term. So there are a lot of things, but the problem with all those changes that I just mentioned is most of them, I'm no constitutional scholar, but most of them probably require constitutional changes. But at the same time, despite all the divides, there is some important bipartisan work that's being done. And I co-chaired a future defense task force on the House Armed Services Committee, where some of our most important conclusions on this very defense-focused panel were about the things that you hear talked about more broadly in terms of our economy, investing in AI, investing in biotech, and winning that race, developing a whole new generation of alliances, because NATO is great for defending Europe, it doesn't do as much with China. NATO is great for preventing a Russian invasion in a traditional sense, yet Russia invades us all the time through the internet, and NATO was not designed in 1946 to stop that. It's also about developing, winning this game in terms of modernization of our weapons systems. The first symbolic thing that we did to reinforce NATO was send a bunch of tanks to Poland, but we're all watching on TV as tanks get eviscerated by drones, so it's wonderful that NATO is stepping up and all these EU members are investing more in defense, they've got to invest in the future of defense in things like drones and not things like tanks if they're gonna be an effective deterrent. And then finally, another key point was developing a new generation of treaties, because I'll give you just a narrow example. Yes, and I'll give you a narrow example to illustrate what I'm talking about. The future of warfare is highly dependent on artificial intelligence. We're gonna have a lot more autonomous fighting vehicles in the air, on the ground, and certainly under the sea than we do now. How we set the rules, the rules of the road for the use of AI is incredibly important not just for the future of humanity, but for our strategic advantage, because if China sets the rules of the road for AI, and we don't have some sort of Geneva Convention like we did in response to the use of chemical weapons in World War I to deal with this new era of warfare, we're gonna be at a big disadvantage because China doesn't care about collateral damage, China doesn't care about killing civilians, but we do. And so if we adhere to our values, our essentially our robots will be more constrained and we'll be more likely to lose that fight. So we have got to get ahead of this issue and we're not doing enough of that today. Oh, you said trees. Treaties. Treaties. Treaties. I love trees. Absolutely love trees. I'm a huge fan of trees, but I think we need to do more for trees too. Madam Secretary, I wanna bring it back to you then and sort of bring it back to where we started. So we've talked a lot here about a lot of the shifts that are happening. Russia, Ukraine, the expansion of NATO, I wanna ask one specific question on Russia, but then I wanna finish on a broader one, which is thinking about the US role in the world, can the US and Russia find some way back or is Russia, is it just different? And we can't go back there. We cannot even begin to have that discussion now. I mean, Putin needs to end this war and it's premature to even think about that. What I will say is, and I know President Biden is very committed to this, Russia needs to pay a serious long-term price for the way they're behaving. Including reparations for Ukraine? Absolutely. Definitely, at least. Everybody thinks so? Yes. Yeah, but even more than that. I mean, to Tom's point earlier, they need to be denied the benefits of the global economy and the global economic order for a long time. These export controls, they're not going away anytime soon. So, you know, your question is hard for me to even get my head around, given where we are now. Step one is we need to end this war. Well, I think that does say something about US power and that we still have power to leverage. There's no doubt we have power. There's been so much to respond to, but you know, Tom made the comment that the export control coalition wouldn't have been built without US leadership. Absolutely true. I think so much of what we're doing. Yes, Europe is a partner. They are there, they were strong, they were swift. This was because of US leadership. To the point of Indo-Pacific versus Europe or China, I will simply say this. I don't want to take anything away from the US-EU relationship, but you know, we rolled out this announcement yesterday. It was the US plus a dozen economies in the Indo-Pacific. It represents 40% of the world's GDP and it's the fastest growing. So where are we today? I agree with you about Europe. Where are we going to be in 10 years? We better pay close attention to the Indo-Pacific countries. And you say, and I agree with you, Singapore and these other countries should have been with us on human rights. They're in a tough zip code with China as their neighbor. And if the United States doesn't show up more and have a proactive economic strategy in that region, they'll continue to vote with China, which is why we do need to really show up consistently. And economics is the coin of the realm, along with technology. I think that's the last word, Madam Secretary, but it's been a great panel, a great discussion. Tom Donilon, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Seth Bolton and Secretary Romondo, thank you very much for being here today and thanks for the conversation. Thank you.