 Thank you very much Brian, that was an introduction which was extremely useful because it saves me putting out a high level of context before I ask Director Clapper my first question. But thanks for coming out tonight and thanks to the University for providing this venue. I've spent a few happy hours watching some very happy people in this hall and I think we'll be a little more reflective than is usually the case at graduation ceremonies and the like. But it's a privilege for me to be here with Jim Clapper. I spent six years in the Embassy in Washington and I have to say there are people that you came to appreciate very much when you're an ambassador and I guess there was nobody in the US I appreciated more than Jim Clapper. We always put down various arguments as to why the alliance we have with the United States is in our national interests and the starting point is almost invariably the fact that it gives us a high level of vision of what is happening around the globe both in terms of sight and also in terms of audibility and that gives us a level of confidence that we can properly plan for our security and diplomacy in this region and more globally. So our ability to collaborate with the American intelligence community is critical and Jim Clapper led it. We're going to talk tonight as the Vice Chancellor has said about a whole array of issues that arise in contemporary terms. We'll be talking about the current administration, folk in the administration, where that's leading us in terms of ongoing crises that are in our area but I thought I'd start by asking the director how does the United States see Australia? What is it when you look at an ally here what is their value to you? Well it's hard to overstate the importance of Australia to the United States and I guess before I get into that too much I ought to just address briefly why does Australia, the United States or any nation enter into an alliance and quintessentially it's or essentially it's because it is in the mutual best interests of the respective parties to that alliance and so in our case by that I mean the United States and Australia it is in our mutual best interests to have that alliance. Now my purview obviously has been intelligence and I first came to Australia in 1984 and in any number of intelligence and competencies since then have grown to appreciate the importance that Australia, important position Australia occupies in the larger scheme of intelligence things can't go into a lot of detail in a setting like this but I've also seen it and have I like to think helped expand the breadth and depth of that relationship and it is today flourishing and that's just one aspect one pillar of that alliance obviously the military relationship the diplomatic relationship are the and the economic relationship all of which I think are among the pillars that make this arrangement and this alliance so important to us it it certainly doesn't hurt at the same time that we have we share I think values and a heritage together that draws us that draws us ever closer and there's a long association in a military context between our two countries when I departed my position as D and I the Prime Minister Turnbull gave me a memento among I received a lot but none meant more to me than the memento that the Prime Minister gave me the statuette replicating the iconic picture of an Australian soldier carrying over his shoulder a wounded American soldier in New Caledonia in 1942 it's a great symbol of our alliance and again I will say from an intelligence perspective we derive mutual benefit from that Australia is a huge contributor to a global perspective not just here regionally but thanks to our joint activities together Australia is a major player in a global context in that intelligence relationship thanks very much I just wanted to set that up in in context so that folk had a bit of an understanding about how you were situated with regard to us and and what was important to you in the your interests in being engaged as well as our interests in being engaged with you but I think what's on the mind of just about everybody here is a bit more contemporary than that the history that underpins that and that is responding to the impact on regional relations on the bilateral relationship on on American politics of the the election to President of Donald Trump and he has come as shall we say a surprise package in in in many features of his both of his presentation and his personality and I just wondered if you could give us a bit of an idea we'll talk a bit more than just one question on this and I'm sure others will have questions too but the impact you see him having on what you might call the traditional national security community of the United States how does he is he perceived by and related to what we've come to respect enormously of the quality of the intelligence community the national security community more broadly defined with a Pentagon and the like you've had things to say about that publicly and I wondered if you care to discuss them here well clearly President Trump is shall I say unconventional never quite had a president certainly in my experience quite like he is he comes to the position rather unfamiliar with the government and how it works and what the least the classical roles of a presence have been and certainly I think the first time he was ever exposed to any classified information or the intelligence community was during once he became the nominee and as as his customary we start to brief both of the principal nominees before the election and certainly after he became the president elect those briefings and indoctrinations became more intensive he of course was very skeptical about the intelligence community assessment that we produced and published on January 6th recounting the extensive and egregious Russian interference in our political process I think he took great exception to it principally because he was very sensitive about anything or anyone that quite would question the legitimacy of his election or the veracity of it and so that assessment represented a challenge I guess to him so it resulted in his character characterizing the intelligence community as Nazis which none of us appreciated very much I had occasion to call him about it and he amazingly took my call and I tried to appeal to his higher instincts about what national asset that he was inheriting the US intelligence community is I may have rendered a great service by departing since he's since replaced two of the principals John Brennan director CIA and myself and and I think a very regrettable manner replaced great public a distinguished public servant Jim Comey and we were three of the four people that briefed him at Trump Tower on the 6th of January about about that report so that's just kind of up close and personal my own encounters with him which I have to say weren't weren't real positive I think as indicated in the introduction I've worked for every president one in the toiled in the trenches of intelligence for every president since including John Kennedy I've been a political pointy in both Republican to Democratic administrations I spent 34 years in the military so my natural instincts are loyalty for the president particularly in his capacity as commander chief and this is the first time I've ever had occasion to question that I think that my impressions here after being here for a week is that perhaps there's too much preoccupation with some of the things he says as and particularly with respect to the impact on the alliance and the the pillars of that alliance as I indicated I think are much more transcendent much more permanent than the transient occupant of the White House and I think people get overwrought about that I will say in fairness to President Trump that I had the honor and privilege of attending the anniversary the 75th 75th anniversary of the Battle of Coral Sea in New York City and President Trump was there with Prime Minister Turnbull and it struck me that he was clearly on a mission to mend fences he gave an excellent speech this was a teleprompter type speech which is much I much prefer the teleprompter president Trump than the tweeting president Trump and I think he said all the right things said and did all the right things and also acknowledged the importance of the alliance but in the end you know Australia must must do what it needs to do in its best national interest and I trust and hope that Australia will see that there is still tremendous value in that relationship because of these pillars whether it's military intelligence economic or diplomatic or whatever our two countries in my view are just inextricably bound and I think those deep long-lasting pervasive relationships will sustain will be sustained and will not be all that affected by some of the utterances that come out of the White House yeah it's a point that I I think that's a very worthwhile point to make if you you can look at the the alliance and in a couple of layers there's a layer now really since the 1960s more than the 1950s or even 40s of intense military engagement in terms of supply of equipment quality equipment embedded personnel intelligence area we've already discussed now investment I mean the last time we have figures it's about 860 billion American investment in Australia in all areas of the economy increasing in that year 2015 by 80 billion which is more than the total stock of Chinese investment for example at 75 billion but even more important now for us is Australian investment in the US which now stands at 600 billion and the earnings of Australian companies in the United States are four times the value of Australian exports to the United States I mean these are this is a totally different relationship now from what it was 20 or 30 years ago but that's that's that level the other but the level of officialdom you know the exchange that takes place on a day-to-day basis between a president and a prime minister while not that not the basis of the alliance is often what actually gets the attention of the public more than the underlying reality and I was just thinking you you didn't mention of it we are not really familiar here because it's not very much within our gaze the the character of the relationship with Russia but that is of course at the centre of the current investigations and concerns that are afflicting Congress in the broader American public what impact do you think and it's hard to make a judgment about this but from your your seat of the pants assessment what impact do you think that the various activities identified as of Russian origin had on the outcome of the election well I that's a key question and I we the intelligence community could not make a call on that we didn't have we don't have the authority the capability of the expertise to assess what was the impact on the electorate of the Russian massinations it's my belief that it had to have had the impact when you consider the magnitude of what they did you know the Russians have a long track record of interfering in elections theirs and other peoples and we have documentation on the Russian attempts to influence our elections going back to the 60s but never ever had we ever seen anything like this that was as aggressive and multi-dimensional as this one was so in addition to the infamous hacking of the democratic national committee there were an intensive campaign to to promulgate fake news by the Russians which many other news outlets in the United States either wittingly or unwittingly picked up and thus amplified social media trolls those who were paid to implant false social media items which many of which went viral a very intensive and sophisticated and slick propaganda campaign by RT the Russian television network which is predominantly funded by the Russian government and there's a close connection between the chief executive of RT network and president Putin so this was a very aggressive campaign but we couldn't actually say empirically what effect it had on the on the election itself i intuitively it had to have the only thing we said in our assessment was that we saw no evidence of messing with voter tally voter tallies or counting votes in any of the 50 states we didn't see any evidence of that i think the other point is that of course the Russians must be very pleased but must be very gratified with the results because our assessment was their first objective was to so discord just you know disruption doubt in our political system and they certainly succeeded in that to a fairly well secondarily it was very strong animus personal animus against Hillary Clinton by Putin himself he held in fact he had great animus towards both clinton's former president clinton and former secretary clinton and in her case held her responsible for what he felt was an attempted color revolution in 2011 that to bring about regime change in other words give her to him so very strong animus towards the clinton's and then as the campaign were on and where it appeared that there might be a chance for uh then candidate trump to become president like trump they started getting on board and of course their preference would it be for someone like him who was a business man somebody they thought they could negotiate with and someone who would not be pushing hard on on human rights for example even in the later stages of the campaign where the polls indicated that secretary clinton was was going to win and their objectives then turned to how to undermine a potential clinton presidency so they were kind of uh they were uh innovative and creative and agile as as the campaign were on they they just look for opportunities to take advantage of it and as director comat former director comey indicated in his hearing before the senate intelligence committee they'll be back they're gonna on the heels of their success here they they are emboldened to be even more aggressive and so i think we can look forward to attempted interference in our election process as a standard feature of russian behavior the um carrying the russian point a bit further one of the interesting comments i saw assigned to secretary tillerson when he was out here for the recent osmond meeting he was said to have remarked to Australian officials that really the president was continually suggesting to him that he he hoped he would find ways of building a better relationship with russia as a primary objective it's interesting i mean not a lot of Australians realize that the russian economy is the same size as the Australian economy ours is going up and theirs is going down and um but with that and with the population that has to be supported by it they've got really quite an extraordinary outreach much of some of its legacy of course from a different era the soviet bloc used to be about seven percent of GDP i think russia is a bit under two percent of GDP now but the soviet bloc of course was a bigger entity but uh looking at at the sort of threat that they might pose or the um the beyond just the politically interfering threat um what do you see is the main developments in their capability that means they can sustain that level of potency if you like in in global strategic issue uh you you did mention a few items of kit that they focused on and and how they behaved on the border perhaps you might just elaborate a little on that well for one they of course the russians have shown that they can leverage a particular capability of theirs that goes back to you know the soviet era my own view is if if you're looking if you're sitting in putin's chair looking out long term for russia the prospects aren't all that great um starting with the demographics population is actually shrinking over time and of course that that has impact on the number of military age males that are available they have challenges with respect to life expectancy high infant mortality rates an AIDS epidemic high rates of alcoholism and of course importantly an economy that is disproportionately dependent on one commodity which is oil and as the price of oil fluctuates that has direct impact on their economy and when they program a budget say $50 a barrel of oil and it's only $35 that has huge impact on the long-term health of their economy they have tremendous infrastructure challenges it'd be very difficult for the russians to wage a two front war say both in the far east in in europe because of their underdeveloped infrastructure nevertheless the russians have embarked on a very aggressive and for my money disturbing modernization of their strategic nuclear weapons notably a a new generation of land mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles and a new generation of submarines carrying sea launch ballistic missiles long range and by the way just for good measure they're also an active violation of the INF treaty so i i heard that kind of the same sort of expression of interest on the part of president at the time president like trump about wouldn't it be great if we could have a better relationship with russia oh yeah i i suppose it would but the russians are not interested in my view in a positive relationship with the with the west and certainly not with the united states they are interested they are they they are a global competitor they want to do as much as they can to undermine our system which uh leadership doesn't doesn't is opposed to they see as a threat to them so russians are not our friends and uh if we can find areas of agreement where our interests converge great but um as ronald reagan once said trust but verify i'd like to bring things a little bit closer to home not much closer to home because i want to talk about uh get your views on the korean peninsula and perhaps settlements of the issues of the nuclear weapons capability of of north korea it does seem that one issue has exercised really quite a high level of focus on the part of the new president he is uh it was said to to me that barack obama said this is going to be your main problem and that he actually does accept intelligence briefings on it and tries to have a conversation about it he drew a red line the red line which always thinks very dangerous thing to draw politically internationally unless you actually really intend to follow through by a crossing of the red line you're going to punch someone's head off so it's an an active red line not just a uh a notional red line so therefore one ought to be careful about using red lines however the red line that he established was on a capability which at the moment north korea does not have and that is an icbm so he said no icbm does seem to me that if this is going to be incapable of being resolved by chinese diplomacy which i strongly suspect it won't be um that maybe there's something there for a sort of freeze or a halt to advancing that that particular capability in return for other things that need to be a fig leaf about non-proliferation at least because the koreans have already made commitments about nuclear weapons i just wondering what your perspective on korea was are we getting it right should we be somewhere else well i do have a a somewhat i guess contrarian or unconventional view on what to do about north korea my interest there began when i first served there in the mid 80s as the director of intelligence for yo's forces korean i've sort of followed developments on the peninsula ever since and one of the things is a consequence one of my items on my bucket list was someday to visit north korea and i got to do that in november 2014 and in the course of retrieving two of our citizens who were at the time imprisoned under hard labor conditions and uh i remember uh parenthetically the one of the nicest things the new york times ever said about me was rhetorically asking why on earth would you send a d and i the head spy in the united states on a delicate diplomatic missions mission like this to north korea especially this d and i and the new york times diagnosis for that was well these gruff want a relic of the cold war ideal for north korea always appreciated that anyway when i went and uh engaged with uh some uh did not meet with kim yong-gun but uh engaged with some north korean elite leaders i was uh blown away with the degree of paranoia and the siege mentality that prevails uh in pyongyang and as they look out all they see are uh enemies and so my first uh authorized talking point that i was given was that uh you must denuclearize before we can have dialogue with you well that is i came away that's a non-starter north koreans are not going to give up their nuclear weapons and oh by the way neither they nor we know if they'll work but it doesn't matter because they have uh created what they want which is deterrence and respect which they crave international recognition as a nuclear power so point one is they're not going to give up their nuclear weapons uh they went to school on kadafi and uh he gave up his weapons of mass destruction and things didn't turn out so well for him and they they uh they they took that on secondly um the chinese are and this is based on some you know dialogue i've had with them they're probably as frustrated with the north koreans as everyone else is they don't like the missiles the missile tests they don't like the underground nuclear tests they don't like all the saber rattling and all that um but chinese like dislike even more is the notion of losing their buffer state uh so they'll they'll put pressure on the my belief is they will put pressure on the north koreans to a point but not so much that they they would cause the regime to collapse because what they they want even they oppose even more would be a unified peninsula obviously under the control of soul and then to have that on their border along the yellow river backed by the united states is complete anathema to the chinese so they will they will pressure they will leverage but only to a point and third it's my personal opinion that the united states really doesn't have any viable military options if we were to preemptively attack uh yangbyon uh nuclear research facility for example or one of the uh kn08 icbm sites uh without any deliberation on the north koreans part that would reflexively they would turn loose all that artillery lined up along the dmz against soul a metropolitan area of about 25 million people which has a lot of americans there too i like to remind folks and that would and they would uh as they've threatened on more than one occasion transform soul into a sea of fire so my view is and this is uh clearly not company policy i can assure you is that uh given all the all the these facts in my view we the u.s along with our uh would have to get gain the cooperation support of the republic of korea allies i think we should consider establishing an intersection in pyongyang not unlike the intersection we had in hibana cuba in representation of another government we didn't recognize but at least it afforded a presence and a conduit for communication and there's i think great advantage to this one would be the just the physical presence there which would pay dividends from an intelligence perspective won't go into detail there but maybe even more important as a conduit for information information from the outside world which the north korean regime fears and that would open up some dialogue we ought to in that while we're doing that we should uh sustain as much prefer pressure as we can particularly financial the north koreans go to great lengths to finance their activities illicitly through front companies and the like they have very complex uh financial mechanisms to generate revenue and we ought to continue to work on on that to try to pressure them but i think uh further isolating the north koreans demonizing them even more threatening major major conflict or or sending an armada someplace is uh all that sort of thing does is heighten that paranoia in that uh that siege mentality well look now i i think the audience may appreciate but you've just heard a revolutionary statement and uh that is not the direction necessarily that policy is being pursued but nevertheless is an interesting perspective that's what's so great about being out of the government and and that is a and that's a sort of product of uh how valuable the uh intense study you make of a country or a system uh when you are a long-serving intelligence uh officer now that's uh i i've been getting a signal that the time has come for us to receive questions from the audience and i understand that the vice chancellor has got a a bunch of them and uh they keep them flowing in and we'll uh we started a bit late so we'll probably finish a bit late and um be very happy to take the uh take the questions that you've got less info great thank you very much uh thank you everyone for your questions we're obviously you're not going to be able to get to all of them but uh that we have some very interesting ones our first question is australia's intelligence community has grown substantially over the last decade to meet the new challenges of the 21st century do you think there are any aspects of the american intelligence system that australia would benefit from for example a director of national intelligence or a homeland department and likewise could the u.s system reproduce any strengths of the australian model such as the inspector general of intelligence and security well um i uh i will i'll have to do the the dutiful statement about my reluctance to inject myself and australian internal issues but since you asked uh i did have some uh dialogue with uh uh steve merchant and it was an old old colleague and friend and michael estrange who were conduct have conducted the uh intelligence review which i think is in the final throes of preparation um and obviously the topic of conversation with me is uh is there an application here for a d and i like arrangement um for australia and uh i said oh there that's a possibility um the one other point i should make before i i finish that discourse is that the only reason we have a d and i the position i occupied for six and a half years is because of a very traumatic uh thing for the united states which was the 9-11 attacks were it not for an external stimulus like that no one in the intelligence community most of all our cia would have ever voted to have let's have a d and i so the major changes like that in our system have been occasioned by some traumatic event where there was a perception of failure uh and there hasn't been that situation here in australia uh you have uh in my humble view a very very capable intelligence establishment and australian citizens should take great pride in the confidence and professionalism of the australian intelligence community which as i indicated earlier punches way way above its weight in terms of impact with us and uh particularly in in the commonwealth the five eyes alliance i do think there is merit in having a body or somebody who can look at intelligence as an enterprise and decide on a systematic routinized basis where to make investments and where to make divestments and i think that that is is one of the strengths of in our system the d and i who can look at the entirety of the enterprise and try to decide on an objective basis where must we invest where might we take risk and that enterprise view i think does have merit uh in something another area that is kind of mundane not very sexy but this is on it which is the nervous system for an intelligence enterprise and can there be consistencies efficiencies and consistencies there we we are moving towards that in our system would not have happened without the presence of a d and i in our system at least there does need to be a champion for integration collaboration coordination and it has to be on a day to day basis uh and on a systematic basis so to the extent that any of those attributes would be appealing uh then that you know but in the end austria has to make its own decisions and not necessarily emulate what uh the united states has done thank you all right uh next question i think both of you could uh take a stab at what do you think happens after the trump presidency will america continue its america first isolationist approach or will there be a return to a globally reengaged america what do you think kim well firstly um good question isolationist is not the right word unilateralist is the right word uh trump is not an isolationist but he is displaying tendencies of a unilateralist that is heavily focused on the idea that there is an american interest that is actually distinguishable from that of a broader community broader western community or broader global community and that american national interest will be pursued in the first instance and being pursued in the first instance it's likely have to have to be a company if a power is to be used by a unilateral exercise of that power i i do think i i do fear that uh that the advent of the trump administration has taken off the table a number of aspects of american foreign policy which uh though often mocked and often produced and produce for arguments of those who find elements of the policy objectionable a lot of criticism and a suggestion of hypocrisy but nevertheless and and they it must say a set of values which is a a defense minister who considered himself a power realist often found uncomfortable uh in exercising it and therefore not very appreciative of it myself but there was and has been the case since really since world war two the united states has had injected into the global political system a a set of concepts and values which actually are important for basic decencies in the system as a whole and in individual countries the americans do elevate human rights issues the americans do elevate uh liberal democracies the americans have uh instigated a rules-based order in relation to trade uh in relation to global economic exchange there is a a sense for the united states that there's a set of values that they pursue which while they may be shared in the united states go more broadly than the us and having those sentiments it undoubtedly underpinned the way in which americans saw their responsibilities to other people including ourselves americans used to cite to say that they thought that Australians are rather like them i always used to say we're nothing like you for you are idealist and you're optimist we are pragmatic pessimists that is why we have a uh you we follow you in many ways out of idle curiosity and the um as to where all that is that is going to actually take us the problem with this administration it's taken as i said earlier in the introduction marks to it um having put up that that paradigm that i just did you know there's there's a multiplicity of political forces in a multiplicity of countries which would deny that any reasonable assessment of those standards were being properly met by the united states or anyone else uh people are full of schadenfreude when they come to to look at things that uh the united states impacts on but nevertheless there was a basic decency out there and the thing that worries me about the current administration is that's essentially taken that out of the equation and has moved to an essentially mechanistic exchanged base um process of bilateral and multilateral relations what's engaged in here is not a higher principle but an exchange of interests and i think that it will be possible for the united states to move back from that but it's going to be hard because other people are moving to fill a gap and introduce into the international relationships other principles that don't necessarily relate to that and having abandoned it for a few years and then getting back to it is not going to be that easy for the us when that occurs i think uh i mean that's a great it is a key question and uh it's somewhat of an imponderable is you know what's going to happen in our political system it's uh you know it's all that you can just watch the daily drama you know you can't make this stuff up it's all some new wrinkle every day so hard to say i do think though that um the uh imperative of globalization which is already upon us is going to be very difficult to reverse and some sometimes the rhetoric i hear uh from the administration is is as though it could be um and bearing in mind of course that the president is playing to his base which is into this notion of america first and we can't but be bothered with the rest of the world because we have all these issues at home and we've got to bring back coal or some other absurd proposition um so uh i just think the uh the imperatives of globalization and the pressure of globalization is it cannot be reversed i think what frankly the president is is encountering as he actually engages with with uh countries is that the the difficulty of uh extracting the united states isolating the united states that it's almost uh can't be done i do think there's a a valid concern that uh and i agree with kim here is this uh sort of uh one-off transactional approach to foreign relations uh how long that you know how long it how long that that is sustained and how much permanent damage that could cause uh what has been uh you know the u.s. is traditional role since world war two um there are those in the country uh to include uh many republicans i've i've encountered who uh believe maybe uh maybe optimistically that uh what we're going through now will serve as a cathartic and that once we get past it we've had very difficult interludes in our history before and then it came together probably the most traumatic dramatic example was our our civil war which was a terrible time for the country tore it asunder and it eventually reunited and was probably stronger forward and whether we'll go through some epic like that in this case i i think remains to be seen i do take great stock in uh what kim says who probably understands uh the united states better than a lot of americans and so i uh that's why i wanted to hear what he had to say first great so uh china has not been a fleet power since the emperor disbanded china's fleets in 1433 but has now bought a second hand aircraft carrier from the ukraine and will have its first home built carrier operational by 2020 with two more to follow given the millions china has spent on dock facilities in darwin fiji and elsewhere is china's growing ability to project force into the pacific and the indian oceans uh a new normal and what does it mean for australia especially if the united states becomes more isolationists well i'm glad uh you're going to buy some new submarines uh i think what china is doing is uh really it shouldn't be viewed necessarily with panic um they're a power a major power in the world and i think an accouterment of that is uh you know their military and certainly uh they're a maritime nation and it's not unreasonable that they would want to project maritime power uh i have a lot more hope in uh a beneficial positive mutually positive relationship with the chinese and i am the russians and if uh their uh their military abilities can be channeled the right way that could be uh you know force for good i do think it it underlines the importance of the united states continuing to be a maritime presence in the pacific and we certainly would look to uh australia to be there with us as you always have been all right i think this will be our last question uh we talked you talked a fair bit today about the uh interference in the us election we didn't talk about what lessons that australia can take from the us experience about foreign interference and our democratic processes especially in this new digital age that we're in well i think one of the most important things uh we in the us intelligence community uh could do and did do which is why we wanted to put out an unclassified version of our intelligence community assessment in fact president obama directed us to do that when he tasks tasks us the first week of december to put everything together we possibly could at whatever classification levels we needed but also to get to share with the next administration and with the congress and to the extent that we possibly could with the public so point one is education uh our electorate our public needs to understand what fake news is and needs to understand what the russians did in our to interfere in our system there are obvious lessons about securing our uh our entire voting apparatus if you will as as what we call critical infrastructure and certainly from a cyber perspective securing voter registration roles and voting machines uh against cyber assaults so to me those two things those are two lessons i guess is is public education and uh recognition the other thing is and this is uh again not company policy is a personal perspective it's my belief in at least in the united states that we need an organization that we used to have a did away with called the united states information agency we needed an organization like that on steroids to do counter messaging that should not be an activity the intelligence community it should be separate to convey the counter message both against russia or other anybody else that interferes in our our system or as a counter isis message messaging organization and that needs to be a fairly a robust uh organization that has the resources to do this messaging both foreign and and domestic well thank you very much i am now going to call uh professor rory medcalf the head of our of our national security college and rory has been the host of uh jim clapper and his visit and will continue to be here for the next couple weeks thank you uh thank you vice chancellor it's a real um a real pleasure to be here this evening i think we all came along out of a bit more than idle curiosity although i think uh kim that was certainly the line that we'll ponder as we go forward but look i think we've been treated and privileged to a really important conversation here tonight we've heard about the alliance between australia and the united states the enduring pillars of that and the question of really how strong are those pillars and how can they really endure beyond the transient occupant of the white house as we've heard so we've heard about i guess trump and after we've taken a tour via russia and north korea to think about global and regional security threats and challenges and risks and issues we haven't heard so much uh about about terrorism we haven't heard so much about some of the other issues that i know uh that on jim clapper's visit here he's uh very interested in speaking about as well issues like climate change we haven't heard a lot about china but that's that's had a lot of attention in the australian policy discourse lately the uh the purpose of an event like tonight i think is really core to the mission of anu in addition to uh to research excellence in addition to teaching it's about having an impact on the national policy debate uh and the role of the national security college is very much very much in that space so it's been a real privilege here uh to to listen to this evening's exchange host and to welcome jim clapper to anu and to the national security college and of course to work to work with kim bezley on these issues i'd like you all now to join me in uh in thanking our speakers