 Okay. My name is Espen Bartaj, the Managing Member of the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum. And I will both introduce and moderate this session. And Marie Slaughter, who was supposed to be with us later, but not in this session, so I will do both. Very happy to have this stellar panel. The World Economic Forum over the last years have increased its emphasis on issues of international security and geopolitics. Quite significantly, to the extent that one-fifth of the overall program is on issues broadly related to that set of subjects. Why does the World Economic Forum do that? You would believe from its name that our primary focus is on more of the economic issues. But it's because a significant number, a majority of our members and partners and people we work with do see the very close relationship these days between the global economy, societal developments, security, geopolitical trends. And we are indeed living in a time of deep uncertainties. We see a series of regional conflicts in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia, Southeast Asia, even in Europe. We're seeing classical conflicts confined to one country, crossing countries. But we also see the advent of new and hybrid forms of conflict and competition. And we see a topic that we introduced last year and was a theme of several panels, the return of strategic competition between key players. So we're trying to understand what is this big picture. And we have a great panel to help us to start this. And I want to say right at the outset that this is the first panel. I think for those of you who made this this morning, this is your first panel at this annual meeting, apart from the concert last night. But it will not be the last opportunity to discuss these issues. So see this also as the opening moment for a broad discussion that will run through. The purpose of a context session, this is the security context, and context on Wednesday is meant to take stock. So where are we? What's happening right now? What is the global picture? And on Friday we will have a security outlook, which will be some of the same topics, but more where are we heading? What will be the agenda of the coming year and the years to come? We have been bringing in more people from the security field, security experts, security practitioners, military, intelligence leaders, defence minister, foreign ministers, people in this broad space, also to build a community of people working on these issues. And you will see more of this as we go along in the coming days and also in the continued work of the forum. Today we have with us Jean-Marie Genot from the International Crisis Group, which he leads, a distinguished governmental career from France, and also well known for his many years at the helm of UN peacekeeping as under Secretary General for the Department of Peacekeeping Affairs, at the time of massive investment and massive change in UN peacekeeping. Admiral Jim Stavridis, now Dean of the Fletcher School, a military practitioner come academic, that continues to focus strongly on these issues, so happy to have with you. Your last military position was SACUR, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe. We interacted a lot those days and we continue to do so. Very happy to have you with us here and in our ongoing work. And then, of course, last but not least, Foreign Minister Louis Wushuqibabu from Rwanda, Foreign Minister for many years from a country that has both been at the midst of one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern times, but also really come out of it and now is a key player in African security. So this is the cost we have this morning. And I would like to start with you, Jean-Marie. What are we actually seeing? We're clearly empirically seeing many different conflicts, as I mentioned. Is it coincidental that they're all happening at this time or is there a big picture that you see when you as crisis group boss looks into all of this from an analytical perspective? No, I think you can connect the dots. When you look at the world today, there is something that has always existed, which is competition between major powers. But what is different now is that there is no agreement on the status quo between the major powers and there is no agreement on how you change it. And so you see the result in the Far East, you see the result in Europe, you see the result in the Middle East. That's one big thing that really goes right through the world. I think a second point is that it's a much more bottom-up, so to speak, world, which in some ways is a very good thing because it means that the people are taking charge. But in another way, it can be a source of many dangers because it means that in many countries where the state is fragile for a variety of reasons that we could spend the whole discussion analyzing why you have many fragile states around the world, but because of that fragility, because of a sense of lack of inclusiveness, you have a lot of challenges to the stability of states and to the existing order. There is also there a challenge to the status quo. And I think a third element is that there is more connectivity in this world. We used to live in a world where what happened here did not, what happened there did not have much impact here. This is when terrorism, for instance, is something that there was a lot of terrorism in the 70s, but it was quite what the big difference between the 70s terrorism and today's terrorism is the connectivity is that something that happens in any place in the world immediately has worldwide reverberations. So that means we really live now in revolutionary times. But revolutionary times, you know, as a Frenchman, you always go back to your own national history, not revolutionary times, the sense of the French Revolution, because it's not about one country. And that's the big difference, the transnational, and it's linked to the connectivity, the transnational dimension of today's changes mean that negotiating end of conflict and we try to find compromise is much harder because there are some conflicts which are still contained to one particular place, but more often than not, they're hijacked by transnational forces with transnational agendas. And then what can you negotiate? It's much harder. And of course the result of that is the tragedy of the refugees, is the tragedy of violent extremism, a number of things that we can analyze, but I think these are some of the sort of broad brush what we're seeing now. Just before we move on, on connectedness, the role of social media in all this, how important is it for people trying to understand the security reality of the world? It's very important because it's become an instrument of mobilization. You can belong in a virtual community today, in a very strong virtual community, it can be a force for good, it can be a force for bad. Like every technological transformation, it has two sides. And we see how for instance Daesh is recruiting on the internet. When you look at today's terrorism, what is on the market for terrorism today? If you had been born, if you'd been active 40 years ago, you would have gone to the Battle of Mainhof or to the Red Brigades. Today if you want to challenge the established order with violence, you do it with Islamic extremism. But how does Islamic extremism build its following in large part through the internet when it comes to highly developed countries? The reasons why you joined Daesh are not the same when you are in Syria, in Iraq or in France or Belgium. A very different reality emerging that we have to understand and take very seriously. Let's have a look at this from Africa. You have a series of travel spots in several parts of Africa, but there's also been a significant effort over the last years to build African responses to them. If you could give an update on this, but also if you like comment on what Jean-Marie already said. Sure. Let me pick up two important aspects of security that Jean-Marie just mentioned. One is inclusiveness and the other one is revolutionary times. So when we look at Africa in general as a continent, we see that a major part of security problems has to do with people feeling a sense of exclusion. It can be ethnic, it can be economic or simply neglect. And when people feel neglected in these revolutionary times, then we're in trouble. Second, I think, and I will not, being a foreign minister, but name countries specifically, but in my own part of the world in Africa and other parts as well, I think leaders need to get back to the basics of leading people, paying attention to citizens, and giving them a minimum of belonging to their countries, to their state, regardless of the economic condition. And I think that's been lacking. We need to figure out where we plug in as many of our citizens as possible. That is part of bringing stability. The experience of my own country, Rwanda, which was basically completely destroyed in the summer of 1994, was that we had to make sacrifices, very difficult decisions, to start bringing the people of Rwanda together, making the kinds of sacrifices that give them a sense of the country is yours. What we have in this country is going to be shared. It's not always equally shared. That's the reality of politics. But this country is yours. We will struggle together. And if you are in leadership, you have to do more than everybody else. So we really look at security, particularly in Africa, as a very important part of just daily life. Do I have a roof on top of my head? Do I have food on the table? Is my child going to be able to go to school and afford it? Can I or my neighbor or my sibling be part of the leadership of the country? So really the whole management of diversity, any way you look at it, the mismanagement of diversity, and this is not just Africa, is part of the problems we see in terms of security and or insecurity. So for me, and I think, I can't speak for the whole continent, but since I'm here from the continent, I think it's important to start looking at matters of security with the basics. Again, inclusiveness is critical. If for nothing else, every one of our citizens needs to own something, needs to own part of the country one way or another. Without that, in these really interesting times, whether it's social media, whether it's just pure revolt, it becomes very difficult to keep the countries safe, to keep the countries together. So that's an aspect of security for me that I think is important. What we have done in Rwanda which has been a lifesaver in the last 21 years is to talk to each other and it continues today. We have even made it constitutional to have a national dialogue every year shared by the head of state with everybody represented, teachers, business people, government officials. So we sit down at the end of the year and kind of evaluate ourselves. Where are we going? And these are major sessions held in parliament over three days, citizens calling, messages on social media, Rwandans abroad across the world participate in that dialogue. So I think as we look at security as a very critical part of just being alive, for me I think it's very important to start with what could seem like smaller things, which is giving people a sense of life, giving people a sense of a future, of giving some level of hope. Even when we don't succeed, it's important that most of our citizens feel that they are going somewhere, that they are not neglected. So I think inclusion, inclusiveness, basic economic rights are very, very important for not just security but long-term stability. This is very interesting. Last week we presented the global risk report as the World Economic Forum does every year, one week before Davos. And what you said resonates perfectly with one of the key findings, which is that we're seeing a global loss in trust, social cohesion, challenges to precisely the sense of togetherness that creates the sense of unity in which, let's say, a nation is built. And this is a phenomenon that is not only happening in part of your neighborhood but also in Europe, for instance, that we see the social trust and cohesion is going down, inequality is going up, and the speed of change is now so fast that at least there is a perception among a lot of populations that their leadership and their regulators are not able to cope with the pace of change and that creates a downward spiral, which I think has quite immediate and significant security effect. So I think these points are very important. Before we go to you, Jim, any of these that you'd like to comment upon from your perspective? Well, I think the inclusivity is indeed a key point. And we see the problem is often that it's about politics and then it turns into ethnicity. Ethnicity is manipulated for political ends and then it becomes very, very dangerous. Twenty-one and a half years ago, the whole world after the horrors and the massacre in Rwanda, which by the way, I know affected your family very directly and in tragic ways, the whole world said never again. How are we doing? Because immediately to yourself and Burundi, while we shouldn't compare one case to another, there are clearly political mobilization of ethnic lines again. And thus the world, this is a leading question, of course, but does the world pay the attention it should to that challenge? Let me be cynical and say that the never again has sort of become never mind. But that said, and again, what Rwanda is today is the sum total of its experience, good and bad in the last two decades. We countries, we leaders, must make sure that we're doing our best whether somebody else comes in to help, whether the United Nations Security Council does something or doesn't. It's very important that we count on our own good leadership, give it a try, give the ownership that we were talking about. Otherwise, yeah, the international politics is rarely local and when it comes to some parts of the world like Africa. So in Burundi, I would say, first of all, Burundi shares a lot with Rwanda, we are the same people, we are sort of twins, our languages are very similar. And so Burundi affects Rwanda automatically. We have 75,000 refugees that just came in over a period of two to three months. And the sad thing in Burundi which needs to be addressed sooner rather than later is that a ruling party split, the problem was basically political. The party of the current president split and many of the people around him left him. He fired them in the party, he fired them in the government, and they left the country they fled, some of them to Rwanda, some of them through Rwanda to Europe and other parts of the world. So that's basically the problem. This whole discussion of whether the president should have run for a third term, whether it's constitutional, that's not really what the heart of the matter is. The heart of the matter is his party became very weak, and the people around him gave up on him because they disagreed on whether he should be the one to run again or whether it should be the party. So once we have that political problem, and usually a lot of confusion about what's happening in Africa and many cliches and so forth, then mobilization for one side or the other starts taking on different shapes including ethnic shapes. We're not there yet. Burundi remains a deeply political problem, but the temptation is there. I think a good reminder for all of us that when something is presented to you as an ethnic conflict, look closer because it may actually be modern politics in a very unpleasant disguise. I think that's what we learned from the South-East Europe. So, Admiral Stavridis, what we talked about so far is what we can say the bottom-up to use language is the fragmentation of states which creates, as we know, very violent conflicts but because of inability to maintain cohesion and state. There's the opposite trend which may seem paradoxical but which reinforces this, I believe, which is that strong states are competing again, maybe not at Cold War levels but definitely more than 10 or 15 years ago. And some of that takes place in Asia and East Asia, I think, and also in maritime space. Yeah. Over to you. Well, let me begin by just saying thank you, and it's terrific to be on a stage again with my former Minister of Defense, our Supreme Allied Commander, who knew would end up here. I'm now the Dean of a School of Diplomacy, so I'll be diplomatic and say I think both of my colleagues are right, which is to say it is great power politics as we have seen over the years but I really agree with Madam Minister that the overarching problems in today's world, I think do stem from inclusion was her term. I'd say it's the inequality piece tied with what Jean-Marie said about visibility. In other words, in today's world, you get to see how others are doing in ways that perhaps you didn't in the past and I think that creates a lot of the firmament that Jean-Marie is exactly right that then gets manipulated as part of great power politics. As I look around the world, we sort of touched on Africa. We mentioned and you can't get through a panel like this for more than six minutes without mentioning the so-called Islamic State. I'll tell you what I also worry about and you mentioned Asia. I think what is transpiring there in particular on the Korean Peninsula is extremely concerning and we've seen a nuclear detonation for the first time in decades. We have a young leader there who's very unstable and it's in the middle, as you say quite correctly, has been of this cauldron of tension between Japan, China, South Korea to some degree, North Korea to the north. All of that kind of bubbles in a great power way but manipulating the dark memories of the Second World War and overlaying it are a sense of challenges these economies come online, the smaller nations around the South China Sea. So I think that pot is bubbling and I worry about that a great deal. I worry about events in Africa, not only sub-Saharan Africa but in northern Africa and its impact as it flows north into Europe coming out of Syria. When you put those trends together and you look at the pressure within Europe, I think that's extremely concerning as well. So that pot, if you will, is bubbling. But one thing we haven't touched on which I worry about perhaps oddly more than anything else is actually cyber. It is our vulnerabilities in this world. This is kind of the dark side of the globalization that Jean-Marie spoke about so articulately. And if we think about a world in which nine billion devices are connected to the Internet, by 2020 they'll be, you can almost pick a number, 20 to 25 billion devices. Terrific. We're all going to be very interconnected. There'll be great transparency. But vulnerability comes with that and it allows these dark forces in asymmetric ways to try and inject their venom into the system. So that's a little basket of challenges. I do want to close by saying something hopeful if I'm allowed to. You are. Thank you. I think it's worth noting Rwanda 20 years ago was a nation that was indeed destroyed. And yet today it is recovered in so many ways recognizing all the challenges that go on. That's very hopeful. We mentioned an anniversary 21 years ago. Let's recall in Europe, 20 years ago, Serbanica in the Balkans. The Balkans of 20 years ago looked a lot like Syria today. Yet we've made great strides there. Albania, Montenegro about to join NATO, Croatia in NATO, European Union. When we want to solve a problem in the Balkans, we don't reach for a rifle anymore. We reach for a telephone to call Brussels. So my point is, as an international community, we can do this. And I'll close it all by saying Columbia, which is a nation that's been fighting a 60 year insurgency. Juan Manuel Santos, I think, is about to deliver a peace deal there. So despite all of the challenges in international security, I think if we work collectively, if we address these exclusion inclusion issues, if we are cognizant of the great power politics, we can make progress. Thank you for that. It's excellent in this panel to remember this tone of optimism that the problems have been solved before. It may happen again. Of course, it's careful. We have Carl Bilt and others in the room who have been very much involved in the Balkans. And I remember from back then, there were a long list of experts saying this will go on for generations and there's no solution. Well, guess what? It changed. Yeah, the comment was they've been killing each other for centuries and they always will. Yeah, that is not what's happening today. There are still many problems, but we can do this. Both statements tend to be wrong, by the way. Exactly. They were not killing each other forever. Exactly. So that's good. But let's stick to the strategic competition again because I think one phenomenon that a lot of our primary membership is interested in, how does this affect the global economy? Yeah, and just a suggestion from our side and again to the risk report. I hope you now take note. Download it, read it. It's a great report. But it's saying that there's a rise of the use of geoeconomic tools. It means that the instrumentalization of normally peaceful or economic measures in order to continue, let's say continue war by other means. Sure. It may be under the shadow of nuclear threshold because after all and thankfully nuclear powers normally don't like to go to war with each other. So they do all the things. Can you expand on this? I can. And I'll start by returning to cyber because this is precisely why I think our vulnerabilities are so extraordinary there. The barriers to entry to using that tool are lower than we have ever seen for a potentially destructive mechanism like that. In other words, we have the greatest mismatch in cyber between level of danger, very high level of preparation, very low. That's extremely concerning and I think it bleeds into the geopolitical because if you want to pull that tool out and use it, you can do so and it's even difficult to attribute it. So an example would be the Sony Pictures attack when Sony Pictures made a movie kind of mockingly of the young leader in North Korea, cyber attack on Sony, $300 million in kinetic damage, more damage to its business reputation, difficult to attribute precisely, probably came from North Korea using cyber to have geopolitical impact and economic sphere. So I think cyber is the place I would look at the easiest way to use those kind of tools indiscriminately and it will be both nation states and anonymous type hackers and sometimes the confluence of the two. And it was a threshold, right? Exactly. Because it's easier to decide to engage in a cyber war than to go to a physical war. Because you may not... Then you don't know where it ends. Exactly. And I think it was actually Carl Bild who said that cyber aggression is much cheaper than cyber defense, which creates a lot of instability. It's much more expensive to protect oneself against cyber attack. Indeed. And if you want to look at the very dark side of the spectrum and I guess that's what we do here, it would be attacks on electrical grids, which we've just seen a little taste of that in Ukraine. Again, difficult to attribute, don't know where it came from, but the ability to take down segments of the electric grid potentially over long periods of time can have obviously enormous economic impact on societies. Very worrisome. Carl, you've been put on the spot there already. Do you have a microphone? Yeah, because it's webcast. I don't agree with what Mr. Frieder said on the sort of the cyber element of it. Immediately after, if you go back to European issues, immediately after Crimea, hybrid warfare was the sort of thing that everyone talked about, small green men and the problems of dealing with that. I wasn't too agitated about that because I think that's essentially a police operation that... Creditional care of that. But what we see now is another form of hybrid warfare and that is the sort of cyber coming into every single conflict. As said, we're beginning to see this in Ukraine. There was an attack on the Ukraine power grid and no doubt that the origin of that is in Russia with a group that is fairly well known, whether you can say that that is part of the Kremlin apparatus that's difficult to do, but on the other hand, is it entirely unlikely? And subsequently, there has been what looks like an attack on the air control system of Kiev Airport. And this is another form of hybrid warfare where it's not primarily the small green men, but the numerous black bites or bits that are intruding our systems and then degrading the ability of our societies to work and doing it in an anonymous way. That is a form of hybrid warfare that I think we have to get used to and that is far difficult to deal with than the small green men that was in the focus of the debate a couple of years ago. And let me add that, that here we can talk about Russia as a fairly big actor, but the problem is of course that this can be done by very small groups very far away. Do you have a microphone here? Thank you. I'm Bernie Meyerson, IBM. I can't agree with you more, but what I find particularly concerning is the asymmetry that the digital economy has created. You know, we talk about the digital economy as a very powerful thing in terms of helping us essentially cross the economic divides and really close the gap between have and have nots, microfinance, and that's a great thing. What we unfortunately can't ignore, and you've raised it extraordinarily well, is the asymmetry because you've lowered the barrier to entry for the bad actors. And although it's wonderful that you can scale a business with tremendous rapidity by going on the cloud and standing it up using other people's resources, that's wonderful. Similarly, the bad actors as you correctly point out, even one, it doesn't have to be a state actor anymore, can slave tens of thousands of machines simply by sending people notes that say, here's $5 for free, and no matter how much you tell people, don't click the thing, they click it. And now they've got a bot in their machine. So they create 10,000 warriors in a matter of minutes. And we don't have the apparatus yet. This is one of the great challenges because I chair the Meta Council on Emerging Technologies. We do not have the apparatus yet that can respond at the rate and pace that cyber is evolving. It's really, it used to be, you needed what, five attackers to every defender I believe was the military standard? Three. Well, sorry. At this point, you're going to need 10 defenders to every one attacker, 100 defenders. And that changes the economic picture for the globe. So it's imperative, it's incumbent on all of us to ferret this out. You cannot have state actors supporting this. It's bad enough individuals, but when you have a state actor and a 10 to one or 100 to one multiplier, it would be catastrophic to the economy on the long run. So it is a challenge and I think it raised it well. And let me use this opportunity also to be one of the people we work with on thinking through the, say, the cyber security threats and also the whole new, you know, let's say the dark side of the fourth industrial revolution, which is not only cyber, but it's cyber plus a number of other technological advances which has the very unwelcome effect of democratizing the access to massive destruction and changing, as you said, the order of attack and defense, which of course weakens the role of the states in the world compared to other actors. And I think that there's many examples of that and there will be other panels where we will discuss this in deeper detail, but as a teaser, if you're not worried enough, there's more to come on this front. I want to move over to the issue of violent extremism in a second, but could you, just as a military reflection on these issues, what does it mean to, let's say to military thinking, military theory, military preparedness? Well, on the one hand, cyber is a continuation of what's been traditional in the military sphere, which is the interplay of offense and defense. So knights in armor are overcome by archers shooting long arrows at Cressy. The mass male formations are overcome by tanks in the Second World War. The nuclear weapon arrives on the seam and somehow we've managed thus far not to use one other than at the very end of the Second World War. But offense and defense continue to go back and forth. As Bernie points out correctly, at the moment offense is a lot easier. So you really have two choices from a military perspective. You amp up the defense and you need to do that. You need to work that piece of it. And there's a whole realm of things within that, both technological protocols and so forth. And then you also have to consider, Espen, how do we inculcate a regime of deterrence on the offensive side, state to state? Because these weapons, and they are weapons, are moving toward the level of mass destruction. They're not there yet. But over time we're going to need a regime in place similar to what has prevented the use of nuclear weapons to use the prevention regime in the case of cyber. So we've seen it before. We're going to need to apply some of that as we go forward. But I think it will consume us in a security way in the decades to come. Where would you see that regime emerging? Where would you look to see if it's there? I think it will start between the major cyber powers, who not purely coincidentally happen to be nuclear powers. So dialogue, I think principally, initially between the United States and China is called for in this regard. Russia is a significant cyber actor. Some of the NATO countries have significant capability in this regard. But I think it will have to emerge bilaterally initially. But it is possible to me that there could be some kind of an international discussion about it. And this is a bit of a metaphorical stretch, but not completely differently than what we saw in the creation of the law of the sea, the United Nations, conventions on the law of the sea. Long term we probably need something like that in the cyber world. But initially we're going to have to address the use of weapons of cyber, I think in bilateral, trilateral kinds of ways between significant actors. But if I may say, that's in a sense the classical answer. You look for states to regulate again. I wonder if we actually need more, we need that bit more, that this is also a dialogue for Google and Amazon and Alibaba and IBM and so on. This is both much of the infrastructure is private. And much of it is global in the sense that while the company may have a headquarter, some of it in the U.S., it's not American companies in that sense. Absolutely correct. And so many of the victims of this activity are not necessarily another country, but it's a global infrastructure. And in the World Economic Forum outlook on the world, we need a multi-stakeholder approach to this, which we actually would like to facilitate. Yeah, and we need to probably begin by defining within our state system who's defending whom. In other words, when a company, a private enterprise is attacked in the cyber world, is that a state and national responsibility to defend it? We have not really worked through that. I often say to people, if North Korea had sunk a carnival cruise liner worth $300 million, the responses would have been fairly obvious. But they did $300 million worth of kinetic damage to a commercial entity in the United States. And the responses are not so obvious. So this is another factor. But you are absolutely correct to point out the private public nexus in the cyber world is crucial alongside the state discussion that we're having. We're open to questions. Somebody has a question on this before we move on. Somebody right behind you. You talk about the dialogue. Microphone because it's webcam. You talk about the dialogue that's necessary between Russia and China and the U.S. and the cyber issue. How do you address the great divergence in how these powers think about cyber problems? In the West we tend to be very focused on the kinetic impact. When you look at the Russian doctrine, the Chinese doctrine, they think about information operations. So the Russian president has often said that a blog post that's critical of the Russian government, he considers to be a cyber attack. Obviously something that's very core to the Western values. Well, first of all, even defining a cyber attack is something that doctrinally we have not concluded. It does run on a spectrum from a blog post, if you will, at the very lightest end of it, to taking down a nation's electric grid. I think we can all agree the latter is certainly an attack. We can most of us agree the former probably isn't. There's an awful lot in there in terms of data disruption, data manipulation, creation of further kinetic effect, but less than electrical grid. So we've got to start by defining that level of attack as to how we do that. Again, there's no mystery here. It's going to be, this is where we roll up our sleeves and use good old fashioned diplomacy and dialogue. We cannot afford to stumble into a cyber cold war, but I fear that's where we're headed. Susan Levin, yeah. Thank you so much. I especially appreciate the comments before on inclusion and on equality. And my question to you really stems from what do you see as successful efforts globally to try to promote that especially given that social media is now helping people understand their levels of inequality or what's happening around the world and what others have versus they may feel like they are the have nots or inclusion. So what is happening now from a security standpoint to increase inclusion, to improve jobs, to help people choose a path of productivity instead of destructivity so that those individuals for example who may be computer science interested are focusing on creating apps instead of creating hacks. That's a great question. Hold your answer a second. The next question is this to the cyber thing? So we stick to cyber and because I wanted to go to those issues as we come to the end. Yes, it's you. I have a prediction to share and I'd like to your opinion whether or not you believe it's more or less accurate. I think the cyber attacks will continue for the next 50 years at very intense level. And this number is the number of years the current users of Microsoft Windows operating system will continue using the system, get retired and become real old. And after that period I think a number of cyber attacks will subside because it will be easier, it will be much more difficult to conduct them when the other operating systems like open source, Linux is used. End of question. You have the answer to the problem. All right. Any comment to that particular? I think it makes the point very well that technology will change, it will adapt and there are going to be new ways of thinking about this in 50 years. The one I would add to this is it is going to be the merger of what today we think of as information technology and biology. And this I think is really uncharted territory as we think about how those two connect. Ray Kurtz while the singularity is near the fourth industrial revolution, et cetera. Big changes ahead and he is absolutely right we should not over focus on the modalities of the moment especially in this sphere. On the connection to bio, what we are looking into that an interesting observation is in order to get nuclear weapons you need fissile material. There are certain ways to control that. One of the key ingredients is in bio weapons which you can, is that you need technology at the level of a micro brewery and you need yeast which is slightly more complicated to control. So just again a teaser on these issues. But let me do some questions and let's try to move back to where I think Jean-Marie started the connection between this highly connected so this hyper connected world information flowing in all directions everybody in principle everybody can talk to everybody else but rather it seems that rather than that leading to more convergence it leads to more divergence because you can pick your particular topic and back in the old days in the village there weren't enough mad people around to form a club but if there are 7 billion people to take from there are probably a few that will share your particular interest and this of course creates a global phenomenon but it plays into very local and localised and let's say very parochial conflicts which then gets this global phenomenon So the inclusiveness as you mentioned which I think is inclusiveness not only in economic terms I think but also by access to a sense of being part of something seems to be one of the takeaways of this session so far. Any reflections on the connections between all this? Well I think we live in a world with just the position so to speak of bubbles small and big you can live in a world where you only meet people who think like you yourself think and that sort of self-reinforcing loop that is quite a dangerous one because freedom invention has to be born out of serendipity what's happening in bubbles actually but with the internet if you use it well it can bring that serendipity but it can also just make you comfortable with the people you're already comfortable with and that's what we see with the virtual communities of terrorism and I think there's one aspect I would want because we didn't discuss it that I would want to stress is that we talk of terrorism as a kind of the strategic threat and when we do that we unify movements that are quite different and that is very unwise because when you look at the reasons why terrorists join a terrorist movement they are each country each group has its own specific dynamics and when we unify them we are doing them a service and I think there the way terrorism sometimes is elevated as the strategic threat including the strategic military threat is not wise indeed there is a need for military dimension to the response you don't want terrorists to have a kind of aura of invincibility but at the same time I think the political dimension of fighting terrorism is way underdeveloped and so long as we do not look at the politics at the conditions under which terrorist groups develop we will have the hammer we know how to use a hammer we'll bang on the terrorists with bombs we will degrade them which is a good thing but we will not solve the issue and that's very much linked to this issue of connectivity I think that's exactly right and the classic way to think of this unfortunately isn't on and off switch in other words hard power or soft power wrong image it is as you imply correctly it's a re-estat you have to dial it in and there are times when you need the hard power particularly up front but the long game are all the things Madam Minister has talked about the inclusion, the economic growth, the education I want to say that word again education enormous part of it that's the long game and we need to stop thinking about it and having arguments about is it a hard power or is it a soft power you absolutely are going to need both you have to be able to dial that re-estat in I'd like to move from there to you again because compared to 20 years ago and I'm talking about Africa the stated will of Africa to be the primary responder to challenges in Africa has been a significant and in my view very positive development so I'm sure in the African political circles, African Union and so on this conversation must be a frequent conversation how do we, what's the right response in a horn of Africa, in Mali, in Khar wherever these issues pop up how do you find the right combination of hard power and soft power in reality and what's the discussion you are a part of in the African continent on that issue? Indeed I think what I know in on the African continent there are many conversations going in you know crisscrossing and all trying to figure out how to use power properly soft power, hard power but my let me just inject my my own personal thinking when and it's part of what Jean Marie was saying about giving importance and linking the bad guys in fact I personally think it's wrong to to keep broadcasting the beheadings I just find it a way of giving the bad guys what they want and I just disagree with it but in the discussions on the continent one of the things we've been looking at is first and foremost to understand that it is in our power to do a number of things not to do everything but we're capable of dealing with some of the conflicts, some of the violence and from there decide how to do it in my part of Africa which is East Africa we decided within the bigger African Union goal of creating these standby forces to quickly get commitments from each one of the 11 or 12 countries in Eastern Africa so that conversation itself revealed that there was conviction on the continent that we're not doing some of the things we could be doing to secure our space to secure our economic gains and it's more a matter of getting organized and making it a point to sit down and figure out what to do so with the Eastern Africa region for example we managed to put together a standby force the Eastern Africa standby force with strong commitment from small island countries like Seychelles for example countries that have no armies so to speak but with their own commitment whether it's money whether it's expertise of different types bring everybody's strengths together that in itself has been a deterrent unfortunately I wish the continental and global politics had allowed us to use the standby force in Burundi in the beginning I think it would have been a very important deterrent but you know politics being politics from New York to Addis Ababa to Arusha which is in Tanzania in the East African community there were different positions about that but the most important takeaway for me is that once we start having serious discussions about our assets, our strengths and bringing them together really pausing and thinking that there is a problem we must solve it it is part of our responsibility then how do we solve it we can always borrow from the entities away from the continent we can talk about finances we can talk about sustenance but the most important thing is to have that conversation what do we in Africa do to start stopping some of the honestly very unnecessary conflicts which are keeping us behind we have had time to fight for independence and now the priority should be fighting for a good life for our people getting rid of poverty advancing in many different ways providing the education to our children and securing the future so for me if the will is there then let's get organized and it sounds like the will is there in a number of African countries but you are still struggling with the question how do you calibrate the use of the hard tools that you clearly have like the Amazon in Somalia with political and economic and let's say social track absolutely and I slightly go back to my introductory comments we have we have Somalia because something went wrong Somalia and nobody really paid serious attention and stopped and thought you know this is a country with a great history with an interesting future let's solve this problem so I think there is a level of seriousness that then allows us to combine the different tools who can contribute what to this discussion and eventually whether it's military force whether it's different types of deterrence whether it's actually even if you look at the conflict in South Sudan for example we all got very excited about this new country that was becoming independent we in the international community and in the international politics we get very excited about agreements and signing some agreement you know as if that's we all know it's not the end of it but South Sudan did not South Sudan needed to be accompanied as a new state South Sudan today has been suffering from not moving to the whole notion of a country a nation the mentality very much with different actors it remains very fragmented and very even the formation of the army has a lot of bringing together different militias so what was needed in South Sudan for example in terms of calibrating these different tools that we have was to actually stay the course be there with South Sudan countries started throwing money at South Sudan South Sudan did not need money at all yes including your country just to be there give them expertise help them manage their oil advise them not to cut off a cartoon when they have no other way to sell their oil to the rest of the world help them build an administration basic things so all these are different tools that unfortunately we are all running and moving to the next area of interest or crisis and I really think looking at not just Africa but that's the area I'm most familiar with but for other conflicts and places of interest as well you can look at it also from the perspective of terrorism other than talking about it so much and expressing concern are we doing enough in really reflecting and pulling together the different assets that are needed thank you very much we wasted so much time but isn't actually the aggregate message here which I think connects to the whole discussion and the two of you to quickly comment on that despite the globalization and connectedness people still live in states and if you get the state wrong as South Sudan and so many other places you can't really it doesn't help you that you're online and you connect to the rest of the world it doesn't make it any better we still have to understand that the national system requires order and structure and politics at a state governmental level I agree with that I think the key again is that we have this tendency to think we can deliver security from the barrel of a gun and we will never do that we cannot deliver security from the barrel of a gun we're gonna need some guns along the way but over time it's dialing that re-estat in the direction of the long game that's gonna solve these challenges and we have examples of this as I mentioned Columbia for example has gradually moved that dial away from the hard power piece toward the inclusive piece to build the economy and they're gonna deliver a peace agreement we talked about the Balkans we've seen Rwanda the place that you and I would have been discussing five years ago of course is Afghanistan which is very much still a play in this world and we're trying to find the right place to set that dial in Afghanistan but I think there the number that I'll give you to kind of close it's back to education under the Taliban 500,000 boys all went to school today over 9 million children boys and girls are going to school in Afghanistan that's the long game that's how if we succeed still and if it'll be because of that kind of long-term investment some hard power along the way certainly but it's playing that long game that I think will deliver security best not the barrel of a gun since you mentioned Afghanistan for the security outlook session on Friday after Afghani the president will be there so if you wonder what happened over these last five years come there well 20 years ago I wrote a book actually on the end of the nation state and because I think it was already in some way in a crisis and I think the challenge today frankly is that on the one hand if you want to mobilize communities you need to be able to identify with the state but at the same time it is more and more the sad reality that there are many issues that the state alone cannot address I look at the Sahel I look at a country like Niger where the median age is something like 15 15 and a half years there is no way Niger on its own will be able to address all the issues it is confronted with it needs broader supporting structures but and that combination of being able to mobilize the sort of national identity a national project for a country like Niger and at the same time admitting that there has to be a broader framework that's a challenge you see in many parts of the world and how you connect those different layers so to speak from the city level cities are the future of the world in many ways from now more than half the population lives in cities to states to regions to the global community that is something that we are not good at the minister was discussing the welcome engagement of Africans in African issues and we see for instance that the United Nations and the African Union haven't got it really right yet in how to address those issues so I think the challenge for security tomorrow is how we stop being a juxtaposition of bubbles but we connect these different layers in a constructive way that's an excellent way to end this session which is just the beginning of a long series of conversations on security thank you very much to all the participants let me quickly mention that before you applaud the speakers we have an excellent international security team just to highlight Anja Kaspersten, Isabel DeSola, Phillip Jones who are all here with us and talk to me or them if you want more information on the work we're doing in this area some of you are already connected but there's more to come thank you very much for being here and see you in the next session