 Welcome to the Ford School. I'm Michael Barr. I am the Joan and Sanford Weil Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. I'm thrilled to be here to welcome you for today's event. Policy Talks at the Ford School, which today is co-sponsored by our International Policy Center. Today's event is part of the Ford School's Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence Program. Established in 2003, the Towsley program has enabled us to bring over two dozen diverse and high-profile policy professionals here to Michigan to join our faculty for a semester and sometimes longer. We've got members of the Towsley family and foundation here with us this evening. I'd like to recognize, and on behalf of the Ford School, offer my thanks to Lynn White and Adele Dunbar for their incredible support for the Ford School. Our Towsley policymakers in residence teach, they mentor our students, they collaborate with our faculty, they become part of the life of the school, bringing the real-world experience in all its complexities and potential right here to the Ford School and the University of Michigan. The Towsley Foundation gift has had a very powerful and positive impact on our school and our students, and we are deeply grateful. This semester, the Ford School is honored to have Michigan alum, Javed Ali, with us as a 2018 Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence. He is currently teaching a Ford School graduate-level course on U.S. National Security Decision Making. Javed has over 20 years of professional experience in national security and intelligence in Washington, D.C., and he most recently served on assignment from the FBI as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Javed began his federal government career in 2002 and has worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI. In addition to his role at the NSC, he was also on assignment at the National Intelligence Council and the National Counterterrorism Center. Javed has a BA in political science from the University of Michigan, a JD from the University of Detroit School of Law, and an MA in international relations from American University. Javed is going to introduce our distinguished panelists more fully in a moment. So for now, please simply join me in offering a very warm welcome to our guests. We have Peter Bergen, journalist, documentary producer, and vice president for Global Study and fellows at New America, Barbara McQuade, my colleague friend and professor from practice at Michigan Law, and former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, and Chris Costa, a 34-year veteran of the Department of Defense, and now executive director of the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. Let me just pause there and ask you to join me in welcoming them. Let me just say a bit about process. We're going to follow our usual Ford School rules. If you have a question for Javed or one of the panelists, please write it on one of the cards passed out at the entrance. Ford School staff will begin collecting cards around 4.30. Professor Joy Rody, I'm looking at the panel and not seeing you, and three of Javed's students will be sorting through and reading the questions. Michael Backman, Elliot Berg, and Ryan Van Wy. If you're watching online, please send your question via Twitter using the hashtag policy talks. And with that, Javed, I'll turn things over to you. Great. Thank you, Dean Barr. Let me just first say thank you, Dean Barr, for giving me the tremendous opportunity to be here the past month, and hopefully the next few weeks. As I look to wind up this class, it really has been a special privilege and an honor for me to be here, and certainly as a Michigan grad many, many years ago. I also wanted to thank everyone who's turned out today to watch in person as a great audience, to hear the remarkable insights you're going to get from this very distinguished panel, and also hopefully for those of you who are watching online or following online as well. That's a neat capability that certainly didn't exist when I was in school 30 years ago. But as Dean Barr mentioned, under the Towsie program, I tried to aspire to hit all the objectives that you had talked about in terms of my presence here these past few weeks and into this month. So certainly lead a new class, and hopefully that class is going well. The students can give you some feedback and whether I'm hitting that objective, interact with the broader range of students across the campus, and I've tried to do that as well, and also pull together a unique panel discussion. And I think we're going to deliver that today. And Dean Barr, when you had asked me a few months ago to start thinking about an event under the Towsie program while I was here, and what that would look like in true National Security Council practice, and Chris Costa knows this, I started to develop multiple options, looked at the pros and cons of each option, and then ultimately came up with my own recommendation. I didn't have to consult with anybody else. But when I started through all that complexity, what I did is I decided to build this panel around something that means, you know, something very profound to me, counterterrorism. This is the issue that I worked the entirety of my career in government and even several years before, 9-11 in Washington. And hopefully this is a perspective that we're going to talk about over the next hour, hour and a half here. But I also think this issue aligns with some of the topics we've explored in the class on national security decision making. So this is a two for one. And then what I also wanted to do was look a little bit into the future. So even though we literally just passed the 17th anniversary of 9-11, for those of you who remember that day, and I certainly do for my time in Washington, that the threat of terrorism isn't going away anytime soon to the United States. And two years from now we'll be in 2020, and we're still not sure what this world is going to look like then. So this is what I wanted this panel discussion to sort of focus on, that forward looking approach to what the world of terrorism and counterterrorism will look like in a couple of years. And we're really lucky to have these three expert views all bringing their own distinguished backgrounds through a variety of different disciplines as Dean Barr described. And I'll give a little bit more about each of them. Each of them who I know some for a little bit longer than others, but all who I've built a positive relationship with. So let's first turn to Peter Bergen, as you've heard from Dean Barr. Are you really I consider Peter the world's leading public policy expert on counterterrorism? You've been in this for almost 30 years, if not more. You've written seven books and correct me on any of this that I get wrong, seven books, most that are award winning, authored multiple reports and monographs. And one of your hallmark achievements is your interview with Osama bin Laden in 1998. Did I get that right? 97. Okay, there we go. But but Peter again, I think really is the world's leading voice outside of of government. And even when in my different positions in government, and Chris Costa can attest to this when we were thinking of sorting through some tough counterterrorism issues inside the NSC, the first person we reached out to was Peter Bergen. So that speaks to Peter's achievement. So Peter, thank you again for spending time with us. And Mike, my connection with you goes back almost 20 years. Chris, I haven't known as long. So Chris hired me as his deputy at the NSC. He and I had never met each other, which is kind of unusual, usually in Washington in these senior positions, those personal connections tend to work out that way. But I had never met Chris. I'm still not sure why you picked me as your deputy. But as you can tell, you went up me on your Michigan tie there, even though you did not go to school, and there is gold in my tie just for the record. But Chris and I hit it off almost from the beginning. And then that year we spent together was almost like a 20 year sort of bond, because we really went through sort of the crucible. From the time we both spent the NSC from early 2017 to 2018. And so Chris can't say enough about, you know, picking me as your deputy, but your own career 34 years in government service, 25 years in the military retired as a colonel. A lot of that time in the military intelligence world, also in the special operations world, Commando Hall of Fame. I bet you didn't know that about Chris. I've seen the pictures. You wouldn't recognize him when he was in his commando sort of role. And then another nine years of service as a civilian in government to include the last year as a special assistant to the president for counterterrorism in the Trump administration. And again, Chris was I was honored to work with Chris as his deputy. And then Barbara, who I also haven't known as long, but when I was at FBI, and I have left government just to make that clear. When I was at FBI and I got there in 2007, Barbara's reputation was already well versed inside the the halls of the FBI's and her career in law enforcement. spent a lot of time as a as a prosecutor on the front lines of a number of different issues to include counterterrorism. But then when you became the US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in 2010, your your prominence became even higher. And I thought it was really unique about your role as a US attorney, even though you were again, leading some really tough national security cases to include counterterrorism cases. But I also thought that you were one of the few US attorneys going back almost a decade who also tried to balance the community outreach role community engagement and wanted to make sure you were sort of you had a foot equally in both of those camps as we were trying to sort through some tough issues after 2001. So thanks Barbara as well for being here with us. So with that is sort of the introduction to the panel. Let me just frame a little bit about the conversation we're going to have today and the format. So we've got an hour and 20 minutes hour and 10 minutes. I think we'll get through this pretty smartly. But I've got four questions. The panelists know what the questions are. There's no gotcha moments here. Unlike some of my media appearances on television as Peter and Barbara can probably attest to. So what I'd like to do though is cycle through the panel with the first two questions that I have. And then I'd like to get you all involved in the audience either here in the room or those watching remotely or online. And again we've got students from the class who will help facilitate that that aspect. But if we don't have questions from the audience hopefully we do but if we don't then I'll move on to the next two questions and we'll swing back to audience questions again at the end. But I really do want hopefully you get a chance to interact with the panelists. So that's enough talking from me and sort of the frame up for what we're trying to accomplish. So why don't we just kind of dive into the questions and we'll start with Peter and go down the line and then reverse it for the second one. So let me just start with the first question. So as I mentioned briefly we want this panel at least to start the conversation about looking into the future what that potential terrorist threat will look like in 2020. So with that as sort of the jumping off point Peter someone who's looked at the terrorism phenomena for 30 years if not more looking at 2020 what do you think the biggest terrorist threats will be to the United States in that two year time frame and why do you believe so? Well thank you Jabba for the invitation and thank you to the Ford School. You know Yogi Barra famously said it's hard to make predictions especially about the future and you know so you know I would make the following observation which is you know ISIS wasn't really the problem ISIS was the symptom of some very big problems which don't really affect the United States that much but do affect the Middle East and Europe. And the big problems are a regional civil war between the Sunni and the Shia that is amplified by very deep pockets on both sides the Iranians and the Gulf States. The collapse of Arab governance from Libya to Yemen is a second issue. The collapse of Arab economies around the region youth unemployment is at 30% in the Arab region right now. The population a demographic explosion the second most other than Sub-Saharan Africa North Africa and Middle East are the fastest growing populations in the world. I don't want to make the argument that you know impoverished people become terrorists but I do want to make the argument that you know people are looking for jobs ISIS the Taliban these kinds of insurgent groups that have a terrorist dimension provide jobs and then as a result of all the first four problems you and also by the way climate change is going to make North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa a very difficult place to live. So that creates this next problem which is this unprecedented wave of immigration into Europe and you know I grew up in England you know Europeans don't have the ideological apparatus to accept large-scale immigration and you know there are course exceptions the mayor of London is a Muslim and the Home Secretary is a Muslim but the fact is if you're a Muslim living in Europe it is not a very accommodating place and a lot of places and so and then you have the rise of these ultra-nationalist parties and even proto-fascist parties which were once very marginal and then all these kinds of trends are amplified by social media so so ISIS while was a sort of Middle Eastern phenomenon that also had a European dimension but the United States wasn't really so affected by it obviously we had some effects we're protected by ideology the American dream which has worked very well for every generation of immigration including Muslims and we're protected by geography you can drive from Paris to Damascus you can't drive from Detroit to Damascus so I would say you know we will see a Sunnabises we'll see a Grand Sunnabises it won't be it may not be as effective and because of the work of Chris and Javid and Barbara you know these these organizations haven't flourished in this in this country and they we've taken the fight to them but that said you know five years ago after the death of Bin Laden the Arab Spring I would have had a rather optimistic answer to your question Javid but but today I don't because I think those underlying issues continue to exist okay thank you Peter Chris so first of all it's a privilege to be here tonight so thank you very much and especially to participate in a panel with Javid and and Peter and Barbara so I'd like to provide some context first and then I'll I'll dig into the questions can you guys hear me okay no okay I'm seeing that north-south so on day one just to set the context we had three issues we're dealing with in the counterterrorism sphere first of all we had a decision to make on an intelligence raid that would happen the first week of the administration that raid was subsequently directed against al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula I subsequently discovered that it was an operator that I knew but that's the price of decision-making national decision-making but we put pressure on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula the second issue that we had to work was a constant underlying threat directed at commercial aviation that was persistent and it was severe and we were very much concerned about that there was a staying continuity between both administrations you should be reassured about it went from one administration to the next to get at that problem and the third issue was we had to accelerate our ISIS campaign those were three issues the first week that we were going to tackle almost immediately so I wanted to provide that context now to answer the biggest threats so right up front I want to reinforce that remnants of ISIS in the next 25 years or something like ISIS is going to persist the enemy has gone underground ISIS has gone underground certainly but some of those wandering in quotes Mujahideen are going to be better trained and more lethal and still insistent on causing havoc in the West and some of them are going to get away from Syria in Iraq so I'm worried about a rebranded ISIS they're going to cohere ideologically with somebody else whether that's a bigger al-Qaeda that's an open question but we still have to worry about ISIS secondly I am worried about al-Qaeda they laid their head low and let ISIS stick it up and take the shots but al-Qaeda has not gone away they've been quietly rebuilding and to use Bruce Dr. Bruce Hoffman's words they've been quietly rebranding themselves in third the other concern in the next 20 25 years or I'm sorry in the next few years I should say up to 2020 based on the question we we received I am worried about Hezbollah they have an infrastructure they have a clandestine infrastructure they've not gone away and they have a tendency to to take advantage of a gray zone conflict that's playing out in Syria to this day so I'm very much worried about Hezbollah and I should argue that some will say that the administration has currently resurrected or I'm sorry resuscitated the the the Hezbollah problem so that we could justify a more aggressive Iranian problem from a pure CT lens I still am worried about Hezbollah they have a very very capable lethal capability and the second part of the question then I'll wrap up very quickly I just want to provide a little bit more of a scene setter that in in the post bin Laden world there was a a greater optimism right bin Laden was killed there was a sense that a cautious optimism began to break out and then again a lot of other things happened but an apocalyptic idiosyncratic and a genocidal group came along and that was ISIS taking advantage of some of the case chaos and that said I think I will close my initial comments with a first answer by saying right now what we currently have playing out in Syria and Iraq is a metaphor for what we're going to be dealing with in the next few years and that is this gray zone conflict playing out when you consider Syria what do you have in place right now what you have is Hezbollah operating in that space proxies you have a a genocidal regime Syria you have Russians in that playground acting taking advantage of some of the chaos on the ground in Syria you have ISIS remnants still operating in US proxy forces in US forces still going after the last vestiges of ISIS and then you have Turks a NATO ally playing in that same space so I think that very much is a is a metaphor for what we're going to be dealing with in the next few years well thanks very much microphone good volume good people in the back well thank you very much for inviting me job it and Michael so glad to be here at the Ford School our neighbor right across the parking lot from the law school I've only thought of you as a good target for a water balloon fight past but great to be here and to answer the question I certainly agree with with what Chris and Peter had to say I guess I'll add a couple more thoughts from where I sit which is as a as a prosecutor of these cases less part of the intelligence community more part of the prosecution team and my my prior job and it appears to me that the threats that we might see in the future might also come from homegrown violent extremism as well as nation states Russia Korea Iran and China in particular but during the time that I worked on these threats in the US Attorney's Office starting in 2002 and until last year we really saw the threat evolve very quickly you know first of course after 9-11 it was all about al-Qaeda and then shortly thereafter it became al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and then it evolved to ISIS and then even that we've seen has has evolved since that time and so I do see even even the ISIS threat evolved from travel to Syria and sign up to be a fighter for ISIS to don't come to us stay where you are fight where you are and using social media to incite you know people doing things like driving a car into a crowd committing terrorist acts where you live and so the threat is so constantly evolving I think Peter who mentioned climate change I see that is driving a lot of terrorist activity if there is going to be migration refugees people with no place to live I think that will spark militant groups fighting for their lives in their land and so I think those things can spark the threat as well and then just to talk a little bit more about those two threats homegrown violent extremism and threats from nation states with regard to homegrown violent extremism I think this is a threat that is so understated and overlooked since 9 11 that 71% of terrorist attacks in the United States have been perpetrated by homegrown violent extremists right wing groups we focus on the big attacks the dramatic attacks like 9 11 but we tend not to pay as much attention to these other groups by homegrown violent extremists and I think that's a mistake it wasn't until the end of the Obama administration that we at the Justice Department started paying more attention to this threat we resuscitated a group that was called the domestic terrorism executive council I was a co-chair of that group and that group had last met on September 10th 2001 its work had been greatly overshadowed by you know this very horrible serious significant events of 9 11 but because so much emphasis was placed on international terrorism I think that there was less attention than appropriate paid to domestic terrorism and so that D tech is still alive and well in my co-chair the U.S. Attorney from the district of Utah is still the U.S. Attorney in this administration and I know that he is carrying on that important work so I'm glad to see that he's got his eye on the ball I sometimes worry about the rhetoric from the administration that focuses on the international threat and understates what this threat is of domestic terrorism but it is just as significant and I think when people die nobody much cares whether their motivation was international terrorism or domestic terrorism and so I think that's a threat that we need to pay attention to and then with regard to the the foreign threat from nation states I know the CIA has recently said that that is going to be its renewed focus that since 9 11 their top priority had been counterterrorism and although it will still be certainly part of what they focus on they have made their top priority nation states from a human intelligence collection and I think that makes a lot of sense with what we've seen with Russian interference with the election which is the conclusion of the 17 intelligence agencies who've looked at that and the the fear of the way cyber technology can be used to attack this country we've seen election interference it can be used for attacking our electrical grid as we move toward the internet of things being able to interfere with autonomous vehicles hospital systems private records data financial systems creating chaos in all of those things and also using social media as a weapon against us for the information wars as a propaganda tool and as a way to collect information about Americans who share lots of private data on social media platforms and using social media to crowd source terrorism as we have seen ISIS do by radicalizing people around the world through social media like Twitter and other platforms and so sorry to present such a dire future it'll be it'll be sunny and warm now that is that is thanks Barbara for those comments and just to kind of wrap up the three different perspectives we heard yes this is not a rosy picture that we're staring at looking into the future but I think it's a realistic one and someone who's been studying the terrorism issue for a long time as well I would say that we hit all the ones I would have expected everyone to sort of comment on but that just goes back to one of my earlier points this phenomenon of terrorism no matter how you describe it is going to manifest itself for the next several years against the United States whether it's a threat to the homeland or whether it's a threat to our interests overseas so this is not going to recede at any time in the future I was struck Barbara by your comments about the nation state threat even from the context of terrorism although I don't think I think you were opening up a little bit broader than that but for those of you who remember before 9-11 the US government it still does although that list is much shorter now the US government used to assemble compile a list of the foreign governments that we believed were actively using terrorism as a tool of official state policy to to affect our interests and if you have watched the way that list has grown over time and certainly after 9-11 that list is much smaller now that it was before 9-11 but who's to say couldn't come back around again in the future and that's something else we need to think about okay so with that is sort of the not too rosy perspective what the future potentially looks like so let me start with Barbara and then we'll work our way backwards for this next round of questions or this next question so with that is the threat sort of tea up does the United States need new authorities capabilities or resources to combat what looks like a very broad and diverse threat of adversaries on the terrorism front yeah as a former prosecutor when I think about tools that are needed I think about two things one is investigative tools that to be used as process to prevent disrupt detect and prosecute terrorist activity and then the other thing is substantive laws crimes that can be charged against people who commit these acts and both present some very significant challenges one I mean getting Congress to pass anything these days can be a challenge anything whatsoever but when it comes to these it's very difficult to keep up with the evolving threat so first in in regard to investigative tools that are available what a prosecutor wants most is certainty and clarity tell me what the rules are and I will follow them but as technology is evolving so quickly it's very difficult for the law to keep up with that technology and I'll give you an example of a case that came out of the eastern district of Michigan when I was there we had a case called United States versus carpenter and it was a case involving a armed robbery crew that was operating around Detroit and one of the pieces of evidence that was used in that case in many other case cases is cell site location data you probably all know that your cell phone is a tracking device and you can be identified with your location 24 7 back for years if that information was obtained we can find out where your phone was at any time of the day or night and Mr. Carpenter is records were obtained with what at the time was believed to be the proper legal process a court order under what's called the stored communications act that this was stored communications and with that court order that we obtained we went to the phone company and we found out that Mr. Carpenter was indeed at the scene of all of those robberies at the date and time they occurred and so in addition to other evidence that was presented to convict him that case went all the way up to the Supreme Court in the summer the Supreme Court held wow this data is so invasive that we think that instead of just this court order you should be required to get this higher legal standard of a search warrant in order to get that going forward with a problem is that means that evidence gets suppressed in a case like Carpenter and so so going forward just figuring out what the rules of the road are can be so challenging that Congress can't even keep up with the evolving technology to get prosecutors the tools they need and so so being nimble and thinking through how these issues parallel the kinds of tools that were obtained in the past another challenge that we face right now is encryption on Apple telephones in the San Bernardino terrorism case where there was a shooting you may know that the FBI wanted to retrieve the content of his cell phone he worked for the county of in San Bernardino and they gave consent to use that phone but it was password protected and the FBI couldn't open it without without knowing what that password was and ten failed password attempts would erase the content of the phone without knowing whether it had been synced to the cloud and without knowing whether he had communicated with other associates was they couldn't they wanted to look at it and they lacked the ability to do that and try to get Apple to help which resisted and they didn't have the tools to get into that into that cell phone so that's the process part that's challenging for prosecutors and we need I think to make clear laws what is the what is the law required to get those things and then substantively also difficult what are the tools available to prosecute these homegrown violent extremism groups when it comes to international terrorism there are a lot of good statutes on the books and that's why people law enforcement authorities often quickly say this is going to be a terrorism investigation and we can investigate for material support to a foreign terrorist organization or terrorism transcending national boundaries the same tools are not available when it comes to domestic terrorism groups and that's because that's a harder nut to crack we know from FBI abuses in the 60s and 70s of programs called co-intel pro and operation chaos that sometimes the FBI infiltrated domestic organizations for political purposes and so as a result there's been great reluctance to allow the law enforcement to have some of the same kinds of tools for domestic groups as international groups but that leaves us without all the laws that we might want to charge against domestic groups and so there remains a question of how do you effectively prosecute these groups without violating their civil liberties and it remains a challenge great thank you Chris so authorities capabilities or resources the simple answer is in a word no from my standpoint and I want to explain that the counter-terrorism enterprise has been very effective pre-911 through 911 post 911 there's been an incredible amount of learning Richard Clark set up the enterprise pre-911 and albeit we had a horrific attack against our nation there's been a lot of learning since that horrific attack and there has been no 911 one of the concerns I have right up front I want to reinforce is the idea of an overcorrection so we in the counter-terrorism domain we absolutely understand the necessity to focus on North Korea we understand the necessity to focus on other state threats certainly the Russians and we worry about Iran the state threat and a sponsor of terrorism that said what I would underscore is we have an excellent counter-terrorism enterprise that's been refined over over years and some have called it a trap that we keep saying well we'll have another 911 if you take away those those resources I would just say that we can reapportion some of those resources but I would recommend doing so very carefully because I'm very very confident that we have an enterprise that's very much much focused on keeping the nation safe day in and day out the real life 24 plays out every day the enterprise I'm talking about is the intelligence community that plugs in very surgically and focuses on counter-terrorism in the convening authority was the office that Javid and I worked in at the NSC that we brought the interagency together not just to hear the intelligence but to focus on mitigation measures okay we know we have a threat stream directed at commercial aviation what are we doing about it and we have the bully pulpit of the White House to ensure that we're applying the right resources so I'm very pleased with that enterprise but I also want to state and this is a frank admission we did not do enough last year on countering violent extremism or whatever the term of art is today we did not focus on that enough I tried I think that our new counter-terrorism strategy I'm hoping we'll focus on that but that was not the priority last year can textually understand that's why I deliberately told you our three-fold focus on day one and it really was a large part on ISIS so I think as things even out I think we'll be able to focus going forward on the HVE threat the FBI the Department of Homeland Security does some excellent work and we don't have the diaspora problems that our European friends and allies have we have a different social structure here in the United States that said I do worry about HVE's and I agree with everything Barbara said and I will tell you that I just spoke to had an opportunity to do a podcast with Bryant Venus right Americans first al-Qaeda post 9-11 he made an ideological and a physical journey to Afghanistan to wage jihad he's been cooperator with the Department of Justice since he was released from prison getting people like Bryant to tell their story in a positive way to share their observations and to kind of bounce back from a colossal mistake that's what the judge has allowed him to do I want more Bryant Venus is to tell their story to deter people from going down that path and of course you know the the major attack that we had last year was Saipoff and HVE on Halloween last year no sleep that night while we work through that to make sure there weren't any foreign ties but how do we prevent that we have print prevent that by a public private partnership and continue to give the resources that the FBI needs DOJ needs in Homeland Security I've already talked about our need to focus some of our resources on the gray zone so I won't speak to that but I really think the enterprise is in a good place I just worry about it over correction the further and further we get away from 9-11 there'll be a tendency and the government does this we have a history of doing this to reapportion resources declare some kind of victory precipitously and take our eye off a movement that hasn't gone away it's the movement that's a concern that's the kind of counter ideological piece of this fight great thank Chris thank you here why hasn't a foreign terrorist organization successfully attacked the United States since 9-11 and there are three big reasons one is our defensive capabilities to our offensive capabilities and three public not public knowledge so on 9-11 we were in open door there were 18 people on the no-fly list 16 people on the no-fly list and one of them wasn't Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the operational commander of 9-11 there now 81,000 people on the no-fly list there one half million people on the tide list which means you go into secondary if you get on an American bound flight or an American carrier on 9-11 we didn't have the National Counterterrorism Center we didn't have DHS we didn't have TSA we had about 30 joint terrorism task forces now they're more than a hundred the intelligence budget has tripled that's so that's our defensive capabilities then our offensive capabilities the drone program put a huge crimp in Al Qaeda Central and the best witness for that has been Loudon himself who wrote we have all his documents now who is extremely concerned that his entire organization was being obliterated by the drone program and then you have public knowledge Barbara prosecuted this case which of course was the underwear bomber when a guy had smoke pouring out of his crotch and a transatlantic flight approaching Detroit it was the passengers and the crew that basically disabled him so the answer to the question is no we don't need a lot more authorities and I you know I I hear Barbara on the back door but like here's the dilemma for Americans the back door would give people access to potential criminals but the most successful enterprise in the United States is Silicon Valley and I would be undercutting this amazing business by saying yes there is a there's a way into every product it's a back door wealth is a way in other you know it's not just the government who can get in is the dilemma and I'm just there's no simple answer to this and then on the second point which I just wanted to like totally great Barbara on this domestic terrorism question here is the dilemma here or not even the dilemma I mean look we live in this we have a first amendment it is not a crime to be a member of a neo-nazi group in this country it is a crime to conduct a violent act on their behalf on the other hand it is a crime to be a member of ISIS in this country because you're part of a international terrorist organization so you can never criminalize neo-nazi groups which have a perfect right to do whatever they want as long as they're not actually breaking the law and so this is what makes it such a you know a different because people often say when there was a domestic terrorism attack why isn't it treated as terrorism well the answer is for a prosecutor like Barbara it's usually just very easy just to get them on murder or and if you introduce terrorism into the equation that raises a whole host of other issues and most of them are constitutional issues which you wouldn't whittle I think. So great round of perspectives on this question and I didn't hear consensus which is also interesting right so that's good you heard our you know two or three different views some overlap and respects but others where I think the lines are pretty clearly drawn but thanks to all the panelists for their thought so we've gotten through two questions I'm looking at Ryan Elliot and Michael it looks like we do have audience questions and several right so I think rather than me cycle through the next round of my own questions that everyone has seen why don't we get to the audience questions and I'll leave it over to you three to kind of lead us through that so yeah absolutely thank you Java my name is Ellie Berg I'm a first year MPP student here at the Ford School and here is the first first question how can we avoid and or remedy anti-western sentiment that is often perpetuated by continued US presence in the region to prevent the regrouping of prominent extremist groups in the region you need me to repeat it just let me know let me say the United States that we have the way I'm a Catholic so I'll say this there are sins of commission and that sins of omission and the United States gets it from both so I think President Obama will have to live with the fact that his serial policy helped contribute to where we are today obviously he didn't create the situation but he certainly didn't ameliorate it on the other hand the original sin in the Middle East to a large degree is the Iraq war it's like we didn't read Hobbes which is if you overthrow somebody anarchy is worse than dictatorship and by the way Obama did exactly the same thing in Libya only only eight years later and said it was his worst mistake so I think this question about anti-western sentiment I mean we are the world's superpower we you know we but we it is very hard to know what the second day after looks like or the third day but if you don't plan for it's obviously going to be worse and if you do plan for it so I don't think there's a simple answer this question because clearly if we done more in Syria this thing would not be the disaster of it Chris outlined and you know that's it I mean I think President Trump made the right choice on Afghanistan by the way after a lot of deliberation the first time he's publicly said look I changed my mind about something significant which is the only thing worse than being Afghanistan is leaving it we've run this videotape a million times before in Iraq in 2011 so there is no simple answer that question because that's why we pay the president and people on the NSE to try and figure these things out and there's going to be no good answer that's the nature of presidential decision-making I think so I would just add that no administration has figured out how to get at the grievance problem throughout the Middle East we just haven't figured that out and I remember Peter looking at a draft of our CT strategy and he identified that as a a significant concern it was a concern that I shared with them but we have to rely also of with our broader policies to help help ameliorate some of the anxiety in in the Middle East for example and I think in some ways we're doing that and remember there's a public and there's a private view of the United States in the Middle East in particular and that is publicly they might have to say we don't like America privately they say we need your help and the the best work that we're doing is small footprint not to violate the sensibilities of nations not to have a large military presence and I don't think this administration has any interest at all in a large scale presence so small groups of special operations walk working with foreign partners I think that's the right blending but we need the overarching policy to and that's a little bit out of my pay grade I had a counter terrorism focus I have to ensure that my regional counterparts are building in kind of the superstructure and then we can continue to do CT appropriately counterterrorism and using our exquisite capabilities but it's a tough problem I wish I had the answer yeah I guess the only thing I would add is that to the extent that we can control the perceptions of of the United States that could contribute to some help you know one of the propaganda tools that gets used in all these terrorist groups is that the United States is you know an occupying force and in an oppressor so you know it doesn't help that we have a prison at Guantanamo for example you know that gets used as propaganda against us it doesn't help when they have images of tanks rolling through the Middle East and so you know those kinds of things maybe to some extent are inevitable but all of those things I think feed that narrative I think the other thing that feeds the narrative is when President Trump and others contribute to that false narrative that America is at war with Islam and that you know Muslims are the problem in an immigration ban and those kinds of things because I think all of those things can be used as a propaganda tool against the United States around the world. Thanks for that question Elliot Michael. I'm Michael Bachman a first-year candidate for master's public policy my question is what are the counterterrorism implications if the U.S. military leaves Afghanistan? Did you like what happened in Iraq in 2014? So I would just add not a whole lot more beyond that but I will say that the key words to focus on is counterterrorism platform and that gets into the cycle I can be accused readily of being caught in this counterterrorism trap if we pull out if we don't have a platform to prosecute counterterrorism then I can say I told you so if there's another 9-11 or something short of that but frankly if you look at the lines of communication which really means the tyranny of distance we have to have the ability to put pressure on our adversaries while they're conducting planning that's another trap right you can identify pockets throughout the world that can be used as sanctuary for terrorists to conduct planning so we have to prioritize but right now you have a burgeoning developing ISIS footprint that wasn't there a few years ago in Afghanistan and you have still remnants of al-Qaeda straddling the border able to operate although we've done a good job as Peter said putting pressure on al-Qaeda core al-Qaeda but the overarching argument is we need a platform to conduct counterterrorism I wasn't focused on the counter Taliban fight that's an insurgency and there's a vibrant insurgency and I hope that eventually we can end that insurgency and there can be some kind of reconciliation and I hope that the insurgency dies in time there's good history to understand that eventually insurgencies die die out based on a exhaustion of the population but the Afghans are a hardy Afghans are a hardy people so I can't be too optimistic that said I am adamant though that we have to have the ability to go after those core organizations like al- qaeda like ISIS when they're in a position to continue their planning against Western targets and that's the overarching reason we needed to continue U.S. footprints in support of of the Afghan government plus they've asked us to stay and I'll cheat a little bit as even though I'm the moderator supposed to be somewhat neutral in this but on that question as well my own career as an intelligence professional supporting a lot of NSE policy decisions on that issue and I was always very comfortable you know giving policymakers sort of an intelligence perspective on that and leaving it up to somebody else to make the ultimate decision but that took on a whole new context when I myself and Chris and I were at the NSE and we were on the front lines of some of those policy choices where the roles completely reversed my colleagues from the intelligence committee were giving us you know an informed set of choices or options but we had to make the hard decisions and as Chris and Peter have both said like there are there are risks on either side of that that issue if you stay there are risks but if you leave history has already shown post 9-11 the risk of when the United States leaves a conflict zone the things that could happen and those are the choices that we had to face when we were at the NSE uh Ryan question on your side good evening and thank you for being here I'm Ryan Van we uh first year adpp candidate as well uh question kind of falls off what you were saying Colonel Costa on our capabilities to target terrorists abroad and given how the war on terrorism expanded since 2001 does the authorization for the use of military force that was granted in 2001 need to be updated 17 years later to kind of account for the new realities on the ground I had a feeling somebody would ask me that question so last night I thought through that because to be candid last year not that I was tactical at all we had to work at the strategic level but that was a decision that legislators had to sort out and it's a question of the legislative versus the executive powers right that said as I said earlier I believe we have the right resources in the authorities to prosecute the counterterrorism strategy against our adversaries really that come from the same roots of of that movement that attacked us on 9-11 so I am very comfortable with that I'll let those debates play out and I think it's important in a democracy for us to have those debates but others are going to have that that debate but but I think it's healthy to ask the questions but as I said and I made clear I was very comfortable with the authorities that we have and I would restate that we are dealing with a movement and the roots of that movement go back to to our adversaries that attacked us on 9-11 yeah I'll answer it so for people who don't know what the AUMF is is the authorized use of military force that was passed shortly after 9-11 and congress gave the president the authority to use I forget the precise language something like all force necessary against those responsible for the attacks of 9-11 I think and their associates that's right and so legally you know what does that mean what is the scope of that and so certainly it means you know core al-qaeda the 19 hijackers all of whom were dead I guess but others who were affiliated with them who plan the attack who supported them but how broad can you how broadly can you interpret what was meant by those responsible for the attacks of 9-11 it has been used for ISIS for example an organization that did not exist on 9-11 and so is that a you know reasonable legal argument to say it can be used against ISIS I mean others would say in favor of it that is sort of the successor organization so those are people but if you take a very narrow look at the language of that statute a textualist would say well no of course not ISIS didn't exist at that time and so the question I think is a good one which is should that language be amended modified expanded in some way to attack the current threat as it exists today to reflect you know the language of the statute yeah the likelihood of it being revised close to zero because congress I mean everybody remembers Hillary Clinton's vote in 2003 and what it did for her politically so no one wants to vote on anything that's controversial Jeff Flake and Tim Gain both I think have legislation on this issue you know it's not going to it is never going to make it the floor let alone pass so unfortunately we are where we are but it would be nice you know if congress congress is essentially abdicated the war powers that is that it's inherently allowed to have a role in and of course the we the people also are not involved in this decision what is the scope of this war what is the length of this war how much money are we going to spend these are very reasonable questions to ask but they will not be asked and I'll cheat a little bit as a moderator too the one time I actually use my law school background in my government career because trust me it was not a success you know before that was when I got to the nsc and when Chris and I were having to wrap our heads around some these tough legal issues around counterterrorism policy that's when the law school at least the big memories of what I remembered from law school training that's when that was important and helping understand a lot of the issues that Barbara that you referenced so from a literal perspective or a literal reading of the aumf versus an expansionist interpretation of the aumf could we start to use aumf to to move against isis or did we have to stick to the straight confines of of the statute as those written after 9 11 so that was for me the one time or the legal background actually kicked in from a counterterrorism perspective so I think we've got more questions as well so who Michael what are the future threats to our civil liberties from counterterrorism policies and operations in the future yeah I guess I can take a big one I think is our privacy rights under all of the surveillance programs that we have today you know we want to intercept threats coming into the United States we have a number of programs about that and one of the open questions is the extent of presidential power to intercept those kinds of communications because of abuses of watergate and interception of Martin Luther King and war protesters and others in the 1970s congress passed a statute called the foreign intelligence surveillance act that was supported supposed to be sort of this compromise between allowing the executive to have unfettered power to conduct surveillance in the name of national security versus the very careful oversight that's given in criminal cases with courts and so the compromise was created to have a secret court the foreign intelligence surveillance court that still provides that oversight but in a non-public way so that the intelligence can be kept confidential but there's we have the comfort that there's some oversight we know that over the years the president has sometimes gone around that statute there was a program called the terrorist surveillance program that was revealed by the New York Times in 2005 we know that Jim Comey refused to sign off on on that program because he believed it to be illegal but scholars will say that it's not clear that it's illegal because we don't know the boundaries of what the president's permitted to do and so it is likely that there are surveillance programs going on we don't know about the Snowden leaks for example shared with us that there were some programs going on that we didn't know about like the collection of every phone call that exists in America every day by all users you know just just in case you know that might need to be queried and so what other programs are going on out there you know genealogy websites is that data all being collected for some other purpose cell site location data you know what information is being collected from signals intelligence to be used and although it seems innocuous enough you know people often say well I don't do anything wrong I don't care if the government has my information we know that in Nazi Germany census data identifying people as Jewish was used to round up those sent to concentration camps so we may trust the government now but we don't know you know for what nefarious purpose all this data might be used in the future and so I think all of that surveillance collection is important but should concern us from a civil liberties perspective also I would add to what Barbara said so getting every cell phone call in the United States and storing them there's section 215 and you know certain revelations this came out and it turned out that actually giant fishing expeditions produced very little there was only one case as far as I can tell that it's very clearly based on this evidence and it was somebody sending money to Shababa Somali terrorist group from San Diego what get what people the thing that finds terrorists is traditional law enforcement techniques informants suspicious activity reports family or community member tips old fashioned police work I mean so the more these very kind of sophisticated kind of approaches a they were unconstitutional it turns out and by the way it was Obama who continued this program right so it was both Bush and Obama and also they didn't they didn't really answer the mail in terms of actually finding terrorists these kind of universal surveillance programs that are unconstitutional so I just we covered it a little bit actually Barbara did a great job of talking about right wing and the first amendment I think Peter did as well so the concern again our abuses do we go too far I was in the seat with Javed during Charlottesville so I'm not a lawyer but I found myself that weekend playing the part of a lawyer as we walk through why we don't have terrorism less legislation necessarily and I know I'm not saying that exactly right for domestically there's some nuance there but we don't use the intelligence tools that I referred to earlier in a big way intrusively we don't apply those same tools domestically at folks that are applying what they think is their first amendment rights so all that said I do worry about that and having grown up first as a counterintelligence agent knowing that the army even had abuses we had Cointel pro with the FBI in the army went beyond the pale many many years ago and we lived through that so we were schooled and understanding the left and right limits of our laws so I worry about that I will tell you that even at the international spy museum we explore that and it's fascinating the Palmer raids against anarchists in the 1920s I think right and so I think we should be reminded of our history and I like where we are right now we don't need to go further on the domestic front now the HVs that are focused on overseas and having communications with foreign foreign intelligence or I'm sorry terrorist organizations or intelligence organizations that are supporting them that's a whole different story okay I think we have additional questions as well Ryan so following on the CT light policy that the United States has implemented abroad to deal with the threat of terrorism this is addressed to the panel are you concerned with the over deployment and constant alliance on special forces to solve that problem of terrorism and is that short-term use of special forces in decisive action targeting missions does that create a greater risk in the long term so I've argued elsewhere and again I say this very carefully and with some thought I worry about like I think I can't speak for special operations command but I will tell you that they worry about the burning out of special operations because the amount of deployments the footprint where they are in the globe things like Niger happen and we lose special operators support to special operators we lose American service members I told you about the first week we lost a Navy SEAL as a result of the raid against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that said I believe that that is exactly what CT pressure requires small footprints of special operators that's a high price to pay but that is exactly what we have to do to continue the pressure and work with foreign partners and make sure that we're working with partners and providing the intelligence that they need in other words intelligence sharing has to happen robustly and we have to have discrete relationships with non-state actors as well meaning some tribes in places and that comes with the price as well outside of the state to state engagements in some ways we go backwards when we work with non-state actors as partners but I think the threat necessitates that it has to be done thoughtfully it has to be done surgically and special operations and our intelligence services are postured to do that but they have to balance that out with the state threats like we talked about I mean Chris encapsulated it perfectly I guess I would just add I don't know anything about special operations though I think that the track record speaks volumes that ISIS has been almost effectively dismantled through special operations drone strikes and other military measures but I think another part of the equation is winning hearts and minds I mean you can you know continue to beat them back but it's the prevention and the changing of minds that will stop the next threat and so we have incredible tools available to us in the same way terrorist organizations are crowdsourcing terrorism in the United States we too could be using social media to try to defeat that narrative when I was in government we often wanted the government to be this voice and I think that was probably a wrong model I don't think the government has the credibility to be that voice I think it looks like propaganda when the government's doing it but finding ways to empower refugees to tell the real story of what it looks like people who are ISIS defectors to tell the real story of what it looks like can be a powerful counter-narrative so I think finding ways to give platforms to those who tell a different story can also be effective All right, Elliott it looks like you've got a question as well Yep, sort of switching gears here what roles should artificial intelligence play in counter-terrorism if any? Look if we didn't have a First Amendment and a Fourth Amendment I think we could stop every terrorist attack in this country because I mean I'm not a tech guy but we're already at the point where we can make some pretty good assumptions I mean look social media companies do this all the time they know they can know your sexual orientation if you're married if you where you live the hobbies you have I mean they can put together a pretty big picture of you which is why you have micro-targeting of ads so similarly this reversing the picture if somebody is exhibiting certain behaviors online and by the way everybody is getting radicalized online 90% of the cases they're in 2015 for instance I mean there's no in-person meetings there's no radical mask it's all online but so if there was no First Amendment no Fourth Amendment I think you could very easily detect people using AI who you think would be threatening it's basically the minority reporters come to life I'm not and look that what the Chinese are doing I mean they create you can create the perfect totalitarian state now with facial recognition technology and AI and luckily we're not going to do that I would just add that last year somebody asked me recently about artificial intelligence and I'm trying to get my head head around that now but I will tell you as I reflected on that there was not one time in a year at at the White House with all the intelligence briefings that Java and I received incessantly being informed by our intelligence community no one briefed me on artificial intelligence I knew it was out there but that's not what we were focused on day to day however now that I've had a chance to breathe a little bit and get some sleep and reflect on what we didn't do last year along with CV it's we didn't give enough focus to how our adversaries are going to use artificial intelligence so I don't have an answer but I will tell you that they're using drones in the battle space ISIS is and they're very savvy they're looking for individuals that understand technology so they can reverse that technology and use it for you know malign purposes so we do have to get our arms around artificial intelligence because our adversaries are a learning adversary but we're but again Frank admission last year we did not focus a lot on that but I'm facilitating a discussion on AI in October so I'm going to get a whole lot smarter well I just think anytime you're relying on more technology it's wonderful it makes our lives you know easier but just in the same way we've all encountered probably problems with you know credit cards that have been compromised in the same way anytime we rely on technology there is the risk that somebody has the ability you know some adversary can use it against us you know there is this big disruption of of data by overloading circuits that happened a year year and a half ago you know autonomous vehicles if we rely on autonomous vehicles can afford an adversary use that technology against us you know it's it's like you know what was it 2001 a space odyssey when the robots take over I think that we have to be careful when we build all those systems that we do it in such a way that we are thoughtful about what happens if an adversary can control this is there a way to to shut it down is there you know a backup plan in place so that we're not so reliant on these systems that you know we're completely disabled when they go down weigh in quickly with my own kind of observation on this not necessarily on the artificial intelligence point but from my perspective as an analyst before I got to the White House what I thought made the ISIS threat so different and unique in some regards probably the most pernicious thing we'd seen after 9-11 was the fact that ISIS or some aspect of ISIS managed to crack this evolving technology phenomena in a way that we in the U.S. government were clearly falling behind in ourselves as Chris described didn't understand and ISIS some of their initial successes were based on their ability to sort of fuse learning and knowledge as Chris described in all the advances that were happening in the early 2010s and then into the into this decade on social media on encryption on instant messaging on mobile communications we ourselves in the government were not doing as good a job of ISIS was as a group in terms of organizing themselves communicating as this far-flung enterprise and actually inspiring people to conduct attacks or covertly organizing attacks so ISIS was ahead of us for a while in that evolving technology space and artificial intelligence is probably an aspect of it Michael What role should humanitarian and development aid play in countering violent and extremist efforts? The the acts that the very few people are engaged in these acts and so kind of any like let's say humanitarian development for country X I mean yeah it's great but it will it prevent I mean I'm always kind of sort of skeptical of some of these ideas because Salman bin Laden was the son of a billionaire Aiman Al-Zawari runs Al-Qaeda as a surgeon from an upper middle class Egyptian family so this is a little bit different we have to make a distinction between terrorist groups made up of volunteers and insurgents who are on a payroll so that if you're working for ISIS you're getting paid $100 a month you're working for the Taliban $150 a month so development assistance in in in an insurgency situation actually might be somewhat useful if you really can create other livelihoods of course that's not necessarily that easy in certain countries as a matter on the terrorism issue I think it's sort of a non it doesn't make it makes no difference at all because terrorists are volunteers they're willing to die for the cause you can't pay people it's not so you have to make a distinction between this could be useful in insurgencies and insurgencies often practice terrorism but terrorists put a kind of classic terrorist group like Al-Qaeda I don't think it would make much difference and in fact you know it came out of Saudi Arabia which after all a poor country where many of these ideas were incubated I think Pete Peter covered that fairly well okay I think we have we've got about 15 minutes left or less than that but it looks like we still have additional questions from the audience so let's keep going down that front Ryan for the issue of the ongoing insurgency and terror threat in Afghanistan can we solve those issues without addressing the safe haven in Pakistan and what are your thoughts on the best way to go about that short answer is no you want to expound on that a little bit Peter so well countries have interests they're not we have an alliance of some kind with Pakistan but they're not friend I mean we're not friends because we we like them or they like us I mean their interests are very stable there's a wonderful scene Ali G asked James James Baker and Ali G are talking about you know carrots and sticks and Ali G says what if they don't like carrots um and the point is we have tried carrots with the Pakistanis we have tried sticks this is 17 years on we have repeatedly said we're leaving this country Afghanistan is going to be attached to them forever so their interests are making sure that they have a non-Indian aligned country on their border because they are threatened by India on their other border at least or in their own minds and they're going to do everything possible to make sure that there isn't an Indian aligned government in Kabul and so that means they'll support groups within the Taliban they're going to do that forever and it President Trump correctly said you know we're going to get tough with the Pakistanis we're not going to get tough with the Pakistanis so long we have troops in Afghanistan we need them because look at the geography you've got Iran and a bunch of sort of Russia pro-Russian Central Asian states the only way you can get supplies through our troops in Afghanistan is by ground through Pakistan or by air and they haven't threatened that so we're in this kind of very stable form of instability where they're going to continue supporting these insurgent groups to some degree we're going to kind of be annoyed about it but we're not really going to we're not going to make them a state sponsor of terrorism or sanction particularly individuals in the Pakistani state because we need them and so that's a very uncomfortable answer to the question because there is really no good answer here there's no magic bullet it's just not you know but we also aren't for all the reasons Chris outlined earlier we're going to be in Afghanistan for quite some period of time because it would be can you by the way can you imagine any president pulling out of Afghanistan when Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump and a terrorist attack was somehow you know emanated from that area of several years later it would be the Benghazi episode you know to the power of you know so we're not going to leave for good reasons because our national security is there but we're also not going to really be able to substantially change the Pakistani kind of view here and just a nuance point it's not just an Afghanistan strategy it's actually it's distinctively it is a South Asia strategy to get at the problem of more pressure on Pakistan but all the things that Peter said exactly right it's we've played this before with the Pakistanis the jury is still out but it is a South Asia strategy it's broader it's broader than just Afghanistan it has to embrace Indian issues as well as Pakistani issues and the Pakistanis don't like that so we'll see the juries out I mean I've heard all of these same arguments that I listened and I'm not betraying anything I listened to some of the engagements you know I was with Pakistanis I was part of some of those engagements and we've told them the same things that I heard a general tell the Pakistanis in 2005 even at the ISI headquarters I got my foot slammed in the door at ISI headquarters when the general said Chris stay really close to me and you're going to the meeting no matter what I had to stay really close to them they still slammed the door on my foot but I managed to get it in the head of ISI glared at me throughout the meeting but I took notes and kind of smirked which isn't my normal style but my foot was hurting the point is I listened to that messaging the same messaging I heard last year so it is a cycle all right do we have more audience questions Elliot and I think this is going to be the last question to what extent should the United States prioritize counter-terrorism over other threats such as an empowered China or a reemerging Russia that was actually one of my questions so I'm glad that somebody else has sort of thought of the same ones I think Chris has strong views on this I do so I had I'd actually prepared some remarks so I'm just going to read just a couple points that I think are important and this is my central thesis right now and again I've had a chance to get some sleep and had a chance to reflect on this very thoughtful questions and commentary from the panel and I'm better for having heard it I will tell you that I worry about a haste to pivot from terrorism to other security challenges I worry about that because I think that we stand to lose on setbacks in the counter-terrorism front we can do more than one thing at once as a nation and people have argued that we have disproportionately focused on counter-terrorism I will tell you in my time in Javits time at the White House we did not disproportionately focus on counter-terrorism I had to fight to ensure that our equities were argued vociferously in policy discussions on Afghanistan of course those arguments broke out in the debate leading up to the final decision for the South Asia strategy but I do worry that the pendulum will swing in the other end of the spectrum and we will forget what happened on 9-11 and we will at the detriment of our counter-terrorism enterprise I do worry about that and I am not alarmist I just believe that is a pragmatic view of the world so I think steady pressure appropriate resources is there fat in the enterprise should we reapportion some of the resources that were that have been focused on CT yes I think we can do that appropriately and I think the intelligent community can figure that out I think a sound overarching counter-terrorism strategy and don't decrement those resources don't detract from the gains that we've had so I do feel strongly about that I wanted to test that out on this audience and maybe we could talk when we break at the social I think that some of us are going to so thank you very much yeah I mean no position to disagree with that and certainly counter-terrorism remains a top priority you know we'd love to say we can walk and chew gum at the same time but you know if you if you've ever managed resources you know you do have to prioritize you have to make a choice of one thing over the other and so I guess some things to think about just I was struck when Gina Haspel announced that CIA was going to make nation states their top priority you know there's a significant threat from nation states there's certainly you know what we've seen with election interference but also a really significant problem relating to industrial espionage from our foreign adversaries you know a huge problem with I can tell you in Detroit stealing trade secrets from the auto industry often through cyber means sometimes it's just through paying enough to an employee to leave and collect data on a thumb drive or a external hard drive and take it to a company a startup in China but the ability to sneak in not through the door but through your computer and steal trade secrets I think could harm the greatest advantage that the United States has which is our industry and our economy and we know that you know there was a big indictment against Chinese nationals Chinese intelligence stealing from the steel industry in Pittsburgh a few years ago most of those cases are not brought and are not charged because you can't extradite people for most of the countries that these threats are coming from and so rather than charge them and go public usually what happens is that the intelligence community continues to watch to try to gain valuable intelligence from that that kind of attack but in that instance it was decided to what's called name and shame to say we know what you're up to and we caught you and to let the world know about that but that's a very significant threat it's going on and really threatens to harm one of the great advantages that the U.S. has over other countries in the world so although certainly counterterrorism is an important priority I don't want that to diminish the priority of the threat posed by nation states history to surprise us and all this discussion we've had which is all true is probably going to be irrelevant when the next thing happens which will be kind of a swine flu virus that kills two million Americans or something we unpredictable or a bio attack and we will basically there's always a imagine a line problem which is you're always fighting the last war which isn't I mean that's the only war you know so but I think it's fairly obvious that history is going to surprise us it surprises on Pearl Harbor it surprises in 9-11 of course there were indications but we tend to be surprised so unfortunately something else will happen history hasn't stopped okay I am mindful of the time and we are three minutes ahead of schedule but as Chris knows as people who used to run meetings all day long that saving a little bit of time is always good for everyone and we had a weird competition who could actually end meeting the earliest so I think I won in that regard even when I was at the NSC but thanks first of all I want to say thanks to a lot of people first thanks to you all who decided to take time out of your busy schedules in afternoon to spend time with us so thank you for that thank you to the panel as well coming in from Washington or even Barbara taking time out of your schedule I know is not easy but thank you so much yeah I said no but thank you again for sharing time with us thanks also to the students from the class Ryan, Michael, Elliot thank you so much for helping to facilitate the questions and also a special thanks to Laura Lee I know I saw Laura here somewhere before Laura I probably bugged the most in my time coming here to the Ford School asking her literally millions of questions about how do I put an event like this together what are the dos and don'ts and I think I tried to hear to all that guy and so Laura thank you as well and the last thank you is to Erin Flores Erin I know you're there in the back you really were the person behind the scenes who did all the hard work to put this together so special thank you for that so round of applause for everyone Dean Barr over to you let me just say thank you again to Javit for putting together a wonderful wonderful panel and to the panelists for being here and all of you please join us outside for a reception so thank you very much