 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Ambassador Distinguished Lecture Series at Purdue featuring Ambassador Rajendra Abhyankar. Thank you to all who are joining us here in person and those of you who are joining us virtually as well. I'm Dr. Stacy Connaughton, the director of the Purdue Policy Research Institute and professor in the Bryan Lamb School of Communication. PPRI is absolutely delighted to be co-hosting this event with the newly launched Center for Technology Diplomacy at Purdue and the Office of Global Partnerships. We are also pleased to be sponsored by the College of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts. The Ambassador Distinguished Lecture Series at Purdue was developed to bring ambassadors and other distinguished dignitaries to the university community to share their first-hand knowledge and experience on various topics of diplomatic challenge and opportunity, particularly those issues in which Purdue has capacity in effecting positive change. This series invites engagement with real-world issues and the strengths of Purdue across disciplines of science, technology, engineering, agriculture, social sciences, and the humanities. At this time I am very pleased to introduce the Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Dr. David Reingold. Dean Reingold received his master's and PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago and is a professor of sociology with primary teaching and research expertise including urban poverty, economic development, social welfare policy, low-income housing policy, civil society, and government performance. His research has appeared in many distinguished journals including the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Public Administration Review, Social Science Review, Urban Studies, The Journal of Urban Affairs, and Housing Studies, among many others. His public service experience includes positions as Director of Research and Policy Development at the U.S. Corporation for National and Community Service, a member of the White House Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth, and Chair of the Task Forces Research Committee, Housing Commissioner and Vice Chairman of the Bloomington Housing Authority Board, Board President of the South Central Community Action Program, and Chair of the Indiana Commission on Community Service and Volunteerism. He has served on expert panels for the United States National Academy of Public Administration and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and he's served on many an editorial board. With that, I'm very pleased to welcome to the stage Dr. David Dean Reingold. Thank you for that very warm welcome, and it's my pleasure to be here to introduce a friend and a colleague, somebody who I've co-conspired with now for over a decade. And Regendra is a modest fellow who has lived an extraordinary life as a world diplomat, and I guess I'll start. I'm going to do this pretty much all by memory, Regendra, so if I get things wrong, it's my it's my faulty memory. So when when Regendra retired from his 35 plus years, I'm cheating you on a handful of years, but I don't know the exact number, I was starting to do the math, but from the Indian diplomatic corps, he finished his career as the secretary, which meant that every Indian diplomat around the world reported to him and he reported to the foreign secretary. Now this, mind you, is India the most populous democracy in the world. Now I know in America we don't we don't like to recognize the fact that there are other democracies, some that are in fact sort of larger than ours, maybe not quite as old as ours, but certainly of a size and scale much much larger than ours. And his career began in working on counterinsurgency topics in the late 1960s focused on the Tamil Tigers and it progressed from there and his stops, you know, included a number of very very sort of important parts of the world as we look back on sort of what's happened, but you know being the ambassador of Syria and Azerbaijan and Turkey and and Lisbon and the EU and and and so on and so forth. And I'm mindful that I'll sort of, I don't reveal some things for gender and some of them I'm not quite sure, I think that they're true, although I haven't been able to sort of fact check all of them, but you know when when when the US was, so he's worked in some of the toughest parts of the world and but but it's always impressed upon me how even in those those those really tough neighborhoods around the around the around the world that there are some of the most sort of compassionate and caring people in those places and and I think he's worked tirelessly to to advance those relationships. And you know when when the United States was and this is before I met Rajendra, but when the United States was poised for war in Iraq and and the President of the United States was looking for an out, I mean I'll say I'll put it that way, I don't know, this is sort of my revisionist history. President Bush was looking for a way to avoid that war, he had a he had his Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor, he was looking for you know who is it who could get to Saddam Hussein to try and figure out how to how to prevent that that was Rajendra. Now I you know I think it's safe to say that his his reach has been been substantial and and when when I was able to you know our partnership started that other public university in the state but when I was able to sort of convince him to come and spend some time here and be a part of the inaugural group to launch the Center on Tech Diplomacy I couldn't think of anybody who would be better suited to sort of sit at the at the at the pivot point between sort of the world of the 20th century and the world of the 21st century. So you know he's he has and and if you and if he's amassing a library of published works you know with his latest book on I think it's Oxford Oxford Press or Cambridge Press and nevertheless Oxford Press a very very impressive piece of scholarship on on the Indian diplomatic sort of world of history and politics and in a lot of places Rajendra you know they give you a tenure for those kinds of books and so anyway but you bit you've certainly made a wonderful name for yourself in the diplomatic arena now as a scholar of diplomacy and and and we're just thrilled that you've decided to spend some time here and to share some of your experiences with our students and to be a part of this inaugural group here launching this pivotal center here on the Center for Tech Diplomacy. So so with that and you know and Paul me your wife is here I'm just delightful so I want to hand it over to you look forward to your remarks and obviously Dean Shang and I you know I know he wanted to be here but but but we're thrilled that you're here and able to share some of your experiences with the Purdue community as as you make your way here in West Lafayette. Thank you very much thank you Dr. Stacey for conducting the meeting in India we would call you the sutradhar sutradhar is the one who controls the strings so you can pull us whichever way you want. David many thanks for your introduction I've done a lot but I hope I continue to do it for a little more time and thank you all of you for being present here. Technology sits at the crossroads of diplomacy and democracy the robust use of technology in international affairs will define the future practice of diplomacy and more importantly the strength of the democracy human rights and prosperity in the United States and in the democratic world it will ensure that quoting Dr. Moon Chiang Dean of the College of Engineering here at Purdue the U.S. can protect its national interest and strengthen its group global leadership nothing illustrates this better than President Biden's virtual four-hour meeting summit on 15 November not very long back with Chinese President Xi Jinping it highlighted three issues first President Biden in underscoring that for the 21st century the United States with its allies and partners will advance a free open and fair international system drew attention that the existing system established after the Second World War is in a state of flux and uncertainty second in discussing the complex nature of relations between the two countries President Biden recognized that the superpower balance increasingly now includes China the two leaders agreed on the importance of managing the competition responsibly to ensure that it does not wear into conflict whether intended or unintended third the summit demonstrated that technology has become the new frontier of international relations Dr. Chiang's initiative was opportune to found Purdue University's Purdue University center for tech diplomacy which is the host today a think tank to advance the use in the U.S. of tech diplomacy in government and public sectors and later in like-minded partner countries pressure from the international system has benefited technology adoption enabling governments to override entrenched domestic interests that oppose the induction of technology due to its presumed negative effects on their businesses ever since 1998 ever since the 1998 internet boom in Silicon Valley the game has been to make the internet easily accessible scalable and free huge fortunes were made many by Indians in inventing devices that would make this possible it was based on the idea that the internet must truly become universally accessible to be a great equalizer with the unending and diverse use of technology all the nations are facing common issues relating to the regulation of the internet particularly aspects of surveillance and privacy and the causes and consequences of the digital divide has highlighted the issue of net neutrality further the prolific use of the internet for example to introduce cryptocurrency has raised the need to frame national regulations while research addresses modes adoption and consequences similar problems will need to be addressed as the internet expands in other areas of our life there will be many going forward in this context tech diplomacy remains the single tool at our command to arrive at viable international solutions today this afternoon I would like to talk on three emerging concerns as we acquies in the growing use of technology in all the aspects of our life first the democratization of the internet second the role of big tech and its influence third misinformation and radicalization of social media so taking the first democratization of the internet uprooting the established patterns of work by the pandemic though disruptive has been somewhat positive the remote working has become an alternative way of working for example enabling wider families to meet together online allowing people to find time to exercise and freeing up time used earlier to commute to office there have also been benefits to the environment by reducing the need to travel the use of digital tools has also made it increasingly possible for non-governmental organizations NGOs to participate in international discussions and share their ideas without the expense of time and money the united nations in its 57th year assessment has stated that digital advances can support and accelerate the achievement of the 23rd 2030 target for sustainable development goals from ending extreme poverty to reducing maternal and infant mortality promoting sustainable farming and decent work and achieving universal literacy world leaders using tech diplomacy have held high level interactions including at the united nations without the need to travel Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on 9th august this year became the first world leader to convene a new meeting of the united nations security council through video conferencing the use of facebook and twitter for conveying political and foreign policy decisions for example during president trump's tenure has brought them quicker to the nation's public although not always a positive development much can be said for bringing government's decision quickly to the public attention at the same time the tremendous benefit we have received from twitter and other online tools like google maps facebook and others cannot be denied every type of information is now available by a click it has helped in cases like pandemic like the pandemic presently wars and other events that have required the widest and immediate contact with the people who have been affected yet the greatest problem has been the phenomenal increase in cybercrime that has affected the democratization of the internet recent pegasus hacking incidents and massive data leaks by the use of spyware are examples where cyber tech diplomacy has become spy tech diplomacy semantic the security research firm has ranked 20 countries that have faced the highest number of cybercrimes attacks led by the us and including china germany brazil britain spain france turkey and india each country lists six contributing factors share of malicious computer activity malicious code rank spam and zombies ranks fishing website hosts and bought rank and attack origins the misuse of technology both by state and non-state actors continues to pose a grave threat to national security digital digital sovereignty and personal freedoms for example by the islamic state which as you know had more or less captured nearly three large provinces of iraq and two large provinces of syria and built almost a country of their own who had used the internet to actually project their message all across the world especially to europe and was responsible for a large few terrorist attacks in europe in this context the burpas convention on cybercrime the first international treaty on this subject lays down a common criminal policy aimed at protecting society against cybercrime it seeks to boost international cooperation through the adoption of appropriate legislation to harmonize national laws and improve investigating techniques yet in force since july 1 2004 by december last year only 65 states had ratified the convention it came into the into force in the united states on first january 2007 drawn up by the council of europe the convention seeks to regulate cybercrime committed via the internet dealing with the infringement of copyright computer related fraud child pornography hate crimes and violation of network security nevertheless these technologies have also threatened privacy eroded security and fueled inequality particularly under autocratic governments thereby affecting and impacting human rights like generations before governments businesses and individuals have to decide how we harness and manage new technologies this is particularly true of how it's it is used in the practice of diplomacy it will require leaders to come together to tackle the global digital divide recognizing that 3.6 billion people in the world 57 percent of the world's population still do not have access to the internet suffer from poor network coverage in some parts of the world particularly in rural rural areas and among older people and also those who do not speak english ctdp's research in this area could make a valuable contribution in increasing the coverage of the internet ctdp would also promote the use of cybertech diplomacy in like-minded democratic countries helping them to reap its benefits and build protection against cyber attacks and cyber surveillance second the role of big tech and its influence apple amazon microsoft and google like nation states have annual revenues that are higher than many countries it has made them significant players in the world economy and in diplomacy their tremendous power has enabled them to tap social media like facebook twitter and riddit without permission of their huge body of users it has led some countries to name tech ambassadors to liars between governments and tech majors to advise on new technological developments that could assist foreign and security policies many countries have also deputed computer scientists engineers and tech experts in their diplomatic missions to assist line officials and promote bilateral cooperation between their countries social media platforms and big tech believing themselves to be a democratizing force despite their lack of electoral legitimacy or democratic oversight have defeated the gatekeepers of media and information flow while maintaining press freedom the need to ensure that rights are set off against obligations has been ignored in the u.s technology regulation by the congress has taken its queue from big tech donors and lobbyists relying on the silicon valley promoted idea of technological inevitability justified since it curtailes state power and maximizes citizen economy by reducing government control further that any regulation would only hamper technological development it flies in the face of our experience for example with trade regulation markets have always been regulated to ensure a freer trade through GATT the general agreement on trade and tariffs and the world trade organization the same rationale should apply to increase use of technology however any claim that these technologies should be subjected to even the slightest regulation is opposed for example are requiring facebook to get permission before extracting from any mobile device the contacts telephone calls text geolocation data app usage and many other forms of data installed on it third misinformation and radicalization of social media the use of technology by social media has enabled it to dominate the minds often the lives of an increasing proportion of the world's population yet the growing use of facebook and other social media channels has also seen the posting of an alarming degree of extremist content conspiracy theories and false information and misinformation fake news and fabricated happiness expressed on social media like facebook and instagram is increasingly making people irritated angered and frustrated yet clicks and likes have become the direct pathways for advertising inviting further consumer engagement by harvesting this evidence of human behavior and tastes a free raw material for commercial extraction prediction and sales has become available to companies like facebook and others given widespread public support in most countries more needs to be done to legislate the unregulated behavior of the advertising and social media giants given growing evidence that it continues to damage democracy this is particularly serious at a time when democracy in the west and other countries whether the us uk france germany italy or india is in a state of change and uncertainty the compromise of their political ecology has seen a retreat from liberal democratic traditions we see a denial of political access to selected minority communities or the rise of authoritarian national parties like the german alternative for dutchland or the french fro national parties at once racist and anti-semitic liberal democracies the world over are failing or falling turkey once a secular democracy is now neither hungary brazil the philippines and many others have increasingly moved towards authoritarian nationalism the optimism of the mid 1990s that liberal democracy had an end of history advantage over other forms of government has proven false as false as the now devastated optimism of the arab spring reviving religious fundamentalism and authoritarian nationalism in that part of the world the loss of us soft power at this time has been particularly deleterious to the task of maintaining democratic institutions worldwide it has coincided with many countries causing up to china we also see an uptick in authoritative language authoritarian language politicians and regimes these developments highlight the crucial importance of the first of the two summits summit for democracy that is to be virtually hosted by president biden on december 9 and 10 a few days from today the summit could also be led as an effort to mobilize world opinion and resources to counter the belligerent ascent of china in recent years is celebrated belt and road initiative now embracing about 30 70 countries has introduced china's command and control culture in these countries the summit will bring together heads of state leaders of the pri of the private and philanthropic sectors and civil society representatives from democracies around the world the agenda is to promote solidarity against authoritarianism fight corruption and advance human rights and democratic principles it is a magnificent opportunity for the president to demonstrate global leadership in the community of nations a departure from the earlier america first approach it will set an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and tackle through collective action the greatest threats faced by democracies today it will focus on challenges and opportunities facing democracies and will provide a platform for leaders to announce both individual and collective commitments reforms and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights abroad and at home yet the summit will need to produce decisions that are actionable and common to all democracies for the u.s. the summit is an opportunity to listen learn and engage with a diverse range of actors whose support and commitment is critical for global democratic renewal it will showcase democracies unique strength the ability to acknowledge its imperfection and confront it openly and transparently i'm hopeful that the summit will give a boost to the use of tech diplomacy in the in its widest in the widest dissemination and follow-up of its results thank you thank you very much ambassador we will be moving our furniture so let me grab this microphone if i can i will slide right over here while we get some assistance too to do this yeah we'll move some chairs okay okay we can now leave them okay thank you very much okay thank you all so much mr. ambassador let me begin by thanking you very much for your service to the world as i looked at your bio it is such an impressive bio out of all of the places where he has served in the world and as you all have heard from his beautiful remarks today clearly served from the mind but also from the heart so i'd like to begin sir by by asking you the second question there on our list which is you have represented india in the european union in belgium and luxembourg as well as izer by john syria turkey cypress shrillanka the list goes on and on what does technology diplomacy look like in different countries in different cultural contexts and how has technology diplomacy bridge differences across cultural and political divides well let me start by saying that if one has to actually bridge differences across cultures and political divides it needs a very strong political will by the government because without that political will technology just becomes a tool i mean technology technology or tech diplomacy becomes a tool second thing is that if once you have the political will then the sky is the limit because if you have the political will to bridge differences and there are very fundamental differences in the world in within countries between peoples of different cultures and peoples of different political views but once you have it i would say that you have to use every every means at your command so these are just some original sort of points i'd make to start with as now let me say that i was in the indian foreign service from 1968 which was a time long before we even had in 1968 we didn't even have mobile phones forget about any we didn't have even emails i mean 68 was was really very and i retired in 2005 it was in 1995 that i got my first hotmail address so that is where i come from so i should just make that clear so in many ways it was a very early time to do a lot of things that i did end up doing so if i take the european parliament uh when i was ambassador to the european union we had uh we had of course always a problem in the european union of finding uh congenial atmosphere to push our issues and by the time i reached brussels the european parliament had become a vibrant body from just a talking shop that it used to be earlier the european parliament is composed of members of the european parliament who come from a varied background from different european countries and from different political parties so the way they work it is that let's say people from all parties which are left of centre in each country of the european union are together seen as one group so that's how that parliament works but by the time i got there i found that they had become very uh they had become actually an important factor in deciding the european union's views and decisions on a number of matters and it was extremely important for me at that time to actually find some way that we could have an india group among the members of parliament of the european union of the european parliament among the two who would actually help us with our interest and that was a real job it required us to do i mean required me to go and meet a lot of people the european parliament incidentally is in strazburg in france whereas the european commission is in brussels in belgium so i had to get to strazburg quite often to meet these people get them um get them somehow put into the india group and the india group according to the parliament regulations they had to adhere to it every year so it was not that they just said okay i'm a member so that was one i think a very big um success that i had in trying to get this done secondly well the second instance i can give you is of azerbaijan as you probably may know some of you will know that azerbaijan is a majority shia muslim country which is bordered by armenia who are of course christians or armenian christians now there is an area between armenia and azerbaijan called nagorno karabakh which is a russian way of saying mountainous karabakh so that is actually um part i mean it is it has always been part of azerbaijan although it has armenians and they're all christians on that ground the armenian government armenian army actually took over militarily nagorno karabakh it was almost now 20 years ago and they're still sitting on that and so there is a problem of the azeris wanting to get it back but not having the strength the military strength to actually do it because on the one side the armenians are being assisted by russia and the azeris are being assisted by turkey so it really becomes a proxy war between these countries so knowing this but this is the background the problem for me was that whenever the issue of kashmir came up in the united nations in the security council the azeris would always vote against us would vote for pakistan so it became uh i needed to convince the president of azerbaijan um i did it on my first meeting when i presented credentials i told him that uh there is something i need in fact actually he started talking about kashmir and saying why don't you give it to pakistan and i said the same reason why you don't give nagorno karabakh to armenia at which stage it was the most unusual meeting that i had because normally when an ambassador presents credentials it is a one-to-one between the head of state and yourself but this time he had all the tv channels and everyone sitting in there which was uh i mean it was the first time that i was coming across something like this but i decided well why not i'll just say my piece so moment i told him that you know if you give nagorno karabakh to armenia we are quite happy to give kashmir to pakistan at which stage he firstly threw out all the media guys who were there and said okay now tell me what exactly the thing is so i said it's like this if nagorno karabakh is christian but it has always been part of azerbaijan it's exactly the same story with kashmir kashmir majority of the population is muslim but it has always been part of india and it has seceded to india legally so i was able actually after he said i think you should have a more discussion with him i foreign minister which i did and over about three four meetings of three four hours each i was able to change them their decisions so that was one but having done this i got to know the president very well and i was trying then because we are talking of 2001 and two when uh for the first time oil exploration in the caspian had started and the caspian is divided according to the country's bordering it there are six of them so each one has its sector and uh so i was interested that we get an oil block in the azeri sector of the caspian i missed it by about one percent i nearly got it but somehow it didn't work so that was uh azerbaijan i don't know how much time we have but i have another one or two instances the first was of course and it's closer to home here in the sense it was getting recognition as a nuclear power even though we had not signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty as you know everyone except india and because india pakistan and israel these are three countries who have never signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty we did it for a simple reason we were the originator of the first draft in 1968 of the nonproliferation treaty but moment we started the negotiations we found that the countries which had nuclear power the five major countries who are members of the security council uh put in a clause saying that they could keep it but all others could not have it so we said forget it this is an unequal negotiation we're not going to and we have never done it so this was the background to what happened basically in 2004 2006 when um we we were able to initially we tried after we had nuclear tests in 1998 and of course we were put under united states sanctions because of we did this and uh we were trying to see now how to get rid of the sanctions we were able till then we had some members of the senate and the congress who are well disposed to india initially it all fell on deaf ears but eventually we were able to convince them that we did it because of our energy requirement and so we were able to persuade them and they were able to carry the message to the president who then uh agreed that there should be a longest discussion between india and the united states to resolve this problem so strobe talbert who was then uh in the national security council and our former foreign minister just one thing they had 18 months of discussions going on for three four hours each time and finally at the end of those 18 months we were able to get the sanctions removed but that was not all once that happened president george w bush actually was a god send because he decided and told us it doesn't matter whether you have signed the nuclear non proliferation treaty or not i'm going to see that you are recognized as a nuclear power and he got it done except for china which continued to oppose it but by 2006 it had all been accomplished so that was and we had like what was my role in it we had to actually get hold of the various members and i used to be consul general then in san francisco but i had jurisdiction over half of the united states so i had to get hold of congressmen and senators in these states to talk to them that's when i first actually met nancy polosi so so that was quite uh oh great if you have time i can give you some more instances uh this is goes back to 1990 when saddam hussein invaded kuey we had a and moment the iraqi army went into kuey there was no way that anybody could get in touch with anybody outside they had completely cut off all communications with that country now as it happened there were about 360 000 indians in kuey at that time who were completely lost because they couldn't contact anyone like nobody could and there was tremendous clamour in our parliament to know the fate of indians in kuey and there were no answers there's a lot of pressure on my ministry to do something about it i was at that time the indian ambassador in cyprus outside in the island there and one of these days when when i was in office i got a call from someone um what i call what's what i called ham radio operators i don't know whether you know these are uh unlicensed radios uh which people use to try and meet different people so he called me to say that i'm getting a message from kuey saying that he's the indian ambassador and wants to speak to any indian ambassador in the region so i said okay the name of the ambassador is such and such could you please ask him what his name is if he confirms the name tell him to call back again on the to call you back again within an hour and i'll come up to your house and we'll see so i did actually go and talk to ambassador buddhiraja and he told me that the indians are all safe he had a few other things like there was a kuey teep princess who was uh afraid of the iraqis and she had approached our ambassador saying can you give me an indian passport so i can travel to india and he said do you think should i give it i said just do what you have to do and uh there's no point in asking delhi but i said i'm going to try to fix you up on a regular contact with delhi but meanwhile what did happen was i was able to inform the ministry in delhi that uh all the indians in kuey are safe and the next day our minister made a statement on the floor of the parliament confirming that and that way the pressure was resolved but it has a curious end this whole story in 1994 when i was posted to Damascus Syria on my first day in office i saw a little box on another table in my office so i asked what is this and they said this is a ham radio i said what is the ham radio doing here he said the government has issued ham radios to every mission in this area i said very good do we know what we are supposed to do with it they hadn't sent the the call sign yet because i assumed that it would happen when if there is an emergency but meanwhile uh there it was and my colleagues were trying to work on that ham radio to find out whether they could whom they could get hold of in the world yeah a ham radio uh a ham radio is an amateur radio which many people i see her nodding her head so she knows uh is an is an amateur radio unlicensed which people use to just contact people on different on different frequencies so anyway that is what happened in Damascus with my colleagues also decided well the radio is there why don't we try and get hold of i mean try and see who all we can connect and the last thing there was that in 2001 which is many years later i was in Abu Dhabi addressing a meeting of the of indian of the indian community there and uh after the meeting one of these people came and said that sir it was my ham radio on which they got in touch with you in Cyprus i said well that's nice you did us a great service so so much for ham radios and uh my last incident on this is the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi who was the prime minister of India you probably know that Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a first woman suicide bomber i think she was the first suicide bomber ever afterwards of course you've seen that in in in the middle east there have been large number of women who have had their explosive strap to their body and blew themselves up anyway this girl 18 years old had this explosive strap to her body and in India it is customary that when you see somebody who like a prime minister or something you just bend down to greet him and as she did that she detonated it and she and Rajiv Gandhi and six people around them were blown to literally to smithereens Rajiv Gandhi's wife could only recognize him from the shoes that he was wearing as far as this girl was concerned all that we were able to get was the was a part of the upper right thigh just that part was intact rest of it was gone but it is a great tribute to our security services as well as the Sri Lanka security services that from that we were able to get the girls all used all the technology that was available with us in order to get the girls entire history where she came from which family which village and and that was quite a remarkable feat of she was a member of the black tigers who were suicide group within the liberation tigers of Tamil Ilam who were fighting for an independent state in Sri Lanka so here are some examples Mr. Investor is wonderful I personally could listen to you tell those stories for a long time because I think through story and narrative we learn a lot right I know you all listening are nodding and you're probably picking up knowledge and tactics for negotiation relationship building all sorts of things that are important to diplomacy so thank you very much sir Dean Wrangold yes yes I think we're going to run out of time here but Regender I'm mindful that you know in your career well the relationship between India and China has always been one of great focus and so as a student of China I'm curious whether or not you what are your do you have what are your concerns about sort of the motives of the Chinese regime as it relates to sort of technology and their technological advancement and if you know if you were sitting in your former seat you know directing the Indian diplomatic corps what would you be telling the Indian ambassador to China well to start with if you're talking of what it is like I mean what I'd be telling him today the problem is that the relations between India and China have never been or have never reached their nadir as today we have the Chinese as you probably know China has a almost a 2000 mile border between India and China on the Himalayan line and for the last 18 years we have been negotiating about aligning that border the after 18 years all that we have been able to do is to exchange our respective maps what are their maps what are our maps so because in certain places they have their border and we have our border so this is the situation and presently in two areas one in Kashmir on that side and one on this side on the east near Arunachal Pradesh which is the end of India the Chinese have their army mass there are 50,000 Chinese troops on the border right now so it is a extremely belligerent this thing now if it comes to a war between India and China I should remind you that in 1962 China had invaded India and came down almost within 50 miles of Calcutta the our second biggest country city and then we drew it was only intended to show that they can do it well and our army was completely lost but that was 62 today we have actually militarily dealt with Chinese with the Chinese in number of these places where they are massed but if it comes to a proper war I don't think we are going to get anywhere so what would I tell the now this is one side on the other hand surprisingly China is one of our largest trading partners so the Chinese are as much interested in continuing trade with India than in keeping us in on the tense let us say I didn't want to use something else but basically the other thing is that the Chinese aim eventually is to keep India into the India Pakistan box not what President Bush actually did was that he because of the recognition of our nuclear power he was a we got out of that box but then it didn't last long for the simple reason that the Chinese are there all the time the United States is quite far away from us secondly now Pakistan has a nuclear weapon China has a nuclear weapon India has a nuclear weapon and we are just literally across I mean you can cross Pakistan like this from here to there so this is the situation so at this time my advice to the my ambassador would be let's see what you can do in trying to have a cooperative relationship where we can let's try to do it because it doesn't serve us at all to fight them ambassador thank you as we wrap up today Dean Ryan Gold what is on the horizon for the center oh well obviously we're I think seven six months into the launch of the center for tech diplomacy and we have a new executive director Bonnie Glick and we're absolutely thrilled that she has decided to join us after a distinguished career in the foreign service and also in private industry and and in the executive service we have our the board continues to grow I think you know you've seen some local media press about some additional new members who were delighted joined us and and you know we're we're busy working to stand up the sort of the component parts of the of the of the effort and like any new organization it's it's sort of a very exciting time and and startups can can you know can can can be can be quite exciting so I think you know more to come and I think the the decision to create it every day seems to be affirmed in terms of sort of what we see happening around the world and the conflict and struggles that are continuing to unfold and be devil global relationships around technology and then we we continue to believe that Purdue University is an important place for that work to to spring from and to grow from and so we have we have great hopes for for that effort and so stay stay tuned thank you so very much and I wish we could continue on into the evening but I know you are all very busy folks can you please join me in thanking our ambassador for his time today