 Thanks so much to our colleague Candace and to John Horowitz. Our next panel is Diversity and Security Policymaking, Progress Report. We're excited to be joined by retired commander Ted Johnson, Deirdre Johnson, the 2017 Eric and Wendy Schmitt fellow at New America, and currently director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and formerly the speechwriter to the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff. Also ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, his Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the US Department of State and Bishop Garrison, senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Human Capital Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And this will be moderated by Heather Hurlbert, director of the Models for Policy Change at New America. Thanks, Daniel. And I wanna thank all of our panelists for joining us this afternoon. And I have to say of all the topics we're discussing today, I think really it's you and the Space Force who are the most innovative, the thing that perhaps we least could have imagined looking back 20 years about what the shape of US security policy in 2021 would look like. So I wanna invite first Gina and then Bishop to start by giving us a little bit of a Progress Report if on the one hand we're thinking about the sweep of 20 years, but also of course the two of you are now each about 200 days into new roles that have never existed before in the US government that we have never tried in such a visible and public-facing way to not just make significant gains in making the actors in US foreign policy look more like the US population, but also really enshrine that as a value in the how and the what of national security policies. So you've got several hundred of your fellow citizens and taxpayers watching who would love to hear about what it is looking like inside the Defense Departments and State Departments to be the people in charge of diversity, human capital, equity and inclusion. So Ambassador, I'll start with you. Thank you very much Heather. I'm delighted to be here and engage in this discussion and sharing some updates on where we are. As you know, I was appointed to this position in early April by Secretary Blinken. He set me up in the strongest way possible by doing a few things from the very beginning. Number one, I report directly to him. And he made clear to me from the beginning that this is something he takes seriously and expects progress from. I meet with him about every two months on this topic and it begins, what have you done? What have you accomplished? The second thing is that I participate in our senior leadership positions of selecting senior positions, ambassadors, deputy chiefs of mission, principal officers, deputy assistant secretaries. That means the top understands the importance that the secretary puts on this. We have begun with my three favorite words, accountability, intentionality and transparency. We are trying to improve our accountability mechanisms and that goes to data. Nobody believes anything is real unless they see the numbers. And that has been one of my greatest challenges in all honesty. There are privacy concerns and we have to do the balancing act in partnership with our lawyers of course. And the Global Talent Management Bureau here in the department to ensure that our efforts to share the data don't compromise people's privacy. So we have ongoing discussions about disaggregated and aggregated data. I have very little interest in aggregated data and make this clear every single day that I'm in the department. I need to know what the numbers look like sliced and diced by gender, by ethnicity, by race, because everyone has overall challenges in the department and in any career, but individual groups, different groups have different problems. And our greatest tool for making headway on these problems is doing barrier analysis, identifying where the triggers, where the choke points are for different groups and then identifying what the barrier is at that choke point. And that's why we must have disaggregated data. We will continue the discussion on how much is shared and with whom, but everybody wants to know how well we're doing and you can only judge that by looking at the numbers. The other thing of course is increasing transparency. Excuse me, increasing transparency so people can see what we're doing and how we're doing it. That is in recruitment, retention, particularly with regard to our assignments process and promotion. And again, we get down to the data. Who's where? How long did it take them to get there? What's held them up? But being very clear about what we're looking at and being very clear about what we expect from the workforce. The secretary has made clear, he spoke honestly and crisply in that a diverse workforce makes our foreign policy smarter, better and more innovative. We need everybody's voice. And finally, of course, acting with intention. Once we identify those barriers, identifying what is the fastest, most effective way of addressing them and moving people beyond them. So that's what we've been doing for the last few months. We've also started an inter-agency working group. All the organizations that fall under the Foreign Affairs Act of 1980, that's AID and State Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce, the chief DEIA folks, we get together to look at what each of us are doing and to amplify and augment what each other are doing so that we can go forward in long arm as far as the progress is concerned and help each other find out where we might be stumbling, where we might be hobbled or where we might be facing barriers. We've also moved forward on putting together our strategic plan for diversity and inclusion and accountability. And that will be a more public document by October. I've just cleared off this morning on the draft of that. It's a comprehensive document, but of course it's being fed by the government-wide effort that was announced in the executive order on the 25th of June. So it has space to be modified or augmented as OPM leads this broader effort. So that's where we are overall, and I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thanks, Bishop. Thank you, and thank you so much for having me. Some things I wanna highlight and echo on what the ambassador said. Her thoughts is always so cogent on this particular topic and of the importance of it, particularly when we talk about diversity is not simply for diversity's sake. We already know here at the outset that diverse teams lead to more innovative solutions in how we deal with some of the most complex problems facing the national security apparatus in our country here in the 21st century. So that is why the president and Secretary Austin have focused on ensuring that we have the proper representation within our ranks, that we have a force that reflects the best and brightest that America has to offer, that we have talent pools that bring in as much as we possibly can, that diversity of lived experience that we need in order to engage these issues. One thing that the ambassador really hit the nail on the head on for us is, two things actually, she's very brilliant, two things. One, the need for data and research, and two, the need for an assessment. So first, we began our efforts back in April where I was tasked with building out the diversity, excuse me, the defense equity team. And that team is comprised of individuals from our personnel and readiness shop, led by two incredibly talented career leaders, Mr. Salazar, Mr. Johnson, in order to really help us scope out a proper assessment of what programs currently exist and where they have been in the series of events over the last four or five years to understand what type of progress has been made. So once we've continued to understand that, we can get a better understanding of what types of lines of effort within those areas we actually need in order to help us identify the issues and engage them properly. So right off the bat, one of the top things we know is data and research. When we look at the Department of Defense, you're speaking of approximately 2.8 million people across the world. Of that fighting, of that total force, excuse me, when we speak of both individuals in military uniform as well as the civilians that fight alongside with them, serve right alongside with them, you're speaking of approximately about 41% of those folks are people of color. So it identifies people of color as some type of ethnic background. So we need to get a handle on understanding is that the proper representation reflected in our leadership? And if not, why? What types of issues exists within our workforce to help us meet the needs going forward of retaining top talent, continuing to recruit top talent and assuring some of our top talent is in our leadership ranks. And that our diversity is properly reflected throughout. That's something that we're trying to come to terms with and identify. And that goes into our next line of effort, talent management. Again, when we look at building out these leaders of the future, you can't decide on a Friday that you're gonna take every colonel within the United States Army and make them flag officer. That's not the way this works. What you need to ensure is that people are getting the proper prerequisites in order for them to matriculate through the processes and through the systems in order to be selected for our highest leadership ranks, whether they be senior executive service or whether they be flag officers. So what are we doing early on in their careers and as early as our initial recruitment phases of properly identifying talent and figuring out at what points are they hitting barriers that may take away from their experience that may have them leave as a part of, may have them leave into a different career. That's what we're trying to identify and address. What are those key issues? So when you look at individuals that are at that mid-career stage, what type of life experiences are they having? What type of career experiences are they having that helps either retain them or that pushes them away from our ranks where we can't keep them and to get them into that leadership space? So that's the next piece of overall talent management. And then it comes down to education and training. We want to ensure that we have a welcoming environment for all of those who serve regardless of their backgrounds. So we need to ensure that we're doing everything we can to help people understand and learn culturally about their fellow service members, about their fellow civilians and to understand where those individuals are coming from and how the world around them has helped to shape their vision of life and impact their own lives and careers. That's a part of what the education and training piece is really all about whenever you talk about DEI. And it's not simply about the idea of woke-ism or the idea of any type of insurance that people won't simply be offended. It really is about understanding where people are coming from and what their overall perspectives of work, of life, of career, all of it, how that encompasses their vision of the world and the lens through which they view everything that they engage. So we're trying to determine what are some of the best steps in order to properly shape that. And then we do have some additional requirements when we look at internal and external stakeholders. We work very closely with OMB as well as with DPC, the Domestic Policy Council and the White House in general to ensure that we have as much transparency as possible in our overall decision-making processes as well as our overall, just overall policies and processes in engaging these topics every day. So it continues to be a work in progress. When you're creating policy and process for nearly 3 million people, it's gonna be a slow moving shift from time to time. But it's important for us to do the heavy lifting and to do a lot of this work in order for us to ensure the best possible outcomes for everyone involved. At the end of the day, again, this is about making the most inclusive environment that allows us to recruit and retain the top talent across the board. And that's what these policies are really about for us. Thanks. Ted, you had a very successful 20-year career in the Navy and know there are not going to be any football arguments between the two of you and in the Pentagon. And then came out and have written a really path-breaking book when the stars begin to fall, looking at posing the idea that racism is an existential threat to the US. So when you watch some of the things that these two are trying to do and that more broadly the new administration has tried in its first couple of hundred days, what would your kind of progress report be as an external observer and stakeholder? What have you seen and what are you still watching for? Yeah, well, I'll tell you the updates that we just received are heartwarming. I mean, they're encouraging because it points to the fact that we're not focusing on diversity for diversity's sake, which sometimes is an objective in and of itself to get different people in the same room and then clap the dust off your hands and suggest that you've now won the battle. So a few things I wanted to pick up on to sort of answer your question and to be responsive to what the fellow panelists have said. The first is when the ambassador talked about the cross tabs about thinking about diversity, not just in terms of overall demographics of the fighting force or diplomatic force but of at the different levels where folks are. We know that in the military, I can tell you from my time when I was the first ships that I went to, I would be the only black officer on the ship. But if you looked at the demographics of the ship, it was actually quite diverse. It's just so happened that most of the people of color and most of the women frankly were on in the illicit side and not in the wardroom with other officers. When I was general Haydn's aide at the national security agency, I was the only black officer on his immediate staff or in the director's action group. And when I was speech writing for the chairman, I was the only black officer, only person of color in the officer ranks on his staff, on the immediate staff or in the action group. And yet when I walked around the Pentagon, when I walked around the national security agency, I saw many people of color and many of women. So it's not just that we have diversity but that we have diversity at every level of decision-making in order to ensure that the outcomes of our missions, of our diplomatic efforts reflect the strengths that diversity brings to the fight and to our objectives. The second thing is something Bishop said around soft power where when the United States shows up as a diverse military, as a diverse diplomatic corps, that in itself is a strength, a strength frankly that many other nations cannot replicate because they don't have the level of diversity that we have in the United States. And it's, and I can tell you that from certainly in World Wars I and II through Korea, Vietnam, other nations used racial tensions in the United States as a weapon against us to suggest that the democracy that we said we were fighting for, our belief in liberty and freedom was actually hypocritical because when you looked at the state of the United States in terms of Jim Crow and how we treated certain immigrants and how we treated women, the fight for democracy we were carrying out overseas often wasn't reflected in the lived experience of people at home. And so that became a weakness for us. In fact, the Soviets during the Cold War often used racial tensions in the United States as a psychological operations instrument tool against us. And so diversity is actually a counter narrative, a strong counter narrative to what other nations say about the United States. And again, that gives us, that helps us when the hearts of minds in other places when we live our creed and that includes necessarily in a nation of 330 million people as diverse as ours that that diversity be front and center. And but the last piece is something that my book talks about and I think that we sort of talked about quite a bit already on the panel is that the government service is one of the few places where Americans are meeting other Americans who are not like them in terms of racial or ethnicity, race or ethnicity, religion, immigrants as cultural backgrounds naturally, like it is an extremely diverse place. And this is one of the strongest benefits and I can speak from my experience in the military of meeting folks who you would never meet otherwise except for the fact that you were both serving. This allows democratic strangers, again in a nation of over 300 million people to establish a kind of civic friendship because you are exposed to people who are different from you and you find that even across these differences that we all want the same things out of our country that we want safe and secure communities that we want our nation to be protected to offer prosperity and opportunity to all. And so when you meet people who you normally are not exposed to, you become resilient to divisive appeals especially along the lines of race and gender of race and ethnicity and gender, you no longer buy into the caricatures that some divisive leaders may put forward because you have real exposure to the people that are being demonized. This is something that I think should be extrapolated nationally in some sort of national service program because the connection to other people who are different from us is essential to a well-functioning democracy. And I think that the lack of that is partly explained some of the animus in our politics in our society today. So I have to follow up from that on the data point because which Ted, you called it the crosstabs and you both mentioned both the importance and the difficulty of finding data. And I have to ask, number one, why is this so hard? Why are we not better able to get and share this information? And then my second question is, does the need for this much data mean that in point of fact, you're still dealing with significant audiences that actually aren't convinced on the merits? So sort of what is it that we need the data for and why of all the things that you'd think it would be hard to do, as you said, Bishop in a massive bureaucracy, the data isn't the piece I would have imagined. So what's so hard? Sure, well, first, I think we want, as many of our decisions as possible to be driven by data, meaning that there's actual tangible, demonstrable factual evidence of a need to change policy or to make some type of shift in a new direction. I think that's very important. Not everyone, I think Ted's point, some of the points he made are really important here. Because we lack the diversity in a lot of instances and individuals to culturally understand the importance of having these types of diverse teams and being able to bring new people in, sometimes you really do have to demonstrate with data, with a scientific fact, how important that innovative thought is. And the way we do that is first to show them the Harvard business reviews or the Yale management reviews that really demonstrate, hey, in business settings, is long been established that diverse teams lead to more innovative solutions. And once you begin to peel that onion back a bit and you see, just as he pointed out, hey, I've written about this, I've been the guy that's the only diverse person in the room and have wondered where all the other people were. So once you come to terms with that issue, yes, then you can start to not only focus in on, well, this is what the data tells us, well, the data can also help us to understand what needs to change in order for us to see the type of goals and end states that we think are important in this process. In terms of why we don't already have the data, well, honestly, it's a few different things I would say, at least for our department, it has long existed but has lived on actual different servers and different systems that didn't necessarily have the type of inoperability we needed in the past. And now we're at a point where we have the type of systems that and the processes in place that can bring it all into one place and we can regularly have automated updates that don't include a lot of manually driven processes. So there's actually a technical piece to that as well as a policy piece as well. Gina, before I come to you, it has been pointed out to me that I was so excited about hearing from the three of you that I am monopolizing you and the audience, you have a Slido box on the lower right-hand side of your screen into which you can type questions for the panel. And if that technology is not working for you, you can also email questions to eventsatnewamerica.org and I apologize for monopolizing and not mentioning that sooner. Gina, data. Well now, I said I'd be honest, so let's be clear. Everybody is not on board this particular frame. There is considerable resistance even as there is considerable support for doing better with regard to inclusion, diversity, accessibility and equity in this organization. Absolutely. Part of the reason that the data is hard to get is as Bishop said, we don't necessarily have it set up in order to get the data. We're gonna have to reconfigure some things to get that disaggregated data that I mentioned is so important. But then we look at, well, why don't we have it? The business case for diversity and inclusion has been made long ago as Bishop points out, but let's take a look at what the private sector looks like. When I started this job, before I started this job, I was looking around for best practices of who's got it right, who's done it right, who's got the boardroom that looks like it should look, who's got the front office that looks like America that has all of the perspectives and lived experiences that are needed to really do the mission as it should be done. And frankly, I haven't found one, let me be clear on that. Nobody's doing it perfectly out there as a wonderful example for the rest of us. So we have to leave. And the government has led in this space before. We have to leave. So that business case, you look at boardrooms and yes, the case has been made, but people still are resistant. I was reading an article early today about public companies requiring diverse boards, but in fact, public companies are the minority and private companies are many more and 1% of private companies have African-Americans on boards. I think it was something like 49 out of X thousands of positions in the last 20 years. Some of that, of course, obtains in the government as well. So we are at the same time giving the message that we are done admiring the problem. And part again of having it not in place is that nobody believed we were serious about this for the last 30 plus years. And in fact, we weren't really serious about it because we're all brilliant people here. And if we were serious about it, we would have taken care of it. We would have got it done. So now we're serious. Now we're putting in place the data analytic teams, the barrier analysis, so we can really have a look at what we are, where we are, why we are, the way we are. We have sent the message that you are not going to be getting senior positions or another senior position if you are not intent in taking care of your entire team, your entire team, not just those who look like you that you're most comfortable with. We're communicating that this business about inclusion is real. And that is what's helping us get the data. Now we also have to think about how we shared it. As I mentioned earlier, they're privacy issues, but they're also concerns about how much we share and what is it going to show? Is it, it's going to be clear as it was in the 2019 GAO report, just how much of a failure we have had in our organization of brilliant people to move this forward, even though we've been talking about it for 30 plus years. So there's going to be some continued uncomfortable conversations within my organization. We had some, but we are intent. We're going to have more uncomfortable conversations. No doubt there's going to be some data out there for America and others to look at and see that we have talked but not walked, but we're serious about it now. And I have no doubt that from the top to the bottom of this organization, there is sufficient momentum, desire, demand to get this done in the way that we know we can get it done. And that's why we have our data issues. So Ted, I'm going to ask my next question to you and let you kind of lay out a maximalist path and then let our two government colleagues follow on behind you. But my colleague Peter Singer had a terrific question earlier for the commander of Space Force. And he said, looking 20 years into the future, what problem that you face today, could we get rid of 20 years from now? And I am not so naive as to imagine that we can eliminate sexism, racism, discrimination or bigotry entirely in 20 years, but what piece of this could we hope to wipe away by 2041? What a great question. And I think the answer is, the first thing that comes to mind is we can create a welcoming culture in the Department of Defense and the Department of State that encourages people of color, women to stay. We know, look, if we just do data collection from a number standpoint, for example, we know how to get recruiting numbers up through bonuses, through direct sort of recruitment efforts, but can we keep people? And if we can't keep them, we have the numbers that we collect to understand how many have stayed and how many have gone is one thing, but the qualitative data to suggest why people stay or why people left is sort of the next step there into determining how we can not just recruit a diverse force, but to maintain it. I will say that we're not, the United States government in this national security apparatus is not the only ones to have this problem. If you look at Silicon Valley, for example, they have a lot of trouble keeping black STEM graduates, for example, out in the Bay Area. I think, you know, San Francisco is meeting black that are just leaving because of cost of lives to which they're working in, whether it's the Apples or the Facebooks or the Googles. And at the same time, we are creating more black computer scientists than ever, more black engineers than ever. So it's not a supply problem. The issue is once those folks show up in those organizations, they don't feel welcomed. And so I think, and the same thing can be said for the military, again, you can, if you take the kid that went to a segregated school from K through 12, which three out of four black children attend, and then they go up to an HBCU and then you send them to a unit where they're the only black officer that is an extreme cultural shift that happens almost overnight. And what are we doing organizationally, nationally, to ensure we're creating cultures that are welcoming to folks that don't fit sort of the standard demographic of folks that have traditionally held these positions. That is fixable. And as was mentioned before, corporations are beginning to figure this out some much better than others. But to the extent we can learn lessons from large corporations and implement them for the mission of the national security discipline, then I think that's something that's doable with the right amount of political will and prioritization by our leaders over the next decade or two. Gina and Bishop, your 20 year plans. 20 year plan. 20 years, I shouldn't be needed. That's my plan. We are trying to get things, the system. We are trying to get after our system. Ted is right, it's the culture. And so, we do training with diplomats. We're used to working to make other cultures comfortable. Other people's comfortable. We're gonna have to bring that expertise and energy to ourselves. So, as I said, I know we can do that. That's what we're trying to do. It is changing the culture, putting it in black and white so that it stays that people understand what and the why. So, I would say in 20 years, it's my intention that there is not a diversity and inclusion officer at the Department of State, but that we have done the job of putting these changes in our system of how we bring people on board and how we train them and how we prepare them for higher positions. We make our assignments process more transparent. We make clear that what is valued will be judged and therefore supporting diversity and inclusion is part of what people are going to be judged on and it will show in their results. So, my 20 year plan is that somebody won't have to do this. There have been so many brilliant things already said on this. I'm gonna take a little bit of a cop out and kind of combine the two. So, first my hope, similar to what the ambassador has said is that you will see a less of a siloing effect of DEI efforts and we will actually truly encapsulate within our overall communities across the board whenever we enter into decision-making processes or the development of policy, we will think as just a part of our regular checklist, how is DEI affected or impactful in this particular effort? So, that would be the first thing. The second thing to Commander's point is that I think that we will have a workforce and it's leadership that fully does reflect not only the values of our society but it'll be a proper representation of the individuals that live within it. When you look at 2050, we're gonna become a majority minority country. So, I think it's gonna be important for us to ensure that we have the proper policies and processes in place that allow for opportunity for individuals to come in and take advantage of those opportunities and lead that career that properly reflects it. I want by that point for us to have had a couple or a few men of color or women of color that have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that we have additional Chiefs of Staff that are people of color, that we have more pilots, more submariners, more ship captains, all of the more special operators, all of these positions that have traditionally been very white, very middle class, very middle America, that we have a greater representation of folks across the board in all of these pivotal positions because they are so important to the national security apparatus and they provide for so much opportunity and growth and so much impact throughout everything that we do that I think is gonna be very important for us to ensure that we have processes in place that take advantage of the variety of talent that already exist right now in our country. So, I'm hoping that 20 years will be enough time to see a lot of the efforts and policies that men like Secretary Austin and President Beiner and Secretary Blinken and others are trying to put in place now that we see them too fruition by then. Thanks, we've got some great audience questions and I'm going to put this one to Gina first because I know you have to drop off a bit early and then you're both welcome to weigh in but I've got two more for you. And this is, can an organization be genuinely committed to diversity, equity, inclusion if that is not fully reflected in every subunit? If it's not reflected in every subunit? Yes, as the organization, the leadership and what the leadership stresses every value or mission statement, is it fully fleshed out I think up and down the scale, it's aspirational, it's what people use as their touchstone, where they're headed, if they're trying to double check are they on the right path, are they doing then they look at that. And so we are adding to ours a real commitment to diversity and inclusion. And as offices and bureaus work toward it, they know what they're working toward. And so I think, yes, but it's not, listen, I'm working and I'm leading an organization that is overcoming 70 years of no interest in this or in Russia, indifference or hostility, combination of the two. And it's not going to be quick, it is going to be a living, as we like to say, living document, living effort. But as I said, we are all smart people here. So we don't have to be slow. Some of the people who used to not taking it seriously, I've got to change minds. I have to, I and my team and those who are on board have got to work to change the perspective of others of our colleagues who have heard of all before many times, many administrations and not seen real change. And so it's on us, our credibility is lacking. It's on us to make clear, oh no, this is real. We mean it this time. This isn't going to stop a year from now, four years from now, it's going into our systems. We're going to show you the difference and the outcomes so that people understand why we all have to value it. So I believe the answer is yes, but it isn't all, turning a page from yesterday to tomorrow, we got to get through today. Bishop and Ted, you're both welcome to weigh in on that. But I also want to ask you another audience question, which is how have the events of January 6th and specifically the number of active duty and veteran military personnel known to have participated in January 6th, how has that redounded against Bishop the work you're trying to do? Sure, so the first thing I'll say is that as the secretary and the chairman and deputy secretary have said on multiple occasions, the vast majority of those who serve do so incredibly honorably with great integrity. We have witnessed a very, we believe to be a very small population within the veteran population having a very, a larger or outsized impact overall on the conversation and discussion. So I think it's important, and I think Ted has pointed this out earlier when we talk about exposure to various culture and having, as Gina said earlier, more of the awkward conversations around a lot of these topics, that is the effort that it's going to take in order for us first to ensure that we work and live and preside in a healthy environment overall for everyone in an inclusive welcoming environment. And we need to get to the bottom of our efforts around misinformation and disinformation before it honestly tears us apart. We all know that that continues to be an issue for a variety of sources and it's something that we need to engage and address and do so in a very thoughtful way that ensures that everyone's that writes and that constitutional rights, privacy, and everything else is properly upheld, supported, and protected. So Ted, working at the Brennan Center, this is a big part of your day job. So I'm looking forward to you weighing in on this as well. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the biggest benefits of service, military service, or service in the federal government where you're exposed to other Americans, again, is this increased social contact and sort of working towards a bigger goal, a mission bigger than yourselves. But the benefits are really a function, not just of exposure, but that is happening in places where there's principled leadership and in institutions that are sort of have a normative culture of acceptance and of tolerance for others and not sort of an intolerant culture. What we're seeing, and I think what's responsible for some of the veterans we saw participating in January 6th is that that exposure does not last a lifetime. The benefits of intergroup contact in the wrong conditions or even in the right conditions, it doesn't last forever. And so what happens is there's sort of a radius and a half-life to this exposure. If you have a veteran, if you have someone who serves, meets people of different races, ethnicities, religion, et cetera, and then they leave service and go back to their home community, the exposure they had to other groups doesn't last them forever. And after some time, maybe a year, two years, five years, it begins to dissipate and they can become susceptible to some of the divisive narratives or some of the animus towards other groups that is being fostered maybe in their local communities. So the exposure isn't enough. It has to happen in the right set of leadership, the right culture, and then be cultivated once military service or diplomatic services ended in order to ensure society benefits from the sort of intergroup contact. Now I was told that we can go a little bit over our original time and I've got one more question for you both and it's the kind of question that I love to ask and I'm pretty sure you're both gonna love to answer. We have viewers who want to know where they can study more about this field and how they can get the kind of jobs and do the kind of work that you both do in this space. So if we're raising up a new generation of people who see diversity, equity issues in national security as not just a cause to take on, but it's something they could devote a career to, where would you send them? Yeah, that's a really good question. And unfortunately, I'm biased because I would tell them go join the military and experience it firsthand. But that aside, so look, there's lots of good books out there and programs undergrad, but certainly graduate programs that do a good job of looking at the sociology of national security. One of the newer fields that I'm really taking with over the last few years is ontological security and the ways that national character and national identity impact national security and a nation's interests. And so you don't have to join the military to get into this work and you don't have to be an international relations major to sort of get smarter on this. Things like sociology and political communications and rhetoric also expose you to how people interact with one another and how they view people who are different from themselves, different cultures, different nationalities, different races, ethnicities and how those differences can be cultivated towards strength or how they can be activated towards animus and the importance of leadership and rhetoric to sort of determine which way folks go. I think he absolutely hit the nail on the head. I would not focus actually on a career necessarily and a particular area of national security in order to go into the high work. I think the sociology piece, anthropology history to be quite frank, American and world history are very important to understanding culturally how people interact, how they engage with one another and the history of how our government and country has had a treatment of a variety of people on a variety of complex issues and understanding why that has taken place plays a pivotal role in understanding the types of policies that are gonna be necessary to help affect it. So for me, I think that's actually the direction which you wanna go, as well as getting a general understanding about the issues facing the national security community regularly because there are no shortage of them whether you're looking more from a functional perspective or more from a regional policy perspective. There's so many out there that it behooves anyone that's interested in the types of issues that we've been discussing today and what we do to really focus more on the humanitarian people side of it versus the actual national security policy side. I'm laughing a little bit because Ted and I are both recovering speech writers and Bishop is a recovering presidential campaign operative. So I think that might suggest another pathway that people have profitably taken in this space. I'll maybe close by saying that there are a number of groups that Bishop Ted and Gina have all worked with at various points doing really terrific work in this space, women of color advancing peace and security, the leadership council for women in national security, out in national security, next generation national security. And you can go to our website at New America and find links to many of them or you can check out Bishop and Ted and Gina online and learn more about how they do that work that way. And I wanna end by thanking all three of our panelists for coming on for this conversation which was really terrific in its own right and something that was really unimaginable even 20 years ago. And as Gina said, perhaps somewhat unnecessary 20 years from now. Thank you all so much for coming.