 Good evening and welcome. Thank you all for coming out for the Texas National Security Forum. I'm Steve Slick, the Director of the University's Intelligence Studies Project and if you're not yet familiar with it, this project is an ambitious undertaking of the Clements Center for National Security and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law. And so if you enjoy tonight's program and share our interest in intelligence and national security, I would encourage you to get involved and come out and participate in more of our programs. I should also acknowledge up front that I am most certainly not the university provost. Dr. McGinnis had hoped to be here this evening to welcome you, but she was called out of town at the last minute and she sends her regrets. Now for those of you who are only able to attend this evening's event, I want to explain briefly that we're at the midpoint of a two-day conference that's focused on the transition of national security responsibilities between presidential administrations. You may have heard that there's an election underway. And as a former intelligence officer, I'm able to assess with high confidence that there will be a new president in January. So as exhausting as this campaign may seem some days, this exercise of peacefully transferring power is in fact quite an exceptional event and should be a source of great national pride for us. So earlier today, a distinguished roster of current and former government officials, military officers and scholars, inventoried and debated the most significant national security threats that are likely to face the next president in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and from terrorists. And if there had been enough time, we might have tried to identify dangers that are still lurking over the horizon and that no one is talking about today, but may well demand much of the next president's time. Tomorrow, right here in the LBJ Library, we'll consider and seek out the best practices in the process of transferring responsibility for our diplomatic, military, and intelligence activities, as well as for policymaking in the White House. So this evening's keynote address by the leader of the U.S. intelligence community aims to connect these security challenges with the activities, and in some cases, these are activities that are already underway that will help prepare the next president to meet those challenges. Following our keynote remarks, the LBJ Library Director and our host this evening, Mark Updegrove, will lead a discussion with the DNI, former national security adviser Steve Hadley, and our UT colleague, Admiral Bob Inman. So with that, and to introduce our keynote speaker, I'll call on the UT Systems Superb Chancellor, Admiral William Craven. Well, thanks very much, Steve. Steve touched on a couple things, and I want to reinforce a few points. We really do have an exceptional group of distinguished conference speakers here tonight, and frankly, I've had the privilege in my career to have worked with a number of them, both in the Bush administration and the Obama administration. So these leaders include our nation's first Director of National Intelligence and the former Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, the former Deputy Secretary of State and the former Dean of the LBJ School, our own, Jim Steinberg, my very good friend, and the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Joe Phil Breedlove, a man who I shared an office with in the White House for two years, and who is now the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Nick Rasmussen, and many other luminaries, folks like Michael Green, Phil Zellico, Jim Jeffery, Kim Kagan, Kristen Silverberg, Fara Pandith, John McLaughlin, and many others. But as Steve said, this conference is also an early manifestation of the Texas National Security Network. Remember those words, the Texas National Security Network. This network is one of the eight quantum leaps that I announced last year, and with it, we aim to make the University of Texas system the leading university system in the world for teaching and research on national security. In the coming months and years, through the network's efforts, you will see even more UT students preparing for careers in defense, intelligence, and diplomacy. There will be more UT scholars conducting cutting-edge research on topics like cyber security, intelligence, biosecurity, and national security. There will be more national security leaders, like those here tonight, convening in Texas to explore consequential matters of defense and statecraft. This conference, as was said, is jointly convened by Clements, and that is Willem Boden, and Bobby Chesney at the Strauss Center for International Law and Security, and of course your host tonight, the LBJ Presidential Library. So let me say a few words about the conference. One of our nation's enduring strengths really is this concept of the peaceful transfer of power that takes place every four or eight years. So following our presidential election, as Steve said, a new president is going to take the oath of office. And as the Commander-in-Chief, we'll assume control of the most powerful military in the world, the most effective intelligence community, and the most influential diplomatic corps. We often take this peaceful transition for granted, but it is only possible because of the strength of our constitutional order, our democratic traditions, and the dedication and the integrity of our public servants. The American people don't have to worry about the losing presidential candidate trying to launch a coup. They don't have to worry that the outgoing president will refuse to step down. They don't have to worry that our men and women under arms, our intelligence professionals, and diplomats will refuse to serve the new president. Those that serve the president are all dedicated patriots. And every day, every single day, they live out their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, regardless of who occupies the White House. Nor do the American people have to worry about our government ceasing to function during a presidential transition. The outgoing administration takes great care to hand over to the incoming administration the control of ongoing combat operations, sensitive intelligence collection, covert operations, and the delicate diplomatic negotiations. And not only do the men and women of our military intelligence community and foreign service willingly serve the new president, they play an indispensable role in facilitating the transition itself. Even as we gathered here tonight, they are preparing countless briefing papers, transition memos and action plans for our next president and his or her team. As a nation, we can take pride and take comfort in the fact that this is done with such incredible professionalism and patriotism. But as this conference is exploring, we want to learn how we can do this better and how the lessons from past transitions can be applied to the one that is currently underway. Just consider what our next president will inherit when he or she takes the office on January 20th. American military forces in combat in places like Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State and Afghanistan against the Taliban al-Qaida, special operations on sensitive missions in places whose names cannot be revealed, but whose danger is certain. The ongoing hunt for terrorist leaders like al-Qaida's Simon al-Zawahiri, intelligence efforts to detect and disrupt terrorist plots against America and our allies, changing diplomatic negotiations, challenging diplomatic negotiations with Russia and China on a range of issues and much, much more. Likewise, consider the policy challenges that will confront our next president, a resurgent Russia aggression in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, a China disrupting the peaceful order in the Asia Pacific area, multiple civil wars and a collapsing state order in the Middle East, a North Korea expanding its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems, and Iran at crossroads as it weighs its commitment to the nuclear deal. And finally, consider some new challenges unique to our era. Challenges such as the possibility of cyber war, environmental degradation and emerging technologies and biology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The next president will have to innovate in all these areas without much help from precedent or history. In short, our next president will have a very full inbox on day one. And we here at the University of Texas want to do our part to support this transition and support the national security professionals who keep our nation safe, secure and free. To begin this discussion tonight, we have a keynote address by the Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper. That will be followed by a panel moderated by Mark Updegrove from the LBJ Library. On stage for this panel will be the former National Security Advisor, Steve Hadley. I had the great good fortune to work for Steve when he was the Deputy National Security Advisor and often interacted with him when he was the National Security Advisor. I remember one day going into Steve's office in the West Wing, it was a very small office, and his inbox was about two feet high. Everything was of national or international importance. I never saw anyone work harder or get more done during their time in the White House than Steve Hadley. And Steve, it is great to have you here tonight. Joining Steve on the stage will be my favorite Admiral and UT legend in the field of national security, Abel Bobby Inman. Abel Inman is the former Director of the National Security Agency and the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. Abel Inman has also been my mentor since arriving here at UT. I am incredibly honored to call him my friend. But before we begin, but before we bring them all on stage, I've asked Jim Clapper to give us his thoughts on the transition of power and the challenges that lay ahead. Now by way of background, Jim is the longest serving Director of National Intelligence since that new post was created more than a decade ago. Now you can read his bio, and it is very impressive, an incredible career in the Air Force, the Director of the National Geospatial Agency, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and of course the Director of National Intelligence. But that's not what you need to know about Jim Clapper. What you really need to know is that Jim Clapper is a good, good man and a great American. He is the kind of guy you can trust implicitly. He is a man of unquestionable integrity, and he has served this nation like few men in its history. He transformed the role of DNI through his personal engagement and the trust that he built throughout the intelligence community. As an American, I can think of no single man who has done more to protect this nation than Jim Clapper. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the Director of National Intelligence, General Jim Clapper. Well, thank you, Bill, for that very generous, very generous introduction. I almost feel like I should quit while my head. And I do look forward. I just listened to the list of distinguished formers who are here and participating in this superb symposium. And I'm happy to say that in about 120 days I hope to join the ranks of the formers. It really is great to be back in Austin. Actually, any trip away from DC is great, particularly this particular season. But Austin's been one of my favorite recurring trips. And I try to make it out here at least once a year for the last two or three years. So I think my task here tonight is to bridge today's discussion focus, you know, the current threat picture into tomorrow's focus preparing the next president and his or her national security team so that they are as ready as they can be to address those threats immediately on January 20th, which by the way is scheduled to be my last day. And actually, it's 119 days and I was clock just turned over. So I thought first, I'd look through a historical lens and how we in the intelligence community have served presidents. And I tend to do that, at least partly because I've lived through so much of that history. In fact, this week, someone of my staff, not so graciously pointed out that if you divide my 75 years on this earth by our nation's 240 years, you find I've been around for about a third of all US history. Thanks. Probably could that's one factoid it could have done without. So I'm also looking through a historical lens because we're here in President Johnson's library. I was here a year ago, exactly last September to participate in an historic event in which the CIA declassified 2,500 documents, the president's daily brief. And this range from President Johnson's administration and President Kennedy's and the PDB courses the absolute apex of intelligence reporting. It's the most among the most highly classified and sensitive documents in all of government. And so declassifying PDBs is something the agency and we as the intelligence community had said we'd never do. But what other country would release something like this? The CIA's unprecedented declassification efforts go back to President Obama's first full day in office when he called on the heads of executive departments to make government more open. And the CIA responded in a big way here in Austin last year. And then just last month, the CIA declassified another 2,500 documents at President Nixon's library in Yorba Linda, California. PDBs from his administration and from President Ford's. Those 5,000 total PDB articles now housed at the two presidential libraries include more than 47,000 pages of the IC's daily dialogue with the president, in which we address global challenges and opportunities related to national security. But as John Brennan, my friend and colleague, the director of the Central Intelligence, he said last September, it all started as a simple intelligence news bulletin for President Kennedy, who felt he was missing important intelligence, because he didn't know when reports were arriving or when or when to expect updates. So the CIA began bringing him a small packet, one that would fit in his shirt pocket, with the intelligence highlights of the day. President Kennedy's short intelligence bulletin was called the President's Intelligence Checklist. And of course, even in our Proclivity for Acronyms, it was called the Pickle. It met and it seemed to me President Kennedy's needs. But when Lyndon Johnson succeeded JFK as president, the checklist didn't quite cut it for him. And when this is particularly evident when the CIA realized he wasn't reading it. So they developed the first president's daily briefing in somewhat the form you recognize it today, a bigger product which gave more in depth analysis of world events. And they delivered it in the afternoon so that the president could read it in bed. They didn't know for sure that that was going to work until they got a note back from the senior White House aide that simply said quote, the president likes this very much. Because of the PDB, President Johnson felt better informed on the driving forces behind world events. And if you read the PDBs that were declassified here last fall, you'd see that world events included a lot more than what was happening in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, where I spent two of my first few years in the intelligence business. Starting in 1969, President Nixon took a different tack, getting his PDBs after they were filtered through Secretary Kissinger as his gatekeeper. The CIA struggled at times to figure out the best way to serve President Nixon. But the agency persevered and adapted to changing requirements in the Nixon White House, which actually has been the history of the PDB. So we've always adjusted to each president's needs. But so they figured out how to continue delivering the intelligence picture to the president. And, of course, you can contrast that with Nixon's vice president, Gerald Ford, who is a former member of the House Appropriations Intelligence Subcommittee, not only received his PDB directly from the CIA, but also had a brief to him by CIA officer David Patterson. David Peterson, excuse me. And much to the consternation of the White House gatekeepers, when Nixon left office, President Ford continued to start his mornings with the CIA briefer. And that tradition of having an intelligence briefer deliver the PDB has continued through today in various forms and versions. Last month, while I was at President Nixon's library at Yorba Linda with John, just for personal interest, I pulled a sampling of his PDBs from June of 1970 to June of 1971, which corresponded to my second tour in Southeast Asia. And it was really fascinating for me to read now what the president was reading then when I was working as a very small cog in the National Intelligence Apparatus. In fact, these two declassified PDB rollout events bookended my two tours in Southeast Asia 65 and 66 and again in 1771. So both these events, the one here and the one in Yorba Linda were actually quite meaningful to me personally. Now, of course, now, and for a while longer, I read all of President Obama's PDBs. And every now and then I get the question of how today's PDB differs from historic PDBs. So I can answer in general terms, at least. I think today's PDB is a much richer product with intelligence from many, many more sources and accesses. The analysis is much more in depth. The technical collection and quality of analysis I believe are way up, which are all great. But to me, the most significant difference is that we now include dissents from components in the intelligence community who may see the intelligence differently than the principal drafter of a given article. I think that's very healthy. And it was and of course, it wasn't possible for that to happen when only one agency was producing the report. So the PDB that President Obama gets every morning is the most comprehensive and professional daily product ever given to a president or to anyone else. The other question I often get about the PDB is what's in it? Well, even in a high classified settings, it can't get into details of what we talk about with the president. But I can say the PDB portrays over time what I see as the most diverse set of global threats that I have seen in my 53 plus years in intelligence. It shows how we're now living in a world of what I call unpredictable stability and stability, in which about two thirds of the nations around the world are at some risk of instability in the next few years. You're everywhere in the world, the IC can point out the potential for states to fail or collapse. And we can't anticipate the specifics, the where the one where and how for our policymakers, it's unpredictable. But in sessions here throughout the day today, we looked at I know you've looked at security issues in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Russia. Well, let me just add some brief perspectives on Africa that demonstrate this unpredictable, unpredictable instability. Africa, of course, is enormous over 11 million square miles with more than 1.1 billion people. And just between 2010 and 2015, 52 presidential elections were held contributing to the constant political change and to some extent turmoil. There are more than 1130 armed conflict events occurred in Africa during this time span, resulting in conservatively over 50,000 fatalities. These are just two factors. There are two factors is driving the scope and complexity of unrest, which has spanned political, economic security, cultural and ethnic sectors, and resulting clashes between varying factions, massive humanitarian crises and perpetual regional instability. All that's have led to interventions by the US and others. And of course, Africa is just one region of the world. This unpredictable instability has been a constant for the current administration and will be for the next one too, no matter who our president is. So unpredictable instability is one factor, one major trend towards our threat picture, which makes our lives more complicated. The second big trend is that technology will continue to be disruptive. Technical areas like artificial intelligence, healthcare and agriculture, self-driving cars, 3D printing, it goes on, have the potential to revolutionize our lives for the better, or they could present vulnerabilities that are very hard to predict. Currently, we're playing a lot of defense when it comes to the onrush of technology happening around the world. My national counter intelligence executive, Bill Avenino, recently told me about a problem our security folks came across. During a standard sweep of a new facility so that we could take possession and move in, they discovered several wireless signals transmitting out into the world, which of course is a little bothersome for us. So they located the sources and were relieved to discover the signals were not from foreign intelligence bugs placed in the facility. They came from vending machines trying to tell their distributor that they were empty. Apparently vending machines phoning home for refills is a fairly common problem that we now know how to look for and mitigate. And of course, that's just the tip of the famous Internet of Things we keep talking and hearing about. The Internet of Things has more than 10.3 billion end points projected to grow to almost 30 billion by 2020, with a market of something like $1.7 trillion. And of course, this leads to several questions about how the Internet of Things affects us, particularly those of us in the intelligence community. Where are weak points that we aren't thinking about? And how is our workforce going to be affected when even our clothes are connected? Or when doctors regularly prescribe wireless monitors for health conditions? Even now, I need a security waiver for my hearing aids, which have, believe it or not, Bluetooth connectivity. I don't do the Bluetooth thing. I get way too much data already. We need to move past just defending ourselves, though, from drink machines and hearing aids to thinking about how the Internet of Things affects our work, our lives in the bigger picture, because many of our adversaries are putting this globalized technology to work for them already. So keeping all these challenges in mind, the upcoming presidential transition will happen at a particularly, I think, difficult time. In about six and a half weeks, we'll hopefully know who the next president is. And in four months, many of the faces and names at the top of the national security structure will change. So my sense is, at least in the beltway, that the prospect of this makes makes people nervous. And that with an election cycle, that's how shall I say been sportier than we're used to. We'll drop a new president with new national security leaders into this situation. And I know a lot of people have been feeling uncertainty about what will happen with this presidential transition. There's been a lot of I can coin the term catastrophizing, particularly inside the beltway and in the 24 hour news cycle and on social media. So I'm here with a message, the same message I conveyed recently to an intelligence industry trade group about two weeks ago and simply was it'll be okay. About a month ago, I participated in a meeting at the White House led by White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough, which was the first formal meeting between the current administration and the two two transition teams. And I have to tell you I was struck by how sober and professional and courteous and civil the whole conversation was. It showed me there are people on all sides of this election who care about and are serious about national security. And because of our mission and our professionalism, today's IC will once again, be a pillar of stability during this transition. The people in the intelligence community, whether government, civilians, contractors, military are a constant in US national security, as they have been for a long time. In fact, going all the way back to George Washington and his copper ring of spies, I remember it well. We've, we have conducted intelligence to reduce uncertainty for our decision makers. And that could be the president in the Oval Office, or it can be a warfighter in an oval shaped foxhole to torture that metaphor. We can't eliminate uncertainty for anyone. But we can provide insight and analysis to help their understanding and to make uncertainty at least manageable. So there are national security decision makers can make educated decisions with an understanding of the risk involved. And that's why we brief the candidates to help reduce uncertainty for our next president. So when the person, whoever it is steps into the Oval Office, he or she will have as good of an understanding of our complex and uncertain world as we can provide. Our nation has a history of orderly transition of power. And I believe the PDBs we declassified here and in Yorba Linda can help people comprehend what happens in the transition between presidential administrations. So that's why one of the reasons we declassified and released them to help public understanding. As John Brennan said last fall here, the release of these documents affirms that the world's greatest democracy doesn't keep secrets merely for secret sake. Whenever we can shed light on the work of our government without harming national security, we will do so. And that's true with those historical documents and is true with discussion of things that we're doing now. So today, considering the press of public interest in what the IC is doing during this presidential transition, which is like anything we've seen before, I thought it shed a little light on what we're doing. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago at the same trade group summit. And I feel it's it's worth repeating, particularly considering our theme for discussion tomorrow. So first to dispel a myth, we're not giving President Obama's PDB or any PDB product to candidates. In fact, the tradition of giving candidates classified briefings precedes the existence of the PDB. In 1952, President Truman offered the first candidate briefings to General Eisenhower and Governor Stevenson. And the newly formed CIA conducted the briefings. Truman felt an obligation to do that because of his own experience and how woefully uninformed he felt on his first day in office. In fact, he hadn't known the existence of the Manhattan Project until 12 days after he was sworn in as president. And he'd been Roosevelt's vice president, of course. So he wanted his successor to be better prepared. So he asked for the two candidates to receive intelligence briefings based solely on their nominations to be president, not on any clearance they'd held, which is an issue that's come up recently. That present, but the president we have as carried over for every election since 1952. The CIA handled these briefings until 2008, when we, the Office Director of National Intelligence, assume this responsibility. Secondly, just to be clear, one team produces and delivers the PDB to the president and a completely separate team produces and coordinates the cross-agency effort to brief candidates. In fact, to make sure there's no political influence on the briefings, the candidate briefing team does not coordinate with the White House and only career intelligence officers give the briefings not any political appointees like me. Similar to prior elections, we set ground rules months before the briefing started and the White House concurred with them on June 22. Dennis reached out to the two transition teams and then we have been operating essentially independently since then. We have a list of topics we offer to each candidate. They can ask for briefings on any or all of them and can also ask for briefings on new topics. If we give briefs on new topics, we'll make sure both candidates have the chance to get those same briefings. Otherwise, we don't tell either campaign or the public what happens in those briefings. Not what topics each candidate shows interest in or gets briefed on, not how either candidate reacts, not what questions get asked. So that's the candidate briefing process and brief. On the day after the election, the briefing process I described changes. When the new president elect receives his or her first president's daily briefing, President Obama's PDB and later my office will also provide support to prepare the next DNI and next generation of IC leaders, including helping them through the confirmation process, which is to be clear something I will not regret leaving behind. This whole process though is built on the precedent set by Truman back in 1952 and what a contribution he made for the future of the country. And I'm really glad that he made that generous decision to better prepare his successor. Today, it's my belief, not surprisingly, that we have a stronger, more capable, more diverse and more integrated IC than ever before, serving President Obama and preparing to support our next president and national security structure. That thought came home for me last week at a celebration my office held for the Air Force birthday, an event at which basically the airmen on my staff this year asked me to tell war stories for about, but only for about a half an hour. And how things were when the Air Force was in its teen years. And we talked about the progression of technology since then and how for almost all of my career, we collected incredible intelligence, but couldn't get it to the warfighters, particularly for days or weeks, way too late to be useful. But how today intelligence is at the operator's fingertips. And we talked about how our community has grown more diverse and more inclusive. Here we still have a lot of work to do. But we now have more women and minorities in the community and in positions of leadership than we have ever had before. That's not all. When I 1964, when I was an Air Force 2nd Lieutenant on my first assignment, I was forced to process out of the Air Force to model airmen. Superb Russian linguists, because they'd been outed a word we didn't use back then as homosexual. The injustice and the waste of talent were simply astounding to me. But 26 years later, I was in a two star general and chief of Air Force intelligence. And I had a chance to maybe atone for my role in the injustice done to those two airmen a quarter of a century before. I restored the security clearance to a gay civilian employee, following the sterling example set by none other than Abel Inman, when he served as director of NSA. Now in 2016, I can proudly say that for the first time, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender IC professionals, through the ranks of our government, contract, and military workforces can serve openly. I believe that's a huge step for the intelligence community, because intelligence integration only works when we bring together differing talents and points of view and give everyone a voice. So I look back over my over half century in the intel business and can see the evolution of our intelligence community. We are better, much better now than we were 53 years ago when I took my oath of office as a brand new second lieutenant in the Air Force. We're better, more capable than we were 15 years ago in September of 2001. And I believe we're better, more integrated than we were six years ago when Vice President Biden swore me in as DNI, although I'm going to leave it to someone else to grade my work. The reason we keep evolving and getting better is because of the people in the intelligence community. This is a community like no other on earth and I couldn't be proud or to have served in it for as long as I have. I believe that in this time of change, when you don't know today who our next intel customer number one will be, what our national priorities will be or what challenges we'll face next, but I'm confident that our unique access as an insight will continue to help our national leaders manage the inevitable uncertainty for a long time to come. So thanks for listening. Now I want to invite Mark up to grow up to introduce Stephen Hadley and Bobby Inman so that we can continue this conversation as a panel. Thanks very much. General, thank you for your remarks and Admiral McRavy gave a marvelous introduction to both Bob Inman and Stephen Hadley. I won't try to be redundant by introducing them myself but just want to say to all of you how honored we are to have you on this stage. And General, I'm going to start with the subject at hand White House transitions. When we have a new president-elect in November and you go into that first transition meeting, what would you put on the top of the agenda? I think the first thing I would do, this is by the way can be coming in FAQ frequently asked question, is to stress, if I had one point to make to the president-elect, is to stress the importance of the independence of the intelligence community. That is its objectivity and the institutional integrity of the intelligence community and to never let politics enter into the rendering of intelligence assessments and judgments. Bob, you've seen a lot of transitions in your time in public service. What was the worst transition you witnessed and what did you learn from? I ended up being very fond of President Reagan. He was a great person to work for. But the transition was not a smooth one. And one of the many lessons I learned from it was a lot of people want to influence the shaping of the new team and the thoughts of the incoming president. In this case my encounter was with Richard Allen who was to be the first national security advisor. I was still a director of national security agency and I was summoned to brief him. He opened the session by asking me where the Soviets would militarily test the Reagan administration in its first year. It was an interesting question. They would certainly probe and challenge but militarily test? I was skeptical that that would occur. He said, we were told that's what you would say. So I'll ask for a little more detail. They had brought Count de Mirage who was the head of the French suratée, California, to brief the governor. And Count de Mirage had told him within the first several months you will be tested militarily by the Soviet Union and it will probably be in Central America. So as they arrived to take office they were already persuaded that what was going on, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras was Soviet directed and that it would be done in a way to test militarily process. So what I learned was you have to early on knock down preconceptions that have been installed by people who have other motives in doing it. Steve, you briefed President Bush before he went into a meeting with President-elect Obama. What did that briefing look like? What did you talk about in terms of equipping President Obama for the office he was about to take on? Well I was not actually in that meeting it was the President and the President-elect just the two of them which is as it should be. The President asked me to come up with a list of what I thought he should talk about and of course in typical fashion I came up with eight or nine points and President looked at the list he said I don't like this list very much and he put it down and he wrote his own. And it was interesting because I think there are sort of three categories of things that the outgoing president can usefully tell the incoming president. One is I think in the intelligence field and General Clapper and I've had this conversation I think it's very important that President Obama tell the incoming president. You know we've been through now 10, 15 years of intelligence reform. We have statutory reform we now have the CIA has reorganized itself. Those are very controversial and they're going to be all kinds of people coming to you to tell you that they're a terrible mistake and we've destroyed the intelligence community we got to go back to the way it was. Don't do it. Wait nine months see how it works. Get to understand the people get to understand the process see how your own team works and then at some point you're going to ask yourself can we do this process better but don't go in and start turning over the tables until you really understand the organization. I think it's terribly important that that be conveyed. Second thing and this is something that President Bush did. You can talk to the new president about military or intelligence operations that are ongoing that the new president elect needs to know and understand and needs to have the perspective of the president on and so one of the things President Bush did is he talked to President Obama about some things we had underway with respect to Iran and Iran's nuclear program and I think the third thing that the outgoing president can tell the new president is something about personalities you know personal relations do matter in foreign policy and national security and I think the outgoing president can give the incoming president who to be wary of who he can or she can work effectively with and how to approach President Xi Jinping or President Putin. So I think those are sort of three baskets and I think that conversation can be very important. President Bush for example is out publicly talked to President Obama about the importance of Saudi Arabia and the importance of that relationship. So I think those three things. There ought to be a message about intelligence. There ought to be a message about our operations military intelligence and then there's ought to be something about in the diplomatic side how the new president should approach these world leaders who are now the new president. President Obama from when we first began discussing transition planning expressed his gratification and appreciation for the tremendous preparation that his administration got from the Bush administration and resolved to even do better and this administration has done a great deal to prepare for a transition. So we have plans in the intervening 74 days between the election and inauguration day to run tabletop exercises. What do you do when you have an Ebola crisis? What do you do when you have a homeland attack or something? To actually walk through how this administration approached things for the benefit of the next one and the reason for that was because of what President Bush and you and others did prepare the Obama administration. Gentlemen I want to ask you, it's been a few years since you've breezed presidents. What has changed most significantly in the intelligence community since you were in your functions in the security apparatus? I'll start with you. The explosion of information flowed daily, the 24-hour news cycle, there's such a vast flow, you may well find it very difficult to tell the president he hasn't already gotten some hit up. What you have to do is straighten out of what's really valid as opposed to what he's heard in that flow. I didn't have that problem back earlier. We were usually first on the scene when something was breaking to tell the president this is a much harder world. Steve it's been almost eight years since you were briefing the president. What's changed most significantly in time that you've been out of government service? Well I think one thing that started under the Bush administration in the wake of the intelligence failures or as I call them the imagination failures associated with the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is something general Clapper talked about that the PDB is now drawn from across the intelligence community and it has pieces from all the various 16 intelligence agencies and descending views are highlighted. That's a terribly important change. Secondly I think and we've talked about this you know it's not what is the intelligence the president needs every morning it's really in some sense what is the information the president needs. But I think thirdly precisely because there's so much information you know we have a plethora of information and opacity of understanding and I think one of the things the new intelligence community needs to think about is really what does the president need? Does it need the up to the minute sort of breaking events or does the president need more I think one of the most important things is context if you do not understand context you are going to make mistakes and so I think one of the real challenges for the new administration and general Clapper will probably have some views about this is what is the president really need and maybe what the president really needs is this kind of in-depth understanding and context that can set the table for the president and allow the president then be in to understand the facts and the data that's coming across the table and set the table for the president to make the policy judgments the president has to make. I think Steve's exactly right and Chris the dilemma this has always been a hardy perennial in intelligence is allowing ourselves to become consumed with the urgent and now as opposed to the more distant and important and Steve's exactly right on the issue of context every administration I think approaches assumption of power with a broad strategic view which gets shorter as each day goes by and as each crisis comes up and it's very difficult to sustain the discipline yes they must have the here and now what's the crisis of the day what are we going to do about it but trying to keep that all in context in perspective is a challenge and it has been for us and it will be for the next administration general you we recently had a bombing in New York City after which you said regrettably this will not be the last of such incidents in this country so how do we effectively evaluate how our security apparatus is doing in preventing terrorist strikes on our well the issue here is how intrusive how invasive do you want the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus to be whenever we've had some incident some event here in the United States Boston Marathon or the current ones we always do you know post event critiques and a lot of critiques are done to us by others no being the Congress and it is interesting as I've experienced this over the last six years to watch that pendulum swing between you're being too invasive or after an event you weren't invasive enough and I suspect we're going to go through this again so to me that's the issue here which bears a lot of public discussion just how intrusive or invasive should the intelligence community be a couple years ago I I'm in it only half humorously and I said you know the intelligence community is expected to render a current accurate relevant and anticipatory intelligence and do it in such a way there's no risk do it in such a way that if it's discovered no no foreign government will get mad do it in such a way there is in the even the centilla of jeopardy to anyone civil liberties or privacy ours or other people or other nations we call that immaculate collection and that kind of illustrates the dilemma that we find ourselves in but to me the root of your question the importance of your question circles around that you know to what if the if the bar is perfect perfection then that will not that will necessitate a lot less freedom and I don't think our the political attitude or societal attitude in this country will will permit that nor should it but generally let me bring you into this if I may so you've got a scale as the general suggests you've got on one side safety and security of the American populace on the other side you have the privacy and civil liberties where do you draw the line how do you make that assessment at any given time the reality is that finding their communications or they're in contact with is likely the only chance you have to prevent and you look at the success the FBI has had and why taps at all and people who were planning to do bombing at all you can give history after the fact and go back and reconstruct I wonder in this current one could we have learned more of what had gone on in pakistan only if the pakistanis wanted to collaborate and tell us what somebody was doing not likely in the process so in this trade-off of privacy versus the rest what's the national interest the national interest is to prevent if you can if you can then try to pursue and bring to justice after the fact Steve you were in the White House as deputy national security advisor after 9-11 well how did you evaluate this equation at that time it's very tough and I will tell you the framework that I feel we had and and a lot it will be controversial and a lot of people would say this is not true but the guidance we had from the president was stay within the law we were not in the business of doing things that took us outside the law stay within the law but within that context the guidance was do everything we can to protect the country consisted in a way that americans will be comfortable and we will we won't have regret the day after and I will tell you after 9-11 where we were clearly behind on our knowledge of al-Qaeda when the intelligence community was saying this was a first of a wave of mass casualty attacks that was coming and some white involved weapons of mass destruction we consciously shifted that balance within the law in favor of protecting the country and doing some things that americans might not quite feel so good about because we thought it was important to keep the country safe and after a couple years when we felt we got ahead of that problem we began to shift that balance back now that's a very controversial proposition it it was a very this debate became very politicized at the time and I think there may be opportunity now to have what I think we have not had which is a really candid conversation about what it takes to protect this country and how do we do it consistent with our values and consistent with ongoing support for american people I don't think we've had a no-kitting conversation about that and I think it's a real opportunity for institutions like yours to bring national security folks bring some people from the human rights community bring some people from silicon valley we've got to repair this breach between the government and the silicon valley force that they have a lot of the the pipes on which this communications and let's have a fairly sophisticated lowered voice conversation of what the tradeoffs are and try to get some sense of in this point in time what is the right balance and see if we can provide in some sense some help from outside to the debate that's going to go on within the government and this new administration so I think where the intelligence community comes in here revolves around what has been the major takeaway the major lesson for me as a result of the Snowden revelations is the need for the intelligence community to be transparent so we've as I mentioned in my remarks declassified a lot of historical documents we've also declassified thousands of pages of current governance principally court renderings FISA court the intelligence surveillance act foreign intelligence surveillance act court and its decisions we have recently published a principles of transparency for the intelligence community which everyone is signed up to we now have a transparency council representing all 17 components of the of the intelligence community and its job is to look for ways whereby we can explain what we do why we do it without compromising of course sources of methods and tradecraft and that in itself is a balance but to inform this dialogue this discussion that has to take place and frankly to restore and sustain the trust and faith and confidence of the American people in its intelligence community we must be more transparent there seems like there would have to be a cultural shift in the intelligence community let's face it transparency is anathema in some ways to somebody who is a security professional yes so how do you do that how do you change that culture I grew up in the intelligence business my father was a signal intelligence officer in World War II and I did it for 28 years so I grew up in that environment and I've spent half a century in it so for me it's genetically antithetical to be transparent but transparent we must be and so I certainly understand that we've got a lot of younger people that are helping us with that the younger generations that we're bringing on the intelligence community who are naturally that way naturally collaborative and they're going to drive that change beneath our feet but I do understand the need to do it but it is hard I mean our culture our instincts our secretiveness right it seems we are seeing more and more cyber attacks General you alluded to this in your remarks they're greater in abundance and they're greater in consequence how do we better safeguard our cyber communities well at the say the corporate and personal level we need to pay more attention to cyber hygiene you know it's amazing how many many people many many companies don't do the basics it's an issue for us in the intelligence community you know those you know who have access to the internet and we have to have training drills on not opening suspicious attachments and things like that so some of the basics more broadly though we have I think a challenge here in developing cyber deterrence if you will it's very hard to do that to generate both the substance and the psychology of deterrence whether it's for a nation state a non-nation state entity or even an individual and it's going to be very difficult for us to do that you know laterally unless we can conjure up internationally a set of cyber norms in the meantime we are clearly going to be on the defensive I think and for us in the intelligence community our job our responsibility is generating threat information and then sharing it as widely as we possibly can both certainly within the government but outside General when you consider briefing the president-elect what do you consider the world's greatest trouble spot where do I start well in my testimony on the hill every year I have to I've had it I'm all done now happily do a worldwide threat assessment and for the last three years I've led that discussion with cyber and the potential both the vulnerabilities we have and the threats that we're seeing and we have two very proficient very sophisticated adversaries in the form of Russia and China and then lesser cases Iran North Korea to name two although their capabilities are improving and what's happening which I find of concern is sort of the expansion of the envelope where attackers whether hacktivists or or nation states are getting bolder and doing more potential damage and the next phase which I believe the next administration will have to confront is much more widespread data manipulation which is really insidious because it casts doubt on the on the veracity integrity of the data whatever it is personal data or corporate data or or government data so that's probably what I would I would I would discuss I have the great good fortune of having a monthly lunch with Admiral Inman and we eat bad food and he gives me good information Bob and we haven't spoken in a while what is your view on that what do you consider the world's greatest trouble? I give you a different answer than I would have two weeks got and that's North Korea and it's because of demonstrated substantial technical advancements in their missiles and in the size of the nuclear explosion they exaggerated what they'd done earlier there are real advancements that in itself wouldn't trouble but they've got a pathological young leader who could do something very precipitous to establish his great fame so my worry about a nuclear attack is up substantially over what would have been what I would have said two weeks ago I don't think he's there yet but the target to me appears pretty clear Bob is there pressure on Kim Jong-un to make a statement to rattle his saber? If there is one it's his own self-generating maybe maybe it's an important part of maintaining his absolute control but you look at the way he's you know executed Uncle put his aunt in the and saying the asylum killed other generals any sign of any opposition he's ruthless at doing but he's sustaining the support because he's advancing North Korea to be a major player in the nuclear arena am I way off Jim? Well no I would just add to that in this principally I have followed developments on the Korean Peninsula ever since I served in Korea 30 years ago as the Director of Intelligence for U.S. Forces Korea and then I had the experience in November of 14 of going to Pyongyang and engaging with the North Koreans real purpose of the trip was to get two citizens out of hard labor which we did but it was interesting to me engage with a couple Korean senior generals who it's very clear they are under they are under siege everywhere they look there is enemy even their erstwhile patron China it doesn't look so good to them they are deathly afraid of the United States military capability I've constantly heard the Diatribe about B-52s and B-1s and all the B-2s so for them a nuclear capability a credible nuclear capability is their ticket to survival and that's that's why the single-minded focus on nuclear so I I would agree with Admiral Inman that the threat and the concern is certainly heightened over what it has been I don't yet view it as critical yet but it certainly could be and while I'm on on this subject I also comment that regrettably we don't exploit their real weakness which is their fear of outside information and you know it's reticulously suggested but I I've found I've found myself thinking about this after I left going on it's it's regrettable we don't have some presence there an intersection much like we had in Havana because I think that would make a lot of difference it would be great for my business but also the opportunity to disseminate information that North Korean people don't get Steve North Korea has been trying to develop a nuclear weapon for over 20 years their negotiations in the mid 90s during the Clinton administration to thwart a major nuclear project they had underway what's different this time well you know can I if I might just take a step back but I think the challenge of the new administration you know we can all come up with a list of challenges and horribles and it's really long you know cyber Iran North Korea China Russia and all the rest I think the challenge for this administration is going to be not treating each of these as a crisis and be constantly in crisis management mode and take a step back and what's really happening why all this chaos and disorder I would say the chaos and disorder is because we had after established world after world war two what we call liberal international order a set of security and economic institutions that provided a remarkable set of degree of stability through the Cold War and we thought you know at the end of the Cold War with communism discredited you know our model and that order was going to be the future and it is now under siege and fraying you know challenged by new players like terrorists child challenged by these rogue states North Korea and Iran child challenged by China and Russia who have a very different model of how the world should look back and I think the real challenge is how do you reconstruct some kind of order some kind of set of framework and institutions that's going to begin to sort of calm this world down and put it in and begin to set in place some crises some some policies that are going to begin to head off crises because if we get into just crisis management all we're going to do is crisis management because we're just going to get more and more now how you operationalize that is very difficult but I think one of the things the new president has to do is look at this national security structure and it's one things maybe we can talk about tomorrow which really has not changed since Henry Kissinger established it in the 1960s and it does not have the bandwidth to deal with all of these crises if we do it in the kind of level of detail we're trying to do it out of the White House and we're going to have to I think up policy making so that the president and his senior advisors are talking about objectives and strategies and major principles and then decentralize the execution and implementation and empower your cabinet secretaries empower your intelligence officers your military officers to do execution and implementation I just think we're going to have to do business differently because if you just you know I think we've already exceeded the bandwidth we have and these folks would General Clapper would know better but I think we've exceeded our bandwidth and be able to manage all of these from a sort of crisis management standpoint centralize in the White House so I really think we need to think fundamentally about how to do business differently in this new situation which we face right General let me go back to trouble spots why do we need to be in Syria what was the question why do we need to be in why do we need to be in Syria just a light question well um that's a policy question can you give a sense of I'm just down the engine room shoving and told it's cool people on the bridge I've only been able to explain I really appreciate it people on the bridge get to drive the ship how fast it goes where what direction it goes and they get to range all the furniture I'm just down the engine I will throw this out then to the panel whether you're in the engine room or or elsewhere on the ship why is it in our national interest to be in Syria is it in our national interest I think the answer is yes the question is what does it mean and how do you do it yeah but look we are seeing a collapse of order in the Middle East that is not just a crisis in the Middle East it is a crisis of the Middle East that is affecting the world people say well you know we can it's not really our problem it's a long way away it's not really strategic from the United States interests well think about this there are more from a humanitarian standpoint there are more displaced people in refugees now than in any time since World War II and Syria which supposedly isn't strategic has produced a refugee flow that I think directly contributed to Brexit which threatens the future of the European Union and has radicalized the politics in Europe raising a real question whether the European project of a Europe whole and free and peace is going to hold together I don't know how much more strategic you can be than something that produces that kind of outcome and secondly you have this presence of ISIS and al-Qaeda and the possibility now they control territory and they have the you know the level of terrorist threats is so far as I can tell from being outside up considerably and it looks more like it was in the years after 9-11 we don't want to go back there so I think there are people certainly in Iraq and certainly in Syria who want to throw ISIS out of the territory they control Iraq and in Syria I think it's very much in our interest that that happen that we find a way to begin to wind down the civil wars because you will not get rid of ISIS and al-Qaeda unless you do and you will not stem the flow of refugees unless you do and we have something to work with and I think with a fairly modest increase in what we are doing in terms of air operations and intelligence and special forces you can make progress and I think we've seen that President Obama very reluctantly has nonetheless done more put more resources on the ground it's beginning to have an effect and I think we just need to do some more faster this is not Iraq 2003 this is not a major invasion but it is in our interest to try to get the Middle East in a more positive trajectory because I think it affects and threatens the strategic interests of the United States Mark, Europe's got to deal with a million refugees who've already come there but there are many million more in Lebanon in Jordan elsewhere that's the breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists unless we make sure they believe there's some hope education for the kids who are in school so there's a lot that can be done ought to be being done for the refugees that says there's hope hope that they can eventually go back Syria but how in the interim do you make sure that oncoming generation of children has some hope in the world and then we're not going to repeat the experience with the Palestinian refugee camps right well I can add to that just I think Steve has it exactly right I mean there are so many implications of what is going on in Syria that this is Iran versus Saudi it's Sunni versus Shia it's the spillover effect and the neighboring countries notably Israel, Jordan, etc so not to mention of the humanitarian disaster this is and this whole issue of terrorism which I think we're going to be confronting and suppressing for some time but you think about it by the time we get into this in intelligence or the military it's too late and what must be addressed in the in the Middle East are the fundamental conditions that give rise to this wave of extremism strained economies weak governance places where which are a wash and weapons a large population bulge of frustrated young males all these conditions I've got to be addressed otherwise there's going to be a wider conflagration in my view and if you put these two things together it shows I think what we have to do in the short run working with other countries in the region and there are countries in the regions now that are stepping up working with countries in the region from the outside we've got to address ISIS now Qaeda we got to take the terror territory away from and we got to begin to wind down these civil wars and the sectarianism and competition between Iran and Syria that Iran and Saudi that it encourages at the same time at the same time we've got to now you know everybody says oh we don't want to do nation building abroad we have to do at home well if we do not help the people of the Middle East find a more secure and prosperous future it will be a breeding ground for ISIS 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 and that means working with countries in the region and there are some of them who are making the right decisions in the UAE and now Saudi Arabia and this Saudi 2030 plan beginning to invest now in the kinds of things that offer the people in the region hope for the future education encouraging entrepreneurship helping give these refugees skills so they can make a contribution to the societies where they're housed now and when they go back home and begin to rebuilding there's these societies there's a whole series of things we can do without a major multi-billion dollar program but to be a catalyst for resources in the region to begin to make the investments now that are required if we're ever over the next decade going to get a more peaceful and stable and prosperous Middle East Eric Schmidt from the New York Times who I believe is with us tonight recently wrote an article in The Times with the headline caliphate in peril more ISIS fighters may take mayhem to Europe is the caliphate destined to disintegrate is that an inevitability well I don't know I think it's going to eventually dissipate and certainly it's physical manifestations the nation state like aspects so clearly the ISIS has lost territory a lot in Syria and Iraq we've taken thousands of fighters off the battlefield in fact we just recently did a new estimate on the number of ISIL fighters and it's lower than it's been in two years since we started keeping records on this their finances are in under stress the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria has has profoundly slowed so by the measures that the so-called you know the metricable aspects of this we're making great progress and we'll continue to the issue would be though what happens to what's left the people that have gravitated they're going to go someplace else and of course there are the eight provinces so-called of the caliphate in other countries and if it isn't ISIS so ISIS itself could revert to its roots which was al-Qaeda in Iraq and become more a more classical insurgency not one that is trying to behave like a nation-state because I think that is that's going to that's going to end importantly they're also having challenges with their media the beak their you know glossy magazine has gone out of business they just recently ended that and that's that's an area that we really need to work because in the end it's the ideology and the very slick sophisticated capabilities that ISIL displays on the internet both for proselytizing for recruiting and for command and control so it will morph into another form that we will still have to contend with Mark, I think the biggest surprise to me in this whole lot is the skill they have demonstrated in using the internet for recruiting for everything else I simply did not anticipate they were going to be that sophisticated that quick yeah let me move on to Russia Vladimir Putin has been sometimes comically a centerpiece in this presidential race what kind of threat does Vladimir Putin and Russia pose to the United States well I think a substantial one he is in my opinion a throwback not to the communist era but a throwback to the Tsar era he has this vision of greater Russia and that's why you know he had an opportunity I mean Ukraine not having influence in Ukraine is simply for example is unthinkable to him and why he's opportunistic as he was to grab Crimea back which from his perspective was simply correcting an injustice that had been done 80 years previously so he sees and he is driven by the notion of Russia as a great global power on a par with us and of course they've manifestation of that is the our attempts to negotiate with them to cooperate with them in in Syria and what really under motivates them more than anything is to be seen as co-equal and influence as influential or more influential than we are in the Middle East of concern to me also is substantial effort and both in in technical competence and in resources that Russia is devoting to modernizing their nuclear capabilities and in some respects you know this is back to the future with you know contending with the Soviet Union certainly not to that magnitude but it is Soviet era like and Putin sees himself as the decision maker the savior and the only one in all of Russia who can bring Russia to greatness as a global power Bob how do you contend with the Vladimir Putin today I understand he has now once again recombined the internal and external intelligence services back into the KGB mode this is getting ready for 2018 he's not going to have any internal riots demonstrations this could be a very smooth election guaranteeing his next six years in the process it's all about power and control and anything that gets in his way he's got but once he's got he's comfortable with that he's still looking to expand the imperialist aims of Vladimir Putin Tsar Putin are undiminished how do you keep a leader like that who is so overtly ambitious at bay how do you neutralize a force like that I think you've got to do two things you know look what one Putin is enjoying this election enormously you know he's right at the center American presidential election I mean this is a this is a great day what would be even a better day for Vladimir Putin better day for Vladimir Putin would be if he woke up one day and the United States and Europe had split the EU had broken apart in response to his undermining in the Baltics he has showed that NATO is a dead and it's article five guaranteed you know the attack on one is an attack on all is a is a dead letter and Russia is kind of reestablish a sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe that would be a fantastic day for Vladimir Putin we can prevent that we are already taking the steps you need to do you need to take that option off the table for him which means we've got to help the Europeans pull together we've got to increase our deployments in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkan area to put NATO troops and US troops on the ground on a rotational basis so that Putin knows that if he gets cute he's going to run up against us so we can and then we need to help the countries of Central and Eastern Europe harden themselves to the kind of subversion that he does this is all doable and I think we can take that off the table in terms of Putin secondly in the Middle East I think the problem is that we don't have enough skin in the game and we don't have enough leverage on the ground to convince the Iranians on the one hand and Putin on the other that this is going to be a stalemate they're going to get their way and the costs are only going to go up and if we do that you will then have a platform what you may be able to actually negotiate something that will hold together and you know in that process Russia has dealt themselves in they will be a full partner they will have to be treated with respect their interests need to be in some extent taken into account all that said but we have got to do more on the ground of the kinds I've described before to set the table if we're ever going to be able to wind that down and I think Secretary Kerry who is you know I admire his energy but I think he's he's playing too weak a hand to get the result he needs and if you do that Putin I think will respect it and will respond he's had a great day with a very modest investment in Syria he's not in a quagmire he's achieved his objectives and he's sitting pretty from modest cost we've got to change his calculation so he's difficult to deal with and but I think there are policies that can work in in managing the situation but this is the kind of thing we're going to be dealing with for a while may I ask a last question of all of you but you are all clearly foreign policy sages and know far more about national security than laymen like your moderator but I would ask you what most concerns you that isn't on the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post what security issue are you gives you most consternation that we as laypersons are not aware of or might not be aware of Mark let me take a more optimistic slam I meant responding to this with Russia I have great difficulty finding areas where we could collaborate with China because of the economies economic equation there are great many places where we can find a collaborate so the challenge there we will never be allies we don't have to be enemies and the issue is defining where can we collaborate how do we do it and where we can't can you build fences to keep it from becoming more adversarial I would argue that making that relationship more stable for the long term we're going to have differences but focusing on the areas we can collaborate is probably our best game for dealing with Russia right Steve so I go to the Middle East Fairmount and I went in February and I had some of our some leaders there of some of our close allies who I've known for a long time speak very candidly and one of them said two of them actually said you know I've got to hand it to you Americans you know who would have thought that you that we would come to a pass where Vladimir Putin and Russia are viewed in the region simultaneously as the most reliable party by at the same time your Israeli allies your traditional Sunni allies Iran and Assad so I think there are there are two things and that's an overstatement but it tells you the state of mind some of the folks so I think the issue is about American leadership and I think one of the prerequisites I think we need to take a more active role in the world in a different way than we did in the in the last century I think to do that we're going to have to fix our politics and fix our economics our model our democratic model of free markets doesn't look too good out there and Putin's model and Xi Jinping's model is looking better and better and they are on a campaign I'm going to sound a little paranoid here but they're on a campaign both internally and internationally to discredit our democratic model I don't think Vladimir Putin wants to throw the election for either Secretary Clinton or Donald Trump I think he wants to discredit our democratic processes in the world as a way of gaining broader acceptance for years we're in a sort of a new ideological struggle in a different way and our model isn't looking so good so I think we've got to work on our economy this is the tough agenda for a new president work on our economy work on our politics and get convinced the American people once again that we need to be engaged in a smart way to protect our interests and lead our friends and allies and it will be a better and safer world if we do I think so I think we're going to do that if I understood your question that was what's not prominent on the on the front page obscure newspaper that might be of concern in the future and I guess I would maybe take a little different approach here and I think the potential for technological challenges that we're going to have in the future when you consider things like artificial intelligence with some people regard with great fear great concern if it's out of control the whole notion of genetic engineering and what that could mean quantum computing huge challenge for us and what some think is a race with the likes of Russia and China because that could have huge impact on encryption and security so I in the context of your question what isn't on the front pages probably every day it's things like that and as always whenever we've been confronted with technological advance it's always a two-edged sword do we marshal it do we use it to our advantage or is it going to be used against us to me that's something you don't see too much in the media but I think it's something the next administration and administrations after that need to think about my sanguine friend Bob Inman shifted the question to from the greatest obscure threat to the greatest opportunity what is in your view general our greatest opportunity on the security front on what on the security front what is our after six years of what we've gone through I don't know I guess if I if I pick one I think it would be I do think there's great potential with partnering with China very different situation with China than Russia and or the era of the Soviet Union and the United States in that basically the economies were mutually exclusive not so with China so we had many motivations many common interests and I think manifestation of this is the agreement that was struck last September on cyber cyber espionage for economic gain and that seems to be working now it's not to say we don't have friction points with the Chinese we certainly do with the South China Sea I was there recently and I found a great confluence convergence of views on North Korea so I think that if I could you know to pick one great opportunity it would be the enhancing improving strengthening the relationship with China gentlemen it's a testament to your sujacity that you could hear a pin drop in this audience as we hung on everywhere don't sweep although I think I heard a vending machine at some point I want to thank you not only for for being here tonight but for all you have done to keep our nation safe thank you so much gentlemen