 This session is Sharon Burke, who's the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy. She's also, she runs the resource security program at New America. And she and Louis Palau will be discussing the future of conflict in the Arctic in 2030. Over to you, Sharon. Thank you very much, Peter, and I'm always delighted to be here at your conference and as part of the New America team. So we have some pictures for you and I'm going to introduce my guests in just a moment. Whenever the slide comes up, we'll be able to see when it's up. We're going to start with a poll. So get your thumbs ready. We have a polling question for you, which I can't see if it's up. There we go. Okay. The question, which I also cannot see, is what is the state of conflict in the Arctic in 2030? So use your imaginations. Multilateral peace arrangement, A, B is U.S. and allies dominate, C, Russia dominates, D, war between the great powers. So give us your honest answer right now, and the texting instructions are up there at the top. And in real time, we should be able to see your answers. It'll give Louie and I a great starting point, so we look forward to your participation. While you're voting, I'm just going to take a minute to introduce my guest here. Louie Palau is an award-winning photojournalist and documentarian. He often covers conflicts. You'll have to explain to us why. But he spent five years embedded in Kandahar, so five years. He's covered the drug wars in Mexico, in fact, as a New America fellow at the time, I believe. He's just finished a documentary on Ukraine. So he's a very experienced photojournalist in these areas. And the reason he's here with us today is that he's also covered the Arctic. And I will tell you more about that in a moment. We're watching your poll results come in. U.S. and allies dominate 36 percent. So an interesting distribution, though. I would say... It keeps changing. It keeps changing. It's like watching an election. Sort of. Okay. How interesting. Wow. You're not sure. It's the caffeine. As a collective, the one thing you don't think, only 13 percent, think a war between the Great Powers and the Arctic in 2013. Otherwise... Wow, look at that. Russia dominates. It's like a game of risk. All right. I'm about to cut you off, so last chance to vote. All right. Look at that. The war between the Great Powers. Oh, it's going down. It's going up. Okay. Let's call it at that. An interesting result. Multilateral peace arrangement is the top. Russia dominates more than U.S. and allies don't need it. It's like very tempting to skew the voting by making comments on how you're voting, but we'll get there. Okay. So, that's great. Let's go to the opening for our presentation. To the first slide. So the Arctic. I think there's a little delay when the slide would click the clicker. I'm going to start talking and soon... Oh, I think... There we go. This is an actual photograph from the polar orbiting satellite. It was the first picture from the new polar orbiting satellite that Noah posted last year in 2018. That is the North Pole in winter. That is the Arctic. And, of course, what you can't see in the middle of winter is that since 1979 with the satellite measurements, the Arctic has lost 40% of its ice. It is melting faster than in any time in recorded history. It is now the projections have been updated. It's believed that the Arctic will be ice free in the summer months as soon as 2030. So think about where you were in 2009, 2008, and how recent that seems to you. This is going to be ice free in the summer months by 2030. Now, of course, an Arctic summer is a whole other thing, right? You're talking about three weeks in September, so don't get too excited. We're going to get there. Yeah. I'm very fortunate to have Louis Paluhier as my guest. He's a phenomenal photojournalist who has covered conflict in many theaters. He's very experienced at this. Well, for National Geographic, a forthcoming issue in the fall, he went to the Arctic. He was embedded in the Arctic. So he's going to tell us more about what he saw and more to the point he's going to show us what he saw. This is an unusual point of view. We see these pictures, often with a red line that shows you just how much the ice is retreated, and what that means. So what does it mean? It means an entirely new theater of operations, not just for the five littoral states and the three near-littoral states, but for lots of others, including China. The Coast Guard put out a brand new strategy last week that's pretty forward-leaning and aggressive for the Coast Guard especially, that starts on the first page by mentioning there's a trillion dollars worth of minerals in this area, a billion dollars worth of undiscovered oil, 30% of the world's remaining natural gas is in this region, a billion dollars, I think, in fishing, a million square miles of U.S. territory, and a whole new ocean to patrol, a whole new transpolar route, which is why the Chinese are so very interested and have made many scientific moves through the region. The Russians have 50% of the ocean of the Arctic coastline, I believe, and the northern sea route. They have something like 40 heavy icebreakers, and last week the U.S. Congress, I believe, approved a new heavy icebreaker for the United States, that's $700 million. So the Arctic, some people are saying, a lot of people in this room may be thinking it's the new great game. But Louis has a really unusual point of view on this because he's literally been on the ground, this is ground truth. So we're going to hear from him now and what he has to say. OK, first of all, Louis, tell us what brought you to the Arctic from Kandahar and Ukraine and all these places. What made you go there and when did you start going there? I've always been interested in geographic spaces and how people compete for these geographic spaces and what the reality is when you hit it and all the best laid plans don't come to pass and looking at history. And so in 1993, when I arrived, these are the three things kind of going on. There's a diamond discovery. I got sent up there in 1993. It's multi-billion dollar mining now in Canada. No one ever thought to be diamonds in Canada. I was always thought they'd be in Africa or other parts of the world. I arrived and there had been a bombing, a minor planet of bomb and kill nine people out of gold mine during a labor dispute. So we think about conflict and security. It's more than just like big armies lining up to have a battle. Security is a lot of different things that are local security. So how do you think, how do people usually imagine the Arctic as a place where people have... Polar bears, ice, and no one lives there and outdated ideas of indigenous people mostly. And then a year later, Canada opens fire on a Spanish fishing vessel over and it just talked about resources and competition for resources. So tell us where you went. This is a map of places that Louis has been or is going to be. So that was 1993. Just on this project, the red lines I've sailed most of the Northwest Passage, I've made about 20 field trips, some being several months, some on foot, some with local Inuit soldiers, snowmobiles, you name it, I've been on it. The red is where I've been, the green is up what's upcoming. The blue is past trips that relate to this and the green is what's coming up next. And so what do most people think of when they think of this region? They have an image in their minds? They have invented narratives usually because what I find the Arctic is a place that's defined by what our desires want it to be. We want it to be about oil, how we better hurry up and go up there and get ready for the oil where most of the oil is inaccessible, we need to know where it is. I also think that the Arctic is this blank slate for invented narratives. There's lots of mining. It's like most of the resources are on people's countries land already. So I think that that's what I think we need to keep in mind. It's a lot of invented narratives because the Arctic, it's an unprecedented moment. Unlike other places in the world where there's our histories, like when I went to Afghanistan, we'd hear centuries of history. This is how it was for this country, so it was for the British or the Russians. There is no this is how it was for the Arctic. So tell us what it looks like on the ground, ground truth, as a potential theater of operations. Tell us what we're looking at. I'm on a Danish Navy vessel here outside the Lucille at Fjord. This is the Fjord actually where the iceberg that sank the Titanic came from. So you get out there and best laid plans never go according to plan. And I also think that if you're training for the military to go in the Arctic, no matter what you're doing, you can't just do a year of training and pass it on to the next person. It's decades and centuries of knowledge that you have to pass on. So this is what we would call ice-free, right? Yeah, that's ice-free, yeah. Right. So tell us what this is. This is just near Fort Greeley in Alaska. I call it the largest unsingable aircraft carrier in the world. It's like this big peninsula of the military presence there is huge and they're constantly training. It just talks about all the paratrooper US Army. And it's just all this planning and training. And in the end, the ultimate power in the world is not military, but nature up there. So you're saying these guys can't just literally drop in. They have to be training up there all the time. Well, you could, yeah, and it's constant training. You can't just do basic training suddenly appear in the Arctic. I mean, when it's minus 60, try starting a snowmobile. So tell us what that looks like. Minus 60? So, yeah, and then these are US Marines and Green Berets training to go to Norway. This is in Barrow. And it's about two months of darkness. So you can't just plan about technical stuff. You got to plan about emotional and psychological effects on your troops. And can they operate every day? And are they from a part of the United States that makes them even possible to operate in the Arctic? So it's an incredibly harsh climate. Right, that's true. He's from Canada, so he knows what that's like. I'm from Los Angeles. My family's from the Mojave Desert. This is scary for us. Well, I'm the kind of guy. I grew up ice fishing as a kid. So jumping in the water in the ice seemed normal to me. But even you, 60 below. So this climate is going to be harsh for a long time. Well, it's a part of the world where the air can kill you. I mean, it's minus 60. There's no other place in the world really other than Antarctica where the air can kill you. And this is also a training? This is pilots training. Most of these pilots are fighter pilots. These are Canadian, UK, and French training in Resolute Bay. There's a special training area up there. It's one of the most gnarly training areas in the world. And what it is is, if you sweat too much, you can die. And these are all these parts of knowledge you need to learn to operate up there that I think is beyond just going to basic training and then going up, operating in the Arctic. I've seen a lot of really skilled warfighters go up to the Arctic and not want to be there anymore and not being able to operate up there because the air gives you frostbite. I mean, there's a lot of things to understand. So who's important for them? Well, you should say what we're looking at here, but also as a clue. This is search and rescue training. This is in Clyde River. Canada has and has had for a long time a lot of an Inuit reservist unit called the Canadian Rangers. And they're in every community. And you think of community-based security and community-based knowledge. Not far different from having key leader engagements under any elders in Afghanistan. It's the same thing. The Inuit are the greatest scientists of the Arctic. They have observational facts and oral histories that talk about what's changing and how things are up there for centuries. So I spent months with Inuit soldiers in the Arctic. And that's what this is as well, right? Yeah, so Canada's military has integrated indigenous knowledge into training for survival and understanding the environment that they're working in. It's kind of mandatory training. They also have a course called the Arctic Operations Advisors course. And you're seeing the renewal of interesting cold weather training in Alaska as well as this is becoming a part of operations in the Arctic. So let's go full circle and come back to the polling question. So there's a lot of attention about, you know, Russia's got all these icebreakers. They're putting down new bases or rehabbing their old bases. The United States new icebreaker. The Canadians, of course, have long history along with indigenous populations of operating and training in the region. Who wins by 2030? You know, is it going to be the Russians? Is it going to be the US and allies? Or from what you said, the Arctic itself wins by 2030. It's a difficult place to operate. Yeah, I mean, I think the most powerful weapon or tool in the Arctic is a nuclear submarine. I don't need an icebreaker. I'll just sail under the ice or airpower. I mean, I can fly anywhere. I have to say I've done a lot of stuff at the US Air Force. A lot of incredible knowledge retained there, even for supporting scientists to do research because only the US Air Force can get to certain places, like, say, in Greenland. So I think that this idea, again, I would just, everybody needs to understand for me if there's ever a battle space or, I don't even like using that, because the idea of a shooting war in the Arctic is almost preposterous to me. Why? Because people will, I have this great quote from a general up, Joint Task Force North. If anyone tried attacking over the pole, it'd be the largest search and rescue operation in the history of the world. Now, I know that there are northern projections of power, but there are anxieties over the continued east-west tensions. And that involves, the Arctic is a very big place, but the Arctic is 100 different places. The Arctic, in Finland, I could drive a really nice car from my hotel right into the Arctic, and I can go do yoga in the morning. In Canada, you can't do that. The Arctic is a lot of different places. So it is about invented narratives, and you need to be careful that some of those invented narratives are part of military strategies from other countries to suck you into a place where you can't operate or waste your resources. So you think, in other words, by 2030, the reality of this place is not going to be significantly different. No, and it's the greatest. It's a very harsh theater of operation. It is, and it is the greatest place of the unknowns on the planet. And our ability, for the United States, our ability to operate up there is unchanged in the sense that it's been, for some time now, submarines and air power largely. Yeah, I think that. But so you said search and rescue, and I know that was a joke and a comment on the aspirations. But in fact, that is one of the growing missions up there, because you can get, especially through the northern sea route, but you've gone through the Northwest passage, right? Yeah. What was that like? I think there are five May days within the first week I was up there, from everything from, I'm not kidding, a Spanish, no, it's not Spanish. Mexican sailing boat, they thought they could sail through up there, and they hit up. And then a cruise ship with scientists got stuck because things aren't mapped out up there. I think that there are ideas floated around, and sometimes I think we think it's about fighting other countries, but I also think it's about, the military can protect the environment. Everybody talks about oil. I think fishing is going to be far more important. It's food. It's what we really need. There's no alternative to food. They're alternative to oil. And I think that what does a country think of their economy when someone else who has lower environmental standards sails and leaks oil into someone's fishing grounds and affects that, or someone fishes just off your 200-mile limit and starts depleting your fish stocks like what collapsed the cod fishery in Canada in the 90s. So this is a place of unknowns, and the trajectory it follows is almost the only thing we can be certain of is it's not going to be what we expect. As a longtime defense community person, the last thought I want to leave you with is that 2030, ice-free in the summer, still means it's a very harsh environment that's mostly frozen most of the time. If it does melt faster and sooner, I would just remind my national security colleagues, don't forget what that actually means. This is climate change. And if it's happening faster, you've got bigger problems than the transpolar route that's opening up. I want to leave you with that thought. And Louie, thank you so much for sharing your brown truth. Good, thanks.