 Good morning everybody welcome we're delighted to have you here and on a glorious morning it's absolutely fabulous of course we deserve it for the weather winter we had you know the tough winter welcome to all of you to the military strategy forum and my special thanks to our friends at Rolls Royce who make it possible for us to make this series available to the policy community in Washington and we're very delighted to have Mike Vickers with us this morning I was serving up in the Armed Services Committee when I think I can't remember the years I think it was nineteen ninety no nineteen eighty eight when we created the program 11 and the whole special operations command socom etc. and I think that we actually had Mike in mind for who would be the leader at socom it took a while for us to find him you know and at the time Mike was of course serving in the CIA had a long history in special forces and came to the administration to become the the Solic commander or the Solic assistant secretary back in 2007 and we were it was just the right time when when he was brought in the Bush administration asked him to come in to give some direction and it was did a masterful job and of course then Bob Gates felt that no one would be better to replace Jim Clapper than Mike to be the undersecretary for intelligence I think it's been masterful service Mike we've been lucky as a country to have you at this crucial time I know it's been challenging and wearing assignment but you shouldered it so wonderfully and the whole community is grateful for what you've done we're going to have a very interesting session this morning and Kath is going to be leading the question and answer period I expect this is going to be a very vivid and lively session so would you with your applause please welcome Mike Vickers undersecretary for intelligence well thank you Dr. Hamry for that really gracious introduction and thank you and to Dr. Hicks for your distinguished service to our country and to CSIS for putting on important forums such as this I thought I'd make a few remarks this morning for about 20 minutes and then take questions as the standard format next slide please all right good I'm qualified now on this thing okay so I'm going to talk about these four topics and given that this is a military strategy forum I'm going to try to move beyond my intelligence brief a little bit and talk about some of the implications for strategy for national security strategy defense strategy and intelligence strategy as we as we look at these issues before I do one of the themes I'd like to leave you with is the tremendous change that's taken place in our intelligence capabilities over the past decade and the even greater change that we foresee looking forward one of the aspects of this is the revolutionary impact precision targeting has had across our intelligence enterprise whether it's in counterterrorism operations whether it's in cyber operations or classic human intelligence and espionage and to illustrate this I'd like to if you'll indulge me I'd like to tell a joke that my former boss secretary Bob Gates used to love to tell about the old way we did business many many years ago supposedly an intelligence officer was working at a in a foreign capital at a diplomatic cocktail party you know trolling the diplomatic circuit as we often do looking for hard targets and unfortunately this officer had a little bit too much to drink and so his mission attention wandered a little bit toward more amorous pursuits rather than traditional hard targets and across the room at this big reception he spotted what he saw was a vision of loveliness and a flowing red gown so using all his appropriate tradecraft he approached the target and made a pitch asking the target if he could have a dance and then he's to his shock the target immediately rebuffed him and said I'm rebuffing you for three reasons first you are drunk second this is not a waltz it's the Peruvian national anthem and third my I'm not a woman I am the cardinal Archbishop of Lima so we're a little better than that today we we enable our case officers with more precision targeting and our and our other operators as well next slide please so I'm gonna go through a range of national security challenges the continued terrorism threat by posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates being the first one the key point I want to leave you with here is while we've had a lot of success in severely degrading al-Qaeda core in the Pakistan Afghanistan border region they continue to pose a threat particularly a reconstitution threat down the road but the three biggest threats are really al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula centered in Yemen and the growing al-Qaeda threat in Syria and al-Qaeda's affiliates of course are spread elsewhere and they're taking advantage of what we call the metastasization using a cancer analogy across the Middle East and in North Africa and that is the conditions that are created by our ungoverned spaces and the historic transformation that's underway in that region there's also of course the threat of a homegrown violent extremists as we saw with the Boston bomber and and others as well and so this really remains job one for the intelligence community and and our special operations forces as well the Syrian Civil War prevent presents a particularly vexing national security challenge it's a horrific civil war with 150,000 dead it's a humanitarian crisis of mind-boggling proportions with some 9 million internally displaced or refugees who have fled the country about two-thirds and one-third and a continuing humanitarian crisis and of course it's giving rise to a significant terrorism threat there as well as the president noted in his speech at West Point we are committed to supporting the Syrian opposition to help them in their stand against the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad and to help them determine a help these help them fight for the right of all Syrian people to determine their own future and then finally to deny terrorists the sanctuary or safe haven that they're currently enjoying in Syria and we will work with the Congress to ramp up our support for the opposition now we come to Russian revanchism I get teased about using the word revanchism but it has many aspects but probably the most concerning currently is the destabilization going on in eastern Ukraine and what we in the special operations community would term unconventional warfare well Russian forces have pulled back their troops from the border region they have not seized their support for pro-Russian separatists in in eastern Ukraine and that threat remains to the government of Ukraine and its territorial integrity cyber threats these threats and the range from intellectual property theft to disruptive denial of service attacks to destructive attacks through malware so emerging domain that has moved very rapidly over the past couple years we've had destructive attacks against South Korea against Saudi Arabia and denial of service attacks against the US financial sector as director clapper made clear in his unclassified annual threat assessment the likelihood of future destructive attacks is increasing there we go my first test okay proliferation and use of WMD the next the next issue for us we continue to have concerns about the Iranian and North Korean nuclear and missile programs Iran has made considerable progress in its ability to enrich and stockpile uranium and has continued to work on its missile programs North Korea as director clapper indicated in his annual threat assessment as we assess is expanding its use its facility for uranium enrichment and has restarted its graphite moderated reactor and continues to develop long-range missile programs most notably the intercontinental KNOA that it has displayed publicly a few times the I already alluded to this earlier about the persistent volatility across Middle East North Africa and South Asia that will likely be with us for a long time to come and we'll give rise to a range of national security challenges this is really one of the key enduring challenges I think we face along with a couple of others on this slide or on the previous slide in the previous one all right a transition in Afghanistan the president announced right before his speech at West Point that we will maintain a 9,800 troops in Afghanistan and by the end of 2000 and calendar 2015 we will reduce that posture approximately in half and consolidate the force on Kabul and Bagram and then no later than the end of 2016 we will reduce it further to a normal embassy-based presence centered on Kabul Afghan forces assume the lead for combat operations last year and at the end of this year combat operations in Afghanistan will cease we will continue to train, advise and assist Afghan forces and to and to pursue our continued counterterrorism mission in in the region and the rise of China this China of late has engaged in provocative behavior in maritime disputes across the East Asian literal is continuing its military modernization and has attempted to counter US engagement in Asia by asserting that the United States is a declining power which we will most certainly not and we will remain a Pacific power the key thing I would like you to take away from the previous two slides is that when you look at these in total a number of a senior intelligence officers director Clapper my good friend former CIA director deputy director Michael Morell an acting director haven't seen this range of challenges on an administration's plate in our careers you know we may be wrong about that but that that's our collective judgment second point is that taken together these are highly asymmetric challenges the years are not directly head-on-head some of them are even further an unconventional or novel is in the cyber case or in indirect in terms of challenges in happening across the region or the relationship between economic power and national security power the other point that I want to highlight is that unlike the Cold War where we had one really enduring and not to be discounted national security challenge and then a series of crises a number of these are likely to be more persistent than enduring and so again that really creates some challenges for strategy as you deal with injuring very difficult to solve multiple problem sets some of you may remember in the late 1970s in the Department of Defense we developed in response to the situation in Central Europe an offset strategy to counter Soviet military power and then followed that up through the 1980s with a series of other strategies to reinforce that and bring it into the Cold War as I look at it today we need a we not just one offset strategy but a series of them to deal with these specific challenges and then the final point I want to make is that also critical to being dealing with these set of enduring challenges is the continued economic and technological leadership of the United States which as former Secretary Gates and others have said you know as a national and is national security imperative for us okay now I'd like to talk a little bit about the relationship between intelligence and national security we always say it's the first line of defense at this time going forward we really really do mean it the benefits that it gives us is informs our national security policy again if you're the president and his top advisors and you're trying to make sense of this wide array of challenges intelligence is the first thing you need to have to understand the world in which you're dealing with and then for our operators our war fighters and other operators our intelligence capabilities really enable what we call intelligence driven precision operations when directed by the president the intelligence community provides him with additional options in between diplomacy and and the overt use of military force these are very important as well and then of course our principle race on detra is preventing strategic surprise and very challenging today as we look forward I would add one other point as we look at this and that is intelligence is a significant source of advantage for the United States today and it's an advantage that is very important to us but it's also one that has to be used aggressively but also prudently to make sure we're helping our leaders solve problems and not adding adding to their problems and of course as you conduct operations there's inherent risk in them and so the risk gain is something that we look at all the time and continue to evolve all right now I'd like to talk about some investments we're making in capability areas to sustain this intelligence advantage well into the future I've grouped this into five areas to focus defense intelligence and our integration with national intelligence on the defense strategic guidance that dr. Hicks worked on so ably a couple years ago I guess it was and the president signed out and then our quadrennial defense review which we just completed and soon to be released national intelligence strategy I group our major priorities into five areas global coverage the ability to operate in what we call anti-access area denial environments a key power projection a challenge for us sustaining our capabilities in counterterrorism operations and adding to them in counterproliferation building out our cyber capabilities and then strengthening our ability our capabilities and counterintelligence and security so let me touch on a few of these first global coverage this really enables everything we do across mission areas and as the budgets flatten or decline becomes even more important given the global distribution and diversity of challenges that we face I can't say too much about the specifics and in many of these areas but I will say a few things the first as director Clapper said in Colorado Springs a couple weeks ago and Betty SAP our director of the NRO mentioned at a conference in Florida about a month ago there are big changes ahead in the way we use our overhead space architecture some of the biggest changes in my view that we've seen in in several decades it will be possible as director Clapper mentioned through techniques such as activity-based intelligence and associated architecture capabilities to go with it to have persistence we've never had before to where we can look at things for long periods of time and you can imagine the the benefits that will give us the second aspect that I will I believe will be revolutionary as we go forward besides persistence is integration rather than having an overhead architecture as Betty SAP described it that that is a set of individual systems with supporting systems we will have for the first time going forward to really integrated architecture that can tip and queue and there's tremendous benefits that come from that we're working to strengthen our crypt analytic capabilities and then our national level defense human capabilities that's run initiative we call the defense clandestine service in the anti-access aerial denial environment this is really associated with our rebalance to Asia and to keep pace with high-end challenges we're working on assured persistent intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance and the resiliency of our of our space architecture and that's about all I can say it at that point but the third bullet is really kind of indicative there and that is we're focused as a strategy on adapting some of the techniques we've learned in counter-terrorism where we have gotten incredibly precise and apply that to these higher-end environments in the counter-terrorism area the predator and reaper the unmanned aerial aircraft unaffectually known as drones have been the signature weapon of our counter-terrorism capability over the past decade much as the improvised explosive device has been the signature weapon of insurgents and terrorists it has enabled the most precise campaign counter-terrorism campaign in the history of warfare and it is our most effective instrument we are very healthy in this area but we are looking to make enhancements in some advanced sensors as well as extending the range of our second-generation platform considerably our operate our integration between our operators and intelligence is another key advantage in both of these areas and something we're working to sustain as well and then back to the challenges chart as the CT problem evolves and shifts on us we're at a turning point not just in national security strategy but also in the counter-terrorism arena of the need to rebalance and rethink some of the ways that we've done business what has really worked what is adaptable to the evolving threat what is not and what do we need to invent a new okay on cyber capabilities that we're making significant progress in developing a cyber force to defend our networks to support combatant commanders and to defend the United States if called upon to do so and the associated support structures to go with it intelligence capabilities as you would in any new domain whether it's space or cyber or others key to making that cyber force effectively and we've had a number of great sessions including some here at CSIS is really our partnerships with industry our partnerships across the US government with Department of Homeland Security and the FBI but also with industry in terms of particularly in the area of information sharing and then finally counterintelligence and security as a result of WikiLeaks, Snowden, Fort Hood and the Navy Yard review Navy Yard attack excuse me and the reviews associated with those four incidents we've taken significant measures now to strengthen our capabilities against insider threats whether it's workplace violence or espionage and are establishing an insider threat center going forward we're also working with the Congress and with the OPM looking to and the DNI looking to shift our the way we evaluate people for positions of responsibility and security clearances through a method called continuous evaluation if you think of rather than snapshots in times where you do an investigation and then you wait several years and you do it again this is more a continuous stream like you do with credit checks and we believe it will have a number of advantages okay let me conclude by talking about the importance of intelligence integration this was the focus of the 9-11 Commission and there are four areas I'd like to talk about some of this honestly predated 9-11 and it has been at work it's been the process of a couple decades of work and then of course others have really accelerated since then responding to evolving threats the first one is integration within agencies the CIA I knew in the 1980s is not the CIA of today it is vastly more integrated in terms of its major components and and directorates and it produces big dividends by doing so our intelligence agencies work much closer together it's hard to find a case where a single intelligence agency has been responsible for a a significant intelligence breakthrough or operation the bin Laden case is a particular example of that were CIA NSA and NGA worked in extremely close partnership to produce the intelligence case that we need and that that really is the model going forward director Clapper and I have made it a top priority to make sure that our national and defense intelligence programs are integrated and transparent to each other we make a number of joint investments together we depend on each other's capabilities to do our missions things that you would think of as tactical capabilities perform some critically important national missions and our tactical operations in the department depend critically on national capabilities and then finally the partnership between the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency is very important across the board in a number of intelligence areas and in capabilities and so with that I'd like to conclude and I'd be happy to take your questions with Dr. Hicks thank you very much Secretary Vickers for your your great remarks and good morning to everyone I'm Kathleen Hicks I run the international security program here at CSIS and you covered truly the waterfront and I think it gives us a very rich conversation opportunity here with the audience and I'll turn it over to them for questions in a few minutes but there are a few things I thought I'd start with this last issue that you raise there's two issues on your last slide you raise one generally on integration and specifically ending on the DOD CIA piece let me take the first part of that we really have come in the time that you've been in your positions within the Department of Defense from 2007 to now from the world of trying to transition from need to know to need to share to to I hope a culture of need to share that was the intent but now of course we've had a series of incidents that test that Snowden being the most recent I'm wondering if you can give a sense of where you think the community is and where the community needs to be on this issue of how much to share how to control information have we swung too far or in fact we just need to accept that there are risks that come with a need to share culture thanks well the we continue to have a strong need to share intelligence our national security strategy depends on enabling partners that requires intelligence sharing and to make the national security apparatus effective across the interagency both domestic and foreign also requires a high degree of intelligence sharing while also protecting need to know so in that vein we are modernizing our information technologies to try our information systems technology systems excuse me across both the IC and within the Department of Defense to try to strike a reasonable balance there between the need to protect information and also distribute it in the IC it's called eyesight which is the IC ITE which is intelligence community intelligence technology information technology enterprise and in the department we're moving toward a system called the joint information environment both of those are cloud based and will give us some security advantages along with with other technologies so in a way it's really the right balance to be struck but there is you know some things like bin Laden had to be compartmented intensely as you know others less so but we can't really move back from the the information sharing environment we just have to do it more responsibly and then your your you ended on the DoD CIA Nexus and that's an area where you and have been particularly effective at bringing the two agencies together the president in his West Point speech last week reiterated his call to transition more operations more emphasis from CIA to DoD on the counterterrorism direct action piece and I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit about how that transition is going he had talked about that previously and what the challenges are facing the Department of Defense as it takes on these missions these direct action missions instead in some cases have been done by the CIA well I don't want to go into much detail here let me make a couple points one our assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism Lisa Monaco will be making a speech in the very near future as a update on what has progressed since the president's speech at the National Defense University last May and so I don't want to steal her thunder and so I'll leave that to her but also suffice it to say we have been working since last May and actually before to implement the president's guidance DoD does precision counterterrorism operations and make sure we have an integrated counterterrorism capability across our IC and the department to meet the president's needs good and let me stick with ISR moving beyond not necessarily just unmanned but just ISR in general I think you made a compelling case for why intelligence is so important in an environment that's as diffuse in its threats as unpredictable probably in its threats and we can we can talk about Ukraine and others but there and but the pressure on ISR in that kind of environment is incredibly intense and you alluded to the flat budget the budget environment is not conducive to a great deal of increased investment in in many areas how well do you think ISR fares in that budget environment and are there areas of particular concern that you have in terms of how we make sure the entire intelligence enterprise is well resourced sure so as secretary Hagel made clear in the quadrennial defense review areas of key focus for him is intelligence surveillance reconnaissance cyber and special operations forces and so we have the priority we believe it requires that said as you know we have to be very focused in our investments and what we prioritize and so in ISR or in other capability areas undersea warfare long-range strike bomber etc we're focusing on a critical set of investments that are very important to our Asia rebalance and those have been protected in the department as well as the continuing capabilities will need for the counterterrorism problem and the instability across the greater Middle East and then the cyber challenges and so that's why I've grouped the capability areas that we have one of the challenges that we face in ISR but really across the department I would say is that now more than ever you have to have an intelligence portfolio approach to investment and so you know you may recall with the different national security challenges we faced in the 1990s one could think about a joint force that had capabilities that could stretch either right or left as necessary we've long since and thanks to your leadership we've long since abandoned that notion in the department and so we carefully adopt across the spectrum of challenges we've had a series of target investments in each area more of an outside-in approach high end and low end and then see what meets in the middle and that seems to be the best way to beat our national security challenges right now but with flat and declining budgets it's it remains a challenge well let me press you just slightly harder on that are there areas on the intelligence side that are particularly worrisome to you I'll give you a complete hypothetical but maybe this is one you know growing the required human in the right you know language skill sets with the right focus given again the diffusion of the threat are there areas that you can point to that are something we should be thinking about as a country as we move into further into the 21st century on the intelligence side sure so for some of these investments they depend on either technological advances or making sure significant resources are provided for some of our global coverage and ni access aerial denial capabilities for others such as strengthening our human capabilities it is really more about human capital it's not a big budget issue as it is a professionalization language training posture integration and number of things that take time to transform a force but you know it's more in the the the softer side of business but no less hard because you're changing institutions from one to another and then in cyber you know very very evolving field and developing the capabilities but they depend on other capabilities as well but then also they depend on public private partnerships and so without in each case there's a critical dependency that's different however in these capability areas and so those are the challenges I try to wrestle the ground with director clapper okay let me just ask one more question then I'll turn it over to the audience I know we have a lot of folks here who are ready to to test your test your knowledge base across the breadth of what the department is doing with the intelligence community is doing let me ask you a really obvious question about Ukraine which is you know how well prepared do you think the intelligence community was to see Russian intent in terms of the annexation of Crimea in particular and are you know are we now refocusing energy on Russia as a result of that action and subsequent activity by Russia so I guess I would answer that that you know Russia is a complex intelligence challenge and it's something that we have been working since the end of the Cold War in the intervening decades but it has been triggered really by there's been spikes because of build-ups to crises or actual crises so for example the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and then and then most recently Ukraine the invasion of Crimea was done very suddenly and so as director clapper and others have said the intelligence community did a pretty good job of providing overall warning to the magnitude of the problem but there's things we could always do better in certain areas and then you know we're very good at once confronted with a crisis in term in responding to it and getting better and better and so we've continued to improved as the crisis has shifted to you know what I described as unconventional warfare in eastern Ukraine and then you know the next part of the challenge which you alluded to in your resource the question is really the longer-term challenge posed by this significant change in Russian behavior and how we adapt the the community to it so we're in you know it's a work in progress but but it's definitely on leaders radar screens okay I've left large swaths of the world uncovered so I'm sure we'll have some questions on those and I see one all the way over here and please when you ask your question state your name and your affiliation hi thank you for being here today my name is Christine Vargas I'm from Avacyn but I also just returned from Egypt as a monitor for democracy international and my question having just been on the ground there is from a DIA defense standpoint how are you evolving policies for intelligent sharing with key international partners especially those with the challenging transitions on their hands well our our intelligence sharing is is usually done almost always about a bilateral basis and it is tailored to the specific requirements of that partner and we do it our individual agencies depending on the case may have relationships with counterparts in a given country but we do this on an integrated fashion approach what we call the director of national intelligence representatives so we funnel both our military intelligence as well as various forms by our national agencies through this one conduit to a national or to a international partner and that applies in Egypt's case as well as others we have one right here thank you about Kutelya McKay in Institute I'm from Georgia you mentioned as one of the challenges Russian revanchism and I kind of like this world because it largely describes the mood in Russia but revanchism is much wider then geographically linked to the Ukraine so my question is what is the scale your assessment what is the scale of the geographic scale of the Russian revanchism and where are the areas you anticipate next crisis linked to the Russian revanchism thank you well that's why I had that broader challenge of revanchism rather than specifically the Russia-Ukraine crisis on that slide and I think there are a number of challenges there is you know as we saw in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine most recently on the border and in Crimea there's a power projection challenge in what Russia calls it's near abroad and former Soviet Union but then there is also a panoply of other influence means and unconventional threats that range from energy coercion to cyber to unconventional warfare as we see and and those threats may be the greater longer-term challenge in a sense because they are highly asymmetric and you know they're not traditional military power and so our strategy with our allies and partners needs to take account of those as well but that's how I see the longer-term challenge thank you Mateo Faini Princeton University I'm a little puzzled by the administration's attempt to essentially set a new rule in terms of espionage saying that espionage conducted on other but that state-led espionage on corporate entities done to advantage other corporate entities of one's own country is essentially unfair I find this puzzling for a number of reasons few other countries recognize this rule it would be extremely hard to enforce not last because if you know that a country is conducting espionage against you have no interest in revealing that you know that kind of thing so I was wondering could you tell us what well first of all could you allay some of these concerns tells us what what the rationale is behind this attempt by the administration to set new rules and whether or not you think it has a reasonable chance of being successful thank you so I wouldn't care you know the president was very clear in presidential policy directive 28 on our signals intelligence architecture that the United States does not and will not engage in economic espionage and to to and to benefit American companies and international competition as you noted that practice is not universally followed by some other countries in the world I would defer to my economic colleagues on this but you know we think a a global system that will produce economic prosperity for all is is you know it would be most conducive to having open international competition without states stealing private secrets and handing them off to their own national companies if you follow that logic then companies bear additional costs that they would have to do to protect their systems that I think are not economically productive I'm drawing on some of my economics training in grad school but I don't think that's the kind of international system we or international countries should favor and I think that's true across the board so I want I don't think it's necessarily new but it is definitive on our policy on Eric Schmidt with the New York Times secretary vickers thank you a two-part question on Syria if you could explain to us a little bit more about the options the Pentagon administration is considering for DoD to assist arming the Syrian rebels and what operational and other challenges that poses the second part of the question is at least for insurgents along that border between Syria and Iraq it seems to be disappearing can you assess for us the ISIS threat in Western on bar right now and assess how Iraq has been able to deal with that threat given the support the US has provided to them so far okay thanks Eric so first on expanded assistance to the Syrian opposition I don't want to go further than the than the president did in his West Point speech we are developing options across the administration and consulting with Congress on this and I'll that's about as far as I can go right now on the threat posed by ISIS as you called it or as we call it ISIL Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant it is a challenge both in Syria and in Western Iraq which is why we look at this as increasingly as a regional problem this is the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq that most of them most of the leadership went to Syria after being significantly degraded in Iraq and there they have ambitions to pose threats broader in the region and and outside the region and so it is a very malevolent terrorist group and one that we're increasingly focused on they broke as you may know they broke away from al-Qaeda recently you know I guess al-Qaeda was just too nice for them and and then as far as your question on Iraq through our Office of Security Cooperation we continue to provide assistance to the Iraqis and across the instruments of the US government to meet the challenges in Iraq well this or rock is a is a you know the conditions that give rise to the to the challenge there you know have a lot to do with political challenges they've had as well as a significant terrorist threat and so there has to be political and economic solution as well as a counterterrorism solution to this problem and they they've made some gains in beating back isle and and bar and and containing its spread elsewhere but it's a significant challenge to the government. Hello David Scruggs renaissance strategic advisors question was you mentioned in the context of cyber working with the industry as a partner but industry really works across other areas with the intelligence community as well given all that's happened in the last three years how is departments working with industry gonna change going forward either in subtle or important ways. Well I think it's an imperative you know did it you know be very honest you know it's the current environment and developments hasn't helped that partnership there's some important legislation moving through the hill right now to try to set the conditions for that that we we support and it's just something you know as a country we're gonna have to solve because the threat isn't going away. Sir George Nicholson CT and special operations consultant for SOCOM. Kathleen you alluded to the relationship I think between the CIA and DOD and Mr. Bickers you probably remember at the OSS dinner John Brennan got up and said there was not a better relationship in the history that exists today but how much of that is personality driven because of your background because of Secretary Yates and Panetta and a few years ago the former DNI testified in front of the Senate committee about do we need to relook at title 10 and title 50 authorities do we need to look at something to codify those relationships better under something like a title 60. You know so the the fact that a number of us have worked together for a lot of years clearly helps but I forgot who the French politician who said the grave you know graveyards are full of indispensable men you know I think it we've put enough things in place that it will survive their current leadership it's a very good way to do business and and the challenges we face dictated. I don't think we need a you know we've evolved a lot since 2009 and this beginning of the administration and the title 10 title 50 title 60 debate we you know are very very integrated and go back and forth very easily and you know that part of the systems working really well. Peter Humphrey I'm an Intel analyst are you happy with the level of our dependents on foreign intelligence services or maybe possibly should we be moving most fraction of our budget to get our own independent capabilities at times or in fact are we going the other way just to save money. Well we have plenty of independent capabilities and you know periodically in some country or crisis you can find you are too dependent on foreign liaison reporting but I think we've learned from those experiences in the past and so we we leverage I mean we we depend on an international network of intelligence partners but we have robust you know lateral capabilities as well and you know one can always adjust the the system but globally I think it serves us quite well. I think many computer experts feel that the in an attack on a network the advantages with the attacker and the defenders are really in the weaker position. I was suggested here at CSIS yesterday by one speaker that in the case of say attacks for instance for espionage purposes on US networks that there be some type of response to the attacker besides just trying to beef up the defenses in given this situation. So if this these experts are right what is your advice to the administration basically when you have to tell them we can't really stop the attacks because the attacker has the advantage. What's the policy. But various suggestions have been made for instance code of conduct between countries about what they're going to allow to do or you know proactive counter attacks to attacks to disincentivize attacks. So what advice are you giving up the chain on this? Well I'll keep my advice up the chain private but let me let me try to answer your question. So one I'm not sure I agree with the premise that the offense has an enduring advantage in the cyber realm. I mean it's a very dynamic field and cybersecurity has evolved you know it's a big growth industry and it's evolved quite a bit. That said you know there are a lot of what one would describe as soft targets and so if you're looking to steal something among many things or attack something among many things that's a hard defensive problem and it's also as I mentioned earlier in response to you know cyber policy you know an economic strategy it's not you know it's not sound economics to have to invest so much in defenses. And then so then in terms of the appropriate response even if offense gets harder it still will be feasible and there still will be softer relatively softer targets to harder targets and so the instruments you can deploy against that policy is one code of conduct is this really in people's interest to carry out this kind of conflict you know again this is a new and evolving domain and so some of the policy discussions are in their early stages as well as potentially other methods law enforcement blocking and attack you know the tailored to the circumstances so I think in cyber as in anything else you need to deploy the full range of instruments and you know it's an evolving field. Okay last question right up front. Jane Furchin with exchange of media group my question is what's your solution about the cyber security issues between US and China and what's your response about the new Chinese report released on May 26 accusing US of hacking of China and hacking activities involve companies like Microsoft and Google thank you so much. Can you repeat the last part on Google and Microsoft? Yeah there is new report from China accusing US of hacking of China the hacking activities involve companies like Microsoft and Google thank you so much. So I'm not aware of a report about Microsoft and and in Google back to the question about cyber norms and cyber policy we have a cyber working group to work with the Chinese on establishing cyber code of conduct and others that you know it's an important initiative and we certainly hope it will continue. Okay Secretary Vickers you've been extremely generous with your time this morning we put you through the ringer and I appreciate you being as forthcoming as you are able to be obviously you have a position that is particularly difficult in terms of in terms of providing us unclassified information and we appreciate your willingness to come down here today and talk to us so please join me with the audience please join me in thanking you