 Oh gosh, we have so many people. Good morning and welcome. I'm Lisa Grundy. I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace. We were established by the US Congress in 1984 as a national nonpartisan public institution that's dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. It's an honor for the Institute to host this important discussion on the findings of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. We are so pleased to welcome Congressman Doug Lamborn, representative from Colorado, steadfast champion of our country's security, who serves as the chair of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the House Armed Services Committee and his co-chair of important military and foreign policy caucuses. Representative Lamborn is going to be making opening comments to help us frame this issue, talk about what we need to do to defend ourselves as a country, to defend our values, and to defend our way of life. The Institute is honored that the chair of the Congressional Commission, Madeline Creedon, and the vice chair of the Commission, Senator John Kyle, are here with us this morning to discuss the Commission's very important findings and recommendations with Wes Mitchell, who is one of the Institute's most distinguished senior advisors. As I think all of us know, the work of the Congressional Commission is absolutely crucial. China has embarked on comprehensive military modernization. This includes the breakneck expansion of its nuclear arsenal, becoming a second nuclear peer of the United States. At the same time, Russia retains a large and destabilizing nuclear arsenal. Russia has rejected its treaty obligations, its adopted escalatory nuclear strategies, and its relied on nuclear blackmail to wage a naked war of aggression in Europe against Ukraine. The threat that these two competitors and adversaries pose to the US, either acting alone or worse in concert with each other, is arguably more complex, more grave than any the US has faced since World War II. Today's discussion on strategic posture is of special significance to USIP. We've had the privilege of hosting a series of bipartisan national security reviews at the direction of Congress, including the Congressional Commission's 2009 predecessor, which was chaired by former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and James Schlesinger. I promise, West Mitchell, that I would hold up the study from your predecessor, Commission. In 2009, that commission, which was working in much more optimistic times, concluded, this is a direct quote, that the danger of an existential threat has dramatically decreased. This is 2009. This has permitted the United States to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons and substantially reduce our nuclear forces. The 2009 commission went on to conclude, the risks of war with China are low. The apparent risks of nuclear war are even lower. But the commission added a cautionary note. It warned, there is also profound uncertainty about China's strategic intentions as a power grows. The commission also cautioned that two days, decades after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States are certainly not enemies, but neither are they allies. These warnings were oppressive. All of us who work for peace today know that to achieve it, a superpower has to be ready for conflict. Its military forces have to be capable of deterring and defeating acts of aggressions by nuclear armed great powers. But all of us who work for peace also know that peace requires a sober readiness to engage in diplomacy and arms control and risk reduction activities when they promote strategic stability. Congressman Lamborn, we are so honored you're here. May we, with your permission, invite you to the floor. Well, good morning. Good morning. Thank you all for attending this important discussion today on our nation's strategic posture. And Lisa, thank you to you and your whole team for hosting us. It's a real honor to be here. It is also my privilege to represent Colorado's fifth congressional district. I work daily to advance the defense of our nation and preserve all of our personal liberties. My district has a unique place in the nation's strategic enterprise. It is home to the US Northern Command, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and US Space Command, three organizations that are charged with the strategic defense of our nation. As chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, my role is to ensure that our nation is prepared to deter, defend against, and respond to any attack. The Strategic Forces Subcommittee is charged with overseeing the US's nuclear missile defense, hypersonics, and military space programs. These functions all enable the US to lead in world events and defend against global threats. Congress forms commissions when it recognizes that it cannot reach enough of an agreement to solve a specific problem through the normal legislative process. As you are all aware, nuclear weapons policies tend to be one of those issues. The Congressional Commission on Strategic Posture, whose report has brought us together here today, has only been created twice, first in 2008 and again in 2022. While strategic deterrence is something Congress generally agrees we need, there is little political consensus about how to achieve it. However, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees agreed that strategic deterrence was important enough to have an independent and bipartisan group examine the problem and provide recommendations. The committees established the Commission through the Fiscal Year 22 National Defense Authorization Act, mandating this important work. The commissioners, all experts in strategic deterrence with unquestionable credentials, have a mandate to deliver a, quote, threat-informed, forward-looking, and non-bipartisan consensus, unquote. And their report accomplished this mission. It presents a sober analysis of the country's strategic disposition and makes clear-eyed findings and recommendations that are, for good reason, garnering a lot of attention. It signals the threats to our national security that have morphed into something that we are not fully prepared to defend against. With the report of this length and detail, it would be impossible to address all the threats and all of its findings in our short time here together this morning. But let me share with you a few main takeaways. The first is that we are now in a world where the United States, for the first time, faces two nuclear peers. Some consider this finding to be striking and novel, but I believe that it is long overdue. Both the 2018 and the 2022 national defense strategies did not address the Chinese strategic threat, even though many were sounding the alarm. Open-source satellite imagery detected growing Chinese ICBM fields, destructive anti-satellite testing, they started that in 2007, fractional orbital bombardment, and hypersonic weapons development. And of course, we must not lose sight of the Iranian and North Korean threats. The cessation of the maximum pressure campaign on Iran and the failed JCPOA negotiations have emboldened the Iranian regime to accelerate its enrichment program to destabilize the region. While we can hope for the best, we must tailor our strategic posture in a way that also deters Iran from embarking on a weaponization program. And meanwhile, North Korea has been expanding its nuclear forces to threaten our allies and the continental United States directly. Even more disconcerting is the recent meeting between Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin. They reportedly discussed the proliferation of advanced ballistic missile technology that would greatly increase the North Korean ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to distant targets. So the commission's recommendations require bipartisan support on the Hill and consistent support from the administration. And it should be deserving and should get garnered that. If a bipartisan group of 12 commissioners can arrive at these conclusions with a very high degree of detail, I hope that we in Congress and the administration can do the same. I agree with the report that Congress and the administration must take a unified case to the American people to gain their support. It is imperative that the American people understands what must be done to deter armed conflict and protect our way of life. I have been watching closely the threat scenario develop over my years in Congress. I'm in my ninth term, my 17th year in Congress. And now I have the opportunity to use my position as strategic forces chairman to actively address the threat through the NDAA, which we pass every year, and other standalone legislation. The top priority for the defense of the nation must be maintaining a modern, credible, and effective strategic deterrence. I am joined in this view by every secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the past several decades. However, this concern has not been universally adopted by all members of Congress. This report does not prioritize or recommend funding of any specific program. That's up to Congress. But nothing in this report is out of reach if we apply the necessary resources and funding and willpower. If maintaining the strategic deterrent is the top priority, then Congress should look to the recommendations made in the commission's report and prioritize them. The commission's most pressing finding and recommendation is that the current program of record is inadequate to meet the two nuclear peer environment. We must not only fully fund and execute the current modernization program of record, but also expand it to ensure that we can deter and counter the Russian and Chinese threats simultaneously. I, for one, doubt that the number of deployed warheads allowed under the new start, 1550, is adequate to meet the Russian and recently constituted Chinese threats. Also, it is critical that the Sentinel ground-based deterrent, the B-21, the Columbia class submarine and nuclear command and control programs that tie all those together, are given every opportunity to deliver on schedule. Congress must also invest in our nation's scientific and industrial base to ensure it is able to deliver these capabilities with no degradation in our current deterrent posture. In addition to addressing our strategic nuclear forces, the commission also accurately called for the urgent modification of our theater nuclear force posture as opposed to strategic nuclear forces. We cannot afford to be placed in a position where an adversary conducts a limited strike and our only option is surrender or massive retaliation. All or nothing may not be the best response. That is why I have been championing the highly survivable nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, also known as Slickham Inn, as an ideal solution and I fought to make it a program of record in the fiscal year 24 house passed in D.A.A. I welcome the commission's recommendation that the U.S. must field sufficient conventional forces to effectively deter and defeat simultaneous Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia. I agree that not having a robust conventional force only increases our reliance on nuclear weapons to deter our adversaries. So to that end, I've been working diligently in Congress to promote the development of both offensive and defensive hypersonic weapons capabilities to match those of Russia and China to deter coercive strikes by them on our critical infrastructure. Also, I have and will continue to champion strategic investment in the space domain which is now being fully contested. This will ensure that our space assets are survivable and can provide the communications, navigation, intelligence, and missile warning necessary for fighting future conflict. I believe also that extending new start in 2021 with no concessions sought from the Russians looks now like a missed opportunity. But in conclusion, I'd like to commend the commission on completing this important report. It delivers a hard hitting message that the U.S. must act today in order to be prepared for tomorrow's strategic threats. Our strategic deterrent is the foundation of our national security and for peace, which this institute is all about. So thank you for your important to this important topic. Well, let me start by echoing Lace and saying how much we appreciated having Congressman Landborn with us this morning. I think that was a strong and clear message and we appreciate his diligence and his leadership on what are obviously some pretty important issues. We have, as Lace said, two other very special guests with us this morning and it's a privilege for me to be able to welcome them and start off our conversation with them. My name is Wes Mitchell. I'm a senior advisor with the U.S. Institute of Peace, our Center for Russia and Europe and of particular interest to our center in this discussion, we have an ongoing effort to study strategic stability and present some recommendations on what, if anything can be done in the near term in the way of either nuclear diplomacy or engaging with our allies. So it's a timely report for that reason among the others that were given. But I wanna say how great it is to have both of you and I don't think our guests require a lengthy introduction. They both have, they're both well known for very distinguished careers in public service. Madeleine Creedon was chair of the Strategic Posture Commission. She previously served as principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and she also served as an assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs. Senator John Kyle, of course, vice chairman of the commission. He served with distinction as a U.S. senator from the great state of Arizona. He was Republican whip and led deliberations on strategic affairs, including the 2010 New START Treaty. Let me say at the top, if you haven't looked at the Strategic Posture Commission report, you should do so. You probably won't read the entire thing. It is not light reading. It is a very long document. I think it has 80, 81 recommendations, more than 130 kind of top line takeaways or findings. But it's necessary, I think, at least if you're interested in matters of international importance and certainly if you work at the U.S. Institute of Peace and you're interested in peace on our planet, I think you need to at least read the executive summary because the world that it describes is not the world that we're accustomed to. It's not the world of the peace dividend coming out of the end of the Cold War. It is a dangerous world. It's a world with two nuclear armed peer competitors. And I think most importantly, I said earlier in the green room, the report sort of grabs you by the lapels and it says, wake up. So whatever else you take from the document, I think absorbing the dangerousness of our predicament, the novelty of our predicament, the first time in our nation's history we've had two nuclear armed competitors, but also the messages, I see it, that we're late. We need to wake up, but that we're behind. I think comes across, there is a tone of urgency that is unmistakable. So I wanna talk a little bit about the commission and its findings. There's a lot of ground we could cover, but I'm gonna try to be selective and draw out some things that might be interesting to USIP, the people who work here, the people who are watching online who follow these very important issues. So I'm gonna start with a few questions here on the dais and then we'll turn to some questions from the audience. But Madeline, let me just start with you as the chair of the commission. I wonder if, just for the benefit of our audience here and for the general public, if you could tell us a few of the findings that you think are most important, that Americans most need to be aware of that came out of your undertaking. Well thanks, Wes, I appreciate that. And I would actually say a very good place to start is with the 2009 strategic posture commission report because that really sets the historic background and when you start with that report and then you come to our report, you get a very stark picture of how substantially things have changed. And that's what I would say is probably the most important takeaway from our report is that the world we thought we were gonna be in in 2008 and 2009 didn't happen. The rest of the world chose a different path and we are where we are. So we have to be very, very wide eyed about where we are. And the end result of that is, as you said, we are a little behind. We are in a world that we didn't plan for, we didn't want, we're not well prepared and we have to also look at our strategy. So if you think about where we are in this report, the big picture is our strategy has to change. We need a two-war strategy because of the threat. And second, we have to figure out how we can prepare, how we can, as a nation, put things in place so that future decision makers and our report is very forward-looking actually have decisions to make. And then the last piece is to enable all of these decisions and helping us be prepared is we have to really focus on the infrastructure, both at the National Nuclear Security Administration and at DOD so that we have the ability to do whatever is needed to allow future decision makers to be prepared. Senator Kyle, let me take it in a similar direction here and ask you, you served on Capitol Hill for a very long time and if the United States is gonna act on these recommendations, there's gonna be, there will have to be a clear sense of priorities. And you know, one of the things that comes across in the report is how upside down we really are. So I think it would surprise a lot of Americans to realize how long it's been since we recapitalized most of our strategic nuclear arsenal. We're at the bottom end of the modernization curve. That really comes across. The Russians, which Russia has a far smaller economy, a less powerful military in many ways, are at the opposite end of the modernization curve. The Chinese are sprinting to parody, basically. And we're still, if I understand correctly, we're still modernizing the triad, the program of record on a one to one basis. So let me ask it this way, this is not entirely a fair question, but if you were an appropriator and you looked at this report and you said, it's almost triage, what right now are the most important things we need to focus on to start closing the gap that is described in the report? First of all, it's a very fair question because we've already been asked that question many times by members of Congress who recognize the fact that believing that we had a peace dividend, a period of time within which we could just relax and not worry about spending money on our strategic deterrent, including our nuclear forces, we allowed them all to atrophy, to the point that not only our weapons, but the delivery systems for those weapons all have to be modernized at the same time. They're all wearing out at about the same time. And these are not weapons that you can just put a band-aid on and have them run for another 20 years. So the bill to modernize these forces comes due now, rather inconvenient, but that's the fact. So with the question of prioritization, I answered by going back to Representative Lamborn's comments a moment ago. As he pointed out, every recent Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs Chairman has said that the number one priority for the US military is our strategic deterrent, underlaid by the fundamental nuclear component of that deterrent. If that is the number one priority, that's where you start. Don't ask me to choose within that priority. Ask me to choose between everything in that priority and other things that would be nice to have, but don't rise to the same level of importance as protecting the United States and the rest of the world, frankly, from nuclear war. There is nothing more important than trying to deter nuclear conflict. So everything that we call for in this report needs to be funded. Now the good news is, well, it's kind of complicated. Let me just take a moment to explain. The existing program of record, what we have embarked upon to refurbish, to modernize our nuclear forces is a multi-year program. It's got at least another dozen years or so to run. And our report notes that it's absolutely critical that we finish this project. But this project was designed just after the 2009 report in about 2010 to reflect the world as we thought it existed then, which was Russia and the United States have agreed on what we think we need to deter each other and we've embodied that in the New START Treaty. That's the science of our force and we don't need to worry about China. Well, now we have China, which says, and by all indications, it is going to achieve its goal of having the same kind of triad with equal capability of Russia and the United States. So now all of a sudden, we've got two countries to worry about, not just one. And we're not saying that they would necessarily collude in an attack on the United States, but it should be evident from the behavior of several different countries in the world today that when there is conflict, other nations not involved in the first conflict may see opportunities to engage in their own activities that are in fact inimical to our interests at the same time. So the possibility of an opportunistic challenge of both Russia and China simultaneously cannot be ignored. So how do we both modernize our existing forces over the course of the next 10 or dozen years or so to reach the level that we thought they should be in 2010 and now account for the new additional challenge represented by China? Well, first thing is you do fund what you said you had to do in 2010 so that at least we finish our current program of record, which means that we refurbish our nuclear weapons, we develop new delivery systems for them, modernize our command and control, and reconstitute the entire nuclear enterprise, all of our laboratories and the scientists and so on that work in those labs and production facilities. All of that's a big deal, costs a lot of money, but ironically, it's only, well, I say it's only, it's about $75 billion a year average. It represents about 7.5% of the defense budget. I mean, this is, we can afford this. So we do that, but we also say in the report that's not sufficient to meet the challenge of tomorrow with the Chinese quickly achieving their goal of having parity with Russia and the United States. What else will it take? In our report, we talk about several different capabilities that we think we're going to need. We don't identify specific weapons systems. We don't pick winners and losers, as Madeline has said, but we do identify requirements that we're going to have to have. And as Madeline said, one of the key things is, we at least have to size our nuclear enterprise in such a way that we have the capability of producing more if we decide we need it and of producing different kinds of things than we have been producing in the past. And that also applies to our delivery systems. I mentioned the 7.5% of the defense budget. Two thirds of that is just in two programs, are missiles and submarines. So the delivery vehicles really constitute the bulk of the cost here. And we understand that in addition to those that we planned for, we may have to increase the numbers of B-21 bombers and submarines and missiles and cruise missiles and the like. Not just numbers, but composition, disposition and other ways of dealing with the problem. All of which is to say that we have the existing program of record to complete a new challenge that will cost more money. And all of this is the number one priority of the US military. Should be the number one priority of the administration and the Congress. So we fund that whatever it costs. And then we can set priorities below that. That's the answer to your question. Well, I appreciate your candor and you said the word, the bill. You're talking about expenditures and really what the report describes would be a massive overhaul. I mean, it's defense industrial base. It's shifting back to a two war standard. Madeleine, let me put it this way. What do you say to the person who's listening to this? And they say, look, I get it. We live in a dangerous world. We have a $30 trillion public debt. We just had a massive, we've had a couple of massive spending sprees lately. There are entitlement programs that are dear to a lot of voters, a lot of Americans that take precedent over defense spending. What would be the answer to the lay person who's concerned about undertaking what looks like it would amount to a fairly significant ratcheting up of our expenditures on the military? What's the, what would you say to that person? Well, to start, this is not, as I mentioned, this is a threat informed report. We have a situation now where if Russia and China continue on their trajectories, we have to do more to make sure that we are secure as a nation and that we have the ability to work with our allies and our partners. Our allies are one of our strongest assets. We have to also think about how we avoid nuclear war. I mean, that is the fundamental point of all this. And to avoid nuclear war, you have to avoid war to begin with. So with all of the other challenges that we have economically, I think fundamentally people do not want to engage in a shooting war with US personnel. I mean, we did that for the last 20 years and we don't wanna do that again. So how do we want to avoid war to begin with? And then work on the, because it's all about deterrence. And I know that's a hard concept to explain, but we wanna make sure we do the things that preserve our way of life, that allow us to still maintain a strong role in the world where we don't see all of our freedoms, I mean, taken away, it sounds a little hyperbolic, but we don't really want China to be the driver of policies and freedoms in the global common. So in the report, one of the things that I would say is we start off with a chapter on the threat. So it pretty much lays out, this is the situation, this is what's going on. And the second chapter is on the stakes. And that is all about why do we care about this? And it lays out, I think in pretty strong terms, we need to care about this. We need to care about our role. We need to care about protecting allies. We need to care about how we preserve our way of life, and it's all at risk. I wanna open for questions, but let me get in one more question of my own, Senator Kyle, you dealt with the negotiations for New START, you're very familiar with nuclear diplomacy. The job of the U.S. Institute of Peace is peace. And what we're talking about in the report is what I like to call peace with a capital peace, systemic peace, but avoid, mitigate, resolve conflict. It's clear in the report that you don't see a lot of space for nuclear diplomacy until we've started to get a handle on our own capabilities. The Russians have probably violated every nuclear treaty that they've entered into. The Chinese have, it seems like they've made clear. I think we're engaging them right now at the Assistant Secretary level, but seem to make it clear they're not very interested until they've closed the gap. Where, if at all, do you see space for diplomacy in addressing some of the concerns that are raised in the report? Divide that into two parts. First of all, first is risk reduction. And second would be larger arms control type treaties. Our report notes that the prospect for the latter, at least anytime soon, is very dim. And until, as you say, the Chinese get to the point where they think they have parity with everybody else, they're not interested in talking. And because of Ukraine, Putin doesn't seem much interested in talking either. However, there are still opportunities for risk reduction. And that's what you saw President Biden and the Chinese leader, Xi, attempting to do, to some degree, yesterday, at least having our military being able to talk to the Chinese military, at least being able to pick up the phone and say, hey, you've got an airplane that's flying too close to one of our civilian aircraft here, getting to move away some distance or that we're gonna potentially have a problem. Things like that, and then a lot deeper than just that incident kind of risk reduction. But there is an opportunity for that. And you never stop working on those kind of problems because there are always opportunities for accidents and misunderstandings in the world where you've got a lot of militaries potentially colliding and you just need to try to de-conflict everything that you can. The last point I'd like to make is kind of, to put an exclamation point on what Madeline said before, one of our recommendations, a very explicit recommendation in the report is that the president, cabinet officials, leaders in Congress all have to begin talking to the American people about this. It's been a long time since an American president has sat down with American people and said, let me tell you about what our interest in the world really is and why we need to deter potential opponents and what it takes and what it's going to cost. And some of the things we might have to give up as a result of doing this. Have you heard that speech recently? Not unless you're pretty old. And congressional leaders don't like to do it either because it's not a fun subject to talk about, but unless their constituents back the tough decisions that they're going to have to make, they're not going to be able to make those tough decisions. So our report says you have to engage the American people in this conversation. It'll be pretty new to them. They're not going to want to hear everything you have to say, but it's critical in a self-governing nation that the people who elect the leaders understand the most basic challenges. And if we're to stay out of war, we've got to be strong enough to deter our adversaries. That message has got to be driven home to the American people. Let's open the floor for questions. I think we've got a couple of microphones and let me remind everyone we're on the record and we're streaming online. Please identify yourself and please make it a question. Anyone? Alright. Thanks very much. Rusty Barber, USIP, and thanks. So this is incredibly fascinating and I love the way it's grounded very much in our domestic, current domestic situation. My question is you mentioned the importance of our partnerships, which is something, of course, a special capability we have that our adversaries don't have in depth. So given the way in which you've also painted concerns about what this will do to other domestic budgetary concerns and so forth and in fact that we're having to reintroduce this issue to much of the part of our population, what is the commensurate capability of our partners to be able to shoulder some of this strategic capability? So our allies and partners are extraordinarily important and I think this is also a message that has to be taken to people. I mean, we just need to discuss that allies are important. They're an important asset. They are not a burden, but all of us are stronger together. So to be stronger together, the allies also have to do things and obviously some of the allies do more than others. Some are bigger, some have smaller GDPs, but they can all do what they can do and one of the things I think we have to do too is we also have to be very focused on how we bring our allies along, how we bring our allies into our broader strategy, how we bring our allies into planning, how we do more than just say, please buy our equipment, more than foreign military sales, but really focus on what are those things we can do together, research and development together, research and development that leads to true systems, true deployable systems, figure out how to actually do co-manufacturing. There are lots and lots of hurdles to achieve this. Obviously, ITAR is one of them. AUKUS is a good example of where we are really partnering with two close allies, Australia and the UK, to do real constructive work, real cooperative work, really getting equipment out the door. But even to do that, there's legislation needed to be able to resolve some of the export control issues. I think we have a lot to do too, to articulate how we can utilize our allies, how we can incorporate them better, and how we can deal with hurdles, probably in all countries, that are in the way to this, to joint research and development and joint cooperation. Everybody together needs to do what they can do. We also I think have to look at being more reliant on our allies in some areas, and then having our allies accept the fact that the alliance at large is going to be dependent on different allies for different things. It is a new dynamic, but I think we have to do it. Additional questions? Jorgen? Hi, good morning. Thank you for this panel. Jorgen Andrews with USIP. When talking about deterrence, a huge part of that discussion is about the state of mind of the competitor, the enemy. And in authoritarian countries like Russia, like China, I think we just got confirmed that she is a dictator again yesterday. So, authoritarians are well known for creating echo chambers that don't feed them accurate information. Authoritarian governments often make decisions, not always based on fact or logic. How does your commission and its report account for the unpredictability of decision-making in authoritarian governments related to the deterrence question? You know, we're building a system. How do we know when we have deterred people who aren't always taking all the data into account? We had a lot of discussion about what would deter certain adversaries and it's not easy to know always. We call in the report for a lot of additional intelligence to help us understand that very issue. So that forms part of the recommendations in one of the sections of our report. But all of that doesn't really help a whole lot if you don't have the basic fundamental deterrent capability to begin with. And so you have to recognize, and I know this phrase peace through strength might have a political connotation to it, but I happen to think it pretty well encapsulates the idea that the best way to deter a potential aggressor is to be so strong that he's not tempted to mess with you and to put it in technical terms. So if we can rebuild our deterrent, our strategic deterrent capability to the point that neither Russia nor China nor Iran or North Korea for that matter believe that they could achieve the objectives that they want to achieve through military conflict. We can also focus on the very important question of what we want to hold at risk, that what do they value most as a part of that equation and thereby develop the deterrent that should work to keep the peace. In the back, Yasha. Thank you both. My name is Yashar Parsi. I work here at USIP. The former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown said about the US-Soviet arms race that when we build, the Soviets build. When we don't build, the Soviets still build. With this in mind, what is your assessment about what is driving China's expansion of its nuclear arsenal? Is it, as some analysts have suggested, a response to modifications to US strategic forces during the past couple of decades? Or is it, alternatively, a reflection of China's greater ambitions? Thank you. Well, that's, you know, that is a difficult question. But if you go back a number of years and start reading some of the various white papers that have come out of China, some of the papers from some of their military institutes, there clearly is a desire on the part of China to play a different role in the world. And to play a different role in the world, they have to have capabilities. So I think this is, you know, based on a lot of these documents. This is a goal that really has its basis in China's desire to be that independent, strong country clearly in their region, but also globally. And it's that new role of China being a power globally that I think is driving them to do what they're doing. I mean, they've said it over and over again that they want to shape the global commons, they want to shape global standards, that they want to drive in their image and replace us. So I think we have to take them at face value. And I think, you know, I personally think this is what's driving most of what they're doing. Yesterday, the Russians loaded a hypersonic projectile onto an ICBM and wonder if one of you could say a word about missile defense. Your report deals with it at length. Do we need an east coast missile defense, a BMD installation? Do we need, how do we deal with the cruise and cruise missile and hypersonic threat? Let me address that two ways. First of all, what is the threat? Historically, the threat had been from a ballistic missile which goes way up in the air and then comes down at a very rapid speed. We then saw the development of cruise missiles, which are slower but much lower, more like an aircraft, but are hard to detect and in some respects, hard to deal with. We also have missiles of different ranges so that some require more of a mid-range capability, others require a greater capability. You also have defenses that are point defenses, defending a particular area, others that have to defend a much larger area. Recently, the Chinese and Russians have developed these hypersonic weapons, which travel so rapidly and move so quickly one way or the other that they're very difficult to intercept. And especially if you get one of these orbital weapons, which can literally be put into orbit and come down at a moment's notice. Obviously, we don't have anything right now to try to stop that. So that's what the nature of the threat is. What have we done in the past to try to defend? North Korea represented a threat to us that we have deterred through a ground-based interceptor, a missile that some of which the numbers classified, but a number of which if a North Korean missile is heading our way, we launch a certain number of these missiles to intercept it. And we have a certain number of them. I think right now, 44. And they're located in Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and also at an Air Force Base in Alaska. If the North Koreans continue to build a lot more ballistic missiles, it may or may not continue to make sense for us to continue to try to defeat that with this ground-based missile that we currently have and are constantly improving. What may make more sense and what certainly would be required in the case of a much more robust kind of attack that could theoretically come from, not theoretically, that could come from China or Russia would be something that's based in space. You have to have the surveillance and tracking and queuing technology that space provides, which is a much larger area within which to operate. And we do have the capability now of satellites, both in low Earth orbit and higher orbits, to detect launches, to track them, to cue potential intercepts, and even potentially to have intercepts in space or from space. What our report in this regard says that for potential coercive attacks from China or Russia, we need to have a robust research, an RDT&E program, not just research, but development and testing program that could result in deployment of space assets to deal with this potential Chinese or Russian threat. By coercive attack, I mean an attack that's more limited than a bolt out of the blue everything, throw everything at us kind of attack, but rather one which launches a few missiles to destroy some critical infrastructure or critical military facilities and convey the message to us, we can do more of this if you don't back off, if you don't comply with our demands. And what the United States is thinking now is we need more than just either, OK, we give up or we have to launch everything we have at either Russia or China. There's got to be some middle ground in order to try to avoid the ultimate nuclear war. And this might be achieved through defenses that could be deployed either in space or combinations of space, sea, land, and space. All of the domains in other words could contribute to this through radars and other communications back and forth. This gets very complicated in terms of how all of these things work, but I just want you to know that what the report says is our ground-based system is OK against a minimal threat. And we can continue to use that and may grow it somewhat. But against a larger threat coming from Russia or China, which is much different than a North Korean threat, and to deal with these new hypersonic threats and even cruise missiles, we may need something much more robust. And that may mean that we have to put most of those assets in space, which is a better environment within which to try to deal with this defensively. We have a question from Leith Grande. And while we're, I just want to add one thing. So one of the things the report does is, in a more near term, is we heard a lot from the commander of US North Command about being able to protect in a near term critical infrastructure, certain bases, certain critical infrastructure. And that would look at deploying some of the systems that we have now. Think, Thad, Patriot, those sorts of things. And that is one of those much nearer terms than some of these longer-term research and development things. So I just wanted to throw that in. One of the things that's so striking when you read the report is the sense of urgency that you convey. It comes through. And I think many of us who were reading it that aren't specialists in the field asked ourselves, is America asleep? Who's asleep? Who's not taking this seriously? Why are the draughters of the report telling us this is so urgent? Because it implies that we're either underestimating the threat. We're not properly framing it. There's not a commitment to do something about it. Is America asleep? Let me take a crack in that matter. Can shoot me down if she disagrees. America was asleep. We thought we had a peace dividend. Cold war is over. We can relax. Well, that's not an irrational way of looking at things, except somebody needed to continue to mind the store. To understand that while we would like to do that, things rust. Things fall apart. We need to change out vacuum tubes and put in circuit boards. You know, we have to modernize the weapons that we've developed in order to deal with threats. And we didn't do that. We should have kept up a minimum level of maintenance of what we had, but we didn't. As a result, now all of these things, the life, the effective life of all of these things is expiring about the same time. And there are, as one of the experts says, no more workarounds. We can't continue to delay it by putting some more band-aids on it and hope it'll work for another couple of years. We've got to decommission the old systems and bring in the new. That's a difficult thing to do in a just-in-time way. In other words, just as this one totally fails, we bring the new one on board. It's really hard to calibrate that in such a way that we don't have a gap in deterrence. And that's the second point. We're not asleep right now, but we have some really big challenges that we haven't exactly figured out how to deal with. In order to meet the schedules that we've laid out here, we should have an industrial base that's much more robust than the one that we have. We should have better and a lot more technical and scientific people. We should have a lot more skilled tradespeople who could weld submarines and the like. And we need to have different systems than the system that now relies a lot on other people to make things for us and deliver them just in time, which may mean that we may need to do more of this manufacturing here in the United States. All of those things are problems that have cropped up over time. It's nobody's fault, but we've got to deal with them now. And they are really hard problems to deal with, all of which will jeopardize our ability to meet our schedules, which are very tight to begin with. So I just would add, I think one of the things that I want to make absolutely clear is everybody agree that right now, today, our nuclear deterrent is safe, secure, reliable, and effective. The key issue, and it's not that we've been asleep, it's that we were focused somewhere else. We were focused on terrorism. We were focused on the Middle East. We were focused on other things for quite a long time. So what happened was we had a big focus on maintaining. And so we did. And the Navy and the Air Force actually took heroic steps to life extend and maintain these delivery systems. And when the plan that really started to take shape in the post-Newstart era to replace all of these delivery systems and also do life extensions on all the warheads, those plans started. But what we have discovered, what we found out, is after years of not building new things, we kind of don't know how to do that anymore. And so a lot of the capabilities that had been in the past didn't exist anymore. So we have to relearn how to do all this. And this is one of the challenges in the infrastructure. We have to figure out, we have to learn how to do them. And not just how they were done empty years ago, but we have to do these in ways that they are more capable, that they are more able to be upgraded, that they are more flexible. And it's just hard as we transition from maintaining old to actually building new. And this is where the infrastructure comes in. Because a lot of the things in the infrastructure also went away. So we have to recreate a lot of these capabilities again. And it's just proving to be really hard. I mean, all of this is just hard. The buildings are hard. They're sort of one of a kind, first of a kind, high hazard buildings. It's been a long time since we've worked on a new nuclear weapon. It's been a long time since we built a new ICBM. The last brand new bomber was the B-2. It was a Cold War bomber. So it's just recapturing all of these capabilities after years of attention on other things and shifting from a maintenance perspective to actually we have to be in a situation. We have to be able to build new again. It's just, it's hard, and it will take a while. And as a result, we're running into lots of problems. They're late. They're over budget. I mean, I kind of expected, because we're relearning a lot of things again. I regret that we don't have more time for questions. This has been a fascinating conversation. And I was just saying a minute ago to Madeleine, to my knowledge, this is the first time, first public document, at least, that's really acknowledged and shined a light on the central strategic problem of two major peers and the dilemmas that that will create. So I think it sends a signal domestically, the wake of the alarm clock. Sends a signal to our adversaries, as well, that we're waking up and to our allies. So thank you for the important work you did for our country. Please join me in giving our speakers a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you.