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Leadership Voices: Admiral James Stavridis

[0:00] [background noises] Sara: [0:13] We'd like to continue our program so that we stay on schedule as you continue to enjoy your meal. [0:20] It's now my pleasure to introduce the gentleman who helped make today's program possible. He's a former classmate of our distinguished speaker, and he's now chairman of the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations, a commercial litigation attorney with Jennings, Strouss & Salmon. He has also taught various legal subjects in the political science department at ASU and at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, along with courses including constitutional and supreme court of law. [0:51] Please welcome Phoenix Chairman of Foreign Relations, Paul Johnson. [0:55] [applause] Paul Johnson: [1:09] Well, Sarah, thank you very much and thank, thanks to all of you for being here. Uh, I'd also like to thank our sponsors, uh, particularly the McCain Institute, the Pakis Foundation, and the O'Connor house, all of whom have helped make this lunch possible. [1:25] And I would also be remiss if I didn't thank, uh, the staff of the O'Connor House and the staff of the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations, particularly Connie [indecipherable 0:01:33] for all the work they've done to put this lunch together. [1:36] [applause] Paul: [1:43] It is my pleasure today to introduce my friend and Naval Academy classmate, Admiral James Stavridis. [1:49] James has worn the uniform of a naval officer for more than 40 years, from 1972 until his retirement last summer. He began at Annapolis as a fourth class midshipman and ended his career as a four-star admiral and supreme allied commander in Europe. And James is the only naval officer to ever hold that position. [2:12] James has come full circle in several aspects of his extraordinary career. He actually comes to us today as a graduate of McClintock High School in Tempe and a former, and a former reporter for the Tempe Daily News while he was in high school. This is particularly fitting, given that the O'Connor House now calls Tempe home. [2:37] James entered the Naval Academy and graduated with honors as an appointee of Arizona Congressman John J. Rhodes. After retiring from the Navy last summer, Jim was appointed dean of the prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. [2:55] This also represents a full circle journey as he graduated from Fletcher with his

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master's and PhD degrees in 1984. And on that occasion he won the Gullion Prize as the top student in his class. His professors apparently were not surprised and very pleased to have him back as dean. [3:15] The admiral has always been a prolific writer. As a young naval officer he began writing for the Navy's professional magazine called "Proceedings" published by the US Naval Institute. He has since written over 100 articles and op-ed pieces that have appeared in many different defense and foreign policy publications. [3:35] Upon retirement from the Navy, in another instance of coming full circle, Jim became the Chairman of the Board of the US Naval Institute whose magazines published his first articles. [3:47] In addition to the more than 100 articles he's written, he's just finished writing his sixth book and is working on a seventh. Along the way during his 40-year naval career he commanded a destroyer, a destroyer squadron, the USS Enterprise battle group, the US Southern Command, and the US European Command. [4:09] His destroyer won the Battenberg Cup as the best ship in the Atlantic Fleet while he was in command. As the destroyer squadron commander he won the Navy League's John Paul Jones Inspirational Leadership Award. [4:22] He has won awards or decorations from some 30 nations and international organizations in addition to his many US decorations. [4:30] Jim's wife Laura has written the definitive guide for Navy spouses and he and Laura have two lovely and accomplished daughters, the older of whom works for Google. Their younger daughter received her commission as a Navy nurse the same summer that Jim retired from the Navy, carrying on a tradition of service from Jim's father, who was a Marine Corps officer and from Laura's father, who was a naval aviator. [4:56] I can testify that Jim is also an accomplished tennis and squash player, having been on the short end of the score many times while facing him. He is fluent in French and Spanish. He was an early advocate of the use of social media by military leaders and is an expert on cyber-security. [5:16] He is widely acclaimed as one of the top foreign and defense policy intellectuals of his time, a trait you will see on display today. [5:24] The New York Times was not understating the case when it dubbed him "a renaissance admiral." Please join me in giving Admiral Stavridis a warm Arizona welcome. [5:35] [applause] Admiral James Stavridis: [5:40] Thanks, Paul. [clears throat] Thanks. [inaudible 0:05:46] . [5:49] Great. Wow, what a great, uh, a great turnout today. And as Paul said, I am, uh,

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very proud to have some roots here in Arizona. Uh, McClintock High School, go Chargers. Uh, wonderful to be back and I know I have a few, uh, classmates and fellow folks in the crowd. [6:07] Generally, after such, uh, a gracious and frankly over the top introduction people say, "You know Stavridis, if you're so, if you're so cool, um, why, why are you not a naval aviator?" And... [6:26] [laughter] Admiral Stavridis: [6:28] And the reason is because I had, uh, a very traumatic incident, uh, right here at Sky Harbor Airport when I was a boy, which would be great if I turned that on first. [6:40] Ooh, let's go back. There it is. [6:43] [laughter] Admiral Stavridis: [laughs] [6:44] All right. What I'm going to talk about today is global security. And with a little bit of a focus, a drill down on cyber-security. But before we talk about 21st century security I want to talk very quickly about 20th century security. I want to look back. [7:09] And I want to begin by looking back exactly 100 years. This is a place in France. It is the West Point, if you will, of France. It's a place called Saint-Cyr, the military academy. These are young cadets 100 years ago, 1914, and they know they're going to go into battle. [7:31] They swear that they will wear their white gloves into battle and they do. By the fall of 1914 they are in combat. By 1918, by the end of the First World War, everybody in this photograph is dead. Everybody. Not most of them, some of them, not many were grievously wounded. All of them were killed. [7:56] This kicks off a cycle of violence in the 20th century that lasted, I would say, until the fall of the Berlin Wall. In my thesis for us today, as we think about 20th century security, this is the battle of Stalingrad, 1.7 million people killed in a one year period. Almost 17,000 a day. [8:24] My thesis for us about 20th century security is it was based on building walls. Maginot Line, the Siegfried Plan. The Berlin Wall. The Iron Curtain. The Bamboo Curtain. The Demilitarized Zones. We built these walls to try and create security. What we discovered is that walls don't work. The Berlin Wall, of course, is iconic of that. [8:51] This realization for me that walls don't work occurred on this day, on 9/11. When I was in my office, indicated by the little red circle there, and I watched the airplane hit the Pentagon. I was a one star admiral at the time. [9:13] And I thought to myself over the next week and month and year that on that day I was in the safest building in the world, protected by the greatest military on Earth in the

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capital of the richest country the world has ever known. I was protected by walls in every sense. Was I safe? Evidently not. [9:41] So, what I'd like to do today is talk about this transition in global security from trying to hide behind walls and keep ourselves safe in that regard and what we can do to build bridges because I would argue bridges are what create security in the 21st century because walls will not solve the security threats we face. [10:07] So let me kind of do a navy thing and look around the horizon with you a little bit at some of the challenges. I'll start with one that's well-known, violent extremism. Sometimes we call it terrorism, a bit of a misnomer. Terrorism is really a tactic, violent extremists who practice terrorism. [10:29] This is a series of photographs from Afghanistan, where a Taliban's justice court has just rendered judgment, and this man executes a woman by shooting her eight times in the back of the head. [10:46] The voice-over, you can see this on the Internet, is "The court has found her guilty of adultery. She must be executed. You must execute her because you are her husband." [11:03] This is violent extremism. Now we think of this as being in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, a long way away. This is Norway, a very peaceful country of 5 million people, a strong ally of the United States. [11:22] Two and a half summers ago, this young man, upper right-hand photograph, named Anders Breivik, blew up the government building. It would be like blowing up the old executive office building in Washington. He killed eight people in the explosion, you see there, which is a terrible day. [11:42] Far worse, he then took high-powered weapons. He went to a small island off the coast of Oslo, and he shot, execution style, 68 young people, between the ages of 18 and 24. It would be roughly like Boy's State and Girl's State being shot up in a place like Arizona. Now, 77 people died in this violent extremist moment. Seventy-seven people, that's a terrible day for any nation. [12:15] Put it on a population-adjusted basis, Norway, five million people. Seventy-seven in Norway would be a day in the United States in which 5,000 young people were killed in a single day. It would be a double 9/11 almost event. [12:34] At his trial, upper left, Anders Breivik. You see the photograph there. He's apologizing. He is apologizing to the forces of right wing nationalism for not having killed more people on that day, so violent extremism is a deep concern. [12:55] So are nations like Iran that today live outside international norms. That's why they're sanctioned by the United Nations, as Iran pursues weapons of mass destruction. Now we're at a mildly hopeful moment with Iran. We're having a conversation. I'm skeptical, but we need to let that play out for a period of time.

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[13:19] But the point is, nations like Iran that exist outside the norms of international behavior should concern us, and I would say even more dangerous is North Korea. [13:32] I would say North Korea is the most dangerous country in the world. They have nuclear weapons. They have a young, untested, highly volatile leader, and their nation is parked right in the geopolitical pressure point of Asia, right on the South China Sea, East China Sea, where nations ringing it are in constant tension. [13:57] So, nations like Iran and North Korea are outside of the norms of diplomacy, and I don't think Dennis Rodman is going to solve it for us. [14:07] A third nation that is today operating outside of international norms is Syria, 140,000 people now killed. The number goes up every day. [14:20] We see 3 million people pushed outside the borders of Syria, 4 million internally displaced. This would be like a third of the population of the United States. It would be 100 million Americans pushed outside the country or in refugee camps. Think about that. [14:38] This situation gets worse, and worse, and worse, and it's because this regime, this Assad regime, is outside the norms. And lest you think this is just a problem contained in Syria, I'd point out these flags, Greece, Turkey, Syria itself, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt, all part of an extremely contentious intention filled region. [15:04] On the left, I put flags of big, great powers. That's India, Russia, United States and China, and I put a little number in there. That little number is the number of war ships from those countries that were in the Eastern Mediterranean on a randomly selected day, this past fall. [15:29] My point is, Syria is a regional challenge that has the potential to cause great tension and conflict between far larger states. And kind of in the middle, between the regional and the great powers on the left, is the proxy war Sunni, Shiite, Iran, Saudi Arabia, that is in progress as well. [15:54] Now, there are also revolutions sweeping this security world. This is Libya on the night that Gaddafi was deposed. This is Tripoli after the fall of Gaddafi. It's emblematic of this Arab spring that's moving all through the region. It's too soon to tell how that one's going to come out. [16:19] Or this one, which is today's headlines. This is Ukraine, where we have the potential for Russian action, very concerning to the United States. Yesterday, we saw Secretary Kerry issue a very stern warning against intervention in this situation to Russia. This is a very dangerous geopolitical situation unfolding in Europe. [16:48] And one just to the south of us, that we don't spend enough time thinking about in my view, is in Venezuela. This is Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of the opposition in Venezuela, being hauled away in a police van...Haven't seen him now for a week. [17:05] Arab World, Ukraine, Venezuela, three different continents, and yet in all of those cases, this is the response to oppression that you see, and it is creating security

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discontinuities around the world. [17:23] There's also narcotics moving through the world. Here is a US Navy capture of a drug runner. I wish I could tell you the US Navy vessel in this photograph is that really good looking high tech submarine. [17:41] Unfortunately, that's the drug runner boat. That submarine is built in the jungle of Colombia. It cost about a billion dollars. It was built in nine months. A diesel submarine capable of excellent communications, crew of four. When we caught it, it had 10 tons of cocaine on it. We caught it with that high-tech navy vessel on top. [18:09] [laughter] Admiral Stavridis: [18:11] This movement of narcotics is a significant danger not only because of the bad effect from the narcotics itself, this of course is cocaine, but also because the corruption and the movement of cash which supports these violent extremists. And of course, it's not just cocaine in the Americas, it's opium, much of it coming out of Afghanistan itself. There are migrants moving around the world, 200 million a year. [18:40] And, oh, by the way, the arctic is increasingly a zone of security challenge as the ice recedes, and you see various states beginning to move through these now ice prix summer zones. So, that's quite a stretch of things. And here on the United States, something Justice O'Connor has talked about frequently, we live in an era of often political gridlock. I see my, my good friend Senator Sam Nunn is coming in a few weeks to talk about this. I would put this on a list of security challenges that we face as well. [19:19] So, that's quite a litany. And you ought to say to yourself, "Wow, I could worry about a lot of those different things." But people ask me a lot when I was at NATO and the NATO commander, "What did you worry about the most? Was it Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, narcotics? What worried you the most? What kept you up at night?" Cyber kept me up at night and keeps me up at night. [19:52] I think, in cyber, we have the greatest mismatch between level of preparation and potential threat. In other words, all the other things I've talked about, North Korea, Iran, Syria, narcotics, violent extremism, we're focused on them. We're spending time. We have a, we have a, a strong defense budget. It's getting cut a little bit right now. We can talk about that, but we're focused on those. [20:21] On cyber, in my view, we are not paying sufficient attention. It is a bit of a ticking time bomb, in my view. And I want to preface some remarks on cyber by saying, like the photograph on the bottom, in the world of cyber, we're still on the beach at Kitty Hawk, we're at the beginning of understanding this medium, the way we were in aviation about 100 years ago. [20:48] So, a great deal is changing, its early days, but as I look ahead and I play the tape forward over the next few years and few decades, I think, we have some work to do in the cyber world. What are the challenges? Across the top, on the left, hacktivists, anarchists,

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people who just want to be disruptive, in the center. [21:14] Credit card theft, how many people in here were hacked as the result of the target credit card? Look around the room. I was, myself. Um, and on the far right, these are Chinese members of a Chinese state-sponsored cyber unit. Uh, now, I'm sure they're just performing defensive maneuvers there. [21:37] [laughter] Admiral Stavridis: [21:39] Also, in the cyber world, violent extremists are working. These are Hezbollah members hacking. So, in addition to anarchists, criminals, and states, we see violent extremists. [21:56] Essentially, everything I talked about in the first part of the presentation begins the flow in the cyber world. Why? Because it's inexpensive, it's accessible. You can tap into it anywhere. You can do great damage economically and logistically. It's very concerning. [22:18] And then we have our own problems that are generated from within our society, from people who, for a variety of reasons, some of them misguided idealists who display knowledge, who move illegally, data, we all know these characters Julie in a song, Bradley, now, Jennifer, uh, Manning, and, um, Eric Snowden, Edward Snowden. [22:50] So, in addition to all the other aspects of cyber...Again, because it's so accessible and people can get at the data, it's highly vulnerable. Let me give you some concrete examples from Europe where I was the NATO commander. These are flags of four very small nations. It's Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and on the far right, Georgia. All of them have undergone either a significant cyber disruption or what I would term a cyber attack in the last decade. [23:23] Georgia will go down as the first nation in history to be attacked kinetically while they were being attacked in the cyber world. This occurred when Russian forces invaded in 2008. [23:36] So, what do you think? What should we do about it? So far, I'd essentially admired the problem with you. Let's, let's take our remaining 10 minutes or so and talk about some ideas, first, in general insecurity and then specifically in this area of cyber. [24:00] Let me begin by saying that in all of these endeavors, we ought to do more of this. We ought to listen more. We spend an awful lot of time, all of us, in charging for a solution before, very often, we stop and listen. And that means reading, it means learning languages, it means engaging in things like all of you are doing today, coming and interacting and listening. It means taking some time before we leap forward. [24:38] This is an actual Belgian air defense system from about 100 years ago. It's a...I hasten to say, they no longer use this. [24:49] [laughter]

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Admiral Stavridis: [24:51] But it is a perfect metaphor for the fact that there are times when it pays to stop and listen a bit. Part of that is doing things like are represented in this image. This is the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. It's where we take our navy, marine, and, and our army and air force. We take officers from all the services and we just unplug them for about nine months and give them a chance to read, to build intellectual capital, to spend time in sessions like this today. [25:23] The other image in this photograph on the far left is a bridge. It's the Newport Bridge. And back to what I said earlier, in this 21st Century security, walls won't work. We have to work to build bridges. [25:44] One powerful bridge is the study of language. This is the Rosetta Stone on the left. And on the right is a photograph of the Canadian Corporeal in Afghanistan, teaching himself Pashto. The study of languages is important. And I think that particularly, here in the United States, as we, uh, continue to expand our cultural reach, we have more and more people coming from all around the world. Um, this is an advantage for the United States. And partly, how we can tap into this is encouraging the study of languages. To know another language is to know another life. [26:24] And we should all be doing a little more reading, I think. Here are some books that I've been reading lately. Uh, these are novels, fiction, and they are about a variety of different subjects. Upper left is "Orphan Master's Son" about North Korea, "Matterhorn" about the US experience in Vietnam. "The Circle" is about Google and the modern world. "Afghan Campaign" is about the first campaign in Afghanistan, not the current one, not the Soviet one, not the British one, Alexander the Great's campaign. [27:02] Reading fiction novels, learning languages, studying culture, listening, those are all part of building bridges in our unimportant component in our security. [27:14] We need also to fight from time to time. When we do need to use hard power, we are far better positioned to do so in an alliance structure, in a coalition structure. Ambassador Kurt Volker here was the US ambassador to NATO. That's the NATO conference table. I spent many, many, many hours around in explaining our missions in Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, piracy. [27:46] Twenty eight nations of NATO, 50 percent of the world's gross domestic product, three million, three million men and women under arms, 800 ocean-going ships, 24,000 combat aircraft, we are much stronger together. Are there frustrations? Do we push and pull at each other? Do we disagree? Absolutely. But I would much rather be in combat with allies alongside me than I would by myself. [28:17] And it's not just NATO, which is 28 nations. This is the flag of the coalition in Afghanistan, which today has 50 nations, 5-0 nations. To find a larger coalition of warriors operating together, you have to go back to the Peloponnesian Wars and look at the coalitions that Sparta and Athens constructed. This is bringing together allies and partners, again, not without challenge, not without difficulty, but much better to stand with others than to stand alone.

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[28:53] And lastly, in the, in the realm of things we should be doing and thinking about for our security, I would argue things like are represented here. This is a US Navy hospital ship. This is the comfort. And these ships are loaded not just with good navy sailors who drive them around but they're loaded with doctors, nurses, dentists, trainers, people who are capable of going into a disaster zone and putting hands-on and helping. [29:28] It's not just the government. Huge private sector component here, as well as allies, French, Dutch, who come and operate these ships with us. This helps create security. When a nation like Nicaragua sees a hospital ship show up, they begin to understand that we are a compassionate nation, we're a competent nation, we're responsive, we're responsible. All of those attributes project and they help, in that sense, to create security for us. [30:03] So, that's a bit of an overview about some broad tools for security. Now, I'll give you another version of Rodin's Thinker as I turn to cyber. Because I spent a fair amount of time at the beginning, talking about these challenges in cyber. So, what do we think about the cyber world? What should we be doing there? And it will not surprise you to know that I would say begin by listening and learning. [30:30] So often in these cyber conversations, and I go to a lot of conventions and discussions, people talk without really understanding, how does my email get from my iPhone 5S to Kurt Volker's antiquated Blackberry? [30:48] [laughter] Admiral Stavridis: [30:50] How does that happen? Well, you know, there...Are there tubes? Are there wires? Does it go to a satellite? Is it...How does that happen? Well, we can learn about that by reading. And actually, the book, "Tubes," on the screen is a layman's guide to the Internet. It's a powerful, easy-to-read book. [31:12] You can read some fiction about where the word "cyber" comes from. It comes...I'm Greek American, so I'm allowed to know this. It comes from the word "cybernetics," which means "guide" or "the mind" in Greek. You would know that if you'd read the novel, "Neuromancer," by William Gibson. [31:33] Bottom left is a book, I think, is powerful, simple by Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brooklyn's Institute back in Washington. I mentioned "The Circle" already, and a couple of others. "Ender's Game" came out recently, very bad movie but a, a very good depiction of what a cyber force might look like. [31:54] So, in cyber, as with security generally, start by listening, reading, building intellectual capital before deploying opinion. [32:03] We should also turn to those alliances. NATO is a terrific place to start thinking about how we can pull and share our knowledge in the cyber world. At the moment, we're kind of limping in NATO because of the Snowden Disclosures. There's a suspicion, notably, between the United States and Germany. We will overcome that. I'm sure Ambassador Volker would say the same, but we ought to use these existing relationships

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to look internationally at cyber and cyber security. [32:36] NATO is beginning to do that. There are other relationships in the Pacific that could also serve as a foundational piece for cyber collaboration. And here in the United States, within our own government, we could do a much better job of bringing our agencies, these are symbols of agencies and military services and departments. So, international inter-agency, because in my observation, we are still extremely stovepiped in the cyber world back in Washington. What a surprise. [33:11] And then, if I could, I'll give you the third leg of this. So, international, inter-agency, and private-public. I would guess many of the people here today are involved in some aspect of cyber. Probably many of you have direct responsibility for that, might even be some, uh, cyber officers, chief information officers, uh, leaders within corporate entities. These are some big corporations that are collaborating today, and we're beginning to scratch the surface of private-public collaboration. [33:46] And let's face it. This is hard. It's challenging. It gets into privacy issues, Uh, it's an extremely uncomfortable conversation, but at the end of the day, just as we had to figure out how are those airplanes going to fly around, where are there going to be airports, what language should controllers use, what radio frequencies, we, we have so many things we had to work out in the media of aviation. [34:14] We need to do this in this world as well, and that means private-public. We have an FAA, and we have a US air force. We need to make sure they are talking together in cyber as they are in other places. [34:31] Now, I mentioned Ender's Game earlier. I put up the logo here to say that a practical thing, I think, we should do in the United States is create a cyber force. In other words, we have an army, a navy, a marine corps, and an air force. If you look back 100 years ago, we had an army, a navy, and a marine corps. We didn't have an air force. We started flying airplanes in the air, the services fought with each other about it, but eventually, we realized we need an air force. [35:03] I would argue today 100 years on, in the cyber world, equally, we need experts who will do the cyber defense and ultimately, I think, we'll need to do cyber offense as well. Now is the time to think about what that force would look like, probably start very small. It will be a very different force than the other four that we think about today. But as this new medium unfolds in front of us, this is a reality that we must begin to think about. [35:37] I think we need to practice defending ourselves in the cyber world. This is a NATO cyber defense exercise conducted in Tallinn, Estonia. It's a very good, very basic set of exercises. And look at the mix of civilian and military. So, again, this world is very uninformed as to who will do what. Those are conversations that we need to have, but I assure you, the more we practice, the more we try and sort out how to balance in the face of attack, the better we'll be. [36:15] And we need to do more in this world. Now, you'll look at that and say, "Oh,

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Stavridis, old, retired admiral, those must be sea lanes of communication or fiber optic cables under the oceans, not so." This is the world according to Facebook. The brighter the white, the higher the concentration of Facebook users. It's a powerful example of the fact that this interconnected world brings us both vulnerability and opportunity. And how we use this in the cyber world, beginning with simply communicating is going to be critical. [37:01] I mean, we all know the six largest nations in the world, right? It's China, India, Facebook, the United States... [37:08] [laughter] Admiral Stavridis: [37:09] Twitter and Indonesia. And actually, once Facebook signs up the 500 million people that come with WhatsApp, that they just bought, Facebook will be going by India. It'll be the second largest nation in the world. [37:28] We're thinking about how we use that social networking in the cyber world. And then, a final practical thought, today, this terrific general, in the middle of that photograph, his name is Keith Alexander, he commands both the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command. [37:53] These are two very different organizations. The National Security Agency is an intelligence-gathering organization. I think we all are pretty well aware of that at this point. The US Cyber Command is the very beginnings of a military command, not a separate service but a, a joint command that would deal with cyber issues. [38:16] Today, one person commands both of them. I think that's a mistake. And I've had this conversation with a lot of people. The National Security Agency, my view, should be commanded, led by a civilian for a variety of, I think, fairly obvious reasons. I think that it is a, under the law, a, what's called a Title 50 Organization, meaning it has a purpose to collect intelligence. [38:45] Separately, I think, a general or an admiral should command the US Cyber Command, because that's a military organization. Those two, in my view, should be separate. They should talk all the time. They should work together. They should collaborate, but they ought to be commanded separately because they're very different. [39:05] What we have today would be roughly like having the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration, and the US Air Force commanded by the same person. It doesn't make sense. It would be roughly like having the director of the CIA and the secretary of defense be the same person. Not a good idea, my view. [39:27] So, that's a practical thought along with the creation of the cyber force, along with collaboration, internationally, inter-agency, private public. We should get after this. We should do it in humility, recognizing we are still on the beach at Kitty Hawk. [39:44] And the endless debate in this area over the next few years will be these two re-stats between how much government control there should be and how much we should

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just let the free market drive the cyber world and how much we should demand total privacy or how much transparency should we give over. Where will we put that re-stat in both of these instances? [40:15] Too many people today in the debate act as though it's an on and off switch that either we're going to give everything away in our privacy or we're simply going to lock everything down. And it's re-stat, you can dial it in. [40:34] It's, it's really what Justice O'Connor has talked about so often. It's about dialogue between leaders who are willing to, together, put their hands on the re-stat in harmony and begin to discuss in a mature away, having listened, having built intellectual capital, having come together to create a vision of the future in the cyber world and in the security world. [41:00] So, I'll close with a picture of our deeply-honored guest, Justice O'Connor, who I think embodies the kind of leader we need today, who can help us put our hands together on the re-stat and dial it in cyber, who can find compromises. All strategy, in the end, is choices. And choices are made best together in collaboration. [41:25] So, final image, Wikipedia, which I presume most folks in the audience use from time to time. Of course, I'm a dean now at The Fletcher School, a very academic institution. I would be horrified if one of my students put a footnote from Wikipedia in there. [41:44] [laughter] Admiral Stavridis: [41:45] But I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia as a, in my capacity as a late person. And I'll tell you why. Um, Wikipedia, of course, is the greatest body of knowledge ever assembled. And it exists not because 12 really smart people are in a room somewhere, typing up all those articles. Wikipedia exists because everyday, hundreds of thousands of people input knowledge into it, through the cyber world, everyday. And everyday, millions of people use that knowledge. [42:20] It's a perfect metaphor for the fact that no one of us is as smart as all of us thinking together. No one person, no one university, no one corporation, no one nation, no one alliance, no one of us is as smart as all of us thinking together. [42:40] I'll with the vision statement from Wikipedia, which is quite simple like all good vision statements. Their vision is a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. [42:59] My thesis for us is that by collaborating international, inter-agency, private-public, by collaborating, we can create the sum of all security in the 21st Century. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thanks a lot. Thanks. [inaudible 0:43:16] [43:16] [applause] Admiral Stavridis: [43:21] Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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[43:24] [applause] Admiral Stavridis: [43:28] Thank you, thank you. That's very kind. Thank you. That's, that's very kind. Thank you. [43:33] [applause] Admiral Stavridis: [43:36] Thank you. [43:37] [applause] Sara: [43:38] Think so, let's see. Please. Thank you, Admiral, for that remarkable and enlightening presentation. [43:50] I'm now privileged to introduce another esteemed guest that we have with us today. He traveled with, to, from Washington, D.C. to service our Q&A moderator for the next portion of the program. His career is nothing short of extraordinary, and I am going to just simply touch upon a few highlights that includes serving as forming US ambassador to NATO, a senior fellow of the center on transatlantic regulations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. [44:24] He was a career member of the US Senior Foreign Service with over 23 years of experience working on European, political and security issues under five presidential administrations, with a BA from Temple University and an MA from the International Relations, uh, Elliot School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. He has studied in Sweden and France and speaks Hungarian, Swedish, and French. [44:51] He's a senior adviser to the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and now serves as the executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a part of Arizona State University. [45:04] Would you please join me in welcoming Ambassador Kurt Volker to the stage. Thank you. [45:08] [applause] Ambassador Kurt Volker: [45:14] Thank you so much. Uh, thank you very much. It's an honor for me to be here, representing the McCain Institute and with such wonderful partners as the O'Connor House and the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations, uh, and the other sponsors and people here this, uh, today. [45:32] It is a really distinguished audience as I look out and I see some of the new friends I've made in Arizona. Um, I have been given, uh, the most difficult task of the day, I would argue, uh, because I have been parachuted into the O'Connor House in order to introduce Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Uh, this is a person, obviously, who needs no introduction, whatsoever. [45:58] Uh, I was looking a little bit of things that may have been said already, said better by other people but maybe worth remembering and of course, her role is the first woman

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justice of the supreme court but also, and perhaps more significantly, her nearly 25 years of service on that court. So, the remarkable issues that she participated in as a justice. [46:23] And she continues to give and give to our country today. And in fact, on the way to Arizona, I was reading Bob Gates' latest book, and he talks in there about the Iraq study group. And there again is Justice O'Connor serving on the Iraq study group. [46:39] In Bob Gates' own words, "Although, she may have had the least direct personal experience with Iraq and defense issues, the person on that commission who ask the most incisive questions and who understood the flaws in logic that may have been presented in order to come up with the best recommendations for that commission." [46:57] So, it is a real pleasure and honor for me to be here with Justice O'Connor and with Admiral Stavridis. As I was listening to Admiral Stavridis speak, I was thinking, "This gentleman is truly a real national asset." But now, we're also joined a real national treasure. Thank you. [47:14] [applause] Ambassador Volker: [47:30] Before we begin with question and answer, uh, I wanted to make one announcement. Uh, as I was sitting here at lunch, uh, I got a text message from Mrs. Cindy McCain. Uh, she wishes that she could be here and, of course, sends here greetings. But she was texting me because she was so excited that something that she has dedicated the last year, a year and a half, two, which is fighting human trafficking in Arizona, has made a substantial step forward. [47:55] Uh, she co-chaired the governor's, uh, commission on human trafficking along with, uh, Gil Orrantia, the head of the DHS office here in Arizona. They put together a number of specific recommendations on how to protect minors and women from sex trafficking and other forms of trafficking in Arizona. [48:15] And today, the legislature just passed a legislation that came out of that commission unanimously, 58 to 0. [48:21] [applause] Ambassador Volker: [48:30] Oh, with your permission, uh, we'll turn to some question and answer here, and I think that, uh, uh, I speak for all of us, uh, with just the degree in which I was impressed with the sweep and the specificity and the clarity of analysis and the forward-looking nature of Admiral Stavridis' presentation. [48:50] And, uh, I will, if I, uh, could take the liberty, pose a first question but I look forward to the questions of the audience. There are cards, uh, on the tables and feel free to fill them out and pass them forward. Uh, but the first question, Admiral, that I wanted to put to you, uh, is getting to that issue that you put in one of your final slides, uh, which is, we know we live in this complex world, very difficult threats and challenges. [49:21] We need our government to be smart about it. We need our government to be engaged on that terrain. And yet, at the same time, the more we give to government as a

p.15

power to challenge or, or to take on those threats, how much are we giving up in our own freedom, our own transparency, and where do you draw that line, and how do we even think about drawing that line? [49:45] So, let me turn that over to you, and we'll continue the conversation. Admiral Stavridis: [49:47] Thank you. I think that, as I tried to indicate in those last slides talking about, uh, the cyber world that it's a fallacy when we look at this as though it's an on and off switch that somehow, if we surrender our rights to the government, um, that we are, um, giving up everything or that, um, our government has no role to apply. [50:16] Neither of those is true in, in my view. I think that, particularly in security and defense, it's, it's a collective world out there, as I try to indicate. And I think, the government has an extremely legitimate view. Ronald Reagan used to say the only two functions of government are to defend the borders and deliver the mail. [50:36] Um, I think that probably overstates it a bit and I think his tongue was firmly in his cheek, but it does tell us that even Ronald Reagan would say the government has a pretty strong role to play in our security. [50:49] So, we have a complex process in Washington. The justice has, has written and talked about it and observed it so deeply. I think, at the moment, my concern is that the wheels are kind of grinding against each other without a sense of collegiality, without a sense of compromise, without a sense of balance. Um, we have, in many ways, an angry government. And I don't think that serves us well. So, that's a philosophical piece. Thank you, Kurt. Ambassador Volker: [51:20] Yeah. Admiral Stavridis: [51:21] In terms of practical things, I believe that the use of, uh, bipartisan commissions can be very, very effective. You mentioned, earlier, one that the Justice served on. Um, I look at, um, various commissions, recently, that have looked at big, national challenges, like post-9/11. [51:41] Um, the, uh, uh, Simpson-Bowles, that looked very closely at how to balance the national debt. I think that using bipartisan commissions, when their results are taken seriously and acted upon, is a, is a powerful, powerful tool in the quiver, in this regard. [52:00] And then, finally, stepping, if you will, down from the leadership queue, I think it's up to all of us to demand from our leaders, through the ballot box and through our own actions, through our own op-ed writing, through our participation, to demand that our leaders come together and find common sense solutions. Poll after poll shows that the nation, broadly, is a centrist nation, and I think that it's up to all of us to act on that. I'll pause with that. Ambassador Volker: [52:38] Thanks. Another issue I wanted to bring up. It came out of the beginning of your presentation. You did a great [indecipherable 0:52:45] of all the crises and challenges we see in the world now with Syria, Ukraine, and I think a question

p.16

that a lot of Americans would be tempted to ask these days after 10 years of war in Afghanistan, after Iraq, with our financial difficulties, our deficit, how much of this is our problem? Why should we really worry about this? Admiral Stavridis: [53:07] There is enormous international fatigue in the country, and I think particularly there's great Middle East fatigue. I think the events in Iraq and Afghanistan are controversial to say the least, and there is a sense that we've overextended, we've overreached a bit. There may be some truth in that. [53:30] On the other hand, I would be deeply concerned about a movement in the country toward isolationism, toward stepping away. We've tried that before. We tried it in the 20th century when we walked away after the First World War. It led to the Great Depression. It was a global disaster and forces of fascism rose up on both sides of our oceans, and eventually those problems came to us in enormous ways, the form of the First World War and the Cold War. [54:00] My belief is that by being appropriately engaged in the world we can forestall that kind of, uh, event rising up. So the question becomes, "OK, got it, but how much?" And I think I would respond by saying, um, we have a, a particular role but not the role in the world, which means working through alliances, working through partners, working with international organizations. [54:31] Um, there's a lot of skepticism about international organizations today but I think many of them are coming out of periods of, uh, internal disorganization and, uh, some level of corruption and emerging in a better way. [54:48] So in addition to our partners in international organizations, the third thing I'd mention is business. Our greatest strength in the United States is our economy. Often people say to me, and I'm grateful when they do, "Admiral, thanks for your service." I, I appreciate that. [55:05] I look around at businesspeople who are out every day creating jobs, making this economy work, delivering our life and our lifestyles. I say, "Thank you for your service." And they have a role in this international world, as well. [55:22] In the end, our markets are not only internal but they are across the sea and to the north and south of us. And the more our businesses can be incentivized to participate I think the less the burden will fall on government to do that. [55:36] And again, it's a re-stat you want to dial in but there is several ideas for engagement in the world that I think are important. Ambassador Volker: [55:44] Great. I'm going to ask one... Admiral Stavridis: [55:46] I think the Justice. Ambassador Volker: [55:47] Please, Justice. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: [55:48] Hold on. I think that your contributions today

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have been superb. Admiral Stavridis: [55:53] Thank you. Justice O'Connor: [55:54] And I do want to reinforce your notion that we all have to stay engaged and everyone in this room, all of us, our families, our friends, have to stay involved, express our views, and participate as citizens. I think that's what makes it work. [56:12] And we just have to not forget that and keep it up. Admiral Stavridis: [56:16] Thank you, ma'am. Ambassador Volker: [56:17] Absolutely. Absolutely. Good. I'm good. [56:19] I'm going to ask one more question and then turn to some from the audience here. Admiral Stavridis: [56:23] Sure. Ambassador Volker: [56:23] But, um, a lot of your presentation, again, focused on the threats that we face as a country. Admiral Stavridis: [56:30] Mm-hmm. Ambassador Volker: [56:31] And our country's role in addressing them. And I want to turn that then from a military at a cyber-command, cyber-security perspective to the civilian side. How safe are we in our civilian world? Our health care system, our water system, our power grid? Um, the cyber activities that we do every day. [56:52] Where do we stand on that? What are our responsibilities? What, what should, what should the future look like? Admiral Stavridis: [56:58] Yeah, unfortunately we're quite vulnerable and, uh, as I look at...Simple example, uh, which I mentioned earlier, the magnetic swipe cards that we use every day, our credit cards, they're a disaster from a security perspective. We have to find new mechanisms. [57:14] Um, I personally think they need to be biometric because our, our deep...Biometric. Biology metrics. So Justice, it would be, uh, your, your retina in your eye is you, unique. Sandra Day O'Connor has the only retina like you have. Your fingerprints, your DNA, thumbprint, exactly. [57:37] I think that we need to take advantage of advances in biology and merge that into the cyber world to protect our personal accounts, our access to our automobiles, our homes, et cetera. [57:48] In terms of our broad infrastructure, unfortunately, we are also extremely vulnerable. Everything from satellites which can be attacked through ground stations to our air control grid to our electrical power grid. All of these are extremely vulnerable. [58:04] A number of, of striking books about that. The one that I would recommend I put

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up on the screen is called, um, "Cyber-Security: What Everyone Needs to Know," by Peter Singer. [58:15] Um, so part of, as the justice says, being engaged means being informed and learning about these vulnerabilities and demanding accountability because, again, as I hope to convey today we have not done the diligence to be prepared for this. Ambassador Volker: [58:30] Mm-hmm. And whose responsibility is it? Is it the congress? Is it business? Justice O'Connor: [58:34] Ours. Ours. Ambassador Volker: [58:37] Citizens. Admiral Stavridis: [58:38] Every single one of us. Justice O'Connor: [58:39] Absolutely. Everyone in this room. Here you are with an intelligent, marvelous group of citizens. We all should pay attention and start reading a little more. What do you think? Admiral Stavridis: [58:50] I'm, I'm with you, Justice. [58:52] [applause] Admiral Stavridis: [58:59] And I think to, to your point, Kurt, it, it's a combination of, of this and it's again something the justice talks about all the time, which is collaboration. And when we, we try and simply say, "The gov...It's the government's job," or, "It's the military's job," or, "It's business' job." Wrong. It's everybody's job. In that...It's our job. I, I think that's right. Ambassador Volker: [59:20] Now here's a question from the audience and I'm going to tie it to what you were just saying as well, too, because when I asked you about internationalism, both you and Justice staunchly defended our responsibility as citizens to try to shape the environment we're living in, not wait for it to get bad. [59:37] Uh, but here's a question. How does our ballooning debt impact, and I should say deficit and debt, impact our national security? In other words, how much can we do? Where are the limits? Admiral Stavridis: [59:49] Yeah. Um, Admiral Mike Mullen, uh, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been on record as saying the number one threat to our national security is our debt. Um, there's some validity to that. Justice O'Connor: [60:03] Or the debt? Admiral Stavridis: [60:04] He, he means, he means both debt and deficit so thank you for clarifying both. Um, I think, Kurt, that we've got some positives going for us. One is the revolution in shale, which is going to reenergize our economy. Second is, uh, we have a strong network of allies and friends around the world. If we look at potential opponents

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they don't enjoy that. [60:31] Um, thirdly the globalization of the economy tends to favor, uh, US innovation and our free markets. So I'm bullish on the United States and our economy. I'll give you a, a fourth strong advantage we have is our education, our system, our higher educational system. [60:52] We've got work to do, clearly, in our elementary schools and our high schools but our universities and our graduate schools are the envy of the world. And they bring citizens here from other parts. [61:03] And the fifth thing I would say, um, is that people from around the world still desperately want to come to America. Now that puts burdens and challenge and we have to work through this immigration idea for the nation but the fact that people want to come here and bring their energy and their creativity is nothing but positive for the United States over the long throw. [61:26] So broadly I'm optimistic, bringing it back to debt and deficit, that we will be able to indeed, using our free markets, grow our way past those challenges. [61:37] And let me add one other thought, which is that, again, things are not an on and off switch, and we're not going to solve the problem by cutting defense. We're not going to solve the problem by raising taxes. We're not going to solve the problem by cutting entitlements. [61:54] We probably need to do some combination of those things, and if we do it soon enough over the 10, 20, and 30 year period, we can grow our way out of this. And this was essentially what the Simpson-Bowles Bipartisan Commission came to that conclusion, and I think it's a pretty good one. Ambassador Volker: [62:15] You know, listening to you I'm remembering as well, too, a time during the Cold War. And if you think about it, the United States is still in a much more powerful and secure position today, economically and politically and militarily, than of most of the time during the Cold War, and I think we have to remember that. Admiral Stavridis: [62:33] No question. Ambassador Volker: [62:34] I have a question here from a student at El Rancho Solano Preparatory School. Admiral Stavridis: [62:39] Wow. Ambassador Volker: [62:40] It's about bitcoins. Admiral Stavridis: [62:43] OK. Ambassador Volker: [62:44] So what is your opinion on the use of bitcoins and the criminal activity that goes along with it now, and the criminality on the web? And then maybe expand on that, vulnerabilities to, you know, the dark forces of globalization.

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Admiral Stavridis: [63:00] Well, I'm sure that, um, 300 years ago when the idea of paper currency began to emerge there was enormous reluctance to accept it in great fear of it and a sense that it could be counterfeited and corrupted and would lead people to be able to move illegally assets around, yet we've come to an accommodation with paper currency. Now we've moved into the next level of currency. [63:32] So I think bitcoin is kind of like that image I showed. It's on the beach at Kitty Hawk. We're at the beginning. My guess is something like that will emerge over time and be an effective medium of exchange. Today it has all kinds of problems. It's essentially become a speculative mechanism as opposed as simply a way to move assets back and forth, and as our, our young questioner indicates in his, or her, very good question, it's also become a way for very anonymous transfers of money, which can be facilitating of criminal activity. [64:08] So, lots of work to do. We're at the beginning, but over the long term, a decade or so, I think there's probably very real value in a mechanism like bitcoin. At the moment, I'm not rushing to get any bitcoins. [64:22] [laughter] Ambassador Volker: [64:24] Sounds wise. Um, I think with the two of us on stage we're becoming a magnet for questions about NATO. Admiral Stavridis: [64:31] Fine. Ambassador Volker: [64:32] And I've got three of them here. Admiral Stavridis: [64:33] Fire away. Ambassador Volker: [64:34] Um, I'm going to see if I can put them together in a sensible way, but I, I think the way I would start this discussion about NATO is, what does NATO do now? Admiral Stavridis: [64:46] Sure. Ambassador Volker: [64:47] Which is, after Afghanistan, with Putin messing around in Ukraine, occupying part of Georgia, clamping down on Democracy, reinvesting in his armed forces. With the Middle East, probably the biggest arc of crisis we've seen in our lifetimes, and with these dark forces of globalization, those are your challenges. But we're cutting defense budgets, we're cutting our own defense budget, and in this complex world, what do you actually do about it? Admiral Stavridis: [65:16] Well let's, let's back up on NATO. Um, when the Cold War ended, the almost universal reaction was, OK, now we can get rid of NATO. We don't need NATO anymore because there's no Warsaw Pact, there's no Soviet Union, there's no threat of invasion in Europe. [65:34] Well, what we discovered, as I talked about today, is that the world's complex, unpredictable, and dangerous. So, over the 20 years or so since the end of the Cold War,

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we've seen NATO engaged in Afghanistan, Syria, the Balkans, Libya, piracy, cyber, counter-narcotics, humanitarian resistance, humanitarian, uh, operations after disasters, natural disasters. [66:03] NATO has found a lot to do and I think has done a lot of good work in the world. As we come out of Afghanistan...And, and let me be clear there. I would predict that we, the NATO alliance, will continue mission in Afghanistan. Much smaller, probably about 15,000, so that'll continue to be a significant mission. [66:26] We have mission today on the edge of Syria. We're seeing migrants come across the Mediterranean. We're concerned about the Arctic and the high North. We're looking at events in Ukraine, you mentioned Georgia. I think NATO has a continuing role to play in the world. I don't think that NATO is a global policeman, but I think NATO is an actor in a very globalized world. The idea that we can just hide behind a wall and wait for threat to come to us I think doesn't work in the 21st century. [66:59] So I'd continue to say, better for the United States to be in NATO than to see it simply drift away. We'll never have a better pool of partners who share our fundamental values more than the Europeans. Ambassador Volker: [67:11] That's going to mean leadership, that's going to mean political will, that's going to mean money, that's going to mean troops. Admiral Stavridis: [67:18] Yep. The flip question that I get sometimes...I'll just ask myself a question, that's always entertaining, is, OK, Stavridis, you were over there in Europe, in command of US force in Europe. Why the heck do we still have forces in Europe anymore? Aren't the Europeans rich enough to defend themselves? Why are they there? [67:39] And I'll give you a couple quick answers to that. One is, it's NATO itself. It's this shared commitment across the ocean, and we don't think about it, but there are, uh, several thousand Europeans in the United States as part of NATO commands, in places like Norfolk, Virginia. Secondly, that transatlantic flow of goods is $4 trillion. It's our largest trading relationship. Thirdly, those NATO bases are not the bastions of the Cold War. They're the forward operating stations of the 21st century. They enable us logistically to get to the Lavant, to get to the Near Middle East, to get to the Persian Gulf, and to get to Central Asia. [68:23] And then as I alluded to earlier, Kurt you know this better than anybody, values. Where, where have all of our values come from? What do we really cherish in this country? Liberty, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gender equality, racial equality. Where, where did that all come from? As you all know, it came from Europe. It came from the Enlightenment in the late 1700s. [68:51] We are products of this European world of ideas, and now they are part of ours, and nowhere else in the world will we find this shared affinity for the values that make both Europe and the United States valued partners for each other. I think for all those reasons it makes sense for us to continue this NATO and European relationship.

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Ambassador Volker: [69:14] Admiral, I think you just gave the best answer to the question we talked about earlier which is internationalism. Why do we engage in the world? Because we believe in those values and to the extent the world reflects those values we are better off. [69:30] We're about out of time, and I'm going to say thank you to Admiral Stavridis, thank you to Justice O'Connor, and I want to thank all of you for coming. [69:40] As I said, we have a very distinguished audience here. I see a few former ambassador colleagues, former military, prominent people from around the Phoenix area, so I want to thank you all for coming. Thank you for including me, the newbie here with the McCain Institute, and I hope to see you all again. Thank you. [69:56] [applause] Justice O'Connor: [69:57] Thank you. I would like to also thank Admiral Stavridis for being with us today. It was an extraordinarily good talk, very interesting for all of us. Your experience is wonderful to share with us. We are very grateful that you came. Admiral Stavridis: [70:15] You are very welcome. Join me in a round of applause for an American icon. [70:18] [applause] Sara: [70:39] Thank you all. Thank you Ambassador Volker, Admiral, Justice O'Connor. Enjoy your afternoon. We hope to see you at a future distinguished speakers series luncheon. Thank you.

Transcription by CastingWords