COUNTRYMAN: A real honor for—not me, for all of us—to have Mike Mullen here as our guest. We won't do the whole biography. It's almost unique that Admiral Mullen who is one of the very few military officers ever to hold four different four star assignments as vice chief of naval operations, as commander of European fleet in Naples (which is where I first got to know him while I was serving in Rome), then as chief of naval operations, and then four years as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

More important than the titles, Mike Mullen was already known, was always known as someone who cared about his people, about the servicemen and women serving under him and showed it in ways large and small. He played a crucial role as Chairman of the joint chiefs in opening up military service as an option to Americans who had formerly been excluded, improving the diversity and inclusivity and strengthen cohesion from our armed services and who also epitomized the term warrior diplomat, a partner with the State Department in negotiations with the Russians.

And while there are lots of things I'd love to ask you about whether it was growing up in Hollywood or your favorite restaurants in Naples, I think we're going to do nuclear weapons today. There's a lot of concern as we heard on an earlier panel about the overall state of U.S.-Russian relations and how it is affecting stability between our two countries, how it is impacting our dialogue and almost negating our dialogue with the Russian Federation.

So, maybe we could start there as both an arms control and a military issue with the INF Treaty about to go away in response to a new weapon that the Russians have deployed. What military steps makes sense to counter a new Russian capability aimed at European cities and is there a military value to the U.S. building intermediate range missiles for use either in Europe or in Asia.

MULLEN: Well, thanks, Tom, and thanks to you and all of you who are working on these issues. Tom made the point just before we started this afternoon that the room that used to house this association's annual meeting has gotten too small and you needed a bigger place.

And so, I appreciate all of you who are focused on this issue. A part of me wishes I didn't have to be here and part of me wishes that you didn't need a room this big. And I'll get to your question on the INF piece but what I worry about is we're sort of on this road now that I thought we had closed off.

And when you look at the issues as they are returning, INF is an example of that and then obviously first time I heard anything about INF recently tied to whether or not we'd stay with it, the first thing I thought about is New START coming up in its 10-year anniversary and whether that, too, was in jeopardy. And I would argue it seems as it is for whatever reason.

And so, it's this road that I thought we've kind of controlled, closed off, figured out, had a way of putting aside these strategic death weapons that would destroy all of us and now I worry that that's a road we're back on and it is opening up. And it's opening up for a number of reasons.

When I listen to people, there's plenty of blame to go around. But it's incredibly worrisome that we're even having this conversation. That said, one of my messages here is I hope that I guess it goes back for me to the 2005 timeframe when I took over the Navy and I had a group of mostly civilian volunteers who were great thinkers that would go off and work issues for me. And two of those thinkers were Paul Bracken (ph) and Jackie Davis (ph) who I in 2005 said I haven't heard a word about deterrence since 1989 or 1990.

`What is deterrence in this century? And Paul (ph) and Jackie (ph) went off and it was the first work I had actually seen. It doesn't mean nobody was working on it. But it was one of those things we thought had passed us and yet it was a new century.

There are other threats and so how do we think about deterrence now. I was actually thinking about it in other areas cyber being one as an example as opposed to back to this but back to this and here we are. And I hope that we can figure out how to move forward on that.

In 2005, I had no idea I'd be the Chairman and then clearly even when I became Chairman, I had no idea I'd be debating New START. I was talking to someone earlier today, I met my Russian counterpart on the phone in August of 2008 when the Russians went into Georgia. He had just been in the job a month. He hadn't been in Moscow in a long time so here he was in charge of a war, an invasion and he's trying to figure out his own world.

And ironically two years later I end up at a table with General Makarov negotiating the New START treaty and I have not spent a lot of time in it up to that point and obviously I immersed myself in it. And I thought we, as two countries, including the ambassador got that to a pretty good place. Difficult for lots of reasons, I won't go into that, but an extraordinarily important outcome. And I had hoped as we negotiated, set the 10 years that we would certainly carry it to the extension that we are now facing, it all happens pretty quickly.

And as I look around this room it's back to sort of experts, I don't know who the experts are anymore. I would only want everybody here who's been in this business a while, to find some young people to make them as smart as you are, to make that investment through fellowships and education, and I mean whatever it is because a lot of the experts from the Soviet days are no longer with us. Many of you are a product of them and we, I feel, have an obligation to make sure that we have a sustaining capability in this area, because it appears it's not going to go away.

When you ask me about the INF it's almost—I mean to some degree it's a tactical question for me, and by that I mean I have no doubt and I also want to caveat what I'm saying is, I will be out of the chairman's job eight years come October and it's not like I have an office in the Pentagon anymore. We have a way of dropping the formers off and never speaking to them again, and so I haven't been back much, so I'm not current particularly on the intelligence details here.

Although you can read the media pretty well and at least I can get it in the box about what's going on. It is natural for us that if we are going to, if we're going to counter a weapon if you will, we're going to develop a system to do that. That's what the military's going to do. We'll generate the threat requirements and do that, exactly whether it will be symmetrical or asymmetrical is a question and I don't have a good answer for that right now.

One of the things we've tried to get done in the New START treaty was have a discussion about the nuclear weapons in Europe, those that aren't there and those that are there, because the Russians have an overwhelming number nearby. That essentially became a non-starter in the discussion at the time, and given the focus on the strategic set, that's what we eventually both agreed that's what we'd cover. That didn't mean they're not dangerous or shouldn't somehow be contained.

I was struck a couple of years ago when I listened to the Russian Ambassador, I think it was to Denmark raised the issue of nuclear weapons and I said "Who is this guy and what is he talking about and it is in Europe?" I mean I've seen President Putin, he has talked about it seemingly more frequently and more frequently as time has gone on right up to this whole INF piece. And I'm both concerned and paranoid enough to know that when the president of Russia comes out publicly and starts talking about our command centers, the game is changing and it is really serious stuff.

And I guess another training moment for me because it was in early Bush Administration and I'm a missile defense guy by trade in the Navy, I'm an Aegis guy, so I've been around the development of missile defense for many, many decades, but when we similarly at some point early in that administration walked away from the ABM treaty. I wasn't involved in that but that really got my attention and so what are treaties for, who's going to believe? Who's going to stay with them? With a track record that sometimes we in the U.S. don't even look at ourselves in terms of our responsibility when something happens, and there are lot of reasons for it. I mean I remember reading about that back then.

When I started to hear—when INF came up, that was literally for me, that was the first thing I thought of is we're going to walk away from another treaty and then yet again another one potentially. And to what end, to a better outcome, and what is that outcome and how do we get there? And particularly when I was in the chairman's job I oftentimes asked that question, where are we going here? How does it end? How are we going to get there? And why are we doing this? And so a lot of those questions for me right now aren't necessarily answered either in the INF debate or in the strategic debate with New START right around the corner, that we would be developing something to counter them, that certainly doesn't surprise me and that's given permission or given a threat.

And probably most significantly given the virtual, literal, and almost complete lack of a relationship with Russia, I think it is that much more dangerous. And that goes back to—I mean the empirical data now is, the Bush administration trying to develop a relationship with Putin, the Obama administration trying to develop a relationship with Putin and the current administration developing a relationship with Putin. And what does that mean and where are the communication links between our two countries militarily, diplomatically?

Actually I read in a paper this morning that Joe Dunford who's the current chairman sees his Russian counterpart. In fact it was said almost routinely like they've been going on a long time. That is not the case. I know Dunford well enough to know, it took him a while. I think it's Gerasimov, is that right, I think it took him a while to get to a point where—and both sides agreed that they could meet. Without, I'm fond of saying even in the darkest days of the Cold War we had lots of links with the Soviets.

We don't have them now. It's not even close. And when we're talking, we're not talking. We're talking past each other. So how do we create meaningful conversations, substantive conversations before we now have to meet at the table or maybe not, maybe we don't have to do that, but let's say meet at the table and renegotiate or discuss the extension of New START. And all that groundwork that is historically been laid, it's just not there, I don't think it's there.

So it's a huge concern. I'm more concerned about the INF breakdown right now in terms of it representing this road back if you will, sort of back to the future than the tactical piece of the weapons themselves. I don't want to discount that. The weapon side of this we can figure out. I would hope we wouldn't have to spend the time, and the money, and the effort to do that if we can figure out a way to get the countries to a point where we don't have to spend that money and make that investment.

COUNTRYMAN: Well, I appreciate that and you've already touched on a couple of the things I wanted to ask. In particular, New START, I am a little bit discouraged by both United States and Russian officials talking about things that have to be done first before we can get to New START extension. For a lot of us, in the absence of serious discussion the right thing to do is just sign the damn extension and then you can talk about things.

I take it from what you've said that you share the concern that New START might go away either because of apathy on the part of the U.S. administration, or because of overly hard bargaining and posture making by both sides. If we don't have New START two years from now, are there—how concerned will you be, are there other methods to try to preserve strategic stability?

MULLEN: One of the things as we, we may get into this, but as North Korea certainly came to the fore in the whole nuclear weapons issue with the North Koreans, one of my worries, and I call myself of age now, I'm a child of the '60s and I was here for the majority of the Cold War, in fact, that's where most of my military experience is. We talk about nuclear weapons and this is the issue with North Korea, we talk about nuclear weapons almost as if it's just a cartoon, that I mean I went to sea on ships, we tested nuclear weapon back then.

I carried them on my ship. My first job was as an anti-submarine warfare officer and the nuclear weapons officer to—and we had nuclear bombs if you will to go after Soviet submarines. And the training that we did, the movies that we used, the explosions that we saw out on the atolls much less what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it’s like we've forgotten what these weapons can do.

There's a great book, many of you all know it and I think it's The Last Train from Hiroshima or The Last Train to Nagasaki, I can't remember one of the two, but it's almost a medical compendium of the damage that these weapons inflict. And the massive scale that they achieve so, so quickly. And in fact, we talk about them as almost as if they don't have that capability. We've forgotten. And Americans are pretty good at forgetting history or not—it's somewhere some between forgetting it and not knowing it as we move forward. And I don't want to be overly critical, we should be mindful of history, but Americans are always moving forward and I commend that. But this is one we should not forget and we ought to understand the devastation levels that these weapons generate.

And no kidding, these weapons that we—and the numbers that we negotiated right down at New START more than ample to destroy the human race, as we speak. And we don't hear many people, much less political leaders talk about that. It's, to me, much more about the politics of it which is right at the center quite frankly of work in my view where INF is and where New START could go because of the political environment certainly in this country. And that has nothing to do quite frankly with Russia at this point.

Certainly there's politics associated with that, but I'm just talking about our own politics. So I don't know who rises up as the expert to get this to a place that it needs to be. This is obviously a presidential decision as it should be, and I hope we can get the right information in front of our president so that he can make the right decision and that it already hasn't been made it's just a matter of revealing it if you will. And I harken back to the ABM treaty, that it's part of the fabric of that view of both politics and capability if you will that we can overcome. I worry, the fact that we can just have—we're having a discussion about can we overcome these weapons which is fundamental yet, is really, really worrisome to me.

So I don't think we understand the weapons well enough. I think we need to refresh, remind ourselves how devastating these are and what they can do and align the seriousness of the discussion, the political debate, the resources, the people and the events to that serious devastating level of outcomes, and never get there, never get there.

COUNTRYMAN: Now, I certainly agree with you that the consciousness among the American public about the size of the weapons we're talking about, the fact that the standard weapon in the U.S. arsenal is 20 times the power of what destroyed Hiroshima. The idea that low yield nuclear weapons are less dangerous and less likely to lead to all-out nuclear warfare is questionable at best. I know that you followed as well the review, the release of the Nuclear Posture Review last year.

Its authors argued that it was not a radical change from the Obama Nuclear Posture Review eight years prior, it did propose the development of two additional sea-based low yield nuclear capabilities. I think some of us see it as driven by America's domestic politics, but also written in the framework of credible deterrence. Do you have an opinion as to whether the current U.S. nuclear capability even before these additional low-level weapons are added, do we have a credible nuclear deterrent that can prevent nuclear use against the United States?

MULLEN: The short answer of that is yes, we do before these additional weapons that you talk about. We have enough. There's also, let me give this, I think to me was very evident in the New START debate there, we have not invested in our arsenal to the degree that we need to, to make sure that the existing arsenal is functional, technically sound, will work if we ever have to, which is so fundamental to it being a deterrent. And we can't—and the number was hundreds of—it was billions and billions, and the Obama administration got into a big debate, in particular, I think Senator Kyl was on the other side of that.

In terms of making sure that the billions would be part of the Obama budget, and they made a deal at the end to generate that investment, which flat out we need as long as we have them. And I hope that that would continue. And given that that investment is being made, I think the arsenal that we have is more than adequate.

One thing about the Pentagon and weapons types, and I'm a weapons type, so you always want a better one, you always want more, you always want to generate, and I'm a requirements guy, a better solution. And so there's obviously a view that some of this may help in that regard. When I think about that, I think less about, back to my time as a kid as a young ensign and JG with these nuclear weapons on a ship going after submarines.

I think about that less now in terms of the Russian submarine Force than I do the Chinese Force. So there is a question and this was in my mind, part of New START as well. While we were negotiating with the Russians, one of the things once you get into this and many of you have lived this as we were reducing our numbers and China has, whatever the number is and it's no fur fuse, it's in itself, I get all that, but when do we get to a number that's low enough where China goes, "I wonder if I ought to get in this game now."

And you look what's happened with respect to Xi Jinping and where he seems to be taking his country in many areas, particular in the area of national security, where do they go and believe me, they're developing a lot of submarines, they're generating, building a lot of submarines. And so again it's sort of back to the future for me, is this what I was doing in the '60s, in the late '60s, a current version of that to get at this kind of threat as well, because long term I think China is the problem, China is the threat, China is going to be the aggressor and we're going to have to figure out how to push back on them pretty hard, hopefully before both of us have to make huge investments in this kind of capability with all that that entails.

I get that low yield, I get the tactical, but if we cross that Rubicon to use a nuclear weapon of any yield, we are in a place we've not been since 1945. And then what does that mean, what permission does that give to use other weapons of higher yield, whether they are still low or whether we take them to another level? And I'm not sure we've given that a lot of thought. I'm not sure we've figured out whether or not that's going to be worth it given the longer-term implications of heading in that direction.

And I know. I mean I got asked not to long after President Trump was—I was asked a lot when President Trump was elected. People didn't even know what the football was all of a sudden we're getting smart of the football and saying, "Walk me through. Would you walk me through what happens with the football?" And it was a bit of an on-off for me.

So I was there 2007 to 2011. I spent so little time on the nuclear weapons part of the portfolio, people were doing that and I was comfortable we were in the good place, that I mean literally had to walk my—I had to do the calculus to say, "okay, here's what happens with that," but it wasn't like I was doing this monthly or quarterly practicing as we did many years ago. Now, that's very much back, in trying to understand that first of all and also it has not been overly—it wasn't overly emphasized in my senior life even as I was chairman as we watched our Air Force go through the two big events that we had. One was shipping missiles from Minot to Barksdale. And the other was shipping parts to Taiwan which were much more indicative and reflective of the lack of attention to this as a priority as we were continuing to shift away from the Cold War.

Now all of that's got to be put back in play. And so for us in the military, that means you got to train people, hire them, pay them, keep them. Where's the technology, where's the expertise, how are we going to operate these really as a part of this deterrence package.

COUNTRYMAN: Let's switch topics a little bit, but stay on the subject of crossing a nuclear red line and what it means. A lot of us watched with great apprehension as India and Pakistan shot at each other across the border just two months ago. I know that you worked hard to build the best possible relationship between the U.S. military and the government and military of Pakistan.

How concerned where you as you watched this from a distance? Can the U.S. do more to draw down the tensions between two nuclear armed states?

MULLEN: I won't tell you how much of my life I've devoted to trying to draw, de-tension that issue between Pakistan and India. I'm still of a mind that with the nuclear weapons capability that Pakistan has and I've said these many times, I think while we focus on Iran, we focus on North Korea and a lot of other things, I think Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world, because they have this wicked brew of no economy, corrupt politicians. The military runs the place, certainly on the national security side.

The seemingly insoluble India-Pakistan relationship which I put at the core which is in Kashmir. So one of the interesting things that came out of the action in February was it's all about Kashmir. It took me a long time to come to believe that was the case. I was focused on many terrorist organizations that resided in the west of Pakistan and in their own way everybody in the Pakistani Military would look at me sideways and saying, "What is it you that don't understand about India?"

So it's all India. And I thought what Modi did—not Modi, sorry, what Singh did after Mumbai in 2008 which was not retaliate and what Khan did the other day by returning that Indian pilot just took the air out of it. And both of them, Singh in particular, because you may or may not remember, his party was coming up for reelection in the next few months.

And of course the drums we're beating because of what happened in Mumbai, and some would argue rightfully so. I was there shortly after that happened. And yet Singh called it off, and that was a bold political move as it was the other day when Khan did that.

I don't know how this comes out. It is something that has worried me a great deal. About a year ago or 18 months ago I got involved in a war game. I'm on the board of Sam Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative and Ernie Moniz is taking that over. And it's a very critical group from my point of view in this business, sometimes flying under the radar over a long period of time to sustain the kind of intellectual diplomatic personal engagement relationship exchange that needs to exist in this particular area. And we had a war game—that we ran a war game and what struck me was the number of Chinese that were at the table.

One of the costs of ignoring Pakistan is that unattended to and they have been for seven or eight years and they're not an easy customer believe me, but one of the costs of that is they drift under the umbrella of China. And I would much rather as in most decisions, I would much rather make a conscious decision because then I know where I stand, and I can sort of map out a strategy that, okay, we're going to just let that relationship evolve and we're going to not pay attention to Pakistan, when a lot of people in Pakistan still want to pay—to be paid attention to by the United States.

But a couple of years ago and I hadn't visited this issue in a long time, to go to this war game and to see it played by U.S. on one side and Pakistan on the—I'm sorry—and China on the other was really a validation of what I saw even when I was there a lot, that they have a relationship where China has never not been there for them.

And when I asked my staff to go to do, study what Pakistan strategy is, now this is 2008. They came back and essentially named the strategy the Fourth Betrayal because we weren't there in '65 for them, we weren't there in '71 for them. We left in '89 and they're just waiting for us to leave again.

Now that's empirical. I get that. I actually understand that. How do we overcome that, back to understanding history which is not our great strength again, but that's what they believe is going to happen. And so I worry a great deal that this is now going to be India and the U.S., Pakistan and China, and it is nukes. And whatever the ratio is, Pakistan doesn't have a chance against India just because of the conventional investment on the military side.

So it's all about nukes, it's all they've got, and it really is. While we may not be doing a lot about deterrence, believe me they are because they think that's the path of their survival, and they are a perfectly paranoid country from the day they were born about India. And so where are all the political leaders and diplomats there to try to help there, and I think a lot of that has to do again key is Kashmir and a lot of it has to do with economic development in Pakistan in addition to having a relationship from a security standpoint.

We are just one other anecdote, when we went to—they had the terrible earthquake in about the '04 timeframe, '04-'05, I knew that Navy one star that went, spent weeks there working in Pakistan to help, and we were doing all we could. And he said every single lieutenant colonel and above in the Pakistani Army had smiles on their faces when we showed up and they were easy to engage, and this right up to the 4 stars. And that's because everybody had been to our schools. They knew where Leavenworth was.

They knew where Carlyle was, they'd trained down at Langley, et cetera. Every major and below never smiled, they'd never been to the U.S. So all they got was the propaganda. And I gave, Anne Patterson was the ambassador early in my time who is a wonderful woman. She had me to the Embassy in one of my first trips to just talk to the war college, about 40 or 50 war college students, Pakistani war college students. So I talked for a few minutes and took questions, and there were two themes that jumped out of the questions.

One is what is it that you don't understand about India? These were all successful officers, and the ground types, the army types, and the airmen had all fought in Kashmir or on that border. And the other was there wasn't a Pakistani officer that didn't know, in the Pakistani military, that didn't know who Senator Pressler was. And there was not a single officer, young officer in United States military that had a clue who Senator Pressler was.

And for those of you that wouldn't know, the Pressler Amendment in I think '92 after Pakistan went nuke was the amendment that it cut it all off. In fact that my Navy counterpart came to see me in '05 or early '06 I think and the first thing he wanted to talk about were the—I think the number is right, the 14 F-16s the United States Navy was flying at our training command in Fallon, Nevada, I didn't even know they were there. They don't forget that. So we got a long road there.

They got a bunch of weapons, the trigger quite frankly and the controls worry me more than I'd want to say in terms of how you get to use them and it really is a military leadership, it's really the military leadership in that country. So it's a very, very dangerous part of the world.

COUNTRYMAN: We've got many more questions on my list including North Korea, but I promised that we would have time for some questions from the audience. So I hope our colleagues from ACA are ready with microphones, the floor is open. Let's start here with Alex is that.

(UNKNOWN): Thank you, admiral, that was really fascinating. We were talking earlier and you brought it up again that these issues largely seem to have disappeared from the U.S. political dialogue or discussion, and certainly we notice even among the democratic challengers, I don't know that anyone has raised these kind of issues at all.

I'm wondering from your long experience, do you see any way of sort of bringing this back of somewhat engaging the political dialogue in the United States to deal with these kinds of issues which I think we here all recognize are important, but the rest of the country maybe fortunately with the end of the Cold War doesn't anymore?

MULLEN: I think we're at a time in our politics that if they don't generate political advantages or numbers, they're not going to be talked about publicly first of all.

Secondly, I think and I'm not an historian or I'm not an expert in terms of this, but if you go back through the years, during election time, the vast majority of the issues are domestic issues. So along those lines and I try to stay out of that, I'm happy to talk to anybody from either side about these issues privately and offer counsel and thought in the for whatever they’re worth category.

But my overall sense is they just don't generate, the issues themselves don't generate enough positive political outcome for them to spend a lot of time on. That said, the irony is flip it to January 20th of whatever year you talk about, having a new president and they spend 60 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent of their life on these issues on, you know, what I would call foreign policy, diplomatic, global issues.

So it's important that they'd be smarter and what I would argue and I don't know if you do this, but I would argue for ACA and others that you make yourself available, known to be made available to everybody that's thrown their hat in the ring to say, "Be glad to discuss this with you." At some point in time you're going to need to have some expertise, we spend a lot of time on this and make that contact.

And these days, you can't go too early. Everybody else is going early, you ought to go early as well to try to help inform them.

COUNTRYMAN: All right. And to a question right in front here.

(UNKNOWN): Thank you. Admiral Mullen, you were a real pathfinder on the issue of U.S. Soviet, or Russian high level military to military contacts.

MULLEN: Yes.

(UNKNOWN): You really opened that wide up. And that's not the case now as you mentioned. Given where we are, am I right to conclude that you would think if we reestablish that regular ongoing high level contact between the two militaries that that would have value even if there's not much in the way of a robust political strategic dialogue?

MULLEN: You know, I would not go so far as to say that one needs to precede the other. There is a lot of data historically that show that usually it does. I can do China with you for a long time here.

I mean, I worked pretty hard, so did my predecessor Pete Pace and Dick Myers to establish some kind of relationship with China. Those are fractious times and every time we’d have an incident, the first thing that Chinese would do is cut off mil to mil. I talked to my counterpart I said, "You got to stop doing that." I mean, we're going to have problems if we can't keep talking through this, we have no way to discuss it, we're never going to get to a point where we can have serious discussions about serious issues.

So one of the reasons I'm delighted that Dunford and Gerasimov are talking is that at least. So I wouldn't say it's a prerequisite, I think once relations get going with a country, it's clearly critical. We absolutely have to have that part of it. And right now I'd certainly like to see more of that than what we're seeing.

The reason I end up on the phone with Makarov when they go into Georgia is nobody was talking to anybody. I mean, the presidents wouldn't talk, the foreign minister and sec State were not talking, the national security advisors weren't talking, I get a call from Hadley going, "okay, pick up the phone. You're going to talk to the Russian CHOD," really?

And obviously the news was out that this was going on but it proved to be a very, very effective communication and it wasn't going to happen, one, without our president and his president saying this is okay at that particular time. And I just think it's vital to have these kind of critical links across our government, I don’t want to say having nothing to do with how we're getting along, we know we've got challenges.

We've had challenges for a long time. They're going to continue in the future. We're going to have growing challenges with China as they grow per se. So, we need to try to create and sustain those relationships, even if it is just to say, "I still don't understand you" or "I still don't agree with you.” But at least I would listen to what the concerns would be" as supposed to guess or read about it from the media on one side or another. Those are lacking right now in Russia.

COUNTRYMAN: I think in the very back over here we had a hand up. Further back. Did I see one? All right then, Ambassador Kennedy.

KENNEDY: Thank you, sir. I particular appreciated your comments about connecting up the dots between the American public foreign policy issues including arms control.

Another group I work with, Foreign Policy for America, is dedicated to indeed just that. But let me ask a question in the nuclear field, you referred to the president's decision-making power on the use of nuclear weapons. Congress, I'm thinking of Senator Markey, others indeed have legislation on no first use of nuclear weapons. And I wondered if you could talk about that, your views on that. Thank you.

MULLEN: I mean, it’s almost like what Tom said earlier when you said nuclear redline, there are certain words and phrases that I've came to believe from Washington, I don't even use anymore, red line being one as an example.

Climate change which, you know, is another one, that just so quickly get you into the political arena that you almost can't have the discussion. The whole issue of no first use and there are plenty of people that think that's where we should be, and I don't know the right answer to that quite frankly. I certainly think it's worth the debate, but my reaction would be immediately, you know, Markey is trying to get no first use policy in terms of which he believes in and is that the right answer, and is this the right vehicle? And I would argue it isn't, it's a vehicle per se.

So let’s have a debate about no first use and I think there are pros and cons to that, we've just never done it and I'm not smart enough to know how far away we've been from that forever, it's not been our policy for a long, long time.

So that piece of it, you know, I don't know. I think understanding, I mean the questions that came to me about that is the sense in some reporting, but this sense of this happens pretty quickly. While I indicated I didn't spend a ton of time on it, I spent enough time to know, it happens pretty quickly. If we get to a point and this is different, it's a first use versus a response, there's not a lot of time.

But to me, it was also immediately this political move to see if we could contain this president, to me that's not the time to change a policy, I don't think that's a time because it just gets so completely and instantly politicized, you almost can't have the debate or the discussion to get to a meaningful outcome.

COUNTRYMAN: I think we're out of time is what Daryl is trying to tell me because we…

MULLEN: One more.

COUNTRYMAN: I'm going to do one more. This gentleman has been very patient. Yes.

KIRK: My name is Don Kirk. I spent some time in Korea, Mr. Countryman was going to ask you about Korea. But I'd like to ask you about Korea now. What do you think of CVID as opposed to step by step by step by step, and where do you think we're going in this debate? Thank you.

MULLEN: I guess with the Koreans in particular, North Koreans, I am in the "do not trust them and verify world," and we'll stay there, first of all.

I am someone that and you would probably know, Sam Nunn and I worked our way through a North Korean strategy document for CFR about a year or so before the administration came in, and the whole idea of that was to at least lay it on the table, look options, look at the issues, et cetera, and we used a lot of North Korean and nuclear experts to put that together.

And going through that, if you asked me to pick a camp I would pick CVID as the goal. And so what I think the president's trying to achieve with respect to that is exactly right, and that gets back to how dangerous these weapons are. And I get, and Colin Powell and I don't necessarily agree on this because Colin says it would be suicide to use the weapon, I get that. Yet, I'm also struck by the complete lack of wisdom in 33-year-olds and I don't want to offend anybody here, I'm just old enough to know while I thought I had some wisdom at 33, I understand now I didn't as I've become older and so I've got a 33-year-old with this capability and I wouldn't trust them at all.

I am concerned, and part of this is, I actually admire President Trump for sitting down with the guy and this is not unusual for this president is, you know, all of the other conventions weren't looked at. Well, line up all the other conventions, all the other presidents and we're nowhere with North Korea.

So trying something different and it is different, I get that, I wasn't totally opposed to. It's just if in this difference and in this approach I think you got to get to that point. Now, CVID is a huge undertaking to get to per se and obviously there would be people that agree we ought to be happy with one step at a time.

I'm only going to be happy with this when this guy doesn't have his finger on that trigger, because I actually think of all the people I know or think I know, he's one given the potential of him not being there anymore, regime change or whatever it is, I think he'd pull that trigger.

COUNTRYMAN: Okay. Thank you very much, Mike.

MULLEN: You're welcome.

COUNTRYMAN: We really appreciate. We especially appreciate your efforts to keep the American public engaged to keep the discussion civilized and informed, and I think that's the goal of so many other people in this room as well. So, thank you for everything, not just that you did but that you're doing right now.

MULLEN: Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

KLARE: Welcome everyone. I'm Michael Klare, I am a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association and a member of the board. And for the past eight months or so, I've been working at Daryl's behest and at the behest of the board to study the implications of emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence, cyberweapons, hypersonic weapons on the future of war and arms control.

And this has been a remarkable journey for me, I've learned all kinds of extraordinary things, and what I've learned has been pretty terrifying as you’ll discover in this panel. I come to the conclusion that these new technologies will have a profound impact on war, on nuclear stability, and arms control, and that our thinking in these areas is going to have to change profoundly in response.

Everything I've learned has told me that the future of war will be profoundly altered as these new technologies come online, and one thing that's become very clear in studying this field, that the speed of development of the new technologies and their weaponization, their application to military use, is happening at a very rapid pace.

And by the way, the key word here is speed, the common denominator, I believe, and I've learned a great deal from our panelists and their work, the common denominator in all of this I find is speed, the acceleration of warfare. It's going to make the pace of combat much faster than it’s been in the past and this has obvious ramifications for nuclear stability.

How will this affect decision making—the decision to go to war, the decision to escalate conflict in a crisis, decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons? All this is going to happen at a much faster pace than in the past. And our thinking is going to have to change in order to cope with this alteration in the nature of combat. And, unfortunately, until now I think thinking in the field, policymaking, has not kept up with the pace of the technological developments. So, it's essential that we begin to address the impacts of these new technologies.

Fortunately, we have an extremely knowledgeable group of panelists who I'll turn over to in a second. I've learned a great deal from their work and my own research into the field and we're very lucky that they're here today to inform us.

We will proceed first with Bonnie Docherty who is a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch and also works with the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and is extremely knowledgeable about autonomous weapons and their significance for international law and international humanitarian law.

She will be followed by Amy Woolf who's a senior researcher at the Congressional Research Office, Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress. She's a senior specialist on nuclear weapons and has written, from my perspective, the definitive study on hypersonic weapons and their impact on the battlefield.

And finally, Erin Dumbacher from the Nuclear Threat Initiative as a program officer there in nuclear weapons and Arms technology and a specialist on the impact of cyberweapons on nuclear stability.

So, again, we're very lucky to have these three highly knowledgeable experts to inform us about this new topic. So first, Bonnie.

DOCHERTY: Thank you Michael. And thank you to the Arms Control Association for inviting me to speak to your meeting today.

I'm going to change gears from what we've been talking about this morning and address an emerging technology that would revolutionize warfare in alarming ways. And particularly I'm talking about what we call fully autonomous weapons, also known as lethal autonomous weapon systems, killer robots; there are a number of names.

But by this, I'm referring to systems that would select and engage targets without meaningful human control. So that’s a step beyond existing armed drones because a human will not be making the ultimate decision to take a life.

The technology is moving rapidly in this direction as Michael indicated, and some scientists have said it could be deployed in years, not decades, unless something is done to preempt it.

So today, I'll talk about some of the challenges that fully autonomous weapons present, why we believe that the best response as a new legal instrument that would require the maintaining meaningful human control over the use of force and also provide an update on the current state of play.

So, fully autonomous weapons raise a host of moral, legal, accountability, and security concerns just to name a few, and we believe these outweigh any purported military advantage. With regard to the moral concerns, for many people including recently the UN secretary general, the use of fully autonomous weapons would be "morally repugnant."

These weapons would be inanimate machines that could not truly comprehend the value of a human life and thus should not be given the power to take it. In essence, they would be reducing human life to an algorithm which would deprive human targets of their dignity.

Legally, fully autonomous weapons raise significant challenges with compliance with international law, notably international humanitarian law or the law of armed conflict and international human rights law. For example, IHL's proportionality principle prohibits attacks in which the civilian harm outweighs the military advantage.

Balancing these factors requires the application of human reason and judgment to complex and dynamic situations on the battlefield. It would be very difficult for an autonomous weapon system to replicate these human qualities and it could not be programmed in advance to prepare for all the unforeseeable situations that it might encounter on the battlefield.

Another important provision of international humanitarian law I want to mention is the Martens Clause, this declares that in the absence of a specific treaty on a subject which is the case here, civilians and combatants are still protected by the principles of humanity and dictates of public conscience.

So, in essence it establishes legal requirement to take some moral concerns into account when developing and using new weapons. The principles of humanity require that people be treated humanely, which depends in part on the ability to apply compassion, something that fully autonomous weapons would lack, and a significant and growing opposition to these weapon systems show that they raise concerns under the dictates of public conscience.

There are numerous examples, but just to name a couple, a recent global poll found that 61 percent of respondents opposed the use of fully autonomous weapons, faith leaders, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and civil society organizations, including the Global Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, have all condemned these weapons, and more than 4,500 roboticists and AI experts from around the world have called for a ban on fully autonomous weapons.

I'll touch more briefly on two other concerns, first the accountability gap that these weapons could raise, there are significant obstacles to holding any individual responsible for the actions or for any harm caused by these weapons. For example, a commander would likely escape legal liability because he or she could not predict and prevent the unforeseeable actions of a robot, and they could not punish a robot after the fact. There would also be evidentiary and logistical challenges to bringing a manufacturer or programmer to account.

And then finally, security is a major issue. The development of this technology would proliferate likely to non-state armed groups as well as states with little regard for international law and it could also lead to an international arms race.

So, in response to these concerns, states and civil societies have argued for a new legally binding instrument that would create a clear global norm against fully autonomous weapons. Such an instrument would follow the precedent set by other treaties banning problematic weapons, chemical, biological, nuclear, as well as landmines and cluster munition. It would also follow the precedent of the 1995 protocol banning blinding lasers, another form of emerging technology which was prohibited preemptively.

In our view, the legally binding instrument should include either/or a positive obligation and a prohibition. The treaty could affirmatively oblige states to maintain meaningful human control over the use of force, and alternatively or in addition, it could prohibit the development, production, and use of these weapon systems that select and engage targets without meaningful human control.

The positive obligation is more future proof, the prohibition addresses the development in production as well as use, and as I said they're not mutually exclusive.

And just a few words about the state of play, international discussions so far had taken place specifically under the offices of the Convention on Conventional Weapons which is a framework convention that has protocols that regulates and prohibits certain problematic weapons.

I was at the last month’s meeting in Geneva and there were some encouraging signs. The majority of states there are calling for a new legally binding instrument that prohibit or regulate this technology. there's widespread convergence among almost all states that human control is necessary over the use of force. States may differ on exactly the terminologies they use or exactly what the content of human control would mean but it in my mind provides a basis for negotiation of a new treaty or protocol.

So, challenges do exist, of course. We are calling for CCW states parties to adopt a mandate to negotiate a new protocol in November so that they would negotiate it next year. But we recognize it will be difficult because CCW operates on a consensus basis, meaning that any one country can prevent the body from taking the next step.

Nevertheless, momentum is growing and if states fail at CCW to take action, they should strongly consider—and these discussions are already under way—the option of going outside of that body to either the UN General Assembly or an independent forum.

So, in inclusion, I would just urge those of you who are concerned about minimizing humanitarian and security concerns associated with armed conflict to support this push for a legally binding instrument and fully autonomous weapons. And most of today's conference has dealt with ways to address the last revolution of warfare which was nuclear weapons, and I encourage you to seize the opportunity to take steps to prevent the next revolution before we go down another long and dangerous path. So, thank you very much.

KLARE: Thank you Bonnie. And Amy, please.

WOOLF: Thank you, Michael. Thank you for the Arms Control Association for inviting me today. It is a little unusual to be sitting at an Arms Control Association meeting and not talking about nuclear weapons.

But for those of you who think hypersonic weapons are something new and scary, I've been covering this program, at least in the Pentagon, since 2003, and the fact that most people in this room, in this country, weren't even aware that hypersonic weapons were an issue until the last year or two tells you a bit about the fundamental problem with the discussion of these weapons.

We know about them, you know about them now, because we're worried Russia and China are acquiring them, and that brings about concerns about the interaction between several nations having hypersonic weapons. Yet, I've been following this since 2003. So, pardon me, I don't have depth of knowledge, I have in length of time.

I'm generally going to address two questions here today. The first is what do we mean by hypersonic weapons? And I'm going to try and limit the scope of that discussion, and then if we're looking for ways to use arms control mechanisms to address our concerns about hypersonic weapons, I'm going to ask what do we mean by arms control? And I'm going to try and expand the scope of that discussion and really get to the point that Michael raised that the concern here is speed.

And if I don't remember to mention that several times, the concern here is speed. So, starting with what do we mean by hypersonic weapons? Hypersonic weapons usually refers to either hypersonic cruise missiles or boost glide vehicles, a weapon where you use a rocket launcher booster with a hypersonic glide vehicle on the front end that travels at more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5). They can be long-range systems, they can be intermediate-range systems, they can be short-range systems. So, to limit the scope of the discussion, I'm going to talk primarily about longer-range systems, but I will incorporate some discussion about shorter and intermediate-range systems after I focus on the long-range systems.

And with these limits, that means I'm basically going to be talking about the U.S. program which for years was known as conventional prompt global strike, but it has morphed into a sea-based intermediate-range missile with a conventionally armed hypersonic glider.

The Russian Avangard system which has been launched on an SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile—which means it's a long-range system equipped with a nuclear warhead—and the Chinese WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicle—you can read a lot about the Chinese system; I don't have a lot of expertise here—but the guessing is that it's an intermediate-range system and we just don't know yet if it's nuclear or conventionally armed.

But those are the three key systems if you're looking at a competition amongst nations in hypersonics. That's where the debate tends to fall. So, in limiting the scope here, we'll go to those. So, why do we consider these weapons to be a problem?

Bottom-line, they are very fast and they are maneuverable. If you think about a regular conventional nuclear armed but conventional ballistic missile, it launches on a parabolic trajectory. It looks like an arrow going through the air. You can predict where it's going. It doesn't maneuver at the end. And if you had missile defenses, you might be able to figure out how to shoot it down.

But hypersonic glide vehicles are maneuverable. So, once they separate from the booster, they can change direction cross range and down range. You can't predict where they're going and they can possibly increase their accuracy by maneuvering on to the target. They are very fast. That shortens decision time which can lead to crisis instabilities, and that's particularly true if you’re talking about shorter-range systems used in theatre of conflict, which is why I'll come back to those in a minute.

And even those armed with conventional warheads can pose an escalation threat if they are used against strategic targets. There is some thinking that if their maneuverability improves their accuracy, you can use them to take out hardened targets that used to be subject only to nuclear attack. And therefore, you can start a war that is strategic with a conventional weapon, and that war might escalate to nuclear use.

There's also the concern that not knowing whether the warhead is nuclear or conventional, the adversary might just assume it's nuclear and you have an escalation risk due to this perception. Then, there's this bottom line, as I said, the reason we the United States or some people in the United States are so worried about hypersonics right now, is the bad guys have them. Bad guys have bad stuff; we need to be worried.

I just gave you four reasons that people raise for being concerned about hypersonics. I'm really only concerned about the second one, the speed one, and it's not that the other concerns aren't real analytic concerns, but I don't think they play yet. We can't defend against hypersonic glide vehicles because they're maneuverable. We can't defend against regular ballistic missile warheads right now either.

So, there's nothing…if I'm worried about Russia deploying a hypersonic glide vehicle in the next year or two on the front end of its ballistic missiles, which seems like a likely path, I am no more worried about that warhead than the non-maneuverable warhead it already has on the SS-19 missile. I can't shoot that down either. That doesn't mean I should be comfortable in that position, but the hypersonic glide vehicle doesn't add anything to my discomfort.

I personally believe that the misperception problem is overstated. And since there's a camera back there recording, I shouldn't offer you my opinion, but I personally believe it's overstated because there really aren't that many missiles in concern here or warheads in concern. We are assuming the Russian Avangard is nuclear-armed. We are asserting repeatedly that U.S. system is not. We're not sure yet about the Chinese system, but when the Russians and the Chinese complain about the U.S. hypersonic glide vehicles on conventional prompt global strike, they don't care about them because they think they might be nuclear. They care about them because they're certain they’re conventional and they're certain we will use them in a strategic way. So, yes, they are escalatory not because of misperception but because we might actually use them against strategic targets. So, I tend to not be as concerned about the misperception problem being escalatory than just about the capability being escalatory.

On the issue of "bad guys have bad stuff, so we need it, too", pardon me, but I think we should acquire weapons because we have a mission need for them, not because somebody else has them. And that's been the U.S. approach with hypersonic glide vehicles since I've started tracking this in 2013. We have been looking at the Pentagon, in Congress, at the need for U.S. hypersonic weapons to meet mission needs.

What's been interesting—because I've been tracking this since 2003—is we've yet to quite settle on a mission—and it’s shifted a bit over the years and I could give you an hour of history about how the mission has shifted—but we have been looking at this from a mission need perspective. And while we were doing that, the Pentagon and Congress were willing to spend about $100 million a year on hypersonics.

In the last couple of years, we've started worrying about the bad guys having bad stuff and this year in the FY2020 budget, there's $2.6 billion for hypersonics in one form or another. So, apparently, mission need is not as compelling as bad guys have bad stuff. I'm not sure that's the way we should be doing our military planning. But it seems that's where we are.

So, then, you hear often that we're having an arms race in hypersonic weapons: "The Russians are doing it. The Chinese are doing it. We need to keep up." I don't think we're having an arms race. There's a technology competition, no doubt. We obviously do not want to fall behind and be surprised by technological developments. We have the technological base. We didn't have the financial or priority system set up to pursue it when we were offering $100 million a year, but it is a technology competition more than an arms race.

And primarily countries—United States, Russia, China—we are not acquiring hypersonic weapons to offset the capabilities of the other countries' hypersonic weapons. And when I think of an arms race, I think, "They have it. We need to get it to stop theirs." It's an interaction within that trade space and that's not what's going on here. We are not… none of these three countries are acquiring hypersonic weapons to offset hypersonic weapons.

The United States is doing it seeking to bolster its long-range strike capability so that early in a conflict, if critical targets need to be attacked early in the conflict, we have the capability to reach out and do so. The Pentagon for years has referred to this as a niche capability or a leading-edge capability where we would use it early in a conflict to achieve results against critical targets like Chinese anti-access/area denial capabilities, air defenses, anti-ship defenses. We would use it to take—to suppress their defenses.

By the way, that's why Russia and China want them too, to suppress our missile defenses which we don't have yet but that's what they're worried about. And Admiral Mullen mentioned the turning point of the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty. You can track the Russian Avangard system. It started in the '80s when there was SDI but pretty much due to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty, Russia was worried the United States is about to deploy major ballistic missile defenses so that we won't be able to take out their regular warheads and they developed maneuvering systems to impede our missile defenses.

China is the same way, more in a regional sense than a global sense, but there too, we're looking at a region where we have missile defenses, anti-ship missiles, there are other land-based missiles to defend our forces in the region and we are in a region and they would like to push us back and that may be the source for their hypersonics.

Absent an arms race because we want to get at each other's hypersonics, it really isn't a trade space for arms control either. So, if your question is "Can we use arms control to stop this technology competition with these very fast weapons that can be destabilizing, it depends on what you mean by arms control. So, here, I'd like to broaden the aperture a bit.

A lot of people have suggested we should just have a test down on hypersonics, freeze everybody in place or we should ban the weapons altogether because these things, "bad guys, bad stuff" we don't want these, or we should at least limit them so that we know what we are dealing with and that we can effect some kind of workaround if the numbers are smaller.

But that assumes that each side fears the other's hypersonic weapons more than it desires its own to achieve its military objectives. And since our military objectives and the other countries’ military objectives are not related to our hypersonics, your arms control agree can't simply limit hypersonics. We might be able to have a conversation with Russia about limiting hypersonics if we were willing to limit missile defenses. Anybody thinks we're going to do that? I don't.

So, we might be able to have a conversation with China about limiting their hypersonics if we limit our presence in the Asia Pacific region. Anybody think we're going to… I don't think we're going to do that. So, it's not a trade space for a standard style arms control agreement that limits, restricts, or ban the technology simply because the technology is frightening.

That's what we heard about with autonomous systems. That's something you can do. Everybody is equally scared of those. It doesn't work that way for hypersonics. These are real military tools responding to real military threats for each of the three countries developing them.

So, what's the real problem here? As I said, and I'm going repeat what Michael said, the problem is speed. The real problem is the speed of hypersonic weapons, particularly in a military conflict theater environment. It can lead to crisis instabilities and inadvertent escalation. This has always been a problem with this concept.

The initial U.S. concept as I said was to have a leading-edge capability so that early in a conflict, we can suppress defenses or take out critical targets. Well, if you're the adversary and you know the United States can get a weapon there in an hour or less, you're launching out from under it in 30 minutes or less. That's the classic definition of crisis instability that those of us in a nuclear weapons world are very comfortable with—very uncomfortable with it. You're more familiar with it.

When I talk to people on the conventional side of the ledger about long-range strike and hypersonic weapons, they've never heard of that. Going first and going fast is how you win the war. They don't think about what the other side might do in response the potential that you can go first and go fast.

So, here we are with 15 years of research into hypersonics and no priority, no champions in Congress, and all of a sudden, the Russians and the Chinese start doing it and now, everybody is trying to go fast, to get these weapons that are crisis destabilizing early in the conflict. And this to me becomes a signaling and messaging issue. If we have the capability to launch quickly at the start of a conflict and suppress China's ability to defend its airspace or defend at sea lanes, they're going to start shooting first.

So, you go from what we had considered a leading-edge capability to shoot promptly at the start of a conflict to something that inspires preemption during the crisis, and that to me is really worrisome. Is there an arms control solution to that? Well, really only if we broaden the aperture for arms control and I know the phrase has been thrown around here today…strategic stability talks, anybody? That's kind of what I'm getting at.

When you have two or three nations with capabilities that in worst case analysis could lead to preventive strikes or preemption early or even pump strikes early in a conflict, you don't want anybody to think they have to go first because they're just too worried to wait. And that may require some level of cooperation, consultation, crisis communications, to make sure that conflicts don't arise out of crises that turn into these preemptive crisis destabilizing opportunities.

KLARE: Thank you. Thank you. And now, Erin, please.

DUMBACHER: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you, Michael, and thank you to the whole Arms Control Association team for inviting me.

What I thought I would talk about today, sort of what we worry about when it comes to really a trifecta of information, communications technology or cyberthreats that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons and when I say, "we", I'm thinking of me and my colleagues at Nuclear Threat Initiative. And then, I'm also happy to talk a little bit about some potential ways we might sort of resolve or begin to mitigate those consequences.

So, on the first, there's sort of this trifecta of cyberthreats that we see could lead to more likely—increased likelihood for nuclear use. The first of course is cyberthreats to the nuclear weapons themselves. So, with the nuclear modernization drive underway here in the United States, to what extent are our command-and-control systems and all of the related systems thereof increasingly eligible or somehow vulnerable to attack. The U.S. Department of Defense's track record on cybersecurity here is not exactly stellar although senior leaders are definitely conscious of the risks. (I could go into more depth there.)

At NTI, we hosted a few years back a cyber nuclear weapon study group who sort of thought through four what I'll call demonstrative scenarios through which cyberattacks could somehow jeopardize our nuclear command-and-control systems or nuclear weapons themselves, things like spoofing of an early warning system that could lead to sort of false warning and nuclear launch as a result.

Cyber attacks on a communication system that could be as simple as something that's disruptive or disabling that could lead to of course misinterpretation of information, inability to de-escalate in a crisis situation, or loss of confidence that your launch order got to the person who needed it.

We are concerned of course also about malicious code or malware somehow being introduced into a nuclear weapons component itself—that's the supply chain risk that you've heard a lot about; that of course could also lead to loss of confidence—and then there's the cyberattack that disables some sort of physical security barrier or measure to getting at that nuclear weapon.

So, that's the threats that we're concerned about to the weapons themselves. The next piece here is much more policy related, and that is the expanding definition of threats including cyberattacks and other nonnuclear attacks that could somehow necessitate a U.S. government response that would include nuclear use. So, here, I'm referring to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.

And then, the third is a little bit of a broader category, something that maybe historically we haven't thought about when it comes to nuclear weapons. But that is the information or the influence operations, disinformation, "deep fakes" that can create somehow a misinterpretation of facts on the ground and the reality that ultimately leads to confusion, miscalculation, which in turn of course we worry could lead to nuclear use.

So, this is a new and, again here, the speed theme is here again. This is a new possibly sort of accelerated risk or means for bringing about the nuclear war by blunder that many have been concerned about for a long time.

So, what could we potentially do about it? So, some strategies for mitigating the risks, I mean, here, it's tricky. There are emerging challenges, many of which require some degree of international or cooperative efforts to mitigate and reduce, and I think here we need to be conscious that it's time to look not just at our old toolset, but any potential new tools that we could develop.

So, for the academics in the room, I might be able to give you a few research agenda pieces here. But we also have to acknowledge here that technical fixes will be insufficient. Senator Nunn and Secretary Moniz wrote not long ago about how we deceive ourselves into thinking we can solve the problem with technology and training. We cannot solve these problems with technology and training.

There are also U.S. policy changes that we can consider, and then areas where as I said sort of more research agenda-like, more sort of further innovation and new ideas frankly are really necessary.

So, I'll start with the U.S. policy changes.

We need to prioritize addressing cyber and information security risks in our modernization plans, full stop. That means doing things like enhancing survivability and resilience of nuclear systems and command-and-control systems. That means enhancing the security of nuclear weapons and reviewing those vulnerabilities throughout the system—not just to the sort of standard cyberattack that you might think of a hacker perpetrating, but also sort of nation-state-backed team of hackers perpetrating, but also the information and the influence operations.

We need to develop more options—this is on the policy side—to increase decision times to try to slow down the increased speed accounting for the threats to the early warning systems and ideally reduce the risks of false warning. And we need a declaratory policy here in the U.S. that is clear, but is consistent, that is intended to prevent the use of nuclear weapons and reduce our reliance on them for U.S. national security.

On the multilateral side, we need to reinvigorate dialogue between U.S. and Russia and, of course, extend New START. We need to be preserving all mechanisms that we have that enhance strategic stability. We need to be establishing norms that discourage cyberweapons use against nuclear weapon systems explicitly. There's a lot of work being done on cybernorms generally, not a lot that has focused exclusively on sort of the risk to nuclear systems.

And then, we need to be maintaining a cadre of experts and building a cadre of experts, folks who understand the technology here as well as the policy side and can help bridge that divide.

Now, here is the list of where it gets a little bit trickier and where we need new ideas and actions.

It's, of course, a perennial policy challenge to stay up to date and ahead of the risks of new technologies while we still come up with the ways to reap sort of the benefits of those technologies, right? I'm not saying anything new here; that's been true for decades before.

But we still need new tools to really manage this and we need to get better at responding more quickly because the technologies themselves are taking us there. We need crisis management mechanisms that are concrete, that are practical, that are near-term, that build trust, and reduce the risks of conflicts and escalation. We need to build and strengthen what I'll call "cyber-secure cultures" throughout the nuclear weapons complex. I think that extends to us in the room even, right?

So, each contractor, each node, and each network needs to be reviewed not only for the benefits that can be gained—from sort of digitizing or modernizing in some way—but also the risks of relying on a much more complex or interconnected nuclear weapon system for deterrence purposes.

The larger, more systemic issue is how we cope with sort of deceptive information and influence operations among all levels of government and I'll extend that to society just because it's a big problem anyway. We want to think about it in big ways. Technologists need to be working with governments as it's often happening—more and more happening I think on the autonomous weapons side. To some extent, also true on the sort of IT and cyber side, technologists need to be working with governments to find out and sort out what those reasonable guardrails could potentially be.

We need to be thinking about ways to limit sort of the potential for "deep fakes" and other digital tools that breed deception all the time, but especially at times of crisis, the same tools that drive clicks and repeat visitors to a website can accelerate nuclear risks in national security and we need to be thoughtful of that.

Governments can, of course, work actively to be the fair arbiter of what's real and what's fake. And then, here's the sort of cyber-secure culture piece of this that we can all play a role in. We need to be thoughtful not just about where did that USB drive come from that we're considering putting in our computers—spoiler alert: don't put it in your computers—but, we need to be mindful about each bit of information that we consume or share and we need to be as media consumers, we can sort of speak with our views and speak with our attention spans and send signals about the type of content that we want to see and trust and that we want to sort of proliferate our national security environment generally. So, at a minimum, we can avoid succumbing to propaganda and contributing to environments more generally full of disinformation.

I'll stop there.

KLARE: Great. Let's give them all a round of applause.

(APPLAUSE)

KLARE: I'm sure you found this as informative and stimulating as I did. Before I open it for questions, I want to ask each of you one basic question. In my research, which depends a lot on your work, I find that these technologies interact with one another and converge and have reinforcing effects.

I wonder if each of you could speak to that if you would.

DOCHERTY: Well, I thought your point about the—I think they're converging. I mean, there's the technological convergence but there's also the convergence in response and I thought your point about technologists taking stands against some of this development was a really good one. Sorry to steal your point, but it got me thinking, and I think that's one place they overlap in terms of like the Arms Control Association tonight is honoring—tonight honoring Google employees, Google tech workers who took a stand against Google's involvement in Project Maven because it would potentially improve the targeting, drones targeting.

And so, that's not as necessarily directly related to fully autonomous weapons, but it's related to that broader idea of weaponizing AI. And so, I think that getting the response as well the technology overlap is an important thing to consider.

WOOLF: The idea that the quicker the conflict gets started, the less time there is for human decision making, the higher the probability that the military or the decision makers will build in autonomous decision making, that's a snowball. When you're dealing with hypersonic weapons in a theater—and one thing I didn't mention is in that $2.6 billion in this year's budget, each of the services, not just the Navy, but the Air Force, the Army, each is developing its own hypersonic boost glide system because everybody thinks this is the great way to fight the war because you can go fast—but human decision makers cannot go as fast to some of these technologies can and you're risking putting an autonomous launcher in there that just makes the whole crisis instability problem worse.

KLARE: Yes. That's what I knew you were going to say.

WOOLF: Yes. I would echo that. I would just say it's very difficult in my view to actually take them apart and discuss them all separately in some of these ways because there's a lot of… so, there's of course the distinction between whether or not you automate a decision path versus whether or not something is autonomous and whether or not even further it’s artificially intelligent in some way.

But it's very difficult to disaggregate some automated decision making that we have already throughout a number of conventional systems and when we think about cyberdefense, for example, it's very difficult to do without any automation. So, it's almost impossible to sort of pull these out.

I think the speed issue is paramount but that also comes down to policy decisions that we choose to make about how we choose to slow down those decision paths.

KLARE: Yes, all right.

Well, thank you for that. I wanted to bring out this because our thinking about arms control is going to not be able to—as Amy suggested—separate these out weapon system by weapon system, but to look at this whole combination of systems and how they affect one another.

I don't know how much time we have. But I'm sure you have questions that you want to ask our panelists. So, if you'll raise your hand, I'll try to get people and we have some microphones available for people who wish to raise questions. So, please, if you have a question please raise your hand.

Is that you, Daryl, with a question?

KIMBALL: We have like 10 minutes left, Michael. I wanted to ask a question of Erin and of Amy about process and how this discussion on the impacts of these technologies might go forward.

So, first, for Amy, you alluded to the fact that there are members of Congress who are interested in keeping pace with the Russians and the Chinese on hypersonics. Where, if anywhere, in Congress is there a systematic discussion about the implications of these technologies, what needs to be done to help foster the right kind of discussion that is maybe scientifically grounded.

And then, Erin, in your view, how can first of all the United States and Russia best come to understandings about intersection of nuclear weapons and cybersecurity and cyberattacks. In the morning session today, we just touched upon the lack of a structured dialogue between the United States and Russia on a number of strategic issues. There have been attempts to get a structured, strategic stability talks forum going. What are your recommendations specifically about this issue fits into that dialogue?

WOOLF: In Congress, there have been over the years discussions within the Armed Services Committee when the developing the NDAA, the [National] Defense Authorization Act, about hypersonic programs, not so much from the technological risk—well, actually even from the technological risk perspective. Back in about 10 years ago when Navy was thinking of putting conventional warheads on D-5 missiles. Congress said no, and withheld the money for it, on the basis of a strategic stability type of argument. So, those would be the places where the questions would come up and the committees and the staff have been aware over the years and have raised the issues.

In the last few years, however, the discussion has not been about whether our systems impose risks on stability, but whether we need to accelerate our systems to respond to the threats from other nations. And there's plenty of room for a broader discussion, but with all the other issues and timing on the agenda, I am not aware of any amendments or legislation in the last couple of years that people have sought to put forward. I can't speak to this year, but in the past, it's been more about doing more to catch up rather than paying better attention to slow down.

KLARE: A sort of question there and then over there.

DUMBACHER: Should I also respond?

KLARE: I'm sorry, please.

DUMBACHER: So more directly. I mean I would endorse what, you know, Joan and many others have said, as the need for structured strategic stability talks between the U.S. and the Russia. Of course, this information and communications technology, just even the definition of what some of those mean for the U.S. and Russian societies, differs on some levels. We've seen that play out in the United Nations groups of governmental experts who have discussed cyber generally not specific to nuclear weapons systems.

And so, I think that there is probably some good strategizing to be done to think through the question of whether or not it's more beneficial to start with or actually, yes, start thinking through the nuclear weapons side of the coin, and then sort of how cyber affects that rather than start with cyber and then think about the implications to nuclear weapons.

But I think we should use every tool that has worked in the past, as I said, so there are crisis management mechanisms through some international organizations. OSCE is thinking about cybernorms and some lines of communication that could be used in crisis cyber related. We need to be using… Admiral Mullen mentioned military to military talks, having an understanding to be able to de-escalate in a crisis situation when necessary even if it's cyber mediated. I don't think we need to throw away those tools by any means, we need to reinvest in them.

But then there are these other much more tricky questions that, and especially as you get into the sort of information and influence operations side of this. Of course, that will play a role and we need to, I think, prioritize and think through those bits of strategic conundrums.

KLARE: Do you want to—please, this gentleman. Wait one second. Yes, go ahead.

(AUDIENCE MEMBER): How we can solve this dilemma of, one part, on one side you have new weapons, you know, manufactured, you know. We can't anticipate them. There are factors, there are artists behind them. We all remember what you have said (inaudible) about the industrial military complex, you have also the military, you have also the national strategic national interest of states, you know, in one part.

In the other part you have the interest of the international community because we must liquidate these weapons, because they are very dangerous, specifically the nuclear arms, you know, this is the dilemma. And also, the panelists have said about or spoken about international military law.

International military law as we know, you know, through the world, all over the world, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and other wars in Africa, generally they are not applied, they are not fulfilled, they are not implemented. Most of the rules of the international humanitarian laws are not fulfilled. How we can solve this dilemma because we can't know, we can't anticipate the new weapons.

For example, also, I want here to the definition of the United Nations, the United Nations say about the absolute weapons destruction—in 1948 they said weapons of mass destruction has the effect of nuke weapons or similar, because we can't know, you understand. After that, after this definition we have the new weapons of armed destruction, and this continues. How we can solve this problem?

I don't know if you have the same opinion like me. I think the only way is that we come back to the collective security system. Thank you.

KLARE: Do you want to respond to that?

DOCHERTY: Sure. A second. I will take a first crack at some of those issues. I think first of all in terms of dealing with national security interests, and you mentioned also development in a private sector, I think in the private sector there is a large number of entities that, some corporations, some heads of, CEOs and founders of AI companies have come out against, at least I can speak to fully autonomous weapons, or autonomous weapons systems.

And I think that they, and many of them see and they don't want their technology contaminated by the fact that it might be used in ways that many people consider unacceptable. And the same could be said of scientists. It's like scientists don't want—chemists don't want their technology being used for chemical weapons, the same could be said for AI. So, I think there's some incentive there to restrict development without restricting the development of AI for good purposes.

I think national security interests, I mean, listening over and over again to states of all who may have very different ideas of how to resolve the problem, who insist that human control of some sort is essential over the use of force. There's some common ground there, and I don't think—I think that that will help restrict development in a problematic way.

And I just sort of, I guess, I would disagree… yes, IHL is violated. All laws are violated to a certain degree. I'd hesitate to say that it's never applied and never implemented. I think you can make… people always ask me, "Well, people violate IHL, why do you even international law?" And one of my responses will be, "Well, people murder, and we still have laws against murder." I mean these things create stigmas and standards that even if not applied everywhere and at all times, they are still important to set a standard on the battlefield. So, I think that international law is very valuable in this forum.

KLARE: I recognize this gentleman and then you'll be this next if there's time, but please, this gentleman?

(AUDIENCE MEMBER): Thank you. Bonnie, I want to take up that very question up because it seems like the effort to outlaw, let's say, lethal autonomous weapon systems under international law is an effort to make sure that there is accountability for decisions about the lethal use of force. And yet I wonder if there is meaningful accountability for the use of lethal force currently when humans are all making the decisions, and when you have systems like signature strikes where meta-data is used, sort of in lieu of intelligence to make decisions about who to target, why not just, you know, the president is going to sign off on the list, the computer can be pre-authorized to just go down the list.

So how would the accountability that you are trying to hold to actually be implemented, carried out?

DOCHERTY: So, thanks for the question. A couple of responses. I think first of all, I mean, yes, the accountability gap is one of the motivations for taking a stand against fully autonomous weapons and developments in that direction. I think that there is… just because there…I mean, like you used the signature strike example, just because there are accountability of issues there it doesn't mean that those shouldn't be resolved. I don't think that's a reason not to resolve in the other situation.

But I think that, I think existing law has mechanisms for which to provide accountability for existing weapons systems. The question there is a matter of implementation. And I think with fully autonomous weapons where there's no human control over, no meaningful human control over the use of force you run the risk that the international law cannot handle this. It's not designed to deal with this kind of situation. So, it's less the question of implementation that the mechanism isn't a good fit because the weapon itself is doing the, making the determination, so it's sort of a step removed.

So that would be one response. And then just also to note that one thing to me it's always very compelling about this issue is that the range of concerns that people have. For some people … people are attracted to different ones, but for some it's the accountability issue, for some it's the moral issue, for some it's the security issues, technological issues, et cetera. So, one thing that I find compelling is that even if any one of those are resolved you still have 10 more that are a problem, so I think the accountability is certainly an important one, but I think that's also not the only issue on the table.

KLARE: I think we have time for one more question and I recognize this woman.

(AUDIENCE MEMBER): Thank you. I just want to confirm or at least speak about the United States capability, ballistic missile interceptor, which is developed by Aegis. This capability capable to encounter Chinese hypersonic DF-17—that's what the source said—so I want to make sure that it is, we are on the top of the capability in counter hypersonic? Thank you.

DOCHERTY: I am not the person to ask. I don't cover missile defense issues to enough to know which systems are capable against which missiles, but it is absolutely clear that we do not have either enough or enough capability in our long-ranged interceptors to counter China's long-range missiles.

At the theater level with Aegis and other shorter-ranged systems there is more capability and more numbers of interceptors, but I am not familiar with which weapons are actually on the list.

KLARE: We have run out of time, but before we thank our panelists, I just want to comment that all of them have raised the fundamental point that as weaponry evolves and new technology is introduced, that arms control is going to have to evolve, and we in the Arms Control Association are dedicated to continue to evolve our thinking in that way, and we'll continue to do that.

So please thank our panelists again. Thank you all.

(APPLAUSE)

DAVENPORT:Great. Thank you, Daryl and thanks to all of you for coming today. We are now going to turn the conversation to North Korea and the looming question of what comes next in the negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington.

And I am thrilled today to have an expert panel to discuss this. We have Suzanne DiMaggio. She is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. There is more of her bio in your program, but I would just note for the purpose of this panel that she also directs a dialogue between the United States and North Korea.

We are also very lucky to have Frank Aum with us. Frank is a senior export of North Korea at the United States Institute of Peace, and prior to that he was a senior advisor for North Korea in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

So, it's been a very eventful month in North Korea policy. We saw Kim Jong-un and President Trump meet in Hanoi for a summit that ended abruptly, and it's still not entirely clear what happened during that meeting, but coming out there was no plan for negotiations to continue, and we do know that there was some disagreement over how talks on de-nuclearization in particular should continue.

President Trump said he wants a big deal. That he urged Kim Jong-un to go all in and Kim was not ready to do that, and that's why the talks stopped. And on the other hand, we saw Kim Jong-un say that they put an offer on the table, dismantlement of facilities at Yongbyon in exchange for relief from sectoral sanctions imposed by the U.N. But the U.S. wanted more and that wasn't acceptable to them.

So, the state of negotiations is quite unclear. Last week President Moon from South Korea came to Washington to meet with Trump, and we also saw some developments in North Korea.

The Supreme People's Assembly met and we heard Kim Jong-un talking about negotiations again, really for the first time since the Hanoi summit. There has been some radio silence in North Korea regarding the process going forward. So, that's really where I want to start today's discussions, and looking at these developments last week and what they mean for the future of talks going forward.

So, Suzanne, perhaps I could start with you and you could just give us your impression of the Moon visit, the developments in North Korea and what you think that might signal for the prospects of negotiations moving forward?

DIMAGGIO: Thanks so much, Kelsey.

First, let me thank the Arms Control Association for having me here today. I especially would like to thank Daryl, Kelsey and Kingston for their leadership on this broad range of important issues.

In my home there are only a few publications now that we actually get hard copies of, we read everything digitally, but the Arms Control Association monthly book is one and it's the only one my husband and I fight over who gets to read it first. And he's a musician, so you’re doing something right.

DAVENPORT:And I would say that I didn't ask her to say that. That was completely spontaneous.

DIMAGGIO: And it's a true story. I am not making that up.

So, what comes next? I think, like Admiral Mullen said before, I'd like to join him in noting that President Trump's, we can call it unorthodox personal diplomacy with Kim Jong-un is a welcome development. I would call it a breakthrough. I think it's the right approach given the personalities that are involved, namely his and Kim Jong-un's. The leader to leader approach hasn't been tried this way and I think in this particular setting it is the right one.

And it's brought about a dramatic reduction in tensions. If you remember, just late 2017 we were on the verge of fire and fury. And I think what many of us thought then, and still believe, was it brought us very close to a potential military conflict. But I think that the limits of this approach are becoming clearer, particularly after Hanoi.

This breakthrough is only going to get us so far. The summitteering I think is only going to get us so far and it's clear now we need a coherent strategy in order to move forward, a coherent strategy and pragmatic goals. Those are the two things that I would stress in order to make lasting progress.

And even though the tensions have been reduced, the fact remains that North Korea's program is more advanced today than it was two summits ago. That is a fact.

Both sides in order to get to this point of progress, I think both sides have been making mistakes, and need to make some adjustments in order to move forward.

Let me start with the North Koreans. I think that they need to change up their approach.

Madam Choe, one of the leading negotiators on the North Korean side, Choe Sun-hui said after the summit that the full blame for the impasse should be placed on Bolton and Pompeo. And she called the chemistry between Trump and Kim mysteriously wonderful. So, that's a good sign. They want to keep the door open to the leader to leader approach.

But what I would say to her is that their lack of interest in meeting with anyone but the president is understandable. But how is it working for you? It's not really working, is it? And I think that's why it needs to be changed.

And with President Trump, I think the North Koreans need to understand that they are facing challenges that maybe they haven't faced before interacting with U.S. officials. But first I think we have to be frank. He has a limited knowledge of these issues.

He doesn't understand the details, the complexities, few would actually, or the history or the context, so the notion of him being able to negotiate these very complex set of issues at the table I think is unrealistic.

The second is he is easily distracted. So, while they were in Hanoi, what was happening here in Washington, Michael Cohen was testifying and it was clear he spent probably most of the night before the meeting watching television and the hearings.

And then I would also add that he is a bit undisciplined. I don't think anyone would argue with me on that. And Madam Choe herself in her statement called attention to the fact, she said that it was their understanding that the U.S. did not ready itself, she said, to sit face to face with us.

So, I think that makes it—these points taken together I think it would be in North Korea's interest to stop playing so hard to get. Sit down with American negotiators and work things out before the summit happens.

And Steve Biegun, the U.S. representative to North Korea, he's a very able, agile, smart interlocutor. And instead of giving him the runaround, let's be frank, they should be meeting regularly in Pyongyang, other capitals, to get the work done that needs to happen before the two leaders meet.

Before the next, there's a lot of talk now about a third summit and that seems to be all the emphasis is organizing a third summit. And I think we need to gain much-needed traction at the working level before we even think about another summit. So, that would be my message to the North Koreans if they are watching.

The U.S. also made some critical mistakes. I think before the summit, we heard a very comprehensive address by Steve Biegun at Stanford. And in my estimation this was the first time I've heard even what I would call the outline of a U.S. strategy towards North Korea. It still wasn't perfect. There were still a lot of gaps, but I think it at least showed a way forward that was, as I said before, clear, comprehensive, but also had pragmatic goals.

But what happened in Manila is somehow the script was changed when they got to the table. And what we've now learned is that at the last minute, President Trump handed Kim Jong-un a piece of paper that said we are going for a big deal. As Kelsey said, not only do we want your full nuclear program, we want your missile capabilities, your biological and chemical weapons, and a full inventory of your program now.

And that was completely unrealistic. In the North Koreans' mind, as I've had many conversations with them about this, they see this as the Libya model. It is unacceptable to them.

And I just want to make this point, that the leader to leader approach, I fully endorse it. One of the things I like about it is that it really—President Trump's instinct that in order to make progress we have to change the fundamental nature of the relationship between Pyongyang and Washington. And in that way, I think we have to recognize and the Administration needs to recognize that Kim Jong-un is not going to make any significant moves to reduce or reign in his program unless and until he feels his regime is safe and that he sees there is a clear path towards economic modernization ahead. And we are so far from that right now.

The good news is that the items left at the table in Hanoi I think are the makings of a very good interim deal. And I should say that there is a clear middle way between what the North Koreans said they wanted in Hanoi and what the U.S. said they wanted. And that middle way is to reach agreement on the overarching goal. For the U.S. of course this would be denuclearization, but also manage to put forward a path of interim agreements in order to get there.

What is the way forward? This is the work of diplomacy that needs to be done. And as I said, these items were left on the table. Kelsey mentioned a couple of them. I would call this a very strong interim deal as a first step. One is the fact that the North Koreans offered to permanently end testing of their nuclear program and their missile program, and codify it. I think it was a very good offer that we probably should have accepted. I think it's significant and I think that the next step for the U.S. is to follow up on this and insist that this include inspectors on the ground to codify that indeed testing has been suspended.

I think the offer on Yongbyon was also significant. Yongbyon is a very big facility. They produce their plutonium and tritium there. It's also their main centrifuge facility. And I think the fact that they put this on the table and offered to open it up to U.N. experts and inspectors was also quite significant. I think a very important step for us to get going right away is to get inspectors back on the ground ASAP.

As we saw during the framework agreement, when we had inspectors on the ground the North Koreans' program did not advance. That's a fact. And we need to get back there.

And the third thing that was on the table was opening a liaison office in Pyongyang. I also think this is something, this is not a concession. This is something that would really give us on the ground access to North Korean officials 24/7. Can you imagine that job? But I think it’s important that we move forward there.

So, the two things I would emphasize just to conclude are, we need to get clear channels of communication up and running. And we also need to clear, sustained diplomatic process as a priority. And in exchange, I should say the, I didnít bring this up but I should have, is the issue of sanctions. I really believe that we have to get to the place where a limited reduction of sanctions has to be part of this package and it has to happen, part of it has to happen early.

In particular, what the North Koreans seem to be interested in especially is things that would need, move the inter-Korean economic projects, joint economic projects forward. Things like the Kaesong Industrial Complex and some joint tourism projects. We should not look at this as a concession either. This is what sanctions are meant to do.

You slap them on a country that’s not behaving well to get them to change their behavior. They’re not punitive measures. So, this is what sanctions are meant to do. So, we should move forward on that carefully with our eyes open and in a limited way. And finally, let me just say the path I’ve put forward I know probably could take years, but we have to get to the place where we’re meeting with North Koreans on a regular basis, not just during the pageantry of summits.

My fear is that we’re now stuck in cycle of summits, where there are just limited bursts of diplomacy in between, and if that is the way we’re going to do this, I think maybe the reduction in tensions will continue but we will not make any progress on all of these other goals. I’ll stop there.

DAVENPORT:Thanks, Suzanne. There’s a lot of threads there that I hope we can pick up on in the conversation, but before that, I’d like to turn to you, Frank, if you could give us your impressions from the meetings last week with Moon, the meetings with North Korea, and where you think we stand moving forward. And anything, you know, you’d like to add about what the process should look like.

AUM:Sure. So, again, thank you, Kelsey and Daryl, for having me. It’s a privilege to be here and also a privilege to be with Suzanne. I feel like every time I read one of her op eds and listen on the radio, I'm always in strong agreement, I find myself nodding. So, it’s good to be here with Suzanne.

So, I think Suzanne was very comprehensive, so I don’t want to add too much more because there’s probably other interesting questions, but in general, I would say from the Trump-Moon summit last week as well as the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly last week as well, two very important events. I'm not if I heard anything new. I think I basically heard those sides doubling down.

So, we had President Trump reaffirming that he wants a big comprehensive deal, he wats to maintain sanctions until North Korea denuclearizes. He seemed to express some flexibility on accepting a smaller deal but this is also dependent on, you know, what kind of deal is it, he needs to see it. And so it has to be a good deal for the U.S. And it’s hard for me to think of North Korea offering some good deal for the U.S. that small. So, I just don’t think that’s very likely.

On the North Korean side, based on the same thing, too, you know, they don’t want to be a part of a process where they’re taking unilateral actions where the U.S. continues this hostile policy, but at the same time both sides expressed willingness to engage in a third summit, so that’s the positive, right?

I think the negative is that for both sides to really get there, I think there’s probably a better understanding that they need to have far greater assurance of some sort of, if not final, near final outcome that can be basically signed off by the heads of state at the summit, so a lot more preparation than happened before Hanoi.

I think both leaders overestimated their ability to persuade the other. I think Kim Jong-un thought he’d go in, meet with Trump directly, take advantage of Trump’s, you know, excitedness about trying to achieve this great deal and he thought he could basically get Trump to give away the store and provide huge relief on sectoral sanctions that have been hampering North Korea’s economy.

Likewise, I think President Trump met with Kim Jong-un and he thought if he does directly, he can use his great negotiating abilities to get North Korea to give up its entire program, go big and even give up his WMD. So, both sides are wrong obviously but again, as Suzanne outlined, there are a lot of agreements that were, or a lot of progress that were made on some of the issues like the exchange of liaison offices and the war declaration, economic humanitarian assistance, the continuation of remains recovery operations, so that all can serve as a foundation for the next summit.

I think the concern is that time is running out, and if there’s a third summit, that is pretty much the last shot I think, because after that I think both sides would kind of retreat to their corners and North Korea will play the waiting game waiting for the elections.

DAVENPORT:Going to this question of time running out, reportedly Kim Jong-un said last week that he’s going to give President Trump a year to become more flexible. So, Frank, what was your interpretation of that statement? Was that rhetoric designed for a domestic audience? Was that a message to Trump? And then what do you think he’s really looking for when he says more flexibility?

AUM:Well, like I said, again, there’s only less than two years left in Trump’s administration and so I think Kim Jong-un is basically signaling that, you know, by the time it gets to next year, there’s, that’s not enough time to really reach a deal and then take any significant implementation steps.

So, right now, we’re at this point where both sides are signaling that they’re interested in this third summit, but they both expect the other side to make the first move. And so my—my favorite is actually Ambassador (inaudible) analogy but it’s, this is like high school dating where two sides are both kind of like, Should I make first, should I call first? Should I call first?

And so this is where President Moon of South Korea can play a huge role. I think he got what he needed from President Trump last week in terms of the sign of some flexibility. Those public comments all happened in that photo spread in the Oval Office before the two-hour meeting so I am hoping that there was actually more tangible discussions during the meeting which you can now take back, you know, whether it’s a phone call with Kim Jong-un or they decide to have another inter-Korean summit, sell them on the idea of flexibility hopefully Kim Jong-un is flexible as well and then we start with the working of the discussions.

The problem there is I feel like North Korea doesn’t really respect Special Representative Biegun. They feel like Trump’s the person to go talk to. And they also are very skeptical of Pompeo and Bolton. So, what is the right level, if they’re not going to really engage with Biegun with at the special representative working level, it’s too early to jump right into a third summit. It pretty much leaves that sort of ad hoc diplomacy where, you know, we’ll hear in the news, Oh, Pompeo is going to Pyongyang again, or Kim Yong-chol is coming to D.C. again. I feel like that’s probably the next step over the next couple months.

DAVENPORT:So, you brought up President Moon and his meeting with Trump and that he may have come away with some of the leverage that he needed to continue the conversation and, we shouldn’t forget that alongside the U.S.-North Korea negotiations, we also have the inter-Korean process. And that has made significant strides in reducing tensions between North Korea and South Korea.

But I think there is some concern that the lack of progress on the U.S.-North Korean front could impede or slow down progress on the inter-Korean dialogue. So, as Moon now starts to talk about another summit with Kim Jong-un, what should we be looking for in the inter-Korean process, how can the United States be supporting the inter-Korean process and how might that relate to hopefully getting U.S.-North Korean negotiations back on track? So, Suzanne, if we could start with you on that.

DIMAGGIO: Well, I think, first of all, we should, I think there’s some that look at this North-South Korea reconciliation process as a sideshow and it isn’t. It is in and of itself very important and that’s I think concluding peace declaration as soon as possible is so important. It’s time to have a peace declaration. Now, keep in mind that’s different than a peace agreement which would require intensive negotiations on a whole range of issues, but I do think we should be doing more to make sure that the process of peace and reconciliation between Seoul and Pyongyang continues.

And it has been going at an impressive pace, unlike the U.S. and North Koreans, the South Koreans and North Koreans are meeting quite regularly. I think it stopped a little bit, there’s a bit of a low, which I think should worry us but comparatively over since Singapore, North and South Korean officials have been meeting hundreds of times at various levels, high level but also working level. And I think we should recognize that progress for what it is.

So, in my mind, I think moving forward with the peace declaration in exchange for something like Yongbyong-plus would be a very good deal particularly having, as I said, inspectors on the ground would really put it over to the edge for me. And also, moving forward, on the sanctions, I think encouraging these economic joint projects to move forward would help solidify that peace process, that reconciliation process.

So, that’s the way we should be thinking, but my main point here is this is not a sideshow. There is something real happening on the Korean Peninsula. It is remarkable what is happening on the Korean Peninsula, and we really need to appreciate that and to make sure it continues to move forward and do everything we can to help move that along.

DAVENPORT:Frank, is there anything you’d like to add on the inter-Korean process?

AUM:Yes, I think as Suzanne said there’s been a lot of progress on Inter-Korean side, the moving back of the guard posts, the de-mining of the joint security area, the establishment of the joint military committee. So, there’s a lot of the reduction of tensions air, land, and sea in the around the demarcation line, but I think the concern is that the South Korean side is basically running out of road, meaning they’ve done a lot of what they can do but at a certain point, they need the sanctions relief to do a little bit more.

Sure, they can sort of institutionalize this joint military committee, they can work a little bit more on peace activities in the West Sea area, but there’s not a whole lot more space to go until they start getting the sanctions relief. And so I feel like that’s why South Korea is in a very tough position. I think if we can get some sanctions relief measures on the Joint Kaesong Industrial Complex, the Mount Kumgang Tourism Project, Inter-Korean Railway Cooperation, that would be very helpful for spurring U.S.-DPRK diplomacy but also Inter-Korean Engagement as well.

DAVENPORT:So, you both have talked a little bit about options for getting the process back on track and what the United States and North Korea could do to be more flexible to advance an agreement. But there’s still a great deal of skepticism here in Washington about whether or not Kim Jong-un is actually sincere about negotiations and there’s talk both in the administration and in parts of Congress that now is actually the time to be putting additional pressure on North Korea. That if we slap additional sanctions on, then we can try and sort of force them back to the table.

So, Frank, you know, what is your opinion on this, is this the time for additional sanctions? And given that this is kind of coming particularly from Congress right now, what would you be telling Congress that an appropriate role for them is within this diplomatic process?

AUM:Now is not the time for new sanctions. Now, I want to clarify. Well, so first of all, I would say that so new significant sanctions will completely scuttle diplomacy and then we’re back to 2017 or very close to I think. I will say that there is a difference between new sanctions legislation or UN Security Council resolutions and stronger enforcement of current sanctions, which I think depending on what exactly we’re talking about could be helpful.

I know that Treasury probably has a huge tranche of additional designations that they want to make on third party entities. That may be okay is sort of creating additional pressure, but I think right now we need to let diplomacy work. There’s not much time anyways. And so I think if it gets to the next year and nothing has happened then I think you’ll start to see the administration moving forward with additional tranches of designations as well as Congress moving forward with, there’s the Lead act, the Brink act, additional ways to really tying down North Korea and we’ll start seeing those move forward.

DAVENPORT:Suzanne?

DIMAGGIO: I just want to add something about Congress. I had the opportunities to meet with representatives of Congress and their staff also on the Senate side and sometimes I'm just appalled frankly by how anti-diplomacy they are on this issue for different reasons. Some are against it because how can you trust someone like Kim Jong-un? We’ve been down this road before, very self-defeating.

But others, we can't hand a win to Trump. I think both sides are equally asinine if I should, can say so. And I think in this regard, yes, there’s reason to be skeptical, we don’t know what Kim Jong-un, his level of seriousness. That’s what diplomacy is for, is to test it. And we need to continually test it, but also that’s why I'm supportive of the step-by-step approach because it is a way to test it.

They do something, we do something. I mean this is very basic, fundamental, but it’s a way, if we’re really going to change the contentious nature of our relationship between Washington and Pyongyang, we have to start somewhere, and I think this is a process given the mutual distrust that exists and all the psychological baggage over decades of failed negotiations, we have to try.

So, I think for Congress, they need to put aside both those reasons and support the process of diplomacy. And yes, Congress should be in a position of oversight. I think the first two years of this administration, there’s been no oversight on this process since it started so that needs to be changed, so oversight, but not an obstacle to diplomacy.

And one of the things that I think we need more of are hearings, bringing in experts to testify on a range of issues of importance to this negotiation. And also getting Pompeo to be there to give regular updates on the Congress on what’s happening. I think a lot of us have been in the dark and there needs to be a bit more transparency to the extent that it doesn’t derail the process I should say.

DAVENPORT:So, sometimes these additional calls for sanctions, the calls for additional pressure are in response to North Korean statements or North Korean events. And since the Hanoi Summit, we saw Madam Choe say North Korea may return to testing, you know, if the dialogue doesn’t continue. Satellite imagery has suggested that North Korea is reconstituting some of the Sohae satellite launch sites.

So, when North Korea is taking these actions that may seem kind of counter to diplomacy, how would you advise both the administration and Congress to react to those types of actions? Suzanne, would you like to start?

DIMAGGIO: Oh, can you just sum it up again?

DAVENPORT:Frank could start and then...

AUM:Yes. So, I think, and that is the concern because today, April 15, is actually the, today is the anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birthday and so this is when people are thinking were thinking, Oh, this might be a time when North Korea might conduct some provocative action. But I think the administration is taking the right approach, that they are closely watching the situation, they’re monitoring to see what will happen and they are warning against any missile tests or satellite launches because that would be very destabilizing for the current diplomatic process.

If a satellite launch does occur, then I think President Trump has a very hard decision to make because on one hand while a satellite launch is prohibited by international law, it’s not so provocative of action that it should derail diplomacy. On the other hand, if you just accept it and continue along the path, then maybe you’re sort of accepting North Korea’s brinkmanship behavior. So, fortunately, nothing has happened today, I hope it doesn’t but it’d be a tough situation if it something does happen.

DAVENPORT:Well, I checked Twitter right before I came up here and there doesn’t seem to be anything yet, so fingers crossed.

DIMAGGIO: So, on this point, this is another reason why the North Koreans and Americans should be having regular meetings, because then we could talk about the fact that they shouldn’t be launching a satellite, that derailed diplomacy before in the past, the leap day agreement and we’d hate to see that happen again.

But on the point of what Kim Jong-un is thinking in terms of whether or not he’ll test. At this point, I don’t think so, because President Trump has been very clear on this point and I'm going to use the word Admiral Mullen said he hated in terms of “the red line”. He made it very clear that testing is his red line.

And I think he is serious about that. So, I don’t think at this point the North Koreans would risk blowing negotiations out of the water by pushing that issue. And getting to Kim Jong-un in terms of one of the things that has really fascinated me about this whole process and his whole coming out party on the world stage is how much he and those around him in the ruling class have communicated to the people of North Korea that they have a new strategic line and it is economic development.

It’s not just us and the international audience that are hearing this or in the elites, this is being broadcast on the news, it’s in billboards from what I can see around Pyongyang. So, I think it is, I don’t want to say transparent because I think that’s going too far, but I think in a way it is Kim Jong-un putting himself out there that this is their strategic goal right now, is to shift the focus of the country to economic development and modernization.

So, in a way, he has staked his legitimacy on fulfilling that just the same way he fulfilled Byong-Jung and the nuclear program advancing to this point. So, that’s been fascinating to watch and I think we should take it very seriously, and take it seriously but also pursue it seriously because that gives us leverage if indeed he is staking his credibility on economic development, then we have a lot of leverage.

DAVENPORT:Oh, and it certainly helps signal what North Korea is looking for and prioritizing. So, I'm going to turn it over to audience questions in just a minute, but first we have to remember also that negotiations with North Korea are not happening in a vacuum and as Daryl mentioned I work on Iran. I know Suzanne does also and we haven't talked much about Iran, so I have to squeeze this in just a little bit.

The current controversy over the nuclear deal with Iran, the uncertain future after the United States withdrew from that deal, do you see that at all as impacting North Korea’s thinking about how they’re approaching these negotiations and has that impacted U.S. credibility on these talks?

DIMAGGIO: It’s no question in my mind that the North Koreans are thinking about this. They’ve been studying it. First, they studied how the negotiations happened to get to the deal, and now they’ve been studying how it has disintegrated with the withdrawal of the U.S. It’s still in place but it’s a different situation now that we’re out of the deal.

Let me focus on two ways that I think the North Koreans have learned a terrible lesson from the U.S. reneging on its commitments to the Iran Nuclear Deal. First is at the very heart of the nuclear deal with Iran was a very basic bargain, you do this and we lift sanctions. And now, the Iranians ñ I think the IAEA has confirmed for the 14th consecutive time or is it 15 now...

DAVENPORT:I'm losing count.

DIMAGGIO: Somewhere. I know. We’re starting to lose count that the Iranians are complying with their commitments to this deal. So, it sends the signal to the North Koreans that even if you comply with your, with your, what you’ve agreed to do, we still may not lift these sanctions. You may not get the benefits that we agreed to. That’s a terrible message to be sending, especially to a country where the Iranians never had any nuclear weapons—single nuclear weapon, but especially to a country where they do.

It provides very little incentive to move forward. And the second area, there are many, many areas. I’ve thought about this long and hard, but I’ll limit it to one more and that is the issue of irreversibility, and I think getting to the point, Kelsey, about the earlier question. I think one of the reasons after Hanoi, the North Koreans put back up the missile site that they had already decommissioned was to show us that nothing they have done yet is irreversible.

And unlike the Iranians who poured concrete into their plutonium facility in Arak, not quite irreversible but pretty darn close for the Iranians to come back on a plutonium path. They would probably cost millions but also take years, an estimated five years to bring that back up. That’s pretty irreversible and I think the North Koreans have seen what the Iranians have done to their program and here they are now, stuck.

And I don’t think the North Koreans want to do that. So, getting back to my earlier point, I really firmly believe North Koreans are not going to do anything significant, certainly nothing close to irreversible, before they feel the regime is safe and that there’s a clear path to economic development and modernization.

DAVENPORT:Great. Questions from the floor. Yes. Over here in the center. Oh, if you could wait for the mic please.

KIM: Thank you. My name is Connie. I'm a reporter for Voice of America. I just want to touch upon North Korea's People's Supreme Assembly that we briefly mentioned in the beginning. One of the key messages from Kim Jong-un was his push to change the U.S.'s political calculations such as the U.S.'s position on sanctions and the denuclearization process. How do you think this stance of North Korea is going to affect the negotiations?

And also, how do you assess President Moon's role as a mediator based on Kim Jong-un's speech at the Supreme People's Assembly?

AUM:So, when North Korea talks about the hostile U.S. policy, that was kind of vague about what does that mean, hostile U.S. policy. Well, it runs across the diplomatic, economic, military sphere. So, all of the exercises and the strategic assets on the peninsula, the lack of normalized relations, but on the economic side, a hostile U.S. policy is the sanction.

So, that is North Korea's goal, to break that sanctions regime and the overall global pressure campaign that the U.S. has been implementing. Kim Jong-un has doubled down on that. I think what President Moon can do is basically try to offer suggestions for ways that both sides can be flexible.

One idea that came out again suggested in the press conference remarks that Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui made was that the possibility of the snapback provisions, right, what we saw in Iran. So, I feel like we have this diverging gap between the approaches of both sides, big comprehensive deal upfront on one hand. For North Korea, it's incremental step-by-step reciprocal actions.

So, how do you converge those two policies? Again, one idea might be trying to agree to a comprehensive deal on paper, but then have the implementation process being more step-by-step and then also include the snapback provisions.

DIMAGGIO: And even if they agree to the big deal, you would need a process in place. We can't snap our fingers and it's going to happen overnight. So, I agree with you on that.

DAVENPORT:Great. Yes. There in the back.

(UNKNOWN): Katherine Calow (ph) Ploughshares Fund. I'm very curious about the recent developments in North Korea with the leadership reshuffling and specifically as some experts have noted, it's interesting that several foreign ministry officials have been elevated in a way we haven't seen under Kim Jong-il.

So, could you speak to what that means if anything? Is that a signal to the U.S.? How should we be reading it and what does it mean for future negotiations with Madam Choe in an elevated position. Thanks.

DIMAGGIO: I think many people were surprised. I think it was three foreign ministry officials who were involved and received very substantial promotions. I think the conventional wisdom had been that the foreign ministry—sorry.

I think the conventional wisdom has been that the foreign ministry had been sidelined and Kim Jong-chul was taking the lead. And I even think that the United States government itself has been waiting and hoping that this portfolio for taking the lead on the negotiations would shift from Kim Jong-chul to the foreign ministry.

I mean, at the end of the day, we really don't know what these changes mean. But I do think that the North Koreans may be readying to move the portfolio more towards the foreign ministry as negotiations, if they get off the ground. I think that might be a sign that they're ready to do that. But it's so opaque. We really don't know what any of these changes mean, this is a lot of tea leaf reading.

DAVENPORT:Frank, do you want to add anything on that or—good, great.

We'll take this question here in front.

TERRY: Gillian Terry (ph) with the National Association of Evangelicals. So, this is an arms control meeting. So, I think everyone here would be thrilled if the nuclear threat were to be taken off the table in the Korean peninsula.

But what about the human rights of the North Korean people? Is there any indication that if sanctions are lifted that that would actually lead to concrete improvements for North Koreans? And if not, what else could be done about that?

AUM:Well, I don't think there's any indication just because you lift sanctions, all of a sudden the human rights situation improves. I think the administration and this is sort of a fine line it has to tread here, but it has to make human rights a part of the negotiations for it to be something that's negotiated.

I'm a little torn on this one, because on hand, there are, human rights plays an important role in the security process including, for example, human rights violations with forced labor abroad and that continues to fund in North Korea's WMD program. So, there is a linkage between those two issues.

What I will say is that we need to be creative about thinking about how human rights can be helpful in this process. So, one idea that I would sort of turn to is thinking about the Helsinki process and basically we had a situation where we were giving the Soviet Bloc exactly what it wanted in terms of security conference, economic cooperation, and in return, we have to put in that human rights basket, right?

And so, I think if we can think about something similar to that where we make it a comprehensive deal, raise the human rights issue, it doesn't have to be where it's so provocative where we're talking about Kim Jong-un being trialed before the ICJ, but really just elevating the human rights concerns. There's probably a way to introduce that that might be helpful to the discussion.

DIMAGGIO: Yes. I think I was very dismayed when I heard that during the Singapore summit the U.S. team did not raise human rights at all. I understand that in order to get negotiations going and we've made denuclearization our top priority, we cannot add human rights as a negotiating item at this stage. But I think at the very least, American officials meeting with North Koreans need to raise these issues in an aspirational way, not in a demanding way, in an aspirational way. So, I'm hoping that that happened in Hanoi.

The other thing is we have to—our own credibility, here we are the U.S. had disallowed humanitarian NGOs from entering North Korea to do very important work on food security, health, et cetera. And I think that that was a big mistake and I think the administration is slowly coming around to realize that and now they're letting a few humanitarian NGOs back in to do this work.

I think in order for us to be able to sit down and talk to the North Koreans about human rights with credibility, we need to be able to say that we are permitting these organizations to do this important work, because after all, it affects the North Korean people and that's really what we want to reach.

I feel very strongly about that. We should let the humanitarian NGOs back in.

DAVENPORT:Mark, there in the back.

(UNKNOWN): Thanks very much. I'm sorry. I got the mic. This is a great panel.

Suzanne, I would agree that a declaration ending the war is sort of an easy card that the United States could play in. I'm not sure exactly what it would be at Yongbyong, whether closing all of it or allowing in inspections. Last August, I thought that the North Koreans placed more emphasis on that. Today, they're talking more about sanctions relief.

Frank stressed the importance of implementing sanctions. You suggested one step-by-step would be to allow inter-Korean cooperation. My question is, is there a way to allow such relaxation of the South-North Korean sanctions that doesn't pull the plug from implementing sanctions elsewhere?

Wouldn't it—I'm afraid it might—and I'll give other countries a signal that they can take their foot off the gas or maybe China and Russia already have I guess.

DIMAGGIO: Great question. Thank you. I'm not a sanctions expert. So, I'm going to thread carefully here.

But my understanding is for some of their activity to be allowed to move forward, it wouldn't require a full lifting of these sanctions. It could be done through exemptions and also could be done through special mechanisms that are set up to facilitate activity like Kaesong and so forth.

I think where there's a will, there's a way and we can think creatively on how to get this done without throwing out all of the sanctions at once. And again, our goal is to use sanctions how they're meant, to change behavior, to move things forward, and we really need to be able to do this. I feel we the United States have become so dependent on sanctions as a weapon of foreign policy to punish and to fault.

And, yes, there's an element of that that has to happen. But here we are at the cusp of a breakthrough and I don't think we should be so unwilling to use sanctions how they ideally are meant to be used. And in terms of the peace agreement, I think you're absolutely right. In my discussions with the North Koreans dating back to 2016 and even 2017, they put the peace agreement at the top of their list as a priority of what they wanted to have in exchange.

That boat has sailed. There's no question about it. These days I remember meeting with North Koreans a year ago and they didn't even bring up the peace declaration. I had to bring it up in our conversations. You're right. It's sanctions now. It's all about the sanctions, and I also think changing the nature of the relationship that I talked about earlier.

AUM:Yes. I'll just add really quickly that I'm not a sanctions expert either but, yes, there are wavers of sanctions or permissions given by the '17, '18 sanctions committee that would allow for ways to get around the prohibition on both cash transfers and joint economic commercial ventures. That doesn't dismantle the entire regime or that specific resolution, but (inaudible) one-off waiver.

And I agree with Suzanne as well. In my discussions with North Korean officials and in track 1.5 dialogues, they've moved off of the end of war declaration. What they said to me is basically that we thought it'd be sort of a nice thing for the U.S. to do, but the U.S. side seem to be hemming and hawing on it, which it was because it was probably introduced around the summer of last year. And for about three or four months, there was a lot of discussion about what that means.

The U.S. side was getting confused. What's the end of war declaration and peace agreement? The Defense Department was concerned about what that means for our security architecture in the region and at that point, North was like if the U.S. side doesn't want it then we don't want it either. What's the point here?

DIMAGGIO: But I still think we should move forward because it's important to the Korean people on both sides of the divide. And I think that means something.

DAVENPORT:We have time for one last question from the gentleman here at the middle table.

(UNKNOWN): Thank you. Thank you for this discussion.

Someone else said personnel makes policy, my question—my comment I guess is the national security advisor opposed the Iran deal. He opposed the Libya deal. He's opposed virtually every arms control agreement that’s ever come down the pike. He opposed the agreed framework.

So, I don't think there's too much reason for optimism about where we might go in the future, the United States might go during this administration. A quick question regarding the peace treaty if I could, historically, autocrats have oftentimes used the external enemy as the justification for their power. If you did that in North Korea, if you had a peace treaty with North Korea, what do you think Kim would have to have as his justification to remain in power? Thank you.

DIMAGGIO: So, in terms of a peace treaty, I think one of the important elements to Kim would be security guarantees and perhaps even a full normalization of relations with us. And in terms of the security guarantees, that of course would have to include the regional players especially Beijing would have to be a big part of that conversation.

And getting to your point about the national security advisor, he who shall not be named, I’ve tweeted about this and had been very clear that I'm confused, if Trump is a dealmaker, he wants to make deals, he wants to reach diplomatic agreements. Why does he have this person on his team? You said he was against the agreed framework, it was more than that. To use his own words, he was the hammer that smashed the agreed framework.

So, let me just make one more point that might be a little, pushing it hard. When I looked at the photos from Hanoi, I was very confused. On the North Korean side, I saw seasoned diplomats who have been, some of whom have been working this file for decades. On our side, I had to be frank. I didn't see a single diplomat. I didn't see a single negotiator.

I’m going to be a little harsh. I don't think President Trump is a negotiator. He's a brander. Secretary Pompeo is not a negotiator. He's a politician. Nick Mulvaney, I don't really know much about him, so I can't say. But I don't think he has experience negotiating on these issues.

And then, finally, he who shall not be named is not a negotiator that builds agreements. He is an official who tears down agreements. So, I think you put your finger on a very big program—personnel. Needs to be changed.

AUM:So, I think you made an excellent point. North Korea certainly speaks to its domestic audience and I've heard both arguments. On one hand North Korea needs to continue the war footing and in order to do that, it needs that external enemy, right? So, if you have a peace treaty, then, how do you maintain the legitimacy of the regime when there's peace, right?

On the other hand, I've also heard the argument that there are various constituencies within the North Korea regime. Kim Jong-un needs to make this argument to them to convince them that their security is assured and one way is through a peace treaty. We've seen the harsh rhetoric against the U.S. diminish in North Korea over the last year or so. We've had President Moon go to Pyongyang, speak before 150,000 North Koreans in the May Day stadium and talk about denuclearization.

That is an incredible shift I think just in the last year and a half. So, I think what we can do is test that hypothesis and see where that process leads us.

DAVENPORT:So, unfortunately, that's all the time we have today for the panel. Needless to say, I would feel much more comfortable if Suzanne and Frank were leading the U.S. delegation and negotiations with North Korea.

But, we appreciate all of the ideas that you put out about the process moving forward, what more flexibility looks like on both sides, the actual role that sanctions should play in the negotiations, and your comments on the role of Congress. I think it was a very rich discussion. I appreciate that. And please join me in thanking our panel.

KIMBALL: I just have a few closing remarks to make and inspired partly by Suzanne's comments. I think we might think of ourselves as Dumbledore's Army, spent a day in a room of requirement, and now we have to head out and do our work.

But, seriously speaking, we've had an incredibly rich conversation through the course of the day, thanks to our excellent speakers, our moderators. I hope it's stimulated your thinking. These are difficult issues. But—and Kelsey and I and Kingston, we all go through this every day and we're paid to work on these things, and I know many of you are retired or say you're retired. Some of you are students. Some of you are current diplomats and practitioners. We all in our different ways I think can take some of the ideas and information from this meeting and go out and help advance progress in these areas.

I just want to note that we will have video and audio of today's proceedings available on our website within the next couple of days, www.armscontrol.org, of course. We'll also have a transcript of today's event available online later this week. It will take a few more days. And I want to thank a number of people who made today's event a big success. Something like this takes a team.

And my name gets invoked many times, but it's the people that I work with, the board of directors, that guide the organization that make it all possible. And so, I just want to thank a few people here especially the sponsors, the key sponsors of today's event.

As you've heard a few times, we moved to a bigger space to accommodate the growing interest in our annual meeting and that was only possible because we have an even larger number of event, reception, table, and individual sponsors. I want to especially thank our event sponsors, Russ Colvin, our table sponsors, David Bernstein, Martin Hellman, Leslie Witt, Deborah Gordon, Catherine Kelleher, Laura Kennedy, Michael Klare, Tori Holt (who just left), Edward Levine, Jan Lodal, Terri Lodge, Tom Grimm, Culmen International, Evangelical For Peace, and the National Association of Evangelicals, and a number of other individuals who made additional contributions in addition to their registration today.

And of course, we couldn't do the work of the Arms Control Association without the ongoing and loyal support of our institutional supporters through the years, not the least of which is the Ploughshares Fund which has been supporting work of the Arms Control Association since well before I became the Executive Director in 2001, long before Joe Cirincione was at Ploughshares. We thank the Ploughshares Fund, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the McArthur Foundation, and many others listed in the program for making our overall work possible, and it's that ongoing support that really enables us to continue the work year-after-after, because as you can tell from today's discussion, we've got years of work ahead of us.

But especially I want to thank our Arms Control Association staff team for putting this event together and so well especially our meeting coordinator, Elana Simon, and our communications and operations director, Tony Fleming. (I think Elana is outside.)

And thanks a lot to our in-house graphic designer, Allen Harris who put together the program for today's conference along with the advertising materials. He's the guy who's been carrying the camera around… there is Allen, who also makes Arms Control Today look beautiful. So, thank you the three of you in particular. And thank to Kelsey, to Kingston Rief, Shervin Taheran, Alicia Sanders-Zackre, and our new Arms Control Today editor, Greg Webb. If you haven't met Greg, check him out at the reception which will come in just a few minutes.

And of course, as I said before, our senior fellow, Michael Klare, who I think is safe to say he's feeling younger again being at the Arms Control Association office and we feel more energized because of his energy and wisdom.

So, these folks are the best in the business and it's an honor to work with them. And also, because we're not just grooming the next generation of arms control leaders, we're trying to benefit from their productivity, our team of interns and volunteers today, Izabella, Cole, Tienchi, and Sasha, who make today's even go smoothly, thanks to the guys, too. And to our board of directors, thank you all for your support.

I wanted to ask everybody who I named or mentioned to just rise and let's everybody a round of applause.

(APPLAUSE)

And as I said, this work depends on your support and almost all of you are already members in the Arms Control Association. We really do appreciate it. We have a small, but loyal following and in your contributions, help us respond to the topsy-turvy of the Trump era in particular and there are other ways that you can help as ambassadors of the organization, some of which are listed in the back of the program.

Spread the word. Ask your institutions to subscribe to Arms Control today. Give a friend, a college student a gift subscription. Think about how you can take action by contacting your elected leaders. We have a new action alert component to our outreach efforts. And be an ambassador by sharing the resources that we provide and there's a list of materials that we produce in addition to Arms Control Today and the best way that we can spread the word is through our friends, our members, and our allies who share that on through their social and professional networks.

So, whether we succeed of course depends not just on what we do in this room, but whether we can build that support beyond this room. And I want to just invoke Larry Weiler again (who's very much on my mind), one our longest serving members, one of the original members of the board of directors of the Arms Control Association who wrote back in 1983, which is a year that really got me thinking about these issues when I was a freshman in college, another dark time in the nuclear era.

And at that time, Larry wrote in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "If nuclear policy is to be changed either fundamentally or with conditions and step-by-step, those outside of bureaucracies must become involved. This assertion rests on a central, historical fact: the postwar arms control efforts, significant restrains in the arms control field have been achieved only when the public became involved."

So, that is in part our mission. I invite you to help with that. And I thank everyone for being here today. We will begin as I said before with our reception in just about five minutes, it is open to everybody who has registered. The first drink is on us. Please be sure to pick up a little blue ticket when you go in. Show them your badge.

And we will expect Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, your senator for many of you. He'll be arriving a little bit before 4:30. In the meantime, enjoy a drink. Enjoy some hors d’ouvres, and decompress from today's discussions. Thank you all. We are adjourned.

(APPLAUSE)

Reception for Meeting Attendees
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland)