is everybody ready for this? So like I said, I said I'd be dressed as a clown. I'm not dressed as a clown.   So if you're offended by the word fuck, probably best to leave the room. I'll try to keep it to the minimum, but that's probably quite high level. I'd imagine most of you here know what bit-fi is. So this is a bit-fi thing. I don't really know what you should call it. It's a device. It's not the wallet, but there's one there. We've got one that's broken, one that's working, but the claim that bit-fi said was it was unhackable. They said the device was completely unhackable. Now to work out why they said it's unhackable, we've got to go into cryptocurrencies a bit. So the way that cryptocurrencies work is you've got a private public key pair. You deposit funds onto the public key and you need to use the private key to spend those funds. It's pretty simple. Now the problem is if someone gets hold of your private key, they take your private key, they can steal your funds. So protecting that private key is important. So what people started doing at first is they started moving their keys onto USB sticks. So the key wasn't always stored on your laptop. Now that kind of works. It had some protection, but the problem is you have to move that key back to the laptop to sign. When you do that, if your laptop's compromised, you'll lose your key. You've lost your funds.  So they store the key inside. The key never has to leave. The idea is you send a transaction through to the wallet and it will sign it. Now the problem there is if someone steals your wallet, they can still send a transaction to it and sign it. So to combat this, what they did was they added pin numbers to the wallet. So you can type a pin number in to protect that key. So ledger, tracer, you'll type a pin number in before you can use that key. Again, this is added protection. Things are getting better and better. So the next stage what people do is they said, well, what happens instead of saying send one bitcoin to cybergibbons, what happens if I say send 100 bitcoins to McAfee. The device, you don't know what it's signing. You can't tell what it's signing. So they added displays to them. So it will say the transaction you're trying to carry out. Next problem, if I ask someone to generate a password, they'll make a bad password. So instead of letting users choose passwords, what they do is they use a random number generator that's inside the device and that will generate the password for you. So it becomes unpredictable. So we've got these four things that normal hardware wallets do. Bitfy's different though. Bitfy's very different. Do we actually have anyone from Bitfy here? They're maybe not admitting it then, we'll see. So what Bitfy does is the user has the key. The user has a seed and a phrase and every time they want to do a transaction, they'll type it into the device. It will then sign that transaction and send it.  It's stored in your brain.   That has got to be typed into the device. There's no way that key doesn't also exist on the device. So they set up this bounty. This is what got us really interested. It was actually my colleague at the back there who I'm not going to name because I don't know what his name is. Dave? G? Whatever. Ali G. Let's go for that. Now this bounty, it said that they deposit the coins onto a Bitfy. Then they give you the Bitfy. They'll send a Bitfy to you and you have to recover the keys from that device. Now this kind of sounds like a rigged fairground game to me. The bounty here, it's only going to cover one very, very specific attack which is just attacking the device they've sent you. They made this really weird statement. The bounty program is not intended to help Bitfy identify security vulnerabilities since we already claim that our security is absolute. So they're saying their device cannot be hacked. So what's the point in setting up a bounty program if your device can't be hacked? So what they actually mean by unhackable is it's not vulnerable to one very, very specific attack. Them sending you a device that they've put a seed and phrase on, probably turned the power off, sent it to you for days in the post and then you've tried to recover the funds off that. So what we're looking at here is a rigged cold boot attack versus evil maid. If I can backdoor your device, that's a much more powerful attack. Now everything I'm going to talk about here, it wasn't me.  Most other people did the work here. So I'm presenting other people's work. So we have got the team. Oddly we got known as Thick Magascal which is the hacker collective mistakenly known as Cyber Givens and somehow sometimes called Oversoft. The media actually took this and ran with it. They started calling us Thick Magascal in stories. It was mainly made up of me, a couple of colleagues who don't want to be named. Spadawea, who's somewhere between the age of four and 16 depending on who you speak to. Oversoft, Ryan Castellucci who may well be here, I'm not sure, but lots and lots of different people. Now the claims that Bitfine made, now you all know John McAfee, yeah? Yeah? The inventor of cybersecurity? Well, he was involved with the marketing of this product and the first thing he does is he says there is no memory to hack in this device. No data.  There's no memory to hack. So we got the Bitfine. That chip, the one that says 4C in big letters is an EMMC flash memory chip. So we kind of challenged him on this and he says there is no RAM. There is no RAM on the device. That says LPDDR3, which low-power DDR RAM. That's RAM. It's not looking good here, is it really? The Bitfine wallet is only 120 US dollars. As a computing device, it's much more costly to manufacture than ordinary hardware wallets. It's a shitty media tech phone. There's nothing to it. You can buy these devices on Aliexpress for 30 bucks. There's nothing to it. We call it a phone. It's absolutely not a cell phone or anything, even resembling a cell phone. All cell phones are hackable.  There was some kind of corroborating evidence here, though. Yeah, SIM1. Subscriber identity module maybe? I don't know. This isn't my specialist subject, to be honest. There's their website. The image on their own site. Smartphone-1.PNG.  Key functions. Now this is from the FCC documentation. If you sell a device in the US that transmits Wi-Fi cellular, you have to get it FCC certified. But we were quite surprised they actually went to this extent. It's fairly common.  But anyway, that's another story for another time. But the FCC certification calls it a phone. I'm fairly sure that McAfee is wrong here. Now people are asking, can't someone just look over your shoulder and see what phrase they are typing? No, no, no. The Bitfire wallet has a screen with an extremely narrow viewing angle. Try it. No one would be able to see anything. Again, I'm not an expert in angles or anything like that. That looks not narrow to me. You can read my phrase off that. It got better though. So some guy who I think was kind of a bit of a shill posted this image saying that you can't read the key off the screen. So what we did was we enhanced the contrast and reduced the brightness slightly. And thanks to Ryan's help, we wrote a little script that allowed us to convert that. And what we found out was that the pass raise was in fact, why is Dan so crazy about Monero? And the seed was test70 at Bitfire.com. So we reconstructed that key from someone posting an image on the internet proving the point that had a narrow viewing angle. We are quite kind about the way we demonstrated this. We stole his money. We transferred it to another account and paid the transaction fees though because we're nice people fundamentally. The best thing was another one of these kind of guys, he kept on pimping it on Twitter. He said, but in this case, thanks to imagery editing software or techniques such as techniques required to read Poison's pass phrase, it would be possible to attain his phrase. Without changing brightness contrast, his funds would have been safe. These are advanced tools. You thought the NSA had good stuff? I've got paint. So we're going to move on to the actual hacks. Now, the first thing that seemed weird was, I don't know if Elliot, whose name I've forgotten is here either. He got his and what he noticed was the serial number that's printed in the back of the case differed to the serial number that was on the box that he received. Now, this isn't great for something where supply chain tampering could be a problem. In fact, it's quite a big problem that it might have been tampered with. They didn't really have a particularly good response to that to be honest. I didn't really have a particularly good response to any of this. The first attack we came up with was really simple. The digitizer, the thing on the screen that detects where your finger goes is I2C, a serial protocol. And it's unencrypted and exposed. So I could take a bit fire and I can attach to the I2C bus and sniff the key presses. It's exposed. So you can see the ribbon there where it's got those on. It's even labeled them for me. So you could definitely fit that in this case. There's a lot of room. It's not a very advanced attack. The next thing we wanted to do was root it. Now, I'd imagine a few people in this room have worked with media tech phones before and they kind of got this reputation for being really, really easy to root. First thing we do is we use their own tool to pull the flash memory out through USB. That gives us access to all of the partitions, which is pretty easy. The data partition was actually encrypted, which was unexpected. So we had to root it by modifying the RAM disk and at which point we had root on that device. What we then did was took a memory dump off my device. So I had made a transaction, sent the memory dump to Ryan, and he wrote a little script that pulled out potential candidates. And you can see there, one, one, one, two, two, two, two. That's my seed in phrase. So he could now steal my funds. Now, at this stage, BitFi had already been kicking off a bit and we won a pony. So this was last year. Well, I'd say we won a pony. BitFi won a pony. But I think it might have been a bit more to do with us. So we got this little gold pony, which is great. It got better though. We had root. And so what we decided to do was the typical thing, play doom on it. So this is, this is, this is Salim, Spadawea, who's, who's doing this. We posted this to prove we've rooted the device. BitFi said that this wasn't a problem. You might have noticed right at the beginning of that.  You don't need to do that. We were just using it to distract from the fact that it was so easy to root. Now the thing was, they said you could purchase it from any source. Now, Tracer and Ledger, the supply chain tampering issue, if someone intercepts the Tracer or the Ledger and puts their own firmware, changes the hardware, this is a problem. These guys were claiming that it wasn't a problem. So someone couldn't man in the middle the hardware. They said it wouldn't work because each device has a specific digital signature. And they were so confident about this. They actually started another bounty. So I got a bit fine. I rooted it. And there you can see the two different processes running. The Nox Admin one that does the bulk of the firmware stuff and the Rokitz one that does the actual wallet. I can see it establishing connection out there. I put my certificate on the device and I could intercept all the requests coming to and from the device. So now when it asks me to sign and pay as an attacker, I've got the ability to send arbitrary transactions to a device. Like a man in the middle of them.  It doesn't exist. The next attack was, after we'd rooted it, what we realized was on Android it's really easy to find the coordinates where you touch the screen. So you can just read out the ITC, the coordinates where it's coming from the digitizer. So I wrote a little script to deal with this. And what that does, you type in the seed and phrase. And if we skip a bit because it's a bit slow, no, can't work out to do that. We do that. It harvests those events and it sends them through to a remote computer. So now again we've got the seed and parse phrase. It wasn't a particularly advanced attack. But we've made a transaction with the man in the middle bit fine. We recovered the seed and phrase. It's done. Selene of course is about 80 times more hardcore than me and he made a much better attack. He made it so that it automatically sent it. There was none of this messing about the coordinates. He recovered it from memory. It was much more effective. We pretty much demonstrated that evil made was a real problem. We told them and they cancelled the bounty. So once we got the bounty they said the bounty wasn't there anymore. Up until this point they hadn't admitted the keys were ever in RAM. And then in the direct message exchange they did actually say the keys do stay in RAM for a brief period of time. So someone can extract that memory. They can get them. This is kind of what a bit file looks like. You've got USB going into the microcontroller. You've got the keys which will be stored in DDR RAM at some point. Now they've made an assumption. They said we think that if the guy was able to retrieve the private key from the device or something like that it would have to be done on a routed device. But if you route a device you have to restart it and it wipes the RAM clean. Now we're hackers. When you restart it it wipes the RAM clean. Now Ryan who I've just spotted said much of hacking is about understanding systems better than those who built them and using that knowledge to do what is supposed to be impossible. So they'd assumed because we rebooted the device there'd be no way to pull those keys from RAM. They were wrong. Once again Selim he wrote an app and this was incredible. It was an Android app. So we've got an unmodified bit file there. He's typing is don't be too salty and my very, very salty tears or whatever it is as his sultan phrase. Once he's done that, oh there's no sound. Oh okay it doesn't matter. It processes that request. So it sent that transaction. Success. He's now going to power off the device. So he's proving it's not modified like a magician. Plugs in USB, reboots the device. The attacking device then routes it after it's rebooted, scans the memory and within a few seconds it's recovered the key. Now this is a complete break of the device. Not only is evil made a problem but cold boot is also a problem. It's not better than storing it on a USB stick to be honest. Then it gets fun. That's a technical bit. Now the fun starts. It's their response. No one gas a ramen penny from the wallet. All these hat claims are meaningless. No one came close to taking the coins from it. Gas the ramen! It took a bit of a dark turn. So McAfee was denying it and then bit file tweeted this out. This is my last tweet as my shift is ending but did you guys ever bother to look into who you picked to fight with and the resources these people have? Not wise. Remember the lies and deception you deliberately spread about bit file can have consequences. That's quite a threatening tweet in the general scheme of things. I mean it's, I'd rather get that than the dick pic but when it comes down to it, well, now they claimed that it was actually to do with this. Now we modified their logo somewhat. My colleague over there is a genius at stuff like this. I couldn't have done it so good. That was my avatar for a while. It did appear to irritate bit file quite a bit. I guess that was the point. They also came out with some other brilliant stuff. We also think it's rather disappointing that a lot of media picked up on claims made by some person hiding behind a picture of a cat. Now we're not quite sure if they're actually talking about Daniel Gallagher who is also part of the team or me. I mean, I kind of look like a cat with the hood up a bit I guess but I don't really know. Very strange. And if you look at that guy who's been posting all this, Cybergibbons, the guy posts something every two seconds, 24 hours a day like he doesn't sleep or something. No, I don't. If somebody had a real job in cybersecurity they wouldn't have so much time to spend on Twitter. It might have a point. Now here's a smart dude making some sense around here. The yellow cat took too much acid and lost it. Now this was an account that was shilling for Bitfie on Twitter. Now an interesting thing that we noticed is that when you try and recover a password on Twitter, it leaks some information. So it leaks the last two digits of the phone number and it leaks the first two letters of the first part of the email and the last bit as well. Now Bitfie.com is five characters.com and Daniel Kasin, the CEO or something of Bitfie would fit in that first bit there. You can also note that down the bottom there, Love Crypto as well, 58. This was clearly linked to Bitfie. McAfee really got involved at this point. Am I a wannabe?   I mean he wasn't being about for a while. I can't remember who made this but they sent it to me. I just love it. He put a challenge out to me. Okay. I have 20 million on my Bitfie. I will pay your way to the states, put you up at my house for as long as you need.  So he was putting this challenge down. 20 million. If I went to the states and attacked his wallet to get those 20 million in coins. Now I don't know if you know McAfee. I don't know if you follow him on Twitter. But about the same time, serious dudes on a serious mission just received an order of one off M4s. That's his house. He's got guns. Really serious guns. He also hasn't been sober for 41 years. So he's invited me into his house with big guns and he hasn't been sober for 41 years. I mean it's already sounding bad. Anti-virus inventor John McAfee went on a naked shooting spree because the Belize government wants to assassinate him.  He shot holes in the ceiling. I don't think it's really worth 20 million to be honest. He then got a bit threatening on DM. Your career is finished.  You lost dude. Go hide under a rock. He keeps on going with this and then he sends me this weird link. Now I don't know if you've heard of clone zone. It's like this website. It used to be able to take the New York Times and various websites, clone it and you could modify it and then you know make spoof articles about other people. So he made it. Well I don't know if he made it. Someone made this one about me. Andrew Tierney, that's me. Okay, so I've given to me. Cyber security professional, cyber pervert enthusiast.  But it had this absolutely brilliant phrase in it. Smash my jigglypuff. I still haven't actually found my jigglypuff. So 11 months later, we thought it all died down. We didn't really think that much was going to happen. But Daniel Kacin came along and set up his own Twitter account and he started getting a bit responsive. Your tweets are boring and annoying. You keep trying to prove to the world that bitfire is not perfect. You ever knows it's not perfect and we're not saying it's perfect. Now the thing was they still haven't informed the customers that they have these problems with their device. They haven't told them about the evil maid, the cold boot. They haven't allowed their customers to adjust to the change in the threat landscape. This tweet is brilliant. They're not in RAM. They are in RAM for much less than a second making extraction impossible. Now we all work in security. We know things aren't binary like that. Some things are hard. Some things are easy. Things are very, very rarely impossible. It's the bit at the bottom though. How many innocent people's lives have you put at risk with your clown act? I mean I think it's a bit unfair calling me a clown but I'm just thinking what I'm doing right now stood on this stage and yeah, maybe I am. Even more threatening stuff. When the marketing machine turns on and the media is covering all this, you're incompetence, arrogance, ill intent towards others, manipulation, irresponsible security practices, an endless list of epic disasters will be fully revealed to the world.  This is epic. We aren't doing the testing so they were claiming that they were getting a third party into test. I don't know if they are. I've got no way of telling if anything they say is true but they aren't doing the testing. They're saying that Selbright are doing the testing. Now I've got a lot of respect for Selbright. They do some very impressive stuff but it's a bold claim to say that on the internet and then the VP of research at Selbright comes along and says they did contact us with a request which we declined. Muppets. Now just to kind of actually give some kudos to them and they said they were going to open source the code. This is so hot. They said they were going to open source the code. And they did actually allow access to the code. Now to get access to it you've got to download a binary and do some crazy stuff and send them a key and eventually you get access to this tool and you get access to the source code. Now we were kind of expecting some things to have changed since last year. Not really. Now it's important to note that if you ever want to wipe keys from memory in a device simply overwriting them with zeros is really not enough. I mean this is really bad. This is not the kind of code. This is the sort of thing you do when you're 17 and messing about. It's really bad. It's not going to wipe keys from memory. Important thing to note about the way that Bitfy works is it's running on an Android device so you've got the bare metal on the outside. You've got the Android OS within that. Then you've got the Android ART inside of that but it's also mono. It's C sharp so it's got another layer of indirection and finally you've got the Bitfy application within that. So we're talking a lot of different layers where things can go wrong. If you wipe memory within mono it's not going to wipe it all the way up the stack. C shop and mono use garbage collection. So if you put something on the heap you've actually got no idea where it's going to stay on the heap. Things can move about. This is why we could originally recover the keys. Now they've come up with this really interesting way of obfuscating the keys. So previously they were stored simply as ASCII bytes I believe. I think that was how it was. So now what they do to combat us scraping the memory for ASCII bytes. Those long base 64 encoded strings are PNGs of the characters. So it's a PNG of the letter A. So rather than have one byte that represents the letter A you've now got about 60 bytes that represent the letter A. Now our cold boot attack sometimes failed. Sometimes the memory would degrade somewhat. You'd lose a bit of that memory and you have to guess the remaining characters. With this scheme loads of that can degrade and you're still able to recover the data. Which we did quite easily. We lost one character from that. You can see that the second byte in the sort there is set to zero. That has actually been successfully wiped. It's quite bad. So a guy called Ben Tasker did a code review. A really, really in depth code review is way too much for me to cover here. He went through a memory dump and he can recover what my sort and phrase are from that. So you can see we've lost that letter E in one location in memory. That's it. That's how ineffective it is. Just looking at the rest of the code quality as well. This is the SSL validator. So it makes a connection out using SSL to their servers. Now you've got to check that that connection is valid. And you can see there it says starts with www.bitfi.com. If you've ever done code review I can register www.bitfi.com.cybergibbons.com and I can intercept SSL communications to these devices. This code is garbage. It's really bad. We haven't even gone into the other parts of it that to sign Bitcoin transactions, sign Apollo transactions, they've just imported arbitrary third party libraries that don't take account of this. So we got a pony last year which Ryan collected, which was absolutely awesome. But we also got a pony this year. So I think this is the first time that we've managed it. One product's got a pony twice for the same thing. So lamest fender on both of them. The thing I most like about getting the pony is this though. That's Charlie Miller. Look at his face. Now kind of getting a bit into more how we'd fix this. Now they always say the keys are never stored in RAM. That's a very different thing to say in the keys are stored in RAM for a very, very short period of time. Now in reality the bottom part is what's happening. But if you threat model for that top bit, assuming the keys are never in RAM, you're not going to be truthful to your customers. There will always be a way to recover those keys from RAM, whatever it is. So they need to communicate this to their users. They need to say this device is broken. So can it be fixed? Well maybe. Could we improve the existing hardware? Well, yeah, if it had secure boot, if they locked the boot loader so the USB just couldn't pull it out, if they cut the USB data lines, which I know was recommended to them, and if they made it take longer than two minutes to root it, it might be a little bit more secure. Could they improve the software? Well, yeah, if they stripped down Android a little bit, it was running a browser, an alarm clock, you know, the standard Android stuff in the background. So there was always a tax service they had that was unnecessary. If you get closer to the metal, if you look at Ledger and Trasl, they're running on microcontrollers using custom code. It's much easier to validate that. Secure development practices would be a good thing to do.  It took a kid, like Selim is not, he's not had the world experience. He's not spent hundreds of hours working these things. It took him probably three or four days to go from nothing to a fully working cold boot attack. That's really quite extreme. If they're going with new hardware, well, we'd suggest they use a microcontroller, secure element, minimize the OS and things like that. But I think fundamentally the thing with bitfires they need new people. They've abused the trust of their customers. You know, this device is not secure. It never has been secure for the last 11 months as far as we're aware, nothing's changed. Now, they could demonstrate they've changed. They could get someone to pen test it.  But they are going to be here tomorrow, they say. So I'm not sure if they're going to be here or over in the hardware hacking village. So I'd suggest maybe if someone could be bothered to take a look at themselves. We can certainly give you some guidelines on how to route it, how to recover stuff from the memory. The results might be interesting. Anyway, that's the end of the talk.  If anyone's got any questions, please ask. Oh, hi, Ryan. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. So yeah, if you just want another amusing story, they did send us a bounty device eventually. It took a lot of convincing. And when they sent us a bounty device, we routed it. And we found that Daniel Kacin's SSID and PSK for his home Wi-Fi were stored in the device and left in the device. So we provisioned it at home, put the funds onto it, and left them in there, which allowed us to geoloquate his house. Good op sec. There's a million funny things that happened that I've probably completely forgotten about. It was good fun. Anything else from anybody? Am I going to get jumped on the way out by Bitfy? Hope so. Thank you, people.


Honourable Sejus Ogul, a former House of Representatives member, has joined the Labour Party's Edo State Covenorship race. He believes in the common man and will prioritise food security and healthcare if elected. Ogul represented Esan North East South in the 8th and 9th National Assembly and has announced his intention to run as the Labour Party's Secretary Honourable Nigerians, the commoners, the damn trodden of this country. They are the people we fight for in this party and they are the people we must leverage. We don't have anything against the rich, we don't have anything against the elites. But we are saying those below them must be allowed to bring. And Labour governments in Osadebe Avenue will liberate them in this state. We don't have any problem with somebody sending the children abroad to school. If you are a rich man and you are in the private sector and you are paying your tax, you don't have any problem with that.  But you cannot be in government and use government resources to do that.


Welcome to the National Security College here at the Australian National University. I'm Rory Metcalf, the head of the National Security College and I want to begin by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and paying respects to the elders of the Ngunnawal people past and present. So today I think the scale of the presence in this room including the media presence really attests to the significance and the timeliness of the speech you're about to hear and the speaker that I'm very, very proud to introduce. So Admiral Scott Swift is here obviously as commander of US Pacific Fleet but more than that I think is here as someone who has played a really significant role in deepening the strategic relationship, the alliance between Australia and the United States in our shared maritime region in the Indo-Pacific over many years and this goes back of course not only to an appointment not so long ago as commander of the seventh fleet but a very long and distinguished career with far too much depth and detail to need to narrate here in the service of the United States over some decades. I think the timeliness of today's presentation about strategy, stability and the alliance in the Indo-Pacific is reinforced by some of the news that we've been following lately. Of course there are questions in many minds in this country really about the nature, the character, the future, the strength of the alliance in an uncertain world including in times that have been politically uncertain. The news that some of us have followed this week about the extra sets of eyes and ears on the Talisman Sabre exercise that Admiral Scott has just joined us from I think also has reinforced the view that the issues we discuss here today are very real, they're not only something of interest to my academic colleagues and so I guess in the spirit of what we do here at the National Security College where we provide executive training and development to Australian officials and also to officials from a range of partner countries but also our academic program but thirdly our role as a I guess a platform for quality debate about policy, about strategic and security issues of matter. It's my real pleasure to welcome Admiral Scott Smith. Well good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning, it's a pleasure to be back, I think it was just over a year and a half ago that I was here in this same space having a similar dialogue and it's great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd, I think it says something about the relationship that the United States enjoys with Australia and one of those as Rory mentioned going back to my 7th Fleet days was Rory himself as a young new 7th Fleet commander I came to Australia at the invitation of Rory and had just a fantastic engagement with broad minded well informed individuals that expanded my thinking on the challenges that we collectively face here in the region and I very much look forward to getting to that same kind of dialogue in the Q&A period. I do want to thank the National Security College at the Australian National University for inviting me back potentially some short term memory loss there and for providing us all the opportunity to share our thinking and insights with each other, I think that dialogue is critically important and it's for like this that our critical a critical part of our ongoing security dialogue enabling a more informed analysis of the challenges that impact Australia, the Indo-Asia Pacific region and those interests here including the United States, those interests throughout the region. I look forward as I mentioned to your questions and comments and learning from your thoughts, experiences and insights. This is my 5th trip to Australia as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and each visit I'm struck by the enduring bonds between our navies, our nations and our people. The crucible of World War II forged that bond as our naval forces fought together in places with names like Soon-To-Straight, Coral Sea and Salvo Island just to name a few. Our sailors share common character, common values and in fact common graves. Through the lens of shared adversity we've developed an abiding confidence in each other's commitment, a mutual respect for each other's capabilities and most importantly an unshakable trust that comes from a natural byproduct of steadfast relationships. Make no mistake, our alliance today is ironclad. I find it encouraging to draw upon our history and to see how our relationship continues to thrive today. For the last month Australian American forces as Roy alluded to conducted the Talisman Sabre exercise, an exercise that included 33,000 personnel and 21 ships including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, her strike group, the USS Bonhomme-Rachard and her expeditionary strike group and the Australian, New Zealand amphibious ready group. I actually just came from participating myself again as Roy mentioned as the command and control portion of the exercise in Brisbane. I was working alongside a US Army Lieutenant General, a Royal Australian Navy Rear Admiral, a US Air Force Major General, a Royal Australian Air Force Air Commodore and a US Marine Brigadier General. If Americans and Australia are two people separated by a common language I can tell you that that language barrier does not exist between our militaries. While the exercise was both realistic and challenging our combined joint forces displayed how smoothly we integrate and operate together. What struck me most is our ability to maneuver an impressive amount of combat power very quickly from sea to shore and around the operating area. That capability is critical and shows that we are ready to be where it matters, when it matters, with what matters within the region and indeed across the globe. With that in mind, multi-lateral exercises like Talisman Sabre help improve our ability to operate together demonstrating the responsible use of combat power to provide security for the sake of stability to enable prosperity. In doing so, we set by example that the combined application of accepted norms, standards, rules and laws is the best approach to counter forces of instability. Those forces of instability offer a false alternative focused on bilateral solutions for multi-lateral challenges, too often leveraging coercion and the use of force over discourse and dialogue. We never know where crisis may occur but it is our job to be prepared to respond. It is not lost on me that our shared history highlights that Australia's defense force has been deployed globally for over a century. Demonstrating a keen appreciation for how frictions originating well beyond our own shores can impinge on security conditions at home. That is a valuable perspective to have, especially with maritime nations and it helps widen the scope of things for us to consider when dealing with national, regional and global security issues. One of the most pressing maritime security challenges facing us in the Indo-Asia Pacific, in my mind, is the potential erosion of a rules-based international system. It is a system that emerged from the ashes of World War II, generated unprecedented levels of prosperity, lifted millions out of poverty and benefited so many nations over the past 70 years. Yet its continued acceptance is being challenged on several fronts by the very nations it most benefited. As U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis stated at the Shangri-La Dialogue last month, quote, the international order is not imposed on individual nations, rather the order is based on principles that were embraced by nations, trying to create a better world and restore hope to all, end quote. Membership is not based on size, strength or wealth. All nations, large and small, have an opportunity to participate and reap the collective rewards of cooperation. Unfortunately, some choose to reject the accepted framework of norm standards, rules and laws that underpin the international system and the inclusive security network supporting it and instead pursue a more self-serving path. We have no clear example of the consequences of self-isolation and a desire to return to an earlier period where might makes right than that of North Korea. Satellite imagery underscores the contrast between a darkened North Korea and the bright lights of its prosperous neighbors. It's a stark comparison, but it emphasizes the positive impact of being a part of that rules-based international system. It is difficult for me to understand those that support such an approach from a national, regional and certainly global construct. Behavior of other nations seems to suggest that opportunistic approach that seeks to impose national laws in international space is not a model to embrace. In the South China Sea, for example, rather than use the mechanisms in place for resolving disputes or advancing national claims, there is an emerging alternative to the global order being offered that leverages national power to coerced neighbors to the reluctant acceptance of unilateral actions. Smaller nations facing a growing preponderance of military and paramilitary force just beyond their shores have little recourse but to acquiesce within such a system. The principle of unfettered access to the global commons at the heart of freedom of navigation discussions cuts across domains and disciplines as our maritime economies become increasingly intertwined. The concern of many in the region is that the imposition of restrictive national laws in international waters reflects parallel efforts to restrict access to diplomatic information, military and economic domains as well. This is why the role of navies is important beyond just the maritime. For decades, the U.S. Navy and our allies and the Royal Australian Navy have through global practice and observance of the international norm standards rules and laws reinforce the value of this critical principle. U.S. forces will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international laws allow and remain committed to protecting the rights, freedoms and lawful uses of the sea and airspace guaranteed to all countries. In a region dominated by the maritime environment, upholding the rules-based system and inclusive security network requires a constant reaffirmation by Indo-Asia Pacific nations and their naval forces. As a rule, when nations apply seapower professionally and responsibly, it broadens national and regional prosperity alike. When seapower is applied provocatively and opportunistically, friction results with great potential for spiraling instability. The region of the Indo-Asia Pacific has enjoyed great prosperity since the end of World War II and potential for continued and increasing prosperity yet remains. There is no doubt that nations who have embraced the international rules-based system have shared in that prosperity and will continue to do so. And there is also no doubt that navies that uphold the international rules-based system like the U.S. Navy and the Royal Australian Navy continue to do, they will remain essential to ensuring the security and stability that enables that prosperity. And with that, I look forward to your questions and comments. Thank you. Please don't go away, Admiral. I think there's going to be a lot of interest generated, a lot of questions. I'm going to, I guess, take advantage of the prerogative of hosting the event, perhaps pose the first question to you, but then invite some more comments and questions from the audience. If you have a question, please do get my attention and indicate who you are when a microphone comes to you because we are on the record. Admiral, I think your remarks really encapsulated both the challenge and I think ways forward on a lot of the regional security issues that worry us. Those of us who've observed the, I guess, the Talisman Sabre exercise from afar this year have been struck, I'll be very direct about it, by the fact that China's taking some interest in the exercise on this occasion and there have been, I think, some pretty credible press reports about the presence of a Chinese surveillance vessel in Australia's EEZ, presumably not there to monitor yacht racing. I'm curious to know what your perspective is on that, whether you can leave some sort of comment, not only on that particular instance, but on the principle, if you like, that's at stake here. Thanks for that, Lori. Let me change the context of the question if I might have that liberty and take you back to RIMPAC, not the most recent RIMPAC, but the RIMPAC before, where we had a similar situation with a Chinese intelligence ship that was participating in the exercise, though, in a somewhat uncoordinated manner. So I think, and far be it for me to comment on something that is clearly an Australian governmental issue, so I'm going to put the perspective in another context and take it back to my comments that as we look at challenges across the region, we should focus on them not so much as challenges, but as opportunities. So I view this as a great opportunity to experience that we had in RIMPAC. So I apologize. I am not an expert on UNCLOS and the United Nations Law, the C document, but I am a student of it. And UNCLOS would suggest that in the RIMPAC perspective that these activities not only were entirely legal, but well within the prerogative of any nation. Those operations were being conducted in the United States EEZ. There are some expectations of those operations. My approach would be to ask the question of any foreign vessel operating in the United States EEZ is to ensure that those operations are military operations and not commercial operations. Because if there's commercial operations, there's a law enforcement factor that comes into play, and I would expect that the United States Coast Guard would visit that vessel to ensure that whatever commercial activities were taken were in compliance with international law. But safe to say on the RIMPAC example that we made the assumption that it was military-based operations and collections. The opportunity that creates is to increase the insights, increase the understanding of what's behind the action. And as I continue to interact with my Chinese colleagues, I've met several occasions with the South Sea Fleet Commanders, the East Sea Fleet Commanders, the North Sea Fleet Commander. I've met with the previous chief of the People's Liberation Army Navy and had met just recently with the new chief, although we had known each other in his previous roles. So it's an opportunity to engage in a dialogue directly with the Chinese to help understand the dichotomy in my mind is why is there a different rule set applied with respect to taking advantage of UNCLOS and other EEZs, but there's this perspective that there's a different rule set that applies within another nation's EEZ. It goes back to the rules-based order and an understanding of what that rules-based order and that understand that those rules apply broadly and regionally. It's how you gain consensus and where countries have different perspectives. So again, I look at it as an opportunity to engage and better understand the broader challenges and the perspective of those challenges from the various stakeholders within the region. Thank you for that. We'll take some questions from the floor. I know we've got media present as well as the interested public, so I'll try and spread the questions out a little, but I'll start with the gentleman in the middle of the back row. Please wait for the microphone and identify yourself. Good morning, Sir. Major Jarrah Thompson, Army Headquarters. I've seen a lot of commentary talking about referencing the context of a rising global power, the facilities track when you're going. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are in terms of whether that example of the Polynesian War a couple of thousand years ago still holds any relevance today or whether people are probably reading too much into it? Yes. Next question. You are at a national security college, so it's the perfect question. So I think there's great value in using history as a guide to expanding the dialogue with respect to the challenges that we face. I do think it's important that we bookmark that discussion as originating from a historical perspective. There's a danger in there as well, so you can see where I'm going with the answer and you alluded to it, that history is not a template by which to judge what's happening today because the situation today is very different. I mean, I could spend 10 minutes talking about why it's so different. I mean, in my mind it starts with social media, the speed of information, the global economy that has second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth orders of effect of a decision made that it's very difficult for the decision maker to fully understand what those impacts are going to be over time. So I think the world that we live in perhaps overstated and stating the obvious is much more complicated today than then. But having said that, it goes to a common theme that I reinforce to my staff is that it's so easy to judge because it's so hard to understand and we need to broaden that dialogue to understand. As most people that ask me a question along this theme, it comes to how do you make space? How do you accommodate the changes in whatever the power centers are in any period? I mean, if you go back to the city's trap that you speak of, it was really a focus in my mind about the accommodations of centers of power as they changed. And that is absolutely applicable today. A common reference that I use is the global stage isn't getting any bigger. It is what it is. So the question is, as powers rise and fall on that stage and new powers step onto that stage, how do we accommodate their positions on that stage? Because room has to be made. And I think everyone would agree using China as the example. They are a global power, certainly from an economic perspective. And I would suggest we all would want to make space for them on that stage. The question is, what's the mechanism by which that space is created? Is it that standard of those international norms and standards that have governed that change in power? I mean, their origin was really at the end of World War II. And look at the approach that Japan took prior to that. And I think certainly the U.S. took a leadership role in establishing what those rules were at various conferences. It was a San Francisco conference in 1954 that worked through the process of establishing those rules here in the Pacific. But equally important is we established the institution for changing those rules, because those that were at that conference had the forethought to understand that the rules based that they were setting then may not be applied in the future. So it's equally important to focus on those institutions. And regardless of what your historical perspective is and what you may apply to better understand the challenges that we face today, that dialogue is critically important. But part of that dialogue needs to be focused on the mechanisms by which those ideas flow into that domain. And I think we've established institutions that are well suited to generate and support that dialogue. My concern is that one is the rules based approach is being challenged for an alternative. My question would be to fix what? And then the challenges to the institutions themselves is something that there should be a broader discussion on, I think. Thank you. We'll take some more questions. The gentleman in the middle. Thank you Admiral for coming to talk to us, especially at this time. In addition to the... Oh, please identify yourself. Pete Badness, I'm a visiting fellow in international relations. In addition to the structural situation of the so-called Thucydides trap, since the election of Donald Trump, it's true that we lived in extraordinary times. And at risk of being blunt, I would like to pose this question to you. If when you returned to your command next week, you were to receive an order from the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, to make a nuclear attack on China, would you do it? So far these are yes and no answers. The answer would be yes. Every member of the U.S. military has sworn or oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey the officers and the President of the United States as the Commander-in-Chief appointed over us. So this is core to the American democracy. And any time you have a military that is moving away from a focus and an allegiance to civilian control, then we really have significant problems. Thank you. That's an answer that of course worries us. And may I do one follow-up? That question rather than comment. Is this question one that is being discussed among military leaders in the United States at your level of command? So I really think it's a different question. The question is, what is the appropriate application of military power? And we live in the United States, I'm speaking as an American, we live in a democracy. And that discussion is a robust discussion that started when I first became aware of it and continues today. I referred to it in my prepared comments and that is the application of military power, which is core to I think to what your question is. But there's opportunity, this is an example of what Roy has teed up here. There's an opportunity to have this type of broad discussion with individuals of alternative views of other individuals to generate that dialogue. Thanks for the question. We've got a couple over here in this corner. We'll start with I think it's David Rowe and then the gentleman in front of him. Thanks Roy, David Rowe from the City Morning Herald and Age Newspapers Admiral. I know we're having a media roundtable in a couple of hours from now, so I risk of making you sick of the sight of me before we even start that. But I'm overriding it for you just to unpack a phrase that you used in your speech. In a region dominated by the maritime environment and holding the rules based order and inclusive security network requires constant reaffirmation by Indo-Asia Pacific nations and their naval forces. Can you define constant reaffirmation and what it would look like from Australia's point of view in particular? Well, I won't and I'll go back to the previous question. The most important thing that I do as a Pacific Fleet Commander is build relationships. The most important byproduct of that relationship is trust. It's also the most perishable element of any relationship. So if you're not constantly building trust, there's always this sense of is the commitment still there from an individual perspective. I think that's some of the challenges that were brought out in the previous question. So it's that it is very important and this is beyond the scope of any one country. It's very important that we continue to act and understand the value that's been brought by this rules based system. Because if we take it for granted, then we're in peril of headed down another path and end up in a place where our ability to take from a military perspective, my specialty is security but security for security's sake has little value. It's transitioning that security into stability and that occurs through actions and that actions is governed by that international rules based order. So people are concerned about how military power may be used. That's why it's so important that we continue to demonstrate that from a national perspective in an international construct, I would suggest here in the Pacific line is more of a regional construct so that we could show that connection between security and stability. And then it's up over to the whole of government. So when I talked about the importance of freedom and navigation, not just from a naval perspective, from the diplomatic information granted that it was a part of military and economic, that's the dime construct that needs to be across all of those domains. And the challenges in one domain need to be thought of in the context of what similar challenges bring in the other domains as well. So that's the security to stability piece. It's that connection between dime that connects the stability to prosperity. Because if nothing is done with stability, if you don't act on those opportunities, prosperity's not going to follow on. So it's a whole of government approach in my mind. This is not just the military piece and that's what I meant with everyone has an opportunity, not just here in the region, but broadly. And too often times I can't go anywhere without having a China-centric discussion. This is not a China-centric discussion. I mean, look at Europe and the challenges being faced in Europe with this recent discussion of a Chinese-Russian bilateral exercise in the Black Sea in my mind, entirely appropriate, well within the bounds of international rules. Look at, you talk about the U.S. election. Look at Brexit, look at other elections around the world. We are in a, if I had this discussion a year ago and someone were to ask me, I'm glad I didn't get asked this question, tell us where you think we'll be a year from now. I would have been so off the mark. So please don't ask that question. We're going to get to what's more important or what are the activities to take us to that destination that we all want to arrive at collectively. What are those actions that are required? Part of those actions are the re-affirmation of that rules-based order that has brought some great prosperity to the Indo-Asia Pacific. Let's take this question here and then I think I saw at the back of the room. Yes, please. Richard Sammons from the Department of International Relations here. Thanks Admiral for coming to this public forum. I was wondering if you would ask almost a semi-personal question. As I was very interested to read your biography, I saw that you served in operation Prane Mantis, which was the London in 1988 planning response to an Iranian provocation. The United States retaliated against Iranian oil platforms and indeed hit the Iranian naval forces quite hard. But perhaps most importantly, as soon as the point was made, U.S. forces were able to pull back and avoid any further escalation. I just wondered, this must have been a very formative experience in your naval career. I wonder if when you think about situations, say provocations in Iran and North Korea, would such an operation be possible today? Or would the risk of escalation just be too high? Yeah, so it's a great question. I go back to the first question as always. You put yourself at risk if you take a data point and try to extrapolate from that one data point what the destination is that you're arriving at that you want to arrive at and even the path that you'll take to get there. It's important that multiple data points be tied together. I thought where you were going to go with the question was how old I am. But the United States, I mentioned that Australia armed forces have been deployed globally for over a century now. From a United States perspective, I have been involved directly in combat operations since I was a young Lieutenant Commander, was that first experience. So I think it's important that we bring a collective perspective to the challenges that we face in the region. And to go back in history and suggest that works so well, and I'm not saying that it did. Over to the diplomats and leaders in government to make that assessment, perhaps historians. But it is difficult, if the assumption was that works so well, to lift that whole clock as a template and try to apply it someplace else because the dynamics invariably are very, very different. I will say that it was a formative event for me. It was the beginning of my thinking with respect to the use of military power. And the fact that military power should be used as an enabler to regain a condition of stability by which dialogue and diplomacy can take root. And I think that's what happened in that military operations. Issues had accelerated to the point that there was a sense that it was unable to have a dialogue otherwise, that the forces of instability certainly in the region needed to be reduced. I would argue that it was a measured approach. The oil rigs were attacked for strategic reasons. Those two ships that were attacked for strategic reasons, but no other naval forces were attacked for strategic reasons to not do that. I think that's the approach that needs to be taken, this broader approach, because I have so much value coming to forums like this. If I only talk to my military colleagues, then we're going to come up with military solutions. We need to expand across that whole dime, the diplomacy, the information, the military, and the economic to understand what tools are available to change the conditions that we find nationally and internationally unacceptable. Thank you for taking a question over here. Andrea Sornano, PhD candidate from National Security College. My question is a little bit more localized for Australia, but I would like to know the American perspective on it. In the negotiations for the establishing of the maritime border with Timor-Leste, what would be the ideal scenario for America that would stabilize that region? I'm really not qualified to speak specifically about that issue, but what I will say is it goes back to the comment that I made about the second, third, fourth, fifth order of consequences of a decision being made. And too often times will be making decisions based on a first order analysis and not that broader, deeper analysis. That's why I think institutions like this are so important, that there's this collective collection of individuals with disparate and differing views that come together to focus on collective challenges. And so you mentioned one. I'll go back to another point that I think I mentioned. It's been a very rich engagement over the last two days here in Canberra. I find myself repeating myself sometimes in the same event, which doesn't instill a sense of commitment to others that I'm speaking to. So I hope I'm not repeating myself here. I think it's actually the importance of relationship building, and that's what I do. So I've been to Timor-Leste on several occasions for that very reason to make sure that I have a better understanding broadly of what's going on in the region. And I know that there are tensions that are related there that certainly surround the local area. There's certainly Indonesian, Malaysian, Philippine, Australian, Timor-Leste obviously being there. So visiting all those countries and having the dialogue about those issues that some may feel are too sensitive. That's not what the first visit is for. The first visit is to develop an understanding of the individuals that you're dealing with. The second visit is about let's get to those consequential issues to have that discussion. So the toolbox that we're reaching into is a toolbox that's rich with opportunities. It's not just a military toolbox. It's a toolbox with those diplomatic, those information, those military, and those economic tools that are made available to resolve challenges such as the border issues that you raise. Thanks. We'll take one or two more. I'll have one question for the end if I have time. I think a gentleman right in the back row. Yes. Hi. My name is Yuhua Jun, a PhD student from school at CHL. I would like to ask a much more technical question about this as we have heard so many Chinese scholars and generals later in time that the PLA is capable of using DF-21 missiles to take down US aircraft carriers. So do you think they are capable of doing so? Absolutely. Yeah. So is Australia. So we need, it is a technical question, but it's not a productive approach to having a broader dialogue. Any country, I think a country's military should match its broader national power. And oftentimes that national power I categorize into two primary areas. One is its ability to influence the region or influence the world. That's the diplomatic side of it. And the other side is the economic side. And I think it's reflective of the scope, scale of the military here in Australia. So Australia has fulfilled a significant leadership role, not just in the region of Australia, but broadly, really around the world. And I think they have a military that matches that as well. Now when you have a military, we do focus on the technical and tactical eaches. And I certainly have great respect for the PLA. I know the PLAN better, so maybe I have more respect for the PLAN. That's why I spent so much time talking to the leaders of the People's Liberation Army Navy. I think that mill to mill engagement is richer than it's ever been in my military career. And I think having those dialogues is more important than getting into the tactical eaches of the capability of the Navy. The issue is how are you going to use that power for the benefit of the region? The power to increase stability and from stability to prosperity. We can take another question from the group. You seem to be flagging here, but I think we have a question here. Thank you. Hi, my name is Theresa from the Department of International Relations, and I'd like to ask whether there's any interactions between the actual Navy, swimming, walking the ports, or there's interactions with the Chinese, and whether that perhaps leads to agreements or some sort of bottom-up approach to water building? Yeah, I hadn't thought about that context, but it probably has led to the agreements that the Code for Unalerted Encounters at Sea began as, I want to say, a bilateral, but it was a focused effort between the U.S. Navy and the PLAN. And then it's much broader than that now. I mean, it really is a model that we use to bridge the communication gap that's created based on differences in language that really all Navy's in the region have embraced, and I suspect come back three years from now that it will have spread globally because the utility of it has such great value. I think that utility, the discussion initially at the higher levels was about the policy implications, but the utility of it was never a question. I think that came from the engagements that we have at the tactical level. I can tell you that my interactions with, from commander to commander, counterparts that meet each other at sea, it's somewhat unique from naval perspective. We're all sailors regardless of what flies from the fantail or what nation we swear allegiance to. The sea is a daunting environment to operate in. It's unforgiving, and there is an embrace code across all sailors that all sailors will respond to sailors in distress. And that generates a natural affinity for dialogue when we encounter one each other with each other at sea. My discussion with the South China Sea fleet, the East China Sea fleet, the North Sea fleet commander, the chief of Chinese Navy is very, very positive. We talk very frankly about consequential issues that our nations face together and what its implications are in the maritime environment. And I do think that the underpinning of those discussions is the relationship that happens on an everyday basis. The Pacific fleet will have conducted over a thousand ship days of operations just in the South China Sea. We conducted operations in the South China Sea with eight other nations just in the month of June. So this is a common area which we can come together to generate that dialogue. It doesn't need to be just in a form like this. It can be on the sea, and I'm happy to characterize as that's exactly what has happened. Admiral, it seems to be exercise season at the moment. Not just with Coliseum and Sabre of course, or as you know the Russians and Chinese in some far-fung places, but also the Malabar exercise was conducted recently, United States, India and Japan. Of course some voices in Australia have been interested in perhaps in future Australia playing a role there. It would be interesting to hear a little bit more from you on what you see as very, very candidly the purposes of exercises like this, perhaps using Malabar as an example if you like, both in a capability sense, but also in a political sense. Actually the characterization that you had is insightful. I think it captures well what the focus is with respect to exercise. There's always a capability piece. There's a readiness piece that is important as well, and there's a national piece to those exercises. I think Malabar, which we have just completed, is a great example. For those of you that may not be fully informed, there's actually two versions of Malabar. There's a Malabar that we exercise in the vicinity of India, and the next year we conduct Malabar in the vicinity of Japan. Malabar is a bilateral exercise still today between India and the United States, specifically from a naval perspective with Seventh Fleet. We have included the Japanese in the years that it is around India. That is a new development, but it's still a bilateral exercise with multilateral, certainly trilateral overtones to it. And then when we've exercised Malabar around Japan, we've always included the Japanese maritime self-defense force in that piece of the exercise series. There is an interest in Australia participating. I know that dialogue is ongoing. I'm a great supporter of Australia's participation. Certainly in the element of the exercise that occurs in the Indian Ocean, Australia clearly has interest there as well. But more important, it is the focus on multilateral engagements. So this idea of taking a bilateral approach to solving problems, I find it hard to find a problem that's truly bilateral in nature. Certainly in the maritime, there's almost always a multilateral element to it. And if you expand the discussion out to a global perspective, the parallels that we see here in the Indo-Asia Pacific are clear and sharp with respect to the challenges that are being faced elsewhere in the world. I mentioned Europe earlier, but it's certainly true in South America and Africa, other regions of the world, that multilateral element of exercising is something that I'm always striving to encourage and expand. Thank you, Admiral. We've got room for one or two more questions. I might go to Matt Sussex, our academic director for an hour. Thanks very much, Admiral. He doesn't need a microphone. No, I'm tempted to ask where you think he'll be next year, but I won't.  And I think you had some quite thoughtful observations about people changing, they're thinking to be more accommodating. My question, I guess, is there room in the rules-based order for the Belt and Road Initiative? And what types of alterations in thinking do you think the major stakeholders might have to make? Yeah, so there absolutely is. I think there's room in the rules-based order for any concept that any individual or nation may support or may pro-offer. I think that the thing that's most important is that those proposals be brought forward to the stakeholders broadly, whether it's a regional issue or if it's a global issue, to have that discussion. So the One Belt, One Road Initiative, many in the region are embracing that. And I think part of that, the reason for that, is the dialogue that China has been expanding to include others in the road to help understand what is the plot, what's the impetus, what's the destination of the One Belt, One Road, one of the equities of those that would participate or choose not to participate in it. That's the level of dialogue to get to. But it's not, you know, I think one of the advantages is if there was a military approach that the One Belt, One Road Initiative was being forced on people from a military perspective, I don't think China would be nearly as successful as they have been with that approach compared to the approach that they've taken. Can I just, quick adjunct to that, Admiral, how do you see the Chinese security presence or military presence in Djibouti that gets reported down the media in light of China's interest and in light of the interests of other countries in the region? So I think that goes back to the broad point, I haven't used the word specifically, but it's transparency. So as I am, and I'll say gratefully, my good friend Admiral Donigan would take exception to that. But, you know, my first flight tour was as the deputy commander of Naval Forces Central Command. And since that tour, I've been in the Pacific since. And I'm grateful for that opportunity. I find the region, I find the challenges absolutely fascinating and so dynamic. I mean, just the example of going back a year and doing the reversion analysis of what is it that was missed that we couldn't do the predictive analysis that would have highlighted where we would end up today. I don't think it could be done because there are so many factors at play. But as I do have friends in the Middle East specific to that region, the question is to what end, but look, China has a global economy. They have significant economic interests in Africa. It doesn't surprise me that they would want a, I don't want to mischaracterize this, I'm not an expert, China may not be characterizing that as a base. By using that term, I don't mean it in that context, but certainly a place to support their military operations from. It's a long way from China. I would imagine it would be a logistics hub. It's the context in which that will be applied to it as we move forward in the future. I think that's where the dialogue drives to. And quite frankly, I don't think it's a military dialogue. It needs to be broadening across that whole of government approach. Those that have concerns from their perspective, bring it into that international forum, bring it into those institutions that have been established to support those kinds of dialogue and then have the discussion. I'm going to end with a yes or no question, because I know that you're good at those, Admiral. So we had one question on nuclear issues today, we're really putting a pretty stark hypothetical, but I'm going for a slightly different question, which is in two parts, do you think North Korea is serious about putting nuclear weapons on submarines, and is it wasting its money? I'll take that one out of the context of North Korea. I think the developing a submarine capability is a double-edged sword. I think I would use Australia as the example. We're not putting nukes on you, Admiral. I'm just talking about the submarine capability at the beginning, but I'm going to get to the new question in a minute. But I've got to give my friend Tim Barrett incredible praise for the strategic approach that he has taken to ensuring that the capability that Australia already had in Collins' class and how to modernize that capability with an understanding of what the national interests are of Australia, because ultimately that military power is used in the national interest of whatever country that military supports. To the specific of, and I'll characterize it as, submarine launch missiles, it is an incredible technical challenge. And any country that goes down that path to try to develop that capability should do it with a clear understanding that it is as much art as it is science. You just can't take a slide rule, take physics experts, engineering experts, and develop that capability out of whole cloth. There's a whole series of issues that come up. I'll go back to the question that was asked about civilian control of nuclear weapons. There needs to be very clear controls with any nation that possesses nuclear weapons as to what those controls are. And I think most of the dialogue that occurs in that nuclear realm, I'm certainly not an expert in it, goes to that sense of the veracity of those controls and the confidence of those that are adjacent to those nations. Are they confident that that commitment to those controls is in some ways the... So I'll leave you with that. You've been very generous with your thoughts and your time today. I think you're certainly familiar, and I think for many of us in the room, you've reaffirmed the view that not only do you bring a message of reassurance about the alliance and about the military relationship with Australia and the United States, but you're also being great insights as an military leader, as a security practitioner. But as a diplomat as well, I think it's a big diplomatic side to really what we see in your work that will stay with me for the rest of the day. I'm going to ask my colleagues in the room to join you now in thanking... APPLAUSE


In the last session for this week, we are going to start talking specifically about some of the mark fields used. We are going to focus on fields of light to title information to start with. The title itself, as appears on the preferred source of information, goes in the mark field 245. I'm here with the values for the indicators. The first indicates whether or not the title is an added entry. If the first indicator is zero, that means that the title is not an added entry. It's a main entry, as we discussed in the last video. If the indicator is a one, that means that the title is an added entry, and there is some other main entry, most likely either a corporate body's name or a uniform title. The second indicator is used to represent the number of non-filing characters in the title. What this means is characters that should be skipped when the title is being alphabetized. If the title began with A, N, or the, you would need to have some non-filing characters indicated. If the title doesn't need to have that word skipped, then your second indicator would be zero. If your title started with the, you would need to have a second indicator of four, so it can skip three characters of T, H, E, and then the space before the first word of the title to be alphabetized. The title proper is the main section of the title. It includes subfield A for the title, subfield N for the numbering of the section, and subfield P for the name of the section. You won't always have subfields N and P, but they might appear on serial sometimes. The title proper is important because it's used to determine major changes. Again, we'll talk later in this class about what exactly a major change in a serial is and when a new record is required. And then the title proper is used in links between older and newer versions of a particular record. So here are some examples of 245 fields. When you're transcribing the title proper, you generally record it as a transcribing as it appears on your preferred source of information. You should omit things that vary from year to year, so if something said it was the fifth annual report, not everyone is going to be fifth, so you would do that out and just put annual report. If it said the 1994 directory, you would omit that and put in the ellipsis of three dots to indicate that it's going to be the directory but it's going to be a different year every time. So here's an example of our serial. We're taking information from the cover. And so here would be our 245 field. In this case, there's not another main entry, so the first indicator is zero. We don't need to skip any characters, so the second indicator is also zero. The title proper of Tennessee Ancestors goes in the subfield A with the period at the end. Because this didn't come from the title page, we do need to indicate where it came from, and so it came from the cover. And we'll talk about this more when we talk about notes later in the class, but you can combine the title from cover information with the description based on note, and so that's what happened in this case. Other title information, usually meaning subtitles, can be transcribed when considered useful. You can either include it as a subtitle in a subfield B in your 245 field, or you can include it as a note in a 500 field. That catalog doesn't involve there. You can decide which would work best for you. Another title related field is Markfield 246 for variant titles. These are other forms of the title that don't appear on the preferred source of information. The first indicator is used to tell the computer whether or not you want a note, meaning do you want this other title displayed to users in the catalog record, and also do you want an added entry, meaning should this be indexed in the title search? I would say most of the time you do want an added entry, so I would recommend using either one or three for this indicator. The second indicator tells you the type of title. So if you did have a title from a title page and you included the cover title, which was different in the 246, you would use the second indicator of four, for example. And there are a lot of different options as you can see there. One use of variant titles is for titles that appear elsewhere on the issue. So in that first example, Miner and Workman's advocate was used in the 245, but advocate appears on the cover. Sometimes you might want to spell out things that are abbreviated or symbols used in the title because your patrons might search that way, so if there was an ampersand in the title, you might spell out the word A and B even if and doesn't appear on the item. Parallel titles could also be included in the 246. Parallel titles are titles that are in a different language. So if you had something that was published and had a title in both Japanese and English, you could put the English title in the 245 and the Japanese title in the 246. Sometimes with serials, you'll need to use the 246 if the title varies between issues, if they're perhaps inconsistent in how they apply the title from issue to issue. You could go ahead and do that, such as you'll see in those first two examples. And you could also include titles that don't actually appear on the piece, but are useful. For example, if Tennessee ancestors is popularly known as 10N, you can go ahead and do that. In this case, you would have subfield A for the title, but then you'd also have subfield I in which you would include a note that explains what this title is. It's not really any of the categories that you can express using the indicators, but it's popularly known as. And this is something you probably would want to display in the record, so you would want to have a note for this as well as an add and entry. So those are the fields that deal with title information in a serial record.


of the approach of enemy planes. But in addition, if gas is dropped by the enemy, a special gas alarm will be sounded. Learn what gas alarm has been chosen by your community. It will be a hand rattle or a hammering sound like the beating of a dish pan, as a spray or in gas bombs. But should enemy raiders use gas against your community, there is no reason for fear or panic. Because if you know what to do, you can protect yourself and safeguard your family against the menace of gas from the air. The ideal protection for civilians is an airtight gas shelter ventilated by a system which removes gas vapors from the incoming air. Such a shelter can be designed to provide some protection also against the effects of high-explosive bombs. Some war gases can be seen by the eye. Others are invisible. But it is important to know that most of them are heavier than air and that they settle down and are most concentrated close to the ground. Hence, if no gas shelter is immediately available, go indoors and go upstairs. The gas at that higher level will probably be less concentrated than down near the ground. First precaution is to prevent gas from getting into the house. So close all windows and shut off all ventilation or air conditioning units which are not equipped to remove war gases from the incoming air. If windows are blown out by high-explosive, tack blankets over the opening. Close fireplace dampers. And if you live in a one-story house, seal all other openings around doors and elsewhere with cloth or rag. In a larger house, go upstairs. Don't go down into an unprotected basement unless you have a gas-proof shelter there. Wait upstairs until your airwarden tells you that it's safe to leave. You may have to wait until even after the all-clear signal for gas may still be present in your section. Some war gases are spread as liquids which slowly evaporate, giving off invisible but poisonous vapors. This type of gas remains for a long time and hence is called persistence. Certain chemicals neutralize this liquid gas and trained decontamination teams of the United States Citizens' Defense Corps, which is the civilian protection force of your community, are equipped to neutralize the liquid gas so that people may go outside without danger of exposure to the liquid or its poisonous fumes. But these workers must wear special gas-proof clothing and masks for protection. The completeness of their protective clothing emphasizes the fact that without such special protection, you must stay indoors until notified that the liquid gas has been neutralized and that the air is free of harmful gas fumes. Liquid gas may also be washed away by heavy rain or by a stream of water from a fire hose. Out in the fields where liquid gas has been dropped, dry chemicals that neutralize the liquid gas are mixed with the earth. This scene should remind us to stay off the grass after a gas attack. Persistent liquid gas and the fumes that it gives off may be lurking unseen and covered by grass or shrubbery for days or even weeks after it has dropped there. Another type of war gas has dropped as a vapor. This cloud gradually thins out and disappears in a few minutes. When it has cleared from the neighborhood, it is no longer a minute. Because this type of gas disperses quickly, it is called non-persistent. So after a gas attack, wait for your warden to tell you that it's safe to leave your house. If you should be caught outdoors when gases drop, hurry to shelter, but don't look up, because liquid gas might fall into your eyes. Every second counts. Act quickly now in applying first aid. There are certain simple steps you can take to prevent or minimize the harmful effects of war gas. If the liquid splatters onto your skin or clothing, or if you have been exposed to gas vapors, remove all outer clothing outside the house, including shoes. This avoids spreading the gas inside. Remember, liquid gas spreads by contact like poison ivy. Leave the contaminated clothing outside to be de-contaminated later. First, quickly remove as much of the liquid gas as you can by carefully blotting with dry cloth or absorbent material. Be careful not to smear or spread the liquid gas onto fresh skin areas. You must work fast. The liquid gas will cause blisters if not neutralized in a few minutes after exposure. You may use absorbent tissues to blot the liquid gas from the skin. Absorbent cotton may be used in the same way with equal success. Throw the contaminated material used to remove the liquid gas into covered containers to be destroyed later on. Use ordinary household bleaching solution containing sodium hypochlorite to neutralize any liquid gas remaining on the skin. The exposed area of skin should be gently and thoroughly bathed with absorbent material saturated with the bleaching solution. Do not use rough cloths and do not rub with pressure, as this might cause irritation. And for safety's sake, rinse the hands thoroughly with the bleaching solution. Provided eyes have been exposed, they should be treated immediately. The recommended treatment for the eyes is the 2% solution of baking soda, that is, bicarbonate of soda. In order to be able to use this quickly, make this solution in advance by mixing a tablespoonful of baking soda in a quart of water. Keep this handy and tightly corked and properly labeled bottle. Now to actually irrigate your eyes, fill an enema bag with the prepared baking soda solution. Have someone help you irrigate each eye with a steady stream for at least two minutes. Alternate back and forth from one eye to the other, though that injury from the gas does not develop in one eye while you are treating the other. If an enema bag is not handy, use a tea kettle or some other device that will pour a small steady stream. Results will be improved if you can hold the eyes open. And if you can't find anyone else to help, you can irrigate your eyes yourself even though it is awkward. Then get into a shower as quickly as possible. This removes the bleaching solution after it has neutralized the gas. Use plenty of soap and wash thoroughly. For by doing so, you are taking an added precaution in the event you may have missed some exposed area. And be sure to wash your hair before you're through. If you don't have a shower, stand in the tub, soak yourself thoroughly. Meanwhile, fill buckets of water and pour them over you to substitute for the shower. Keep the drain open. Let the water run away.  It might spread the liquid gas over your body. After bathing, irrigate the nose with a stream of the baking soda solution. And to treat the throat, use the same solution as a gargle. If you haven't provided first aid materials in advance, don't waste time looking for them. Do the next best thing. Wash immediately after removing your clothes. Let water run into your eyes to help remove any traces of gas which may be in them. After being exposed to gas, you may start coughing or perhaps have a brassy taste in your mouth. Your lungs may feel heavy and oppressed. Maybe cigarettes don't taste like they usually do. In a case like this, you must lie down immediately. Relax. Don't exert yourself. Even if you feel all right, don't take a chance. Lie down because exertion may aggravate your condition if you've gotten gas into your lungs. Tell your warden to notify the emergency medical service. And if blisters develop, don't touch or attempt to break them. Breaking them might start new blisters. Summon medical aid for proper treatment. Now let's go back to those clothes. The all clear has sounded and the warden has notified us that it's safe to come out. Don't touch the clothes. You might get liquid gas on yourself. A trained man from the United States Citizens' Defense Corps will take them away to decontaminate them. Why does the enemy use gas against civilians? Well, gas bombs dropped by the enemy do not destroy our homes and factories as do high-explosive bombs. War gas does not start the devastating fires that are the great menace of incendiary bombs. War gas does not shatter arms and legs as bullets and bomb fragments do. The real purpose of the enemy in using war gas is to spread fear and panic. To destroy our morale and to cripple our war production. The enemy hopes that we will become scared and panic, that the weapons our soldiers are waiting for will fail to arrive when crucial battles demand them. But you can fork the enemy by not giving way to fear and panic because you know what to do if gas comes. Remember, close all openings which might permit gas-laden air to enter the building. Use blankets to cover windows shattered by high-explosive bombs. Go up above the first floor. Don't go down into the basement unless you have a gas-proof shelter there. Stay indoors until your air-warden tells you it's safe to leave. If you come in contact with gas outdoors, leave outer clothing outside the building. Time is your ally if you use it, so apply first aid as quickly as possible. Quickly remove any liquid gas by blotting. Be careful not to spread the liquid gas. Then gently and thoroughly bathe the affected skin area with the bleaching solution. Wash each eye out for two minutes with a 2% baking soda solution. Soap and wash next. Use lots of soap, do a thorough job. Use either a shower or poor buckets of water over you in a bathtub. Irrigate your nose. And gargle your throat with the baking soda solution after bathing. Don't waste time looking for first aid materials. If you haven't provided them in advance, soap and shower immediately after removing your clothing. Wash your eyes out with plain water. If your lungs are affected, lie down to rest while waiting for the doctor to arrive. Or if blisters form, summon medical aid. For world battle fronts, our fighting men are hammering the enemy with weapons forged in America's mighty arsenal of democracy. These are the weapons made and wielded by free men to answer the challenge of tyrants who would enslave us if they could. And they are the weapons which eventually must and will beat the axis. Here at home our weapons are a few simple household items. Bleaching solution, baking soda solution, soap and water. Yes, with these we too can arm ourselves against the enemy so that if gas comes, it will find us not panic but prepared.


This new electrochemical method enables the oxidation of C, Sp3, H and C, Sp2, H bonds in cyclic alkanes and cyclic olefins resulting in the production of cycloaliphatic ketones and aliphatic, Di, carboxylic acids. The process uses nitrate salts as anodic mediators and reducing molecular oxygen as a cathodic counter-reaction, making it a sustainable and cost-effective method for converting petrochemical feedstarts into useful products. This article was authored by Joachim Nicol, Kamal Hoffman, Samuel Mosaski, and others.


We are joined today by Renegade SEC Commissioner, Hester Purse, late of the Mercatus Center. She has written a very interesting, dare I say blistering critique of a recent decision by the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Could you talk just a little bit about the structure of the SEC for people who don't understand it? You know, this commissioner system, I've read your work on this. I know you were actually an advocate of that system and now as someone who's inside of it, what is that like being on a board of commissioners who disagree on topics and how does that form, or how does that affect the ultimate decision-making process?  But, and so we have less input on sort of the rules that we're gonna be doing and so forth. But we all have a voice and the idea is that you wanna have people from different perspectives because you wanna have some policy consistency over time. We all vote on every enforcement action and on every rule-making. People sometimes say to me, well, Hester, you do nothing except for talk about things. So why don't you just resign? And I think the point is, and other people say to me, well, someone who is as skeptical of regulation as you are shouldn't even be at a regulator. In my response is I think it's really important to have people with different voices saying, we need to look at these things from a different perspective. And sometimes it takes a long time to shift the thinking but I think it's worth having people sort of debating these things rather than just coming out with one view. I mean, the world is very complicated and there's more than one way to look at things. We've got two questions for you and we're gonna let you go at 1.30. First, can you, building on that, what is your general theory of good regulation in the financial sector? As when you were working at the Mercatus Center at George Mason, you wrote, you were a fierce critic of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, the last two mega pieces of legislation on the financial sector. What does good regulation look like? If you were able to write that. Well, I think the first, my first principle is that if two people voluntarily agree that they wanna do something, there needs to be a very good reason for the government to step in into that transaction and say, no, you can't do that or you have to do it differently. There are times when the two people's agreement to do something can have consequences for other people outside of that transaction, we have to be thinking about that. So that's my general philosophy. I think we need to make sure that people's incentives are match up with consequences, right?  And unfortunately, that has happened a lot in our financial system and it sort of changed the way everything works and it's led government to come in and say, well, since we're burying the consequences when people make stupid decisions, we're gonna try to make decisions for them. But because government doesn't have the right incentives, it's very difficult for government to make decisions effectively. Markets are much more effective at conveying information than a regulatory system is. And so we need to capitalize on that. We need to take advantage of the fact that markets transmit information really well. So that might, my theory is always, yeah, there's a place for regulation, but it shouldn't be the first place we look, it should be the last place. What does a good regulation, or what's an example, do you think, of a good regulation that actually reduces transaction costs without distorting behaviors? I think we can play a role in helping people get disclosure to make their own decisions about things. So, and certainly, there are rules around mutual funds that I think have been effective rules. There are a lot of things the SEC does that I think do help reduce transaction costs. But I think too often we try to just jump in and make a merit-based decision based on our understanding of someone else's circumstances. And I find that really offensive. There's kind of the inevitability that regulators are gonna try to regulate. You mentioned some of the issues that arise there kind of they get comfortable with incumbent firms and then makes it harder for new entrants. So this was all meant to disrupt that whole system. Is there a case for just saying, okay, if the SEC wants to put out some sort of registration form and make it optional and let people who wanna opt in to only the SEC approved versions, that's fine. But just let crypto be crypto and people can kind of enter at their own risk. Yeah, and I certainly understand that point of view but I think we have rules on the books and to the extent that whether it's crypto or something else, those implicate the existing rules then we have to enforce those rules. Now, if you're talking about do we wanna develop a new regulatory framework where there really are gaps and where things really aren't covered, that's a conversation that we should be having. And I think one of the things I always say is don't jump to the conclusion that regulation is going to be the answer to solving problems. I mean, a lot of the problems we saw with centralized entities in the crypto world during the last year are problems that are very similar to problems we've seen with traditional financial intermediaries. But there also are things that people can do on their own to hold those intermediaries accountable. And as people working at intermediaries, they can do things to show people that they're doing what they're saying they're doing. So people in crypto shouldn't be jumping to the conclusion that regulation is always the first and best answer. We have to have this conversation as a community. I'm maybe on one side of the spectrum and saying, look, let's figure out whether there's a better way to do this but there are other people who are very much committed to having a regulatory solution. And that's just something in this society we got to work out and figure out where most people are. It's really important for people who are in crypto to think about applying the lessons from traditional finance and thinking about that. Thinking about if you're really trying to build something decentralized, what does that actually look like? And then sort of thinking about whether it makes sense to say, let's try to carve out the decentralized world and figure out whether and really make the pitch that regulation is not, wouldn't play the same role there because the decentralization, the on-chain aspects, the fact that everyone can participate on the same terms, that actually takes the place of regulation. It's harder to make that case when you're talking about large centralized intermediaries that are holding people's assets. It is important to think about where are the spaces where people just want to be able to say, yes, I'm opting in to a less regulated space. I'm certainly open to something like that. I don't know whether others in Washington are, but I think everyone goes in eyes wide open. You've made a choice to operate in a space that has less regulation than other spaces. Hey, thanks for watching that excerpt from our live conversation with SEC Commissioner Hester Purse and crypto investor and writer Nick Carter about the government's escalating crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges like Kraken and the broader DeFi economy. Join me and Nicholas be here every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern for more conversations like this and subscribe to Reasons YouTube channel for notifications whenever our videos go live. Thanks for watching.