Let me first introduce myself. My name is Hassan Bahtimi and I'm a senior lecturer of the War Studies Department. Most of the research theme lead for science, technology, health and security in the School of Security Studies. The theme combines researchers and academics working at the intersection between science, technology and security politics, including health and conflict. I'm very pleased we have today Fawzea Gibson-Fall, who will talk about her recently published article in RIS, Review of International Studies. It's a British International Studies Association. Fawzea is pursuing a doctorate degree in the Queen Mary University London, where she researches the role of African militaries in global health. She is a well-known face at King's. She spent some time here doing her masters, but also she was teaching fellow before joining Queen Mary to start her PhD. I'm also pleased we have Gemma Bouscher, who will be our discussant for today. Gemma is a researcher in the conflict and health research group at King's, in addition to being a medical doctor. Gemma is also writing her PhD. Her topic is on antimicrobial resistance in contemporary conflicts. We will start by handing off on the floor to Fawzea, who's going to speak for about 15, 20 minutes about her paper, sharing some of the key and core ideas and arguments. We will then have comments or questions, thoughts, reflections from Gemma, and then we will open it up for comments. Please note that the event is recorded, hopefully successfully, and will be made available later on the department's YouTube channel. If you have any questions, please use the raise hand function or use the Q&A channel that you'll find at the bottom of your screen. Again, thank you so much for joining us today and looking forward to the talk and the discussion and I hand over the floor to Fawzea. Thank you so much Hassan and thank you for having me and for inviting me to present my work. It's really an honor to be amongst you both. It's just a pleasure and an honor and I'm seeing some really familiar names in the audience. I really thank you for coming today as well. I really look forward to our conversation. And so let me dive right in. So the paper looks at worldwide documented instances of military engagements in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic and it doesn't aim to be an all-encompassing or comprehensive review per se. What I venture to do is to untangle and situate these engagements amid contemporary understandings of military actors in global health. And to do so, I highlight issues of continuity, change and resistance in using militaries as health actors and emergencies, but also in kind of everyday healthcare policy and delivery. And militaries as health actors, you'll know as much as me, have been somewhat understudied in international relations. But I think this scholarship, but what I tried to do, sorry, is to try to link the scholarship that we do have to the current instances in order to open some possibilities for future empirical and eventually theoretical avenues. And I understand military practices as co-constituted at global, regional and local levels through foreign and domestic interventions. And I highlight the kind of long institutional roots of some of these practices, which have often been obscured or blurred through dichotomies between civilian and military realms. But I also acknowledge that this historical continuum, linking health and military actors is also exacerbated by the contemporary rise of the global health security paradigm and strategic agendas, mostly within defense policies. And these instances have kind of deepened and diversified military global health mandates. And this historical continuum, which links militaries and health practices is exacerbated through pivotal events at both international and local levels. We can think, for instance, of the ZCAP 2018 epidemic in Brazil and elsewhere and or the 2014-16 West African Ebola epidemic, which kind of remains seminal examples of this process, whereby militaries have undertaken what is often DEMA central roles in the responses. And the coronavirus pandemic most obviously stands as a pivotal event in global health civil and military relations. And it brings urgency to establishing common definitions and frames of references in frames of references to apprehend health-related military engagements in all its complexity. And I also stress in the paper and in my current work, my current research work, that at the national level, especially in low and middle-income countries, militaries have often historically filled the gaps in under-resorts health systems. And these extensive health-related routine roles in particular remain widely understudied. And I think somehow that this has particular repercussions for the inadequacy of available international guidelines, but also for our inability to think creatively, preventively, and perhaps responsively about these interactions. In the paper, I also summarize issues of resistance to this phenomenon, whereby people-centered rights-based perspective have often offered alternative to traditional conceptions of security in the health realm, and how these community-focused public health approaches tend to caution against military involvement, which are often deemed detrimental to delivery outcomes. And this form of resistance to military involvement in health relates to specific areas of concern, often thought to be inflating geopolitical tensions or community suspicion, et cetera. So on the other sides, obviously proponents of military engagement with public health will seek coherence in aligning security mandates with wider societal goals. Here, the inclusion of the military and wider health sector capability is seen as more efficient and a more holistic take on stake capacity as a whole, less silos, more synergy. And amid the pandemic, these visions are clashing and governmental responses are likely to be in parts guided by these kind of differing, securitized biomedical or people-centered approaches to public health. And this has a knock-on effect on military involvement. And I highlight some knowledge gaps. So what do we not know? This is a very murky research arena. We know very little about the outcome of military health engagements in practice. Prior to the pandemic, militaries have often prioritized global health engagements while failing to gather or publish evidence of whether they do in fact, legitimize their own presence overseas, but also whether they advance specific health targets, to some extent, I mean, that's the baseball. And the paper also highlights some of the difficulties. So some of the issues relating to conducting civil military health research from the civilian side also. So the absence of forums, and this is quickly changing, but we've had three years kind of an absence of forum connecting both sectors in a research, and Kings is definitely not the case at Kings in the last couple of years, but there has been a kind of gap on that front. And there's also, I think we can observe a dissimilitude in research ethos and intentions from both sides. And so what the paper does is that it offers avenues to apprehend and study military involvement in health going forward. And so I kind of unpacked three main trends identified in the first six months of the Ebola pandemic, sorry, the coronavirus pandemic. The first trend relates to minimal technical military support. So this trend emerged amid deliberately civilian led and operationalized responses. These responses have intentionally limited military involvement to very niche, very technical specific support of the civilian response. And in these settings, specialized and sporadic military involvement have often remained unused in those first couple of months. Obviously that tends to change. And I think these trends are kind of moving. They're not completely static. Countries will move around the ladder, let's say, but they're all kind of these instances where the military wasn't required. And there's also, but I think it's quite fair to say that it was extremely widespread that most it's not almost all countries in the world have deployed some level of capacity. And then there's these kind of rare exceptions. You can think about the Indian state of Kerala or most obviously Costa Rica, which doesn't have a military but has a police force. And so, but in most of the responses in the first trend, you can observe a kind of legacy of primary healthcare service investments, adequately trained personnel, centralized management systems and also proactive leadership. The second and by far the most widespread trend would be this idea of a blended civil military response to COVID-19. This is the most common operation types of operations. And they're also very varied. So amid blended responses, national militaries take part in population-facing activities in parallel to or embedded within civilian-led responses. Civil military hospital capacity is also a central component of this trend. And if some regional commonalities are identified, countries will also exhibit stark differences in sub-national experiences, right? As we've seen in the US, for instance. So features and characteristics of these blended involvement are also wide ranging in military enforcement of pandemic measures has taken hold in low middle-income countries where you had condensed urban populations who would rely on subsistence economies and in these settings, militaries enforce lockdown through various often coercive measures. And then we have a third trend and quite an interesting one, which is the fact that in some settings, the military has taken the leadership of the entire COVID-19 response. And this also emerged in countries displaying some level of blended civil military responses and that then quickly shift towards military leadership and military political leadership of the response itself. And shifts in balance of power of already kind of hybrid political systems or systems with heavy military influence are intensifying amid COVID-19 responses. And so the discussion bit of a paper kind of identify civil military pathways. And I then summarize the multitude of confounding factors which underpin the types of governmental responses. I think comparisons amid the pandemic have been detrimental in many ways. But these include and these confounding factors will include obvious things like political systems, levels of institutional capacity, political legitimacy, justice system, media freedom, media reliability. And so extremely context specific national and regional experiences will constitute new sets of norms and practices linking health and defense institutions. Levels of military involvement in health also vary according to contagion level, political climates and institutional legacies and other factors such as the density of the population, the competency of state leaders or lack of and of health ministers will also influence the recourse to the military. But when we look at these responses as a whole, we start seeing patterns and political shifts whereby militaries take on vacuum feeling roles. So a poor factor, they're invoked to respond to identified needs, but they also position themselves to eventually acquire further control as part of the responses. And in light of these three levels of participation to these three trends, it appears that the recourse to military is threefold. And this is through this kind of ABC, almost these three ways. So the first is that it allows, it follows a country's historical legacy in civil military relations and perceptions of military delivery. B, or secondly, you can think that these involvements occur to fill gaps when systems are overwhelmed. This is universal. It follows contagion threats level and the health systems ability to cope with the epidemic pressure. This is also a gradual post process, which is more widespread in states with weaker health systems or where the military has historically run civilian facing services. In certain contexts, however, there's also a push factor occurring whereby militaries will position themselves as responder. And this is not necessarily marshaled through centralized decision-making and will create tensions with and the wider kind of state civil military relations. And lastly and importantly, it appears that a country's public health approach, so that that includes, not exclusively, but definitely includes top-down kind of pandemic preparedness or delivery frameworks when they exist. And this kind of public health approach will influence the recourse to military means. And when adopting securitized biomedical responses, countries with weaker health systems will need to recourse to top-down often military means. And in COVID-19, these responses are marshaled through the military to enforce measures that you now know really well. So the measures such as lockdown surveillance and border control and contact tracing. And in these contexts, the ability to command through military means in the health realm remains a double-edged sword. And it allows for stringent responses, but it can also threaten citizenship rights and community trust that is so crucial in epidemics. And so to conclude, I'm almost running out of time. So we urgently need to know more about the impact of these involvements. Do they make people feel safer? Do they impact on health-seeking behavior? And we need to understand case variability and context specificity. And what is really starting to show is that direct and indirect involvements of the military in COVID-19, national responses have led to an increase in policy and practice linking military and health actors. All these involvements are fermenting new COVID-19 related civil military assemblages, which is a literature we know in IR, but I think as really should really pick up in this area which will influence future local and global civil military relations. And this could have a normative impact further entrenching military as common actors in the health realm. And so we really need as global health in my auscoder to focus on the ways in which civilian institutional like you know they're compensated through military means. And this will allow for better societal resilience for future emergency responses. So this was my paper. I still encourage you to read it if you're interested or if you want to get in touch later or yeah, or collaborate or X, Y and Z. But yeah, over to you, Dr. Bauscher. Fauzia, thank you so much. That was a fantastic presentation and it hardly needs saying that it's on such a timely subject, which is so important. And I'm really thrilled that we can talk about it whilst it's unfolding before us. And I think that's really my first impression is that the speed that you managed to get this paper out to actually capture and witness this phenomenon of something really pivotal that's happening around us right at the time that it happens is amazing. And I think it's really useful because what you've done is give us a really effective framework of thinking about this phenomenon. And of course, you mentioned rightly the long historical roots of the trend. But I think, you know, those of us who remember the Ebola epidemic that you mentioned 2014 to 16, I think we can recall the hand-ringing around the issues of civil military engagements in mobile health missions. And in some ways it's been interesting to watch the sort of the events around COVID where in many ways that the response at the domestic scale has been sort of unprecedented but also has swept up unawares on governments managing their domestic responses.  And I think we can see actually, especially in that second category that you talk about the sort of coming to the rescue of civil military actors and particularly military actors to prevent critical system failure and this overwhelming of health services. So I wonder if that might be a good point for us to jump off in our discussion. In this week, we've seen a lot of discussion around people calling on the government to launch an inquiry and a lessons learned exercise in the UK. And I wonder if from the work you've done for this paper, whether you have any impressions about the key takeaways for policy makers working and thinking about the future of civil military engagements in health emergencies. What you think would be valuable to take away from this experience? So your question is many fold Gemma. And I wonder if it's only UK based or just generally, I think we are so terrible at gathering data. We are so terrible.  But actually what came out of the Ebola outbreak in terms of literature, very little was centered around experiences on both sides, right? There was a couple of papers and for instance, I can think of a couple in the BMJ military and a couple of reports like the saving life reports, but we really lack comprehensive reviews. We lacked an understanding of how this was experiencing communities at local level. Some anthropologists have done some work, but I can think of two or three papers. So I think we're not very good at this area of study. And I think it, you know, and we will forcibly get better because COVID is kind of forcing us to do so, but these pivotal moments also kind of skew routine everyday practices, right? And so we get these kind of, and I think in the UK, we need to have a real fundamental review of the way we function in COVID, but also generally on that front. So yeah, so data gathering, more qualitative research also, because I think it's fine to do, it's great to do kind of technical reports, but actually we do need, as academics, we do need to start gathering qualitative data or mixed methods. And we can talk about methodologies, but we, yeah. Did I answer your question? You did, you did. And I think that's a good, that kind of picks up on a point you raised about the, you know, this idea of continuity and actually picking up on perhaps using our methods in social sciences perhaps to address that issue. I mean, I'm interested to understand what you understand by continuity in the context of civil military engagements. So this is a really good question. I think, again, the issue of continuity, especially in LMICs, so we can do reports about our own, you know, the NHS functioning, et cetera, but I think we really fail to ask a question, especially in the civil military arena globally, there's such a failure to look at everyday interactions, but also at crisis interactions in low-medium income countries. So you've got militaries like the Pakistani military, the Senegalese military that I'm working on at the moment, which have had extensive roles, very prominent since the 60s and beyond, right? These are colonial institutions that carried through. And so we know very little about the way, you know, this is happening. And so historical methods, for instance, but also just going in country and understanding how our people and processes functioning, I think would carry a huge amount of weight for us. And then maybe COVID is opening this idea, right? In general, the fact that we've done pretty terribly and therefore some settings that were less resourced have done, you know, I don't want to be blunt, but some less poor settings seem to have done better for a myriad of reasons. And we can't, you know, blow our horn too early, but there is that kind of need to look for self-explanations, I think, and to look at the so-called periphery and try to understand how some of these processes are happening elsewhere and that continuity elsewhere. That's, I think that's a very interesting point. And I think that kind of brings the sort of, was that the traditional global health actors into the frame as well. And I think it is, you've mentioned this comes along, you know, you have the health system strengthening approaches within global health agendas and you also have the ascendance of global health security. And I wonder how you see these sort of respective actors engaging with each other over the coming periods and obviously there's great diversity and context, but, you know, we seem to have a clash of agendas in some settings around this and you talk about resistance to civil military responses. And I think that issue of resistance is going to be really fertile over the next few years. How do you see that playing out? Again, I think we're in the dark. So both of these agendas are pushed without having concrete manifestations of why they are, right? So I think the resistance exists for reasons that are really valuable. And I'm currently doing interviews with practitioners on the civilian side and the ministry side. And I think some of the resistance and some of the examples that are captured within those narratives of resistance are really important and I haven't read them anywhere and they're really worrying. So this kind of a version to it has roots and has deep ramifications and perhaps very worrying, you know, I think some of these practices need to be looked at in more depth. I think something like the COVID-19 pandemic is really showing that the limits of the security frame in terms of explaining some of the health outcomes, right? Especially in the UK, for instance, but elsewhere. So the inequalities that underpin the health outcomes that we're seeing necessitate better adapted responses. And I think there's a limit to the security frame in that manner. But yeah, but I do think that we just, we need more information and we need to sit down. I think there's been such a lack of forum and this is changing and that's brilliant. I think it's really interesting you raised that kind of the limitation in our current framings and obviously as academics, that's a challenge, isn't it? You know, it makes us think about what theoretical avenues we might have to interrogate this. I mean, you know, there's obviously securitization as a kind of classical theory of this, but I wonder what you think of productive advances in the sort of theoretical approaches we can use from various academic sectors to appreciate the problem and the challenges. Yeah, that's a very good question. I'm battling with that at the moment myself. This piece was consciously not theoretical per se. I didn't want to use militarization, normalization. I didn't want to go into that categorization per se, but I think some of our tools are really lacking. And so for instance, I think securitization, which has been our go-to to explain these phenomenons in global health is really, you know, really struggles to understand some of these dynamics that are happening in the everyday, right? Militry, again, militaries have kind of routine roles, not necessarily invoked through a trickle-down effect or a process of securitization. So I think it often tends to skew our understanding of certain martial politics at an institutional level and at delivery level. So these approaches need to be rethought. And I think the idea of militarization, for instance, in IA also hasn't been thought through in the health realm much. And so I'm trying to do that at the moment for my own research, but also I think, you know, for instance, so I tried to do in the article to really try to stress that idea of the local and the global and the interconnectedness. And I think more insight into the governance structures of these interactions and how they influence each other is really, really needed. So yeah, multi-level analysis, governance analysis. That's great. You mentioned sort of how you've, partly how you got into this and I know we've got lots of students watching. So I wonder if you could actually give us a broader look about how you actually came to this problem and this issue of civil military engagements in health emergencies. It's a unique issue that you're hitting just the right time for. So that's a question. I think I wrote this paper because it was the elephant in the room of my research. Right, as you said, when you opened, it was the fact that I had to make sense of what was coming out for me to not think only in crisis mode and to try to then be able to address some of these questions more fundamentally. So I kind of almost got it out of the way of my own thinking. And I got interested in this probably most vividly by traveling in Sub-Saharan Africa and working in broadcasting at the time. But I would see the militaries doing everyday deliveries of cops and participating within health systems in a way that I didn't think was documented and was fascinating and interesting. And then when I then later came to academia, I realized that that was absolutely lacking in sort of the body of work in global health. And so I got interested in this mainly from an African standpoint. But then I also got increasingly interested from a kind of global North standpoint because I couldn't teach it to student. I really struggled to find theoretical and empirical evidence to pass on some of these issues to students. And so I would build my courses around reports. But I just thought there was a gap there in terms of my teaching. And so, yeah, my poor students over the years have had to carry on with me in the thinking and around these issues, yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure to kind of watch it because those of us who have known you for a long time have known your passion for this subject going through the years. So it's great to see that you've kind of addressed the current challenge with this really fantastic paper. I wonder actually if this is a good moment to open up discussion to the floor, Hassan. Yeah, excellent. And I'd like to thank you so much, Fosea, for your presentation and for your paper. And also Gemma for this very interesting discussion. So let's remind everyone that you are most welcome to contribute. So if you feel you have a comment and we already got a few, I'm gonna share them with Fosea and Gemma. If you have a comment or a question, feel free either to use the raise hand function and we can bring you into the discussion or write in the Q and A. And again, we'll bring that into the discussion. Perhaps I will start by a question that I had going through the paper Fosea and listening to you as well is, which is actually one that perhaps, I mean, you're very specific in your paper, right? And I think you've captured very good in a very good way, the topology. And I think that is in itself something is very thought provoking. I wonder whether you specifically looking at the table that you had at the paper, that I was very curious about the, how does that pan out geographically? The first thing that I started, that I quote myself doing is try to actually make sense of this topology, whether this cuts across North and South, cuts across well, different civil military relations, state capacity. So in terms of like what really explains, I know that might be a big question, what really explains that variance in how the military sort of like interacted with policy responses to COVID. What in, based on what you saw, and again, you were very specific in saying like this is only first six months. So, I mean, and that can be also something that perhaps also can be discussed like to what extent you see these trends sort of continuing or something in the life cycle of the pandemic, the different requirements of it that we might need a different configuration. So to sum up, like how do you think, what do you think most explains that variance? And I realize, you know, there might be just like a confluence of factors. But also looking ahead, and I know this is research that you've not done perhaps yet, but would you see like this perhaps changing in a different phase of the pandemic or is it a reflection of something that is more institutional and structural and therefore will persist? So I think this is such a good question and also multifaceted. I think the topology in itself was, again, to try to untangle them. And I think this will be done in so many various ways. I think what I'm giving is a broad category of kind of almost a three level, which helps us start to understand how they might have happened. And I think that second category, that civil and military category is huge, right? And is experienced in so many different ways. And so in a way, the topology kind of helped me make sense also of the kind of responses which didn't necessitate. It kind of gives almost kind of a scale of where you don't necessitate. And why is that, right? How is it? Is it because there's not the availability at military in terms of military preparedness or is it just that it's not needed? And as you said, there's so many factors which underpin these responses. And I think countries themselves will move along that category as the pandemic unfold. And again, I wrote this paper in, I think it was the beginning of the summer. And so things have changed already since then. But I think the topology stays in which the scale, countries will then move along the scale depending on contagion level and kind of political. We see it in the UK with our, and I don't wanna open that whole two days ago for a security review, but I think governments will change, their approaches will change and therefore the manifestations domestically and internationally will also change most obviously. But I think that topology kind of stays for me to understand at least, and I don't know whether it will stick but I think for me, it will stick definitely in that kind of an ability to be able to locate an incursion of the military within the civilian response itself, right? And so whether countries would, would move along is most obvious for me. So I gave the, and I think in the first instance, I talk about symbolic military involvements which I think are very important here and cut across all typologies, right? The fact that there's continuous discourse linking the military and the health realm, not only with think tank, talking about the transferability of military skills into the civilian sector, but also kind of the everyday media framing of the pandemic. And so I think whether this is happening across the board and like topology doesn't necessarily inform the normative impact that the pandemic will have for that link. I see you're nodding, but yeah, so and again, so the example, for instance, of Canada where it was, and again, the vaccination, for instance, is shifting that. So in Canada, there was very little in military. Now the military has taken, there's a certain leadership and vaccination rollout that was taken on later on after the paper was written. And so obviously there will be changes. Yeah. Excellent, thank you so much, Jose. So let me bring in some of the questions from our, questions and comments from our attendees. And again, I encourage everyone, you're more than welcome sort of to put your questions and we'll bring them to the panel either through the raise hand function or through the Q&A channel. So let me start by a question from Professor Preeti Patel. So Preeti Rice, I was wondering if there has been any work on the cost effectiveness of military health interventions in global health. So what do you think about that? I don't think so, Preeti, Professor Patel. Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I mean, I've reviewed for my PhD, I did a lit review, which had 150 articles, I think. And I can't think of any cost effectiveness study. I think there's such a, there's definitely a need for more effectiveness study. There's also that difference between effectiveness and whether it's appropriate or not, right? And I think both of these realm really need to be approached consciously. So health is so economic effective. Is it health effectiveness she's referring to? A cost effectiveness. Yeah, so cost effectiveness would be brilliant, but I haven't seen that. Ooh, I hope that doesn't exist. If it exists, please send it to me. But I don't think I've seen that. I think that'd be really interesting. Yeah. Great. I have a question from Riley Jones. Were there any notable, or any notable examples in your research that the public visibility of military intervention gave credibility to populations that have historically perceived weak central government? Was it a mixed picture? And thank you for your excellent presentation, excellent paper. Same question from Riley as well. Was there evidence of military intervention interacting in positive or negative ways with wider development themes in countries or regions? Support, ignore, disrupt? So to answer the first question around, I think there is some level of, and again, it's very hard. We don't have any evidence of how populations experience this, right? So I'm only basing this on kind of secondary reports, like media reports, et cetera. We know very little about how, and we need to have insights into how communities are at the forefront of receiving that care and all those services. And we know very little. I think there is obviously some level of gravitas, right? That comes with saying, well, and this is very present in the securitization literature where you make it the priority, you make it the health of the people, the governmental priority by involving military, right? Because it's the last level of the state. And I think this is present in civil military conversations and in security literature. The problem we have is that we don't know. We don't know if it makes people feel safer. We don't know whether. So I think we need to have much more insight into this. And this will, again, it's this idea that someone pointed to it when I was conducting my interviews this month, was saying, not on COVID, on my research in Africa, but was saying there's such a difference between effectiveness and appropriateness. And appropriateness is so context specific, obviously. And so in terms of notable examples giving credibility, I think there's definitely a signaling of credibility that can happen. It can also be detrimental to governments, right? It can also make them look, especially in places that I look at in the third trend, in places where there is a civil military power balance already at play politically, it can be quite detrimental to governments when there seems to be an independent take on the military, right? Undermining the civilian response. So I think it really depends context-wise. And Riley asked, positive or negative ways with wider development themes in countries or regions, support, ignore this trap? Was it evidence of intervention there? Difficult. Again, we don't have enough information. I'm really looking forward to reading some of the reports, hopefully that will come out of, but I think these will come out a year and a year in two years where we're going to be able to see the wider impact. We're only starting to see the wider impact on COVID, right? We just had a paper, you know, the study that came out of Southeast Asia yesterday showing the maternal and child mortality burdens or just only seeing the wider implications. So I think before we're able to draw any conclusions of that will take a while. Excellent. So another question from Biod Roberts. Thank you for a great presentation in Q&A. You highlighted the lack of research on this topic. I think that's the theme that comes across very clearly that more needs to be done. How could we strengthen co-production of research in this topic with actors from affected countries? Biod, Professor Roberts, that is an excellent question. I think there needs to be more forums. There needs to be more practical forums. There are forums that exist. I can think of a couple. So you've got game exercises, military participatory, civil military exercises, for instance, that have for pandemic preparedness that have happened across the world in all big regions of the world. And so these are happening. I think we need to start embedding research within those exercises, for instance, right? So where are the researchers at these meetings? Are they invited? And they document. We need anthropologists. It'd be brilliant to have an ethnography of the next big interaction. And there is this issue of the fact that obviously a lot of this falls under defense and security, you know, defense policy. And this is something I'm personally working on at the moment. And of course, you know, you need to navigate certain levels of secrecy in those instances. I think there needs to be, I don't know, I hope one of the students attending will want to do a PhD about this and we'll take on a regional outlook. I think there just needs to be an interest within scholars and in the global north on these issues. And I wonder whether, you know, collaborating has been difficult for very, you know, obvious ethos and reasons for research that you see when you speak to both sides. But I think there's such an urgency in collaboration. Yeah. Excellent. Thanks, Posea. A very important question. It's from an anonymous attendee. How, if at all, do gender, women, peace and security narratives incorporate into this research? So this is a really good question. So we know, so the paper brushes on, touches upon this. And so we know that in the pandemic, women are disproportionately affected economically socially, right, in the disruption of reproductive services. We know that they bear bigger economic burden. We also know that in post-conflict situations that the security discourse tends to play in gender vulnerabilities. This has been shown in Burundi and in certain settings. So there is a kind of scholarly impetus to be very careful. But also I find in my own research, at the moment in terms of interviews, that when I speak to people, I'm often very surprised by some of the, some of the, you know, I was just talking about the secrecy. And I don't want to give away my research stuff from the other side, but I think there's this idea of secrecy that cannot necessarily be detrimental to things like reproductive rights, et cetera. We might be surprised when we ask the questions about mandatory involvement in that some of the services might be more nuanced or more complex than what would be the obvious, kind of anti-militaristic standpoint. And so, yeah, so I can see that there are vulnerabilities that need to be, you know, the literature, the feminist literature, for instance, and critical theory literature makes this very clear. And I think we need to be able to involve that in our thinking. And I also think we need to ask the questions in the first place and gather evidence around gender and gender exposure to military services and military measures in the health realm. Excellent. I have a question for you, Forzea, since you talked a lot, I mean, it's the theme that keeps coming up that we need to produce the data and sort of like do research and actually develop a research agenda that's something that is unfolding as we speak, as in like, we've not seen the end of it. I mean, hopefully we will at some point soon. And the question is like how, like talk us through perhaps like how you did that research. I mean, you talk about that in the paper, but I was hoping that we can squeeze maybe something more out of you on that in a discussion. So you mentioned you were working on it or you started working on it or you're in a big chunk of it was done over the summer. So how did you get your data from what were some of the key sort of like challenges that you faced then, you know, as researchers looking into something that is unfolding and sort of not really sure. I mean, in the summer somewhere, somewhere sort of like in a misguided way, perhaps more optimistic than others. But we're all engulfed into this kind of environment of uncertainty about this. How did you manage that with the research and open-ended story? So I was really encouraged by my supervisor, Sophie Hammond and Kate Hall, Equi Mary to make sense of the data, the great literature that was coming out with the COVID up and they really followed up with me. And I think they were very good at keeping me on track in terms of knowing my limits with what I could do with that sort of data as well. So, you know, this is mainly based on great literature. So it's Google searches, like a lot of reports that are going to come out, you know, before we have those conversations and we sit down and we have, you know, internal reports on various ends. I think a lot of us will be doing Google searches, right? And so that's what I was doing frantically in the sunshine in the summer. Very thankfully grateful for having the ability to do that. But I was really supported by my supervisor to also not necessarily, you know, put the, in French, you say put the carriage in front of the, I don't know, and I was, there we go. So this idea of not having, you know, not necessarily needing to draw any theoretical conclusions from this, right? And to stay humble and on my ability to make sense of the data that was coming out and unfolding. And I think there is a sense of wonderful things will come out of this pandemic in two years. But I think there is also an incentive to, for those of us who are working in these areas to sit down and say, right, how does this fit in with our, you know, five years or, you know, two years understanding of this, it was very issue, right? And so to be very blunt that the research was happening, you know, over the summer, having Google alerts constantly, nervously reading about COVID and militaries having multiple alerts and categorizing it and trying to make sense of it. And also speaking, you know, because I was also carrying on some conversations around the PhD, also in the back of my head, having kind of that background literature theoretical and literature also, you know, planted that seed and then trying to make sense of it. So bridging those two and making sense of it. But I was really well supported by my supervisors in doing that, I have to say. Fauziya, I wonder if I could jump in and press you again. You raised a really interesting point in the paper about the issue of messaging and how, you know, we've grown kind of accustomed to the militaristic language around this pandemic. I wonder what you make of that in the context of your typology, because I was wondering, looking at the typology, well, have states had to make, you know, and governments consciously altered their messaging me and obviously there's a large theoretical background to this, you know, in politics of exceptions, theorization, all that, but when you charted the different styles of engagements, have you noticed significant differences in the messaging and do you think that alters perhaps anything around, you know, the public acceptance of this convergence in, I think particularly in that blended area and that second category, where there's kind of a lot of diversity and unfamiliarity to some of the responses. I think it's that idea of the double-edged sword, isn't it? It's like, it has, you know, you see it in public discourse, it serves a certain purpose, it seems to work, it keeps people at home, et cetera. But I think it's also, it can also be detrimental to the response in that you make, you know, COVID patients, for instance, feel like they're a threat and so it has an absolute duo role. And the fact that you see it in even completely demilitarized quote unquote settings is really interesting, it's fascinating. Why do we use, right? As a speech act, like why do we use this language even without having recourse to the military? And what do they give us, as civilian institutions? I think that's fascinating. There was a, you know, I think we spoke about this, I was speaking to someone else about the bibliometric analysis that was done out of colleagues from colleagues who are associated with the research group at Kings on Complicant Health Research. So bibliometric analysis will allow us to see kind of the transfer within studies, right, of capacity. But we need to have discursive, you know, discursive analysis of this also and try to say what purpose does it serve? Is it working? How does the media, for instance, use this, spins this? Because it serves, definitely works with headlines. Does it work in terms of conflating or obscuring some of the inequalities and the social determinants driving these outbreaks? I mean, that's another story and we need more truthful narratives and we need to be. That's also about data communication, isn't it? It's about academics being able to transfer complex, complex health data and nuance to the public. And so I think there's a, there's definitely a simplification that comes in in terms of the way we frame in, yeah, we frame the disease, yeah. Thank you. I think we have some more questions actually in the Q&A files here. Let me... Do you want me to, shall I read it? Thank you. Sorry, it will be nicer if you read it. Oh, yes. And apologies if I'm getting the titles wrong. I mean, I'm only seeing the names, so apologies in advance. So this is a question or a comment from Adilisha Fairbanks. I was wondering whether your research has touched upon the role of humanitarian principles in civil-military relations in humanitarian settings. And if yes, what's some key findings where... I've just started a PhD looking at community perceptions of civil-military relations in DRC Ebola and would love to speak directly at some point. So that's perhaps for both of you to agree on. Yeah, thank you, Adilisha. Thank you for the question. And I would love to be in touch with you. It'd be wonderful. In terms of your question, so whether... So the paper does reference the... This is a... You and your research would have known about this and seen this again and again. I think the Oslo guidelines, which are the go-to guidelines and other guidelines and frameworks have been often deemed inadequate for these interactions in humanitarian settings. Whether people know about them or not is already contentious, but whether they're adequate or not is also an issue. And so this is obviously replicated in what we're seeing in COVID-19, so the fact that there's no kind of frame of reference. So this is an issue. Whether there's a paper that just came out, actually, and I couldn't reference it in the paper because it wasn't out then, but there is a paper, a very good paper, which looks at some of the meetings that happened at Chattanooga and houses in the BMJ military was just published by Sam Boland, and I think Colin McKinnis and others around the inadequacy of the current international frameworks for humanitarian and in epidemics. So I would encourage you to have a look at that. I couldn't, yeah, again, I couldn't reference it in the paper, but I think, again, the COVID-19 is just bringing impetus to these conversations, and so they will be revised and we will have... Yeah, as you take... And I'm looking forward to hearing about your PhD, obviously. I hope that answers your question. Great, there is a question from an anonymous attendee who's not very confident about their question, but I think it's great, actually. I encourage everyone to share with us their comments and questions. So during military health intervention, is there concern for sustainability, durability of these efforts? So looking ahead, is this something that... This is an issue that is recognised as perhaps problematic in that intervention. Is military support in a health system meant to act as a temporary support mechanism or with the intent of this support being continuous? Should military intervention act more as an accessory crutch to civilian efforts to the health system or not? That's such a good question. And I think in the audience, there's a lot of people who might be able to speak to that. So it wasn't my idea in the paper to take a position, right? I didn't want to say, like, there's no... I don't know the way this should look like in practice, per se. I think there is... Again, when you look at it at my seas, there are these continuous link. And I don't think there's a value judgment to be done necessarily about them, right? Whether it's a kind of longevity crutch that then came to replicate your language, which is very well formulated, by the way, which is a longer crutch, which then kind of spikes up in times of crisis. So I think this is absolutely context-specific. So in the UK, for instance, there's been some recommendation made at parliamentary level around the way in which this should happen. And I think some colleagues will have very clear views on how this should unfold locally here, for instance. So, yeah, so I'm not sure to answer your question, whether... Yeah. And the bit of the question, which is about the concern for sustainability, I think is really interesting because in a lot of those... Because I think, and I don't want, again, I don't want to be controversial, but with the security review, we just see that some of the political, you know, the way funding is pulled in and out, for instance, depending on agendas, on political agendas and visions, you know, really impedes the ability to act. And I think the UK is a really good example because it had such a strong global health security, kind of overseas presence and thinking nationally and then kind of really failed in local... There was a mismatch between the two. And so how do we make this a sustainable and continuum? Yeah, should be at the centre of our... Yeah, our enquiries. I mean, I really found that last... I mean, all the questions really interesting, but that last one also, like, rhymed with a discussion that is being... That is taking place in the UK, about to what extent is some of the investment that is being put into addressing COVID-19, you know, could be done in a more sustainable way. So rather than sort of like, you know, resources going to sort of general purpose consultancy work is just like invested in a, perhaps, sort of like a more sustainable way in a health system that would carry these functions forward. And therefore, I find that bringing that also to the military domain is something that would be sort of like interesting to think about. Absolutely. And I think when you look at that first trend, which has very little military involvement, it also has very versatile primary healthcare systems, right? And so... Yeah. And I think I say that the article says that, in which we've been thinking about it from a military standpoint often, right? So how do military intervene within this realm? But actually we need to think about what are the lacuna's compensated and how might we... Really, like how might we make sure that we not necessarily have to invoke this ad hoc coming in, in words to consolidate kind of more versatile community responses, I think, which doesn't necessarily involve military. Yeah. I'm really interested in the military-led category for Zia that you mentioned. I mean, you include in the paper specifically like Indonesia, Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, Brazil and Peru. I mean, which just like very different countries with very different political systems. And I'm just like trying to make sense of that collection. I'm wondering whether you have thought about it, just like how is it that these countries ended up in that category? I think it's more about the kind of power struggle between civil-military relations and at what point do the response in itself shifts, right? And so countries with military rules will obviously have that only as a government. But I think some of the ways in which the response is especially in Latin America have shifted. You know, as the epidemic kind of took hold and I talk in the, you know, I make that comparison which could, you know, the kind of delay in presidential understanding of the disease, for instance, which then has an obvious trickle-down effect on military involvement, just because it has an effect on contagion, right? So as, and I give the example of Verundi, the United States and Brazil were present were just relentlessly belittling the importance of the pandemic and then led to kind of an unleashing of local outbreaks. And so I think, yeah, it's really this idea of how, what happens? And again, this is a typology, but I think we really, I would love, I mean, I would need a hundred lives to be able to do this, but I think we need to be able, and scholars will do it, to be able to look at this palette without power shifting and at what point it happens and all these very different settings. And again, I kind of stress that idea that we need those context-specific insights, but are there commonalities in the way there is not only, and that's what I go back about the push factor and the pull factor, is it that not only is it a lack of capacity or is it also when the military powers also kind of think, well, this is the moment to step in and also gain, and this comes back to our anonymous comments around sustainability. And so it will be really interesting to see in those settings whether three, four years down the line, some of the gains within the civilian realm will have rolled back out, right? In various settings. Excellent. I think we've covered a lot of ground. So let me give you lots of questions and comments, get some reflections on them before ending our very interesting session. So the first is from Professor Martin Bricknell. Well done for your excellent work. I wonder if you also looked at the impact of COVID-19 on civil-military relations in current areas of conflict. So, and some examples like Mali, DRC, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, et cetera. And let me also combine that with the other questions so that you can have them both. Have you seen a decline in humanitarian military intervention after COVID, monetary-wise and otherwise? Okay. So two really, really good questions. Martin, thank you so much for the question, Professor Bricknell. So that's such a good question. And I think because as I was, when Hassan asked me this very straight on question of how the research was happening and I was, you know, kind of drowning in Google alerts and carrying the data, a lot of these settings, as you know, more than me will have had various journalists present or very little data coming out of those settings. The place where I saw that one thing that I found really interesting in conflict and post-conflict setting is instances of utilizing the pandemic for propaganda. And so from non-state armed groups are obviously the elephant in the room of these inquiries. So, you know, if we think about it from a civil-military standpoint, often we will eclipse these kind of non-states and other security actors involved in kind of incorporating these issues and also providing services, right? This is happening. There was very good work done at the ODI, for instance, on non-state armed group and their place in the pandemic in the last year. And so my paper doesn't necessarily tackle these issues based from it. I think we'll have to do it and we'll be fascinating to see how that plays out. Yeah. Yeah. And then the question by Nadine, which is around the decline, if I have seen a decline in humanitarian and military intervention after COVID. So this is a really good question. So I haven't seen, I'm not the oracle on this. I haven't looked at budgets, for instance, but I have in looking at think tank and policy around these issues, I think a lot of the geopolitical implications of the pandemic are going to be really interesting. And this is kind of some of the takeaway message of the paper around what does this mean for cosmopolitan militaries? What does this mean for defense funding? And I think as we see austerity cuts happening within civilian institutions, but also the Stockholm Peace and Research Institute predicted that there would be defense funding post-pandemic most obviously, potentially not necessarily everywhere, where I stand at the moment, but in other settings, we are not the center of the universe in other settings. And so I think this will be really interesting to see whether, you know, what is the impact going to be like? And I didn't want to go too much into this in the paper because I didn't, then it, you know, then it's become completely supposed, you know, it becomes a supposition really. But I think you're absolutely right in thinking that this, the humanitarian military intervention landscape will change. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for Zaya for coming and sharing your excellent research with us, excellent and speedy research that managed to make it to, you know, to our publication in such a short time span. So thank you so much for coming and joining you and joining us today talking about your paper, but also more broadly about the topic and how to do research in this very difficult space and time. Thanks as well for Gemma for being an excellent discussion and sharing some of her thoughts and ideas on this and for everyone for coming in and joining in today, some of the really interesting comments and questions that helped trigger a very useful discussion. Well, I hope you all keep well and hope to see Fawzea again. Hopefully we're talking about another new publication soon and I wish you all well and see you again soon. Thank you so much.


Everybody, welcome to Boston, Massachusetts. This is a special presentation of theCUBE. We're here on top of 60 State Street. You'll see the clock tower in the background overlooking Boston Harbor. It's really a pleasure to be with you. We're here at BMC Day, checking out what BMC customers are doing in the whole area of digital transformation. I'm here with Stu Miniman and Brian Graceley. Brian's up this week from North Carolina.  Gentlemen, good to see you, Stu. Brian, good to see you. Welcome to Boston. Great day, beautiful day. Unbelievable day today, right?  Sun comes out, we get this great view in the background. We're going to be eating over at Legal Harbor Side on the first floor tonight. Looking forward to that to stop by if you're in town. But, so what we heard today was really a big discussion around digital transformation. You know, it's a theme that we hear within the industry a lot. The traditional BMC crowd are sort of IT operations people. BMC was a sort of two plus billion dollar company that went private a couple of years ago in a takeout with Bain. You know, very much, it's a very small version of what we saw from Dell, Stu. And, of course, we know well the story of ServiceNow coming in, going after IT service management. Kind of picking off a lot of the sweet spot of BMC and CA and IBM and HP with change management and problem management and that stuff. But, so BMC kind of struggled as a public company, but now as a private company, it gets to do a couple of things. One, write its own narrative, kind of like Dell does.  It's not on the 90-day shot clock, as Michael Dell likes to call it. So, we heard some positive momentum here today. We're going to be talking to some of the senior execs within BMC's organization, hopefully some customers as well. Stu, what's your take and then we'll get Brian's input. Yeah, Dave, so, you know, as we've been looking at cloud, the real opportunity to be able to transform customer environments is to make things, the term Brian's used is operationally efficient. And of course, where the rubber hits the road on that is the management layer.  How do I make business processes work better? So, this is the area where BMC and companies like it can really come and, you know, help customers through that transformation, what they're calling the digital transformation process. So, everybody talks about digital transformation. Everybody talks about cloud. You kind of got to be in those two areas and, you know, throw in mobile and social if you want. But Brian, so, from your point of view, BMC, are they in the conversation? Are they relevant to the whole cloud conversation? If so, how so? Well, I think for them, you know, the conversation today was all about, you know, business is going to change and it's going to have, and it's changing faster and faster. And it was about making the audience that was here, the users of BMC technology relevant again, making them understand that BMC is about automation, it's about cloud management, it's about being able to help from the main frame to the cloud. You know, BMC's got an opportunity to be very relevant because all the transformations they talked about today, unless you're just talking about a pure play, an Uber or a Tesla, it's, I've got to link these new systems of engagement all the way back to systems of record. And BMC's got a breadth of portfolio that kind of crosses all that from an IT operations perspective. So, we also heard from Evelyn Erlich from Forrester, meaty presentation to say the least. You know, she kind of gave us a brain dump on sort of Forrester's view of digital transformation, a lot of the ITIL stuff. Take aways from her presentations too, any thoughts? Yeah, I mean, she did a real good job of, you know, really focusing on what customers are doing.  And you know, we don't call it IT anymore, we need to call it business technology. And of course, this digital transformation is a journey. So, some of the things that we've been hearing for a few years, but articulated nicely, helping move kind of up the stack, if you will, as to where the business value needs to be, and how we can really take some steps for the digital transformation. You know, talk a little bit about DevOps and you know, some of these movements to help make things better.  Right. It's sort of a recurring theme. It's like everybody's using Airbnb and Uber as examples of digitization. So, where are we in terms of what customers are really doing in terms of that digital transformation, in terms of transforming into that DevOps, which oftentimes is an ops dev type of environment. What's your take on that? Well, I think so, she laid out a huge, lots of ways you can get there, all the technologies. To me, what was really interesting is, and I hear this from a lot of end customers who are doing it, the business has to drive it. It's not going to be driven by IT, sort of saying we're going to be 15% faster, 30% faster, so it's the business driving it. And the proof point that she used that I thought was really interesting was, she said, you know, be very focused on mobile first. Be very focused on what mobile means to that customer experience, from partners to supply chain to the actual end user buying experience. And a lot of times that can be the driver that's going to push those things downstream that IT has to change, but it's also going to change how maybe sales engages. It's going to change how your website engages. Having that point in how do I get along this journey is really important for businesses, because if you look at 50 slides and there's a lot of density, you don't know where to start. Yeah, and it really is hard because it's specific to each business. You're kind of going to start with, okay, how do I apply this? It's really hard to generalize and take action on that, but nonetheless, it's something that a lot of people are talking about. We're going to be here all afternoon, talking to executives. We're going to actually talk to Forrester as well, and we're going to have some of our own sort of discussion. So keep right there. There's a special presentation of theCUBE. We're at top of Beantown at 60 State Street in Boston at BMC Day. There's a cube right back.


Welcome, folks, this is Tom O'Brien of TFNN.  Great day, safe day, let's make it a great night, folks. Create the perfect relationship between you and your body. Treat your body with honor, love, gratitude, and respect. You're making a goal to adore your body and accept yourself completely. You're learning to have a perfect relationship with anyone else you are with. Make it a wise, let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industries up 561, Nasdaq up 168, S&P's up 62, gold contract down $28.90, trading at $17.49 an ounce. We've got Silver down 28 cents, $22.62 an ounce. Light sweet crude, up 97 cents, $73.20 of barrel notes and bonds. The 10-year note, down 19 ticks, trading $132.12, 30-year for full point plus 26 at $162.05 and $king dollar. King dollar's down 432 ticks, trading at 93.031. We have huge divergence here, folks, in the dollar and the gold, which is a beautiful thing. I can tell you, I'll tell you why. Well, the why is because the Euro is topside the big way, the pound is topside the big way. They don't look to me like that. They're gonna come back. That is saying the dollar's gonna keep going lower.   If in fact, you get the opposite effect. That's the real bottom line. You notice that 117 ends at 110.25 and the British pounds at 137 to one U.S. dollar. Our phone number's<PHONE_NUMBER>. Give us a call, folks. I know it's going on in your world. In the world of the S&Ps, let's take a look at them. What do you have? Well, this close is really gonna be important because what you have here is this.  You get a contraction of volume going. What is happening is that the market's holding price.  You don't hold price. This is gonna be the end of the B to C of a very large potential ABC structure on the way down. And it's a classic too. There's no doubt because you came down here with what, 166 million? Yesterday we had 103 million. Today you get 53. What ends up happening is that we'll end up with 63 or something. That's what you normally see. You normally see that contraction happen. You're going into 118. That's crucial to understand. So we'll see where this shakes out coming into the close. You get some of the, that's on the spy. NBX100 is the same type of setup. NBX100 is a little bit weaker than the spy. Even though we have it up.  We're at the top, we get the gap is 372. So you're already into that gap. A real bottom line is that where is it gonna close out when we're coming into this close here? Now if we take a look at the NQs, what you're gonna see inside the NQs right now, come on baby, there we go. Inside the NQs right now, you hit a high out here of 347, 15,347. You're still, you're off it by 30 points, but 30 points inside the Qs are nothing. But let me get this up, come on baby, here we go. Okay, so pull this, I see what happens. I'm so used to this thing that way. What I'm trying to do is get it closer to me. Close in time, okay, where am I pulling this in? Bottom line. Okay, so we are right now, you're below, this is wild, okay. So the way the NQs are actually trading folks, is that we can actually get back down to this low that was established out here this morning, at that 265, let me make sure that's right now. Sorry, just 265, yeah, 265. You're at 315, so that's not that many more points lower, but that's how this thing looks. And if that's what you get, the bottom line is that what you're gonna get there is that you have the potential ABC structure in place. Gold, gold contract out here. You talk about divergence, this is real divergence too, which is really cool man. I love that, okay, divergence like this is really cool, and what I mean by that folks is this, is that when I bring up the pound and when I bring up the euro, you're gonna see just the power of that. And what we have here, and I actually was going through this yesterday, meaning on another equity. So pitchers, the first time that we came down in the gold contract, we came down with 290,000 contracts. That was established out here on the 9th of August. Then we came down last week with 250,000 contracts. You had 206,000 now. That's what you like to see. What I also wanna see now though is a rejection of lower price. We haven't got the rejection of lower price yet yet. You're right down at that level. Bottom line is that I suspect we're gonna get it. Notes and bonds, we wanna get in that note and bond market, man, because what you have out here is that you have the 10-year right, I think it actually broke through the bottom of this consolidation. Let's see what it looks like here. No, T, Y. Okay, so you're down 19 ticks. I don't think that's enough to get through it actually. Oh, there it is. Okay, so you have 1.8 million contracts. You broke through the bottom of it. And that sets up right now with 132.12. That sets up a 131.29. That's where we had strength going back to the 7th of July. Let's go take a look at the TLT. TLT, this is a 20-year plus. This baby is back three dollars. You're at 148. You're coming into 19 million to 116. Okay, this is gonna be a little more volume to basically get cracked. You know, we'll see where this shakes out. This also has not rejected lower price. King dollar. You're gonna see what King dollar out here, bottom line. That came back fast and furious, took back everything that was up yesterday. And what you're gonna see here will put up the euro as well as the pound. The pound is the one that stopped moving first this morning, folks. You can see the euro came off the lows of 116.84. You're at 117.47. If we take a look at the pound, you're gonna see the pound is the one that really moved first and then the euro moved. The pound went from 136.12, 137.31. And what you actually do have is that now you have three higher lows, okay? Real close, but the bottom line is that we do have three higher lows inside of the marketplace. My phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>, that was up 534-nazik163. S&Ps up 58, stay right there, folks. Come right back.


Well, good morning and thanks for being here today. This week we kicked off a couple of holiday celebrations at the state house with the annual Christmas tree lighting. We'll follow that up with a menorah lighting next week. It's hard to believe it was only three years ago during the height of the pandemic that people weren't able to gather. Any businesses were closed and things didn't feel all that bright and festive. We knew how hard this was going to be on families in particular. So to create a sense of hope and keep people connected, we launched Vermont lights the way and ask everyone to light up Vermont any way they could for the holiday season. At the same time, we wanted to show Vermonters could also light the way with acts of kindness. So we also started raise of kindness, which recognizes people for spreading good will during an incredibly difficult time. The purpose was to shine some light during those dark times. And we weren't sure what to expect, but we got such a strong response. It was clear that this this is something people needed more of, whether in a global pandemic or not. So we've done it every year since. In Vermont really does light the way in many different respects, and we proven it time and time again, whether it was through the pandemic, this summer's flooding or global and national turmoil, Vermonters continued to show their commitment to community, willingness to serve and going the extra mile to help those in need. We see this in all kinds of acts, big and small. Sometimes it's just the little things, those simple random everyday acts of kindness that could make all the difference in the world. And I believe it's important to highlight those deeds and the good people who make them happen. Over the last year, for example, a Colchester woman was recognized for lending a shoulder to cry on for a neighbor whose mom was just diagnosed with Alzheimer's and then visited her mom in the memory care center while her family was out of town. An eighth grader in Swanton helped families in need by providing care packages for their pets to lessen the burden on them. In residence in Brattleboro, organize a community toy drive. When it comes to the flood, there have been so many that have come our way from EMS workers knocking on doors of those who needed heat to stay park employees evacuating and hosting campers and flooded campgrounds. The communities who donated everything from air mattresses to food for their neighbors. The point is, there's no act too big or too small to put forward as a nomination. And I know there are countless stories we haven't heard and that should be recognized. And we want to do that because kindness is contagious. There's a chain reaction with good days and we certainly need more good these days. I've signed a proclamation making December raise of kindness month and we'll be celebrating these acts. So I'm asking Vermonters, if you have someone in mind, go to our website, governor dot vermont dot gov slash kindness to nominate them. While we're talking about goodwill and helping others, please remember to buy Vermont strong plates at dmb.vermont.gov slash Vermont strong 23 help the thousands of Vermonters still struggling from the flood. As a reminder, for the month of December, half the funds will go to help businesses who need a little help to get their doors open and keep them open. And the other half will go to Vermont Community Foundation for individual needs, specifically housing, critical financial expenses, food and mental health. We need everyone to step up. It's not enough to pull out your plate from Irene. We need those who are struggling to know we had their back and haven't forgotten them. So with that, I'll open up the questions. Sorry to cut off the good The good good news can always count on you. We are rapidly hurtling toward much of the session, or maybe top three priorities for you heading into this year? Well, I would say, I mean, certainly top on the list for me is something that's been top of our list. The last six, seven, maybe even eight years housing. That's certainly going to be front and center. And I think it's something that we share with the legislature. The flood recovery continues to be something we have to address and continue to do. Our flood recovery office will will continue to make sure that we channel as much funding as we receive from the federal government to do so. And then the budget was just going to be difficult this year. It's going to be a challenging year, but I do think if we all come together with, you know, recognizing that we have some of the same goals that we can get through that and make it happen and protect Vermonters while making sure that we're not forcing people to make decisions about where they live. So we want people to stay in Vermont. We want to attract more people to Vermont, and we certainly need them to fulfill our workforce. But we need all the ingredients to do that. When you say it's going to be a tough budget here, I I know that recent taxes have been much a non-starter for you. And so they're going to be areas in state government that are going to. Well, we'll see. I mean, obviously the legislature has all the power now. They have the supermajority. And I'll make my best best case for why we shouldn't be raising taxes, why we can't. They certainly did a lot of that last year. It took a lot of the taxing capacity away. And I and it doesn't leave much room at this point. And I think that many there'll be many legislators both sides of the aisle that will agree with that. So we're going to have to look for ways to move through. I've always personally and in my business and in the political process and budgetary process, I think about things in in terms of want and need. And the need comes first. And it's difficult to distinguish between the two. But that's where I start. Last week's education tax rate letter forecast a pretty high property tax rate increase. So what do you say to the burden that could put on the monitors? Yeah, that's that's something that I don't think for monitors can endure. And we have to find ways to make sure that we're keeping the property tax. We already have one of the highest property tax rates in the country. And this is not going to be helpful in attracting more people to our state or keeping people here. So we'll have to work together and find ways to alleviate that. And I think, you know, you have to be honest with ourselves and every option. All ideas should be on the table without discounting anything. Just should be on the table and take the politics out of it. And let's let's see what's best for the kids first. Make sure we're protecting them. And I would say that because we're spending we spend a lot of money on education in Vermont. But we have to have to recognize we may not be getting our money's worth in terms of the outcome. So we're going to have to look at that and address that. And but keep in mind the goal of making sure we educate our kids. A big part of that forecast increase was because of COVID cash that districts were using supposed to be for one time funds. But now they've included those or they've built those those numbers into their budget. Now they can't support them. I mean, you and other lawmakers all along had called for use this one time money for one time expenses.  What what are you reading? You know I've as you recognize I said this a lot over the last couple of years. We need to all this money is one time and we have to treat it as one time. Meaning that we need to invest it in ways that would give us the highest return. And using it to just take care of expenses, just spending it will just lead us to where we're at today. So I think again we're here. This is where we're at. There are local local budgets that that have a lot to do with where we're at. So we'll just have to address it and work together to work our way out of it. Yes, some of the educators would say let's look at the factors behind these increases. Healthcare costs premiums skyrocketing. Also inflation inflation. So I mean even though it's a huge increase I think they probably feel like they're treading water. Yeah well 20% increase if that if that comes to be is just not something that's palatable. We just we just can't afford it. Without finding other ways to supplement that. What do we want to do without? And maybe those are discussions we have to have. But we have to live within our means because we're already spending a lot of money. How effective has act 46 been in your your mind? Being part of this as well as you know funding rural school districts as well which cost more of course to educate rural students. How effective do you think it's been since it passed? Five six. I forget how long ago, but um well I would I would leave it to the experts to decide whether it's been effective or not. Again I look at where we're at today and some of the same challenges are there and some of them are out of you know what we need is we need more people in the state. We need more taxpayers not more taxes. We need we need more kids to fill those schools. And that's where we're I think that's where we're missing it. And and again making it more expensive for people to live here and come here is not the solution. There a bit of a shift away from that but today Vermont's Vermont's criminal justice council is expected to make a decision regarding Sheriff John Grismore being able to continue practicing law enforcement in the state. Do you have any desired outcome from this? I mean you've said before that you wished he didn't run for the position after the incident at this point. Yeah I mean that's a decision they're going to have to make but and I made my my point early on I didn't think he should run but he did run and the people of of the county elected him. So they knew with their eyes wide open what they were getting. So it's that now it's up to the criminal justice board to determine whether he should continue to to be certified law enforcement but that doesn't preclude him from being sheriff. And on another side as well Montpelier's post office still remains closed. I mean repairs have been going on there in the state house different buildings across the city. Do you have any stance on potentially getting that post office back or a timeline for those offices? Yeah we we have nothing to do with that as a federal issue and I don't know how much to be honest with you and this is probably a better question for the federal delegation but I don't know how much work they're doing to the the building at this point. I don't know what their long-range plan is. We reached out to them and offered to help in any way we could with some of the buildings we have to to supplement or both be the short term long term needs and they weren't weren't interested in some of our solutions but maybe they will be still open to having conversations about what that could be. What does it tell you about your communication or even the congressional delegation's communication with the postal service? I mean they haven't even the postal service hasn't responded to the delegation's letter a month ago. Yeah I don't know there seem to be autonomous to everyone else and they don't seem to have to answer to anybody at this point. I don't know I mean it's a good question again another good question for the federal delegation I believe how they feel about it. Do you get the impression that they don't care? I don't I don't know what to make of it to be honest with you I mean this isn't some small town they just lost a few post office bosses this is their capital city I mean they should be paying attention to this I believe but they don't appear to be. I'd say in January first matter January and how has this been as a workspace for you guys? It's been great yeah no very fortunate to have it it's the our continual continuation of operations plan that we put forth was Suzanne Young that forced us to do it as secretary administration and it was flawless in some respects so this has been great space for us. It seems to be better than the civilian. You know there's a lot of there's a lot of attributes to this. Yeah no I enjoy actually being here so. Can you walk the work? I could. How much less in a way is the cash flow now that all the covid is gone away? Well now we have you know another round all the covid money is gone but then now we have more cash coming in and because of the the IRA and the BIL and all the other federal programs that have come in to be more infrastructure wise but that'll be circulating within the coffers and and that's one of the the bright spots for us as well that with the legislature we did coming to agreement on having match money for them for that those federal dollars and that's going to benefit us tremendously in the future as we try and ride this storm out over the next few years. Has there been any received drop now the way he's out there? I'm too early to tell but I'm sure there will be yes. I have a question about the state's high-tech operation. Every now and then thank you for reading articles that it's way way behind the Vermont is yes in tech and then just the last week there was an article about mental health for youth and the database was not working properly and that might have stopped. Well we've been on going problem for 10 or 15 years. Yeah well I would say the either DMV Department of Labor all those legacy projects the big ones have been on the radar for decades and now we're just getting to them so again the good news is we are in the initial phases of that DMV and labor so so that's good when I came into office we recognize the need for having an agency a new agency that will the legislature went along with us on to create the agency of digital services which has been tremendously helpful in in making sure that we have our thumb on those technical digital needs so it's been very effective and one of the highlights of of this administration. And you are the largest business in the state. Possibly sure probably. Employees and revenue and all that. Well yeah it's hard to look at it in terms of revenue but I don't think of ourselves as a business but we do employ a lot of people. We should run it more like a business maybe. I was wondering how you sort of view the republican presidential race at this point understanding how you feel about Donald Trump. Would it be helpful to win out this field down so there's one strong challenger to Trump? I think there will be eventually. Maybe maybe a point is maybe not soon enough. But but I think they're getting there. It seems as though it's coming down to it seems to me as though it would come down to maybe DeSantis and Haley and Christie maybe. Christie would be on the outside. I mean you've talked before about how important you feel it is that a governor be president right with that experience so you've got Haley DeSantis and Christie. Who do you like there? Who's your favorite there? Well I like I like Chris Christie for a lot of reasons but I like Nikki Haley as well. I know both of them and when I first became governor and both counseled with me so I know them better than the others. What do you like about her? I think her approach she is she's got a lot of compassion but she she's run a state so she understands you know how to balance the budget and how to make sure that economic development is on the forefront. But I can say that about Chris Christie as well that both both the same. Do you look at her as a more realistic candidate in winning? It's it's hard to say but I think she she has a lot of attributes and she certainly was on the the worldwide stage as well as the ambassador to the United Nations. I think that's helpful especially in these days. Have any of them asked for your endorsement? No I don't think they want to hurt their chances. Governor your DCF commissioner sent a letter to lawmakers asking them to once again not just pause but indefinitely pause the raise the age initiative. What's your assessment of how those reforms are going in and why pause? Well we've had concerns about the raise the age from the very beginning so we decided to move forward with that but but again we've asked for delays all on the way and I think it's appropriate not to move forward with that I think it'd be more helpful. I think we have to to rethink some of what we've done for the last two or three years and maybe bring back the pendulum towards the center. Public safety is a big big concern of mine and many others across Vermont. For you what's giving you pause? What's changed? Oh just the the amount of criminal activity we're seeing across the state across the country but across the state in particular. We thought we were some somehow insulated from all of that but a lot of it is due to drug drug trafficking and that seems to be the I would say the the core of of our issue. We can go to the phones we have Ed Barber New Court Daily Express. Can you hear me? We can. I only got about half of every word you said Ed so I hate to ask you this but can you try it again? Unless somebody else caught it in here. I think you were asking about the moratorium on evictions and I'm not sure of the status of that at this point and and how long that will will be in place but I'll get you the answer and get back to you. Okay the second class that related when the evictions depended started cons, allergy, and roughly 50 built in the parts of our housing. The Vermont Sheriff went to Vermont State Authority in which the lamp caused the formation to be able to qualify for a tenant to get a rent subsidy. In a year it could be their cons appropriated this program at but they had to through the federal program with it and then had to do paperwork. There's a little input that didn't get paid because the tenant wouldn't operate and I don't know how those lords can get their rent because some of them that I'm familiar with are not renting their apartments that should be available to the public. Yeah I don't know as I got the full breadth of your question Ed unfortunately but had to do with evictions again. I you know when you're going back to the pandemic I don't believe I think I believe that's all been lifted with the state of emergency that is no longer in place but in terms of if there are units that are not being utilized at this point due to some legal procedure we we definitely would be all years because we we have a shortage of housing as you know and we want to make sure that we're filling all those units we need more online we have the VHIP program that was was something that I had thought about early in when I became governor because I looked at all the homes in Barrie for instance all the beautiful Victorian homes and thought we should be utilizing them and and maybe putting accessory dwellings on them turning some into apartments and so forth and we should we the state should be be putting that forward that unfortunately the legislature didn't go along with that when I first proposed it but now it's it's working it's working well they did adopt it and and it's putting units back online for a fraction of the costs of new ones so if you have apartment house owners that need some help in putting those back online please please let us know and because we want the VHIP program sounds like it would be most useful to them and to us but I can if you can add if you can send us an email with your questions specifically so that we get exactly what you want from that perfect I would be so thank you thank you i see rebecca we'll reach out to you okay thank you thank you Tim McQuiston from our business magazine hi governor uh Betsy Bishop the president of Vermont chamber and asked that she is stepping down next year after serving for many years I was wondering if you had a comment about that you know I I that was news to me as well I had didn't I didn't hadn't heard anything about that before I read it yesterday unfortunate for the chamber she's been she's been great of a great addition to the economic future of Vermont she has all the credits that she worked with the administration during the Douglas administration she was deputy chief of staff I believe at that point she was Department of Labor so she she understands government I I don't know what's next for her maybe you could tell me but I but I don't know I haven't haven't spoken to her but I I owe her a call well it it does beg the question governor because um many people don't suggest that she should run for the job you currently have and you two are friends I think it's fair to say um so you know being a reporter we try and connect the dots that if you made a decision whether you're going to seek real action I have not I have not okay that's a pretty brief answer connect the dots here with the Betsy Bishop in here but all right thank you governor I appreciate it back to the room will you tell us when you do this night I will you mentioned flood recovery as one of the priorities for this session are you anticipating perhaps a package of one-time money to fill in gaps for communities residents we're still hoping we don't I still don't know as we um understand how much money is available uh through the federal government at this point in time so um we're hopeful there'll be one-time money for mitigation uh and uh and recovery so we're still Doug Farnham of course our chief recovery officer and and he's looking for every pot of money he can possibly find uh to help in that regard so um and we're in you know bigger projects like the the corridor from Barry to to Waterbury uh is something that I'm I'm interested in I think I could alleviate a lot of problems for Barry Montpelier and Waterbury in the future if we could expand the river corridor provide capacity for storage of storm water are you thinking of enlarging the river well it would be widening it yes um and providing providing relief there so that the we can we can store the again the high intensity rainstorm that comes and provide for a place for it to go you think about I mean we're still making decisions about central garage for instance uh whether we're going to rebuild there or we're going to vacate and maybe we return if we vacate maybe we return that into storage capacity there there are a number of areas along the river that I believe could be utilized um and use them for that for that storage bin so to speak I mean there's a proposal or an idea of maybe taking the state parking lots of downtown Montpelier making those all green space that that could work but but if they're low in their parking we just need the storage capacity so it doesn't again I'm no expert but but we just need places for the water to naturally go and overflow the banks and if they go on to a parking lot we can move cars out of the way not impact homes and and businesses that's great you know they and then we can clean them up after you mentioned not knowing at this point how much more money we're going to be able to get the feds what has communication awesome we have we've had a good rapport with FEMA the White House has been responsive but and the congressional delegation has been there with us along the way and we're hoping that there'll be some supplemental funding for some of those bigger projects like the very project that I talked about before and and there is some money that is there that that was appropriated in the supplemental bill quite a few months ago for FEMA and and whether any of that money could be utilized for some of the mitigation work we want it's just none known at this point but the delegation is working on that yeah because that was for the disaster relief funding at least my understanding is that that's more for acute needs not as much these long-term mitigation projects were you hoping for leeway well there's always those notwithstanding clauses that could be utilized with all the flood recovery work that the state needs to project for this year I'm wondering if there are other policy priorities that you think are going to need to take a backseat I'm thinking specifically of the legislature's appetite for a paid leave well we have the paid leave provision with the volunteer paid family leave that we put into place is working very very well and it's an avenue that they should they should consider I I don't believe there's the taxing capacity that they see for that I mean there is always taxing capacity but how much damage you do along the way is is of concern of mine so I think that that's one area that they should think about I've already said that what we have is going to work and it seems working for a lot of employers how is it where you like can you kind of lay out because it's been what like a year since that yeah I don't have all the facts and figures here but but I can get that for you or we can talk about it that view is subject in another press conference actually to tell you where we're at with that thank you Governor the sheriff's said that the last year's law was kind of a power grab by by the legislature and are you concerned that a an appointed criminal justice board decertifying an elected official is maybe an administrative infringement on local local elected rights yeah that's right along the edge because they're not really barring him from being a sheriff they're debarring that person from law enforcement ability right you don't have to be I don't believe maybe I should check with our general council first but I don't believe you have to have a law enforcement certification to be sheriff sort of like sitting in the legislature without actually getting the phone I think maybe that's not a great analogy but to have a sheriff who can't be who can't enforce the law himself as a police officer seems well although I mean you have they're like an administrator and they're there I I agree I mean it'd be preferable if they had their certification but I'm not sure that that that's where I'm not sure that it really is like unconstitutional because they're not throwing him out of office that would be something the the legislature would have to do great thank you all very much