Good morning everybody. Good morning. Welcome to US Institute of Peace. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president here, and I'm delighted to welcome everybody for one of our bipartisan Congressional dialogues. This is part of a series in which we provide a platform for Congressional members who are coming together from across the aisle to work on critical foreign policy issues that are essential for our national interests. And this is the bipartisan spirit that really has informed USIP since our founding in 1984 as an independent, nonpartisan, national institute that's dedicated to resolving and reducing international violence. Here at USIP, we very much believe that peace is possible, that it's a very practical undertaking, and that it is essential for our national security. And we pursue this mission by linking research with policy training and working on the ground to support partners on the front lines of violent conflict. We've long served as a powerful platform for people to come together from across different views, political areas of expertise as a way of tackling the most vital foreign challenges. And that's exactly what brings us here today. Despite what you read in the papers, we have found that there is a continuing and genuine interest on Capitol Hill and coming together to grapple with important issues. And we have that opportunity today to hear from two congressional foreign policy leaders who are focused on an important issue facing us, which is diplomacy and development in a complex global landscape. The world has experienced significant advancement in technology, in global health, in economic growth over the past half century, often called the long piece. We've seen the last 70 years has brought a drastic reduction in violence between states. Literacy rates have gone up, more girls are in primary school, extreme poverty goes down, child mortality, lots of good news. But as the title of our event suggests, today's very, very rapidly changing world presents us with new challenges and a more complex set of obstacles. We see that fragile states continue to, you know, those states that are filled with unmet grievances, bad governance, injustice. These are the states that continue to spawn violent extremism, civil wars, historic levels of migrants and refugees. And now these issues are further exacerbated and complicated by the rising competition between regional and major powers. Global issues like pandemics, environmental shocks, the dark side of technology, these are all requiring global solutions at a time of rising global tension. So this is a time when U.S. global leadership will require the best of our diplomats, the best of our development experts, and the most effective systems to support them. And our ability to come together around a shared vision and a path forward. So we're honored to have with us here today two congressional foreign policy leaders, Congressman Ami Berra from California and Congressman Lee Zeldin from New York. So you'll notice not only are they from the Republican and Democrat party, they're also from the two coasts. So this is truly an exercise in coming together. Congressman Berra and Zeldin lead the newly established House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation as chairman and ranking member. And the subcommittee's goal in the words of Chairman Berra, the goal is to hold governments accountable to support the mission of our diplomats and development experts and to investigate abuses when they occur. Congressman Berra practiced medicine for 20 years. And so with his medical background, he's been a leading voice on the need to address global health. Congressman Zeldin served in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division into Crete, Iraq, which has led him to be a leader in Congress on foreign policy and veterans issues. So both of these Congress members, they're well traveled. They've been to these hot spots around the world and they've seen firsthand the impact and the importance of U.S. diplomacy and development in advancing our country's interests. Congressman Berra and Congressman Zeldin, thank you for being here with us today. We're really pleased that you could join us. For those who are watching us online, you can follow USIP on Twitter at USIP with the hashtag bipartisan USIP. With that, please join me in welcoming to the stage Congressman Berra and Congressman Zeldin. Please come up. So I'd like to invite Congressman Berra to make some opening remarks. He'll be followed by Congressman Zeldin. We'll have a conversation and then we're going to open it up for questions and conversation. Well, thank you, Nancy, for that introduction. And I want to thank USIP for hosting this event. And for those of you that have taken time out of your morning to be here, thank you for your involvement. And those watching online, thank you for joining us.  Things are changing at a more rapid clip. And if we look back at our history and think about where we are, you touched on it. Post World War II, America's diplomacy and development, that world leadership really did create a safer world, did reduce conflict and so forth. You know, the long sustained view during the Cold War did lead to reduced conflicts. But today we find ourselves in a different place. And you know, when we think about the opportunity, and when I think about the opportunity that Congressman Zeldin and I and our colleagues have, when we start to think about what does 21st century diplomacy and development look like, there's a real opportunity here. And when conversation prior to this, you know, you had sustained views and so forth, and you had congressional oversight previously, but you know, not just in this administration, but in the last few administrations, you've seen Congress lose some of that oversight responsibility and the executive branches gain more of that. So, you know, as we start to lay our agenda and think about what does the oversight committee focus on, you know, I think we've got a primary purpose to think about where are we today? What is the current state of America's diplomacy and development? What is the current state of the human resources, the men and women that service every day representing the interests of the United States, but not just the men and women, the NGOs that are out there, et cetera, representing the United States and its values and interests. Where is that? But if all we do is take a quick snapshot of where we are today, where are those human resources, where are those programs, we'll have only done half our job. The second part of that job really is where do we want to be? What should this look like in the 21st century? What should the people look like? How do we empower those folks that are out there, our diplomats, our development personnel with the right tools to do their jobs in the most important way? What does a 21st century embassy look like? And how do we equip those embassies? How do we work in a world with the international community, with other multilateral organizations to better extend our resources? How do we work with the NGO community in a more effective way? How do we work with the corporate philanthropic community? So this is increasingly really important questions. We've also got to take the long view. We can't look at this as a two-year or four-year task. And the reason why Congress's role is so important here is we've got to have that sustained mission from one administration to the next. So yeah, I'm incredibly excited. You know, I'll leave it with one last thing. This isn't Congress's job alone. This is, you know, many of the folks that are in this town but all across this world that have been thinking about this, we can't accomplish what we hope to accomplish without engaging the folks that are out in the field, the folks that are at the think tanks, but then also in a bipartisan way, how do we best represent America's interest in the 21st century? So I absolutely look forward to working with USIP. Certainly look forward to working with Congressman Zeldin. And the best solutions are always going to be bipartisan solutions. So thank you. I guess in the spirit of bipartisanship, I'll just start off by saying I agree with everything that Chairman Barra just stated. And I'll be careful not to be repeating any of the themes because he really did touch on a lot in framing the mission and the work ahead for the committee that we serve on together. And it is an honor to be serving with Chairman Barra in this capacity as he now has assumed the gavel. And I thank all of you for being here for an important discussion. It is important for us to find ways to be able to work together to have conversations that are productive, that are substantive, sometimes because it's uncomfortable. We don't engage in debate in sorting out differences of opinion. It's actually very healthy to the process for us to be honest with each other, to share our concerns with a particular legislative proposal that's in front of us or a decision that's supposed to be made with foreign policy and other issues that are before us in Congress. So I wouldn't certainly want to discourage debate in the pursuit of bipartisanship. But unfortunately what doesn't get out to our constituents enough is that conversations like this happen. It's good that you have the cameras here and I understand that you all have promoted to our constituents that we're going to be here. So hopefully we have many who are watching at home so that they see that we're here. It's Friday morning. We're in Washington and we're working. Ed Koch, who is a former mayor of New York City, he said, if you agree with me, nine times out of 12, vote for me. If you agree with me, 12 times out of 12, see a psychiatrist. And I'm sure a lot that we're going to be discussing this morning that everyone in this room is going to agree upon. But to have an honest conversation, it's also going to require us to give you candid answers to your questions today, whether it be from here on the dais from all of you in the audience. I'll just briefly say that my philosophy on foreign policy is one that should always pursue strengthening our relationships with our friends, treating our adversaries as our adversaries, understanding that our adversaries do not respect weakness, they only respect strength. We can't be silent with many conflicts that happen, not because we want war but because we want to prevent it. The military option, which is one of the four instruments of national power, is the last possible option ever. If you ever come across anyone in government or out in pursuit of conflict that looks at the military option of the four instruments as option one, two, or three, then there's something wrong with them. And as the institute focuses on here, really to take some self-reflection as to whether or not you're standing on the side of good or not, if you're in pursuit of peace, ultimately, if that's your long game, you're right. If you're in pursuit of conflict, you're wrong. And the mission and know that many of you who are here work for the institute, you all are here at the institute today or watching at home, I believe that our military should never be sent into harm's way unless they're sent to win. You send our troops to win or you don't send them at all. I also believe our country should do a better job when our veterans return home, that they are treated with the love, the dignity, the respect that they deserve on behalf of a very grateful nation. I know that the institute here has some members of the team who have served in the military. I thank them all for their service. There was a time after World War II where just under 100% of Congress was made up of military veterans. Right after Vietnam, it was just over three quarters. Now that number is less than one in five. It's good to have diversity in Congress. So I'm not here advocating for us to be able to return to that post World War II number. It's fine that we have great diversity in Congress. But I will say that in my interaction with fellow veterans on both sides of the aisle, there's a certain outlook that I know is part of the conversation today, at least with one of your questions. That perspective you get from serving the military, the leadership that you get, I would say it would be good if we had some more veterans in Congress than we do now. That number that's less than one in five is a bit concerning to me. So as we go into today's conversation, please understand that any discussion with regards to that M is knowing that it, please know that I'm talking about option triple Z. We always need to be pursuing the diplomacy, the economic pressure, bilateral multilateral diplomacy, the information operation, the other instruments of national power. And for that, I hope that we can have maximum bipartisanship on the Hill, maximum progress in this city and around this country and at the UN closer to where I live and all around the world. So I look forward to today's conversation. Thank you for hosting both Chairman Berra and I. And I guess we'll get it going. Let's get it going. Let's dive in. Thank you. Thank you both of you. So this new subcommittee is part of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. So I want to start there. And I'll ask both of you for your reflections. I mean, historically, we have been well served as a nation by this concept that politics stop at the water's edge. And I would love your thoughts on where do you see areas within the House Foreign Affairs Committee where there is a lot of room for bipartisan agreement where Republicans and Democrats are coming together to solve some of the most vaccine issues. Let's start with you, Chairman Berra. Great. I think we've been served well on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It probably is the most bipartisan committee in Congress. Under Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel, we were blessed to have great leadership. And now under Chairman Engel and Ranking Member McCall, I think we see that same bipartisanship. A good example would actually be the authorization bill looking at the Northern Triangle countries. How do we take a deep look at what the root cause issues are that are happening in these Northern Triangle countries? We had a hearing on this fairly recently. And you wouldn't know who the Democrats or the Republicans were because we recognize that we've got a challenge on our southern border right now. But again, when you're thinking about diplomacy and development, we also recognize that we've got to go to the root cause. And I think when you look at most of our hearings, there's some contentious hearings at times where there's differences of opinion. But by and large, if we're thinking about Russia, if we're thinking about long-term sustained strategy in Ukraine, if we're starting to talk about fragile states in Africa, you do see strong bipartisan concern. If we did a markup of 15 different bills, the one that is most likely to get the media's attention is going to be the most controversial bill of the 15th. And if there isn't a controversial bill, then you'll never know that a markup even took place. And it actually has been great. It's been a bit surprising by how much agreement from some of the most conservative members of Congress to some of the most liberal members of Congress. We have Freedom Caucus members on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and you have as far anti Freedom Caucus as it gets on the other side of the aisle. And yet, when we do a markup, we saw it on my first couple of terms with Chairman Ed Royce. We see now with Chairman Elliot Engel that a lot of what we do is it's unanimous. But if you want to debate policy with regards to Venezuela, if you want to discuss the future of the Iran nuclear deal, you're going to, and we would be wrong for us not to engage in a conversation on some of the most pressing topics of the day because, you know, God forbid, we might have a disagreement on the days. So I don't want to discourage that, but I would say as you look around this entire globe, that committee is filled with bipartisanship to the extent of unanimity, which is great and healthy. The committee is almost unanimous in the support of Israel. It has been great in the effort to combat ISIS, to identify the extremist elements that are out there and, you know, ways that we can work with other governments to cooperate with each other, the bipartisan effort with UNRWA textbooks. I mean, you could just go from country to country and see a ton of cooperation, which has been fantastic, even if it's not unanimous. Nancy, if I could just add, and it's important for us to have vibrant dialogue and debate and disagreement. And, you know, we've had hearings on the war powers resolution, what's happening in Yemen, and our approach and strategy to Venezuela. Better policy is going to come out of that debate, and we don't always have to agree on the end point. But if we don't actually engage in asking the right questions, if we're not pushing the envelope to better understand what those strategies are, we're not doing our jobs as members of Congress. And that is our oversight responsibility. And it also challenges, I believe, members to focus in on issues that they might not be focused in on. Until that committee hearing on Yemen gets scheduled, that member might be focusing on anything else other than Yemen. So it's, you know, it's good to schedule the hearings and the debate on these issues, forces members to engage. Well, we say here at USIP that there will always be conflict and the challenge is to manage it so that it's productive and transformative, but to acknowledge that there will be. But so let's move now to your subcommittee, which is newly formed, and you've described it as being able to ensure that we have the most effective diplomacy, the most effective development. How do you see the subcommittee pursuing that? And what should our interests be? Great. Thanks for that question, Nancy. So it's oversight and investigations. And if you're to look at the media, they want to talk about investigations. Certainly we're going to use the investigative tools to get a sense of where we are. But really this is about oversight. And if I'm thinking about some priorities and what we ought to be looking at is we've had chronic vacancies both at USAID and state. Yeah, that that isn't just this administration. It precedes this administration.  How can we better speed up the process? So our personnel have the resources. And by the way, I'm remiss for any State Department employees both here and internationally. Thank you for your service and our development workers at USAID. Again, thank you for what you're doing for us every day. But how can we make sure you've got the tools to do your job in the most effective way? You know, when I think we were chatting, you know, when we were thinking about those mid-career professionals as well, the next generation of our development workers and senior diplomats, we're losing a lot of those folks. Why are we losing those folks? How can we best retain them? How can we best keep those folks in our diplomacy and development throughout their careers? Are there things that we could do to modernize it?  And that's not just isolated to state or USAID. You see that in the federal government. But for folks that you're asking to go on long-term deployments and, you know, you lose a lot of folks. So, you know, we've addressed that within the military, but can we also address that for folks that we're asking for longer deployments so that they may be able to step away for a while, not have to worry about those resources, but then also be able to come back into the departments? I'll say as the ranking member on the subcommittee, there has not been a single moment that Chairman Barra has said anything, whether it's rhetoric, policy, approach to the committee that I've disagreed with, which is a testament to him just taking over a chairmanship to have that type of endorsement from our side of the aisle. It's an oversight and investigation subcommittee. It's possible at some point that a, you know, decisions made or an investigation gets started that we might have a difference of opinion on. But I'll tell you, he hasn't given me any hint of, you know, of that to come. So, I'm filled with optimism. Oversight is incredibly important. It's a critical congressional role, whether it's appropriations, making sure that there's accountability, that money is being spent the way it's supposed to be spent, whether congressional intent is being followed when a bill becomes a law, and then years later, a particular agency of the federal government is not pursuing that intent exactly as Congress meant it, even if it was a prior Congress before we got here. That piece of oversight is important. Or maybe an agency, or even within an agency, not talking well to each other, ways to improve reporting, to improve efficiencies. I don't view the executive branch as, and the legislative branch as one that should always be in conflict. Oversight doesn't mean two branches fighting with each other over everything. Maybe there's a way to conduct hearing that Congress is informed that congressional intent is being followed, and that's not as much of an issue as we thought it was. But improved communication and coordination between agencies and Congress, I think, improves the entire process, and it helps make Congress and our constituents feel better about funding all of these programs and ways to improve efficiencies in reporting, as I mentioned, I think, are key. And I think there's a way for the chairman and I and our parties for the whole committee to have good victories there, as well. So I want to talk about risk, because when, for both because of years of different kinds of oversight, there has developed a certain risk aversion certainly to trying and experimenting with things and failing. There's also in a post-Bengasi era, and let's face it, the world is not as safe as it used to be. There's a risk aversion for security purposes. How do we balance concern for security, concern for effective use of resources with unleashing our diplomats and development experts such that they can be more effective? How do you develop greater appetite for appropriate risk? Absolutely. So that is an area that we actually will be diving into. If we think about the dollars we're sending abroad and the NGOs, they can work appropriately 99% of the time. It'll be the 1% of the time where some of those resources end up with the bad actor that ends up on the front page of the New York Times. So just as we're starting to look at this process, have we created these bureaucratic barriers, the reporting requirements, etc., that prevent those resources to getting to the places that they need? We certainly want to look at that. I think Congressman Zeldin touched on if Congress authorizes inappropriate funds, are those funds getting out there? Are they being impounded perhaps? So I don't want to presuppose why the funds aren't getting there, but we do have real concerns that the funds aren't getting there. Can we have a more appropriate risk tolerance? So I won't give you a concrete answer on what acceptable risk is, but through the committee process, through the process of working with the administration, I think we have to look at that. Post Benghazi, and this is another area that the committee will certainly look into, if you were to look at American diplomats and development workers 30 years ago and we were chatting about this, you'd see them out with the people back in the 60s, 70s, 80s in the heyday when you'd see all of that. What's happening now is are we building these barriers? Are we removing our diplomats' ability to do their work? Our development workers' ability to get out there? It is a different world today, and we've got to find that right balance, and we can't do that without engaging the administration, without engaging those senior development workers and diplomats. What worries me is the flip today is, I was in Sierra Leone a few months ago, and you see the Chinese everywhere. You see others all over the place where you'd have the Americans. What does that look like in the 21st century? That is something that I absolutely think the committee will be looking into, hopefully working with the administration to think about what is that appropriate risk tolerance. So that we are able to have eyes on and understand what's going on with greater flexibility and field division. I can't imagine a development worker or an ambassador being able to do their job unless they're actually out there with the people. There are authorized programs and unauthorized programs that get funded, and Congress has a responsibility to authorize a program. Our committee, as it relates to the jurisdiction of the State Department, can play an important role in ensuring that Congress is armed with the maximum amount of information as to whether or not a particular item of the budget should be funded more or less, that money should be moved to another area. That's something that's unauthorized, that we should pass legislation to reauthorize it. So that's all key. And in my opening remarks, I talked about how we should never send our troops in a harm's way unless they're sent to win. I say that out of great concern for the men and women who risk life and limb on the battlefield, but really globally, wherever we send anyone on any mission, we should be sending them to win. I also believe that our government should remain, when I say it's, I'm not talking about sending everyone with that military instrument of national power. There are many different missions. We should just, whether they work for the State Department or USAID, if they're with an intel agency, everyone who is sent abroad spending time away from family, sometimes for years on end, they all should be sent to win. And so our duty as stewards of tax dollars to make sure that it's being spent as appropriately as possible, I also believe that our government needs to always remain nimble and leaning forward as to what is the government that we want of 2020. That kind of, in 2019, that's what we should be talking about with the FY 2020 budget. We should be having a conversation of what should the government look like in 2025. And we, based off of our experience in government, in life, we get reflective and we think of what government in 2020 should look like based off of what worked five, 10, 20 years ago. And I actually think it's really important if you have that experience of lessons learned from five, 10, 20 years ago, is to help create the creative vision for what needs to be improved and made more efficient for that next level of government, because I hate to report we don't have a surplus next year. And I know that shocking news. It's a lot that we need to fund. I mean, Nancy, I would just, you know, my staff gets on me sometimes and folks that visit our office, but we haven't done a State Department Authorization Act in years, a Foreign Service Act in years. Long term. Right. A lot of nodding heads. And that weakens our ability, right, that we're not doing that. We're not doing our job as oversight. Now, a lot of folks come into the office and say, it's not going to happen. Well, it's not going to happen if we don't actually try. And we've got to take that long view and we've got to make those attempts. And both Chairman Angle and Chairman Royce have both attempted the process. Let's actually see if we can't do, I don't think our committee will be leading this, but, you know, certainly we ought to do these authorization bills and try to get back to some regular normal order, because it'll not only serve the administration better, it'll serve the folks that are out there. They'll have a sense of, you know, what we're prioritizing, and it'll also allow us to take a longer term view. Well, I want to ask one final question before we go to the audience, and that is, USIP was asked by Congress, as we are from time to time, to pull together a bipartisan group of experts to look at how to address the underlying conditions of fragility that give rise to violent extremism, especially in the Sahel, the horn of Africa in the Middle East. And if I could just summarize the report that we delivered to Congress about a month ago, is that we need a policy of prevention, and it includes recommendations around more flexible, longer term approaches, some of which will be in the purview of what you all will be thinking and working on. And there is legislation both in the House and the Senate on reduction of global fragility. But I wanted to ask you both before we turn to the audience, you know, this is hard. This is the dog that doesn't bark, going to prevention instead of the reaction, responding to crises that have already happened. How do you see that intersecting with your mandate? You've spoken several times now about the importance of a longer term view, which is core to a prevention policy. Look, my professional background as a physician, that informs how I look at a lot of this. And as a physician, you're trying to practice prevention. And you may not see that disease avoidance 20 years from now. We've got to take that same approach. And the reason why bipartisanship is so important to me is there's the truth. We know we're going to have Democratic presence. We know we're going to have Republican presence. And what you're talking about, you're not going to accomplish a four-year term or an eight-year term. You're talking about a generational impact. If we want to address the youth bulge in Sub-Saharan Africa, which, you know, when you look at the experts, it is going to cause a lot of instability in that. We've got to take a long-term sustained approach that's bipartisan that doesn't shift every four years from one president to the next.  And, you know, the most effective foreign policy was when had strong Democratic and Republican support, and you had strong congressional oversight and involvement. Great points. We need a stronger, more consistent, more effective foreign policy, no matter who the president is. At any time, it's been my observation that from one administration to the next, there's inconsistency from one country to the next. You'll find inconsistency. Sometimes within the same country, the same administration from one month to the next, there's inconsistency. So, for the rest of the world to understand American leadership, to be able to tell others about what American values mean to them or how to predict an American, whether it's American prevention or reaction, there's a need for us to be better leaders and be more consistent. And the long-term planning is key. The Global Fragility Act is one vehicle that the House has, the Foreign Affairs Committee has moved in the past. This was a Royce angle bill that's now an angle McCall bill. So, that bipartisan support is key. The Build Act was signed into law last Congress. So, the lot is moving in this front, and I think that the Foreign Affairs Committee just needs to keep the lead on this topic and not expect any other committee to do it for us. It's, Elliott Anglenay are related, by the way. We are second cousins once removed, but we're still related. There we go. Aren't we all, right? And I think that he's doing a, I think he's doing a good job so far with this committee. It's just very important that some of these topics that are discussed where there's controversy that we find more of an opportunity for progress, because some of the early debates have been more parsons, just the life of politics in 2019. But I do think that Chairman Anglenay is highly capable of getting big victories over the finish line. And I think that this is one topic that is primed for bipartisan action. So, I want to check to see if we have here in the room with us or online any current or former members of either state or USAID who'd like to ask the first question. We've got a hand right here. We've got mics coming around up front, if we could. Thank you. First of all, thank you, Nancy and USIP for hosting this event. My name is Jeff Levine. I'm Vice President of the Foreign Service Association, employees at USAID. Thank you both very much for your time today and for the bipartisan support for foreign policy. Representative Zeldin, I appreciated hearing you say about wanting to be sure that we send the Foreign Service, State, USAID, Commerce, USDA, where we have a chance to win. Representative Barra, I appreciated your point that winning also has to include a long-term view. It's not just a short-term. My question for both of you is, in your committee, in both oversight and investigations, how do you see those two views coming together around policies that ensure that the Foreign Service has an optimal Foreign Service professional core to be able to deliver on the expectations that Congress has? Thank you. So from our end, I touched on really diving into where the personnel issues are today. And it really does worry me that these chronic vacancies put undue stress on the folks that are already out there trying to do this work, maybe diminishes their capacity to reach their full capabilities. So that is an area that we will be diving into and we've already started making some inquiries to the administration. And we would hope that we can work with Secretary Pompeo, Ambassador Green, and like to really do that deep dive so we can solve that issue. We also want to look at the morale inside the buildings, et cetera, and the work environments. In addition, though, let's not just understand what those chronic vacancies look like. Let's also see where we want to go, right? So what are the right tools that can help our men and women that are serving us do their jobs in the most effective way? Should an ambassador rotate every three years, or should you actually think about that person staying in country longer? I don't suppose to have an answer to that, but what are the right questions that we should be asking? And then how can we engage the folks that are expert in this area to think about those? I touched on paid family leave, I think. Why is it that we're losing mid-career professionals, the folks that really are going to be our superstar diplomats and development workers and serve this country? How do we retain that talent? What does it need to look like in the 21st century? Do you allow folks to leave and go get their master's degree or additional education, or even go into the private sector for a couple of years and then create a path to bring them back? Again, there's smarter people than I who understand the intricacies of this, but I think we've got the privilege of being in Congress and having a committee that can actually ask some of these questions and engage those stakeholders. One of the most important leadership principles is to take care of your people. While I often think about the service member who's on their 10th deployment missing birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, we as members of Congress will go on a code L to a Middle Eastern country where you're meeting a State Department official who will fill in on what they've been up to for the last 15 years, and they don't have 10, 11, 12 deployments because they have just been gone the whole time, and they're in harm's way, too. So I think that taking care of people is the most important takeaway that I would have from listening to what Chairman Barra just said and setting people up for success. Now, I was critical of the transition that the President had coming into office. I believe that a lesson learned for any major party candidate in the future is that when you have the nomination secured and you're going to your convention, that your transition needs to effectively start that moment. Because if you are elected President of the United States the next day, there needs to be a transition plan that is being implemented, and in this case, the transition plan, to the extent there was one, it was literally thrown in a trash the next day. So they were starting over from scratch after the election, and I think it set back the State Department. In particular, there are other agencies that I had that observation with, but I definitely saw it at State. So I think that's a piece of it in funding where you have bipartisan support on the committee for pushing back on the budget proposals that come from the executive branch as it relates to State Department funding. I do, as I mentioned earlier, I understand that there is a deficit, and I take that very seriously, but we also have to be careful never to balance anything on the back of something in the government that does not make sense. That's why it would be foolish for us to engage in a conversation. Well, how do we balance the budget next year? How do we balance the budget in the next three, four, five years? It's not going to happen. I think what would be responsible for Congress is to be passing a budget that balances in seven, eight, ten years. That would be responsible. I think it's irresponsible for us to pass a budget that doesn't even attempt to do that. In that context, I understand that you have a conversation with Secretary Pompeo, his team, everyone within the State Department of how are we going to make State Department operate more efficiently nine years from now? Fair conversation. But in the interest of getting a budget passed this year, some of the proposals on State, I believe, ends up resulting in a more likely outcome of military conflict. And just playing off of that, we've got to look at it that way. Certainly, what's the cost of some of the programs, but what's the cost of not actually being there, right? So you have to, we have to understand that complexity because it, in many cases, is going to cost us a lot more down the road if we're not actually there today. Thank you. In the interest of time, I'm going to take a couple questions at once if there are others who have questions in the audience. Or let's go here and then to Graham. Thank you so much. My name is Mojib. I'm a Rangel Fellow with the State Department. And my question is closely related to the experiential nature of the fellowship in that I am about to begin a internship on the Hill with Senator Menendez, a staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And so my question for Chairman Barra and Ranking Member Zeldin is how can Foreign Service Officers be best prepared to serve and aid in your foreign policy legislation implementation? And on the flip side for the professionals here in the audience, as well as Nancy, how can legislators best serve Foreign Service Officers in their execution of development and diplomacy? Okay, and then let's bring it over to Graham, over here. And then we'll go to the back. My name is Graham Bannerman. I was the lead Republican staffer when the last foreign aid bill was passed. And the lead Democratic staffer was a guy named Jerry Conley. In when we passed that legislation, we had the same congressional makeup, a Republican House Democratic, no, Republican Senate Democratic House. What seems to be lacking in those days back in the dark ages, Congress worked five days a week fully. They were here. They were not gone Fridays and Mondays. Before the markup occurred, there were months of hearings by each subcommittee in the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate that went into great detail on every program within the subcommittee's jurisdiction.  You had East Asia hearings. You had Latin America hearings. Do you believe the Congress today is willing to put that much work into passing a foreign aid authorization bill? Okay, let's take quick answers to those two big questions, and then we'll take a final question in the back. So just quickly, what can we, we can't do our jobs unless we're actually working closely with the folks, our Foreign Service officers and others that are in the field because you're informing us what you need. So this has to be a partnership. It's not Congress saying, Hey, here's what you need to do. It's building that relationship and not just with our senior diplomats, but and development workers, but also our junior ones to because we want you to enter the foreign service. But I'd like you to stay here for 30 years and develop that expertise. Congress is broken right now. I'm stating the obvious, or it's not the most efficient organization. You know, one of the things that we did do in a bipartisan way when we set the rules package of this 116th Congress was create a select committee, bipartisan equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans on how you modernize Congress and make it more functional. So one of the ideas that often gets tossed around is the Monday through Friday piece, the working. You know, I have jurisdiction over my committee and we're spending doing a deep dive in how we can use the committee process in the most effective way. That could be picking out two or three topics and doing multiple hearings and peeling the onion back and diving deeper and deeper. But I want to do this in a systematic way. So it leads us to a conclusion. I am better trying to understand and we probably should. You know, Mr. Connolly serves with us right now, but try to better understand what it would take to do a foreign aid act, to do a State Department, not that before and serves act. And, you know, because again, unless we don't set that goal, we won't accomplish it. I think Congressman Berman gave it a big effort as the last time it was tried. Comments? I think that on the Foreign Service Officer piece, lessons learned from the field is and timely and relevant is better than any information that we as a member or anyone else who are fellow team members on that staff. It's better than anything that anyone comes armed to that conversation. You are the subject matter expert on what is the situation on the ground in that country where you just came from with perspective on other issues that you saw that might not have been directly in your lane, but observations that you made that can help inform not just your member, but other members as well. And I would say one of the best ways to ensure that members are helping Foreign Service Officers is to tell us what we need to do to better help you. If you see something that's missing, I wouldn't assume that the members know, you know, your top five list of items you need to help you better do your job. So, yeah, it's great that you're coming onto the Hill and Senator Menendez obviously is ranking member of that important committee is in a special place to help influence a policy very positively in Congress. As far as time spent on the Hill, there's, I, other members would be more than willing to spend more time here that the key test for me as I imagine the key test for other members is you don't want to just be wasting time. You don't want to be here just to be here. But if you were to create, you know, an extra day this week or two extra days next week for us to be here, all I ask for is that you're making it worthwhile. So they're, and I, what I've seen is that on the foreign affairs committee every day that I'm here, the committee's having a hearing or a markup, subcommittees are having hearings or markups, the committee's been active. The challenge is you have to find it in the bandwidth of all of the different things that you want to accomplish and you want to talk about because there's a lot when your jurisdiction is the world. There's a lot that you might want to focus in on that might be more in the news that your constituents might be talking to you more about. Why aren't you doing a hearing on this, this, this and that? And that list of 15 different things, none of it will include a reauthorization of anything. Like our constituents don't contact us calling for reauthorizations of bills, but that's, you just have to force that into the bandwidth of the committee. Well, maybe they will having watched this. I want to give our one last question or an opportunity and then we'll close it up with your final comments. I'm Shala Arraste from Voice of America Persian Service. My question is first to Mr. Zeldin. I remember I interviewed you and Secretary Pompeo at the time a few years back when he was a member of Congress trying to get visa to go to Iran to observe the election. My question is, is Iran an urgent threat to United States at the moment, United States interest, and is there any dialogue in the Congress at the moment to how to support the administration and are you prepared to do that? And is there any room now for such a move to dialogue with Iranian while IRGC is in charge actually in Iran to go and dialogue and diplomacy? Well, thank you. You've just opened up a completely different dialogue that we should have with the question at the beginning. If you want to say anything quickly about that, it's obviously a big question. Sure. So Mike Pompeo and I, Frank Lobiondo at the time, was the subcommittee chair of the CIA subcommittee. Three of us went to the Iranian intersection of the Pakistani embassy and filed a visa. It's worth noting Zarif still has not formally denied our visa, although he still has not approved it. This is now several years ago. Any country that in their parliament and their leaders and on their holidays are chanting death to America, calling United States the great Satan, when they develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, that's not meant for Israel. It's intercontinental ballistic missiles concerned about a lot of Iran's bad activities that they're engaged in. And I'm also very well aware, and this is where an institute like yours can play a critical role, is that millions of Iranians right now would love to, they've been waiting a generation and a half, two generations, for an opportunity to take their country in a better way. They talk about freedom, democracy, stability. They want to be good world actors. Do I view Iran as a threat to the United States? Absolutely. When I know of US service members who were killed at the hands of and connection to activities of the IRGC. So there is a real threat, but I also don't want to paint a brush that doesn't acknowledge the fact that the Iranian people agree with us when we talk about the human rights violations and the person who's imprisoned for representing someone who's gay and a woman who is getting in trouble for taking off a headscarf. There's been so many different examples of the Iranian regime brutalizing its own people.  And I think that we should, with a clear eye, focus that issue on that and not paint too broad of a brush where the Iranian people are not part of the solution. Thank you. Congressman Barr, I'm going to give you the last word to close up on the session if you want to have any final reflections on the conversation. Sure, just to. I started with American foreign policy and global engagement post World War II and the Cold War made the world a better place, solved a lot of the world's issues or at least addressed a lot of the world's issues. American soft power diplomacy and development will look different in the 21st century, but make no mistake that the world wants American leadership in that engagement. And we shouldn't shy away from the challenges that we see right in front of us. And many of you, we travel around and they want to see America there. They know our values. They know what we represent. So we ought to take that issue on and address what it looks like in the 21st century. And we have to take and look at this in a long-term sustained way, look at the new partners, how we partner with developed nations around the world, how we partner with NGOs, et cetera, and what that looks like in the 21st century, the people, the places that we should be. And that requires long-term congressional involvement and oversight. I've got an announcement to make. I'm not running for president. I'm running for reelection to Congress because I want to be part of what that looks like. So, thank you for doing this and thanks for having us. I want to thank both of you for coming here today. I think demonstrating that there's appetite to try to tackle some of these issues that are so important. If you do decide that you want to take on the reauthorization, let us know we'd be happy to be helpful here at USIP. And I think a lot of people here have expertise and scars that they can help bring to bear. But these are critical issues. And enabling our diplomats and our development experts to work most effectively is one of those critical issues that we so appreciate you're taking on. Please join me in thanking Congressman Zeldin and Chairman Ami Berra for joining us today.


Hey everybody, welcome back to my channel. Drew here from Lone Fox and we have another episode of a series that I actually haven't done an episode of a while in. A while in? A while in? And that is DIYing your DMs. Can we also talk about my background at the moment? My fireplace. I've never filmed in front of it and now that I've painted it black, all I want to do is film in front of it. Like it's so pretty and I set up the camera and I was pretty shocked at how this looked. But besides that, we are going to be doing some DIYs today and they are so good, you guys. I feel like I haven't done a lot of DIYs on the channel lately. I've been doing more like full room makeovers or kitchen transformations or tip driven videos and I haven't done DIYs in a while. So I have four incredible projects for you guys today that you sent me over on Instagram. So if you're not already following me over on Instagram and TikTok, make sure to do so because you guys can actually send along DIY ideas. And if your one did not stick through an entire DIY video, this one might change your mind because all four of these projects turned out absolutely incredible. And I'm so excited for you guys to see them. And before jumping in quickly, I wanted to share a special announcement. We were nominated for a Webby Award, which is absolutely insane. Lone Fox was nominated, which is crazy. And this was all because of you guys, all the constant love and support we were nominated under the how to and DIY category, which is insane. So I'm going to leave the link at the top of the description box below. Just takes a couple of seconds and you guys, we could win this thing. So that's really, really exciting. But let's go ahead and dive on into our DIYs. Grab my phone because I'm going to read you guys our first DM that was sent over by Lone Fox family member Sid and she says, Hi Drew, I've been eyeing this hook for a while now, but can't rationalize spending $120 on it. Would love to see how you DIY it. And I'm not too sure where this particular hook is from, but from looking at it instantly in my head, I came up with a couple of ideas and then I conceptualized it a bit more.  So with our larger wooden balls, I'm going to actually turn this into a screw. So I grabbed a screw for my stash that was two and a half inches long. And then on the backside of that ball, I actually drilled a hole wide enough, but not all the way through just about half of an inch in there. And then using my welding epoxy, you can get this at any hardware store. I will link it below for you guys. You're just going to mix up equal parts of that. And this will mount our screw inside of the ball and make it so that the ball is the actual screw or kind of the mechanism of the hook itself. So we're just going to want to make sure that our screw is securely fastened in here. And this kind of welding epoxy works great for that. It is extremely strong, like this is going absolutely nowhere. And I set it on top of a vase to cure for about six hours. Once it was done curing, I pulled off the tape and you guys it's not coming out. It wasn't really going anywhere. So I grabbed some gloss glaze. This is the Sculpey gloss glaze and all the materials I'm using for all of these projects. I will link below for you guys. So just make sure to check the description box. So I painted the larger ball with the gloss glaze only and then over on the smaller ball, I'm using some gold paint just to go ahead and paint on this ball here. Now I'm going to do two coats of the gold paint and then one coat of the epoxy just to make it nice and shiny. I went outside and cut down my dowel to about nine inches tall, but you can adjust it to whatever height you'd like it to be. And I went ahead and glued on my smaller one. As you can see it had a hole in the backside, but I just hid that on the backside. And then I figured out where I wanted my larger ball screw or the actual piece that is going to mount this to the wall to go. And I drilled it directly through my dowel. Now this is an oak dowel and it was surprisingly hard to drill through, but I got it through. And as you could see our nice screw ball, that sounds so strange, fits right through.  You might want to drill a hole first, a little bit smaller than your screw, but once you have it in, it is nice and firm. And I just love the minimal kind of Scandinavian vibe of this. I feel like it's very sculptural, but also functional. That hook was honestly pretty cute and surprisingly easy. But our next project is not as easy. It's a little bit more intense, but it's definitely doable, you guys. This was sent over by Christian and he said, I saw these photos on Pinterest the other day and saved them and I'll pop them up right here for a DIYing your DMs episode. And I can't remember if you've done a Rattan light fixture, but I feel like this one screams Lone Fox. I don't know if you're still into Rattan or Kane, but love you Drew. And thank you so much Christian, love you as well. And I definitely am into Rattan and Kane. I still use it in a lot of my designs, but I actually prefer the stained version or like darker Kane and darker Rattan lately. So I'm going to put my own spin on this particular chandelier right here and actually create it for a fraction, a fraction of the price, which is absolutely insane. But this is how I did it. The first material we need for this project is some woven Kane. And I got this at a local shop here in Los Angeles, the Kane and basket supply. I will link them below. They are incredible, you guys. I actually loved this color of Kane and asked them like why it was this color. And they said it was because it was 50 years old and they sold it to me for 250 a foot. So I was pretty excited about that. I brought it home and soaked it in some hot water in my bathtub for about 30 minutes. And while that was soaking inside, I also picked up six of these 12 inch embroidery hoops from the craft store. And I'm actually going to be spray painting these embroidery hoops with some black spray paint. So you can get these on Amazon and bulk or wherever you'd like to. I'll link them below for you guys. And I'm using a satin black finish spray paint. And I'm just going to be spraying the front side and backside completely with a full coat of black. And while those dried outside, I went back inside and as you can see the water changed colors tremendously. I couldn't believe it was this dark, but I just pulled it out of the bath and dried it off with a towel. And then we're ready for our next step in the process. So I grabbed my embroidery hoops from drying outside, brought them in and opened them to their fullest width. And what we're going to be doing is actually cutting a small piece of a tan that will fit inside of that section and essentially pressing it into an embroidery hoop like you would fabric. Now I thought it would be pretty simple once I soften them to just press it right in, but it definitely was not as easy as I thought. But if you have a friend, it is so much easier. If you can have four hands on the embroidery hoop, you can kind of press from all four directions and the top hoop will slip over the bottom one. And it's just much easier.  And you're just going to repeat the process to the rest of your five embroidery hoops. I ended up using a total of six of these circles, but you can totally adjust it to however many you would like. And once you have all six of them placed with the retan on the inside, just bring them outside to fully dry for about an hour or two. Now for the base of the lamp, I didn't really know what to use, but I had this small planter, I got it at the Goodwill for $3 a while back. So I ended up thinking it would be a perfect size for this, but I didn't love the dark brown wood. So I just did a coat of the satin black as well. I really want the retan to be the pop and kind of focal of this light. So the black is going to be kind of our trim and accent color. So after I sprayed that, and it was drying, I went back in and cut all of our excess retan and tightened all of the screws of our embroidery hoop. So they were good to go once we wanted to kind of assemble our light fixture. I will say the hardest part of this entire process was drilling the hole in the top of our pot here. It wasn't hard. It was just a little scary, but I got it. Do not worry. Now I'm slipping in an Ikea light cord. I use these for all my DIY lights. They're just the best light cord, super simple and affordable popped on the insert on the inside there. And then it was time to figure out how I was going to be attaching everything together. So I had these eighth inch dowels and I thought, why don't I just use these to attach from the little pot to the retan circles? And you guys look at this tiny little miter saw I got on Amazon. You need this. It is perfect for dowels or small DIY craft projects. I'll link it for you. But I just drilled right through the side of our embroidery hoop and pushed our dowel into it. I used a drill bit that was a little bit smaller than the dowel itself. So I had to use some force and the pressure is what's holding everything together. So I cut each of these sticks to about six inches, but I did vary the lengths of them so that the circles would kind of stick off in different areas. And then I drilled directly into the pot as you could see. And I just stuck the stick inside and inserted each of our embroidery hoops that are filled with the retan material into our light fixture. And it was really simple. This process was actually the easiest part of the whole thing, I'd say. But once you have it completely done, you can totally go back and adjust it if you'd like to. But I would also suggest painting your dowel. So I just used some black acrylic paint to go in and paint all of our connectors, which overall made this light look finished and complete and one solid piece. I cannot believe this is a DIY project. Okay guys, don't click out yet. I promise you the next two projects are not as hard. They're really cute though. And our next one is from Caroline and she actually didn't send a message. She just wrote DIY my DM and sent a photo of her DM. And you know what Caroline, I am going to do just that. And she actually sent along this record player, which I believe looks handmade. It looks pretty simple. And I headed to the hardware store, got some wood and a couple of supplies and actually created this for a very, very affordable price point. Project number three is the easiest furniture build ever. I picked up three of these boards from Lowe's. They are 16 by 48 and they are actually paneled and glued together. But I love that look because when you stain it, it almost gives you like this checkerboard effect. So on our first board, we're actually going to be cutting this one down to three different sizes.  So as you can see, we have our three boards here to start. They were $15 a piece. And with our first one, we're going to cut three 15 inch sections out of it. So that's exactly what I'm doing now. And I think this wood was really affordable because it's actually glued together, but it's still really strong in the end. And I love it for this project. Now next for our cut, we're going to take our second piece of wood and chop nine inches off the bottom of that. This is going to be the top of our record player. And that nine inch section that we cut off is going to be the area on the side where we're going to add our records to. So I'm just cutting that off right now. And when you piece your cuts together, it's going to look something like this. So I ended up using my nail gun just to hold the pieces together while I went in with my drill to drill some pilot holes. Now this is totally necessary when you're using wood like this because you're not going to want the screw to split it.  And I'm using two and a half inch screws here. And I just always use the same exact one. I'll link them below for you guys are my favorite. So I screwed on our top portion first and then I'm screwing on the bottom here. So this is going to be flipped over and that's going to be the base of our unit. And you're also going to want to add that last 15 inch section to that far edge and then drill all the pilot holes in this area as well and screw directly into create this base here. Now it looks a little crooked on camera, but I promised you it wasn't the floor is just crazy. And now we're going to go ahead and create the legs, which I wanted to give this piece more of a mid century legs. So I went ahead and cut down a piece of wood to nine inches tall. And what I'm going to be doing is measuring over two and a half inches on the top and one and three quarters on the bottom, connect those lines together. And that's going to give you the angle you need. And you can just repeat that process all the way across your wood to get however many legs that you want. And I ended up needing four of them. So these are my cut out legs here. And I went to go place them on the bottom, but I realized they just stuck straight up and down, which was not the look I was going for. I really wanted a bit of an angle to them. So all you have to do to get that angle is just go ahead and measure half of an inch to nothing on the end there. If you can see I'm going from half of an inch on one side to nothing on the opposite side chopping that off and using some L brackets to mount this onto the bottom of our piece. Now it's really nice actually having this paneled wood because it kind of acts as a line for you. So you know exactly where to put your legs. So I just followed the paneling on the wood and just made sure that they were all in the right place. And I did use two brackets on the front side and backside of each leg. And I just made sure to set the front leg back far enough to where the only way you'd see it is if you're really underneath it and up close to it, you know, but it really did need this structure and durability. So I wanted to make sure to add two brackets to each side and I flipped it over and I was thoroughly impressed with this piece you guys. But the staining is what really made it come to life. I used this special walnut stain by Minwax and because of the paneling of this wood, every single section on this media console literally was different tones, which I loved so much like each little piece of wood had its own little moment and all the knots really popped out. And overall, I just feel like this wood stained beautifully. I could not believe this ended up being a $50 record player in the end. Everything looks so high end and it looks like a piece you'd find at Urban Outfitters. And our last project is perfect for anyone who has a pet. This is such a cute idea and actually Lone Fox family member Lauren sent this over and she just said super cute DIY project and sent a photo of it and it was this rattan like dog cage side table situation. And I just loved the way that it looked and it instantly made me think of the tray table that Ikea had and I knew I had one on hand. So I whipped out some cane, my tray table and put together a really cute side table that doubles as like a little house for your cat or dog as well. Whenever I get the opportunity to DIY something pet related, I always go for it. So I grabbed this Gladham Ikea side table, which I actually already had in my stash and I moved the tray from the top to the bottom. And then I got this 18 inch round piece of wood from Lowe's and this 24 inch wide rattan material from the same basket and cane supply shop in Los Angeles. Now what I wanted to do was figure out how much of this I actually needed and I ended up buying six feet of it just to make sure I had enough. But I went and wrapped it around my piece and just cut off any excess. And then I wanted to find the exact middle of our cane to create the opening for our little pet home. And to do that, I rolled out some paper. This is the kids craft paper from Ikea. I'm obsessed with it. I have like 10 rolls at my house and I just cut a piece off, but I made sure to fold it in half because we're gonna draw half of our arch shape onto this. And when we cut it out and open it, it's going to be the full arch. So I just free handed this. I always free handed my arches. But if you want to draw one properly, you can totally like use a rounded bowl or something to do so. But I cut this out and this is what my shape ended up looking like once I had opened it up, which was pretty nice. I love the way that it looked. And I then went ahead and trimmed off one of the unfinished edges. I just wanted to make this nice and straight so I can see what we were working with because this is going to be the bottom of our opening. So I kind of wanted to figure out again where the middle was and then I placed my template that I created for the arch right in the middle and drew around that on the retan material and then used some scissors to cut out our opening. Once that opening was cut out, I also got some reeds spline from the same store and I wanted to just glue this around to create a nice casing and just overall finish off the piece. But as I started to glue it and wrap it around, it snapped. So I had to go in with a new idea. So I actually just grabbed some macrame cording and used three pieces of it. And it was a lot easier. I was easily able to of course wrap this and kind of create a finished edge on our retan material. Added some hot glue to the bottom there just so that it didn't fray. Now for the wood top, this is an 18 inch wood round I got at Lowe's. But the thing is, is it doesn't fit properly on top, but it almost does. So I marked exactly where all four sides where I needed to kind of dremel out a small piece of the wood. And I did that all the way around the table there. As you can see, it's just so close to fitting. But sadly, it didn't fit. So I just used a dremel, which I'm very excited. I finally got to use this. I've had it for a while. And I dremeled out some small sections. It was super easy. I love this tool. And it just slipped right in to our side table there. And that's going to be the top of our table. So now we're going to go ahead and just start wrapping the cane material around to figure out where or how tall I want this to go. And once you figure out the height that you want for your retan, just cut it off. And the great thing about retan is it's kind of like a grid. So you can just cut it on the grid. You don't have to use any rulers or anything. And I figured out where I wanted that to go. And then I decided to finish off the top and bottom edges before applying it. And I just went ahead and used this 5 eighth inch wood piece. I don't exactly know what this is used for. I actually think it might be for weaving baskets, honestly. So I glued that on the top and bottom there. And then I slipped it in. And the great thing is that the actual legs of the table hold it inside. But the tray at the bottom is what gives it that rounded shape. So I'm just wrapping it around. And the retan itself, of course, is pretty sturdy. So it's going to stand upright. And I just glued this to the bottom of the tray there. And then on the backside, I went ahead and cut down the middle of the back so that we could create a seam. And I'm going to finish that off with some of that same wood material be used on the top and bottom. That material is actually really nice.  So I glued this strip down the backside. And I also added one on the inside as well just so you couldn't see that glue or any of those raw edges on the inside. And the final step was to add a finish. Now you can go ahead and stain the top of the wood if you want to or paint it. But I just wanted to give it a clear coat because I like how the wood matched the cane. So I just felt like it was pretty cohesive. And this is how the finished pet home turned out. And those are all the projects in today's DIY and your DMs episode. If you would like to potentially have yours featured in a new episode, make sure to head over and follow me over on Instagram and TikTok, both of Lone Fox Home. And you can DM me absolutely any ideas you have. I always go through my DMs and save projects and screenshot them if I see them. So you might see them in a later video as well. But this video was definitely jam packed, so I'll let you guys get on it your way. If you're not already, make sure to subscribe to the Lone Fox channel. That way you don't miss any videos. I post brand new home decor and DIY content every single week, along with Instagram and TikTok. And guys, last but not least, do not forget to vote for Lone Fox for the Webby Award. I will leave the link at the top of the description box below. It's super simple to vote, and I would appreciate it so much, you guys. I think we got this. Very excited. I'll catch you guys in my next one. Bye, everyone.


Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE. Covering DockerCon 2017, brought to you by Docker and support from its ecosystem partners. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and joined with my co-host for the second day of theCUBE's program, Jim Kobielus, really excited to have not only the founder of Docker, Solomon Hikes, he's also the CTO, Chief Product Officer, did some keynotes here, all over the place. So Solomon, thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Congratulations on all the progress and welcome back to theCUBE. Thanks a lot. It's a lot of fun. All right, so, you know, so many things to talk about, but let's start with you. How you doing? You know, I'm sure, you know, there's so much that went into this week. You know, what are you most proud of? What are you most excited about these days? Boy, yeah, where to start? I mean, the cool thing for me about DockerCon is I focus on the keynote, right? We just package up a nice story, try to explain what we're doing, what we're going, and that's a pretty massive team effort. I think it's 30 of us for months preparing, you know, deciding what we want to talk about, working on demos, pulling all-nighters. So it's just really fun to see a keynote go from nothing to a really nice, fun story. And then I get to show up and discover all the other cool stuff. So I'm like everyone else. I just marvel at the, you know, the organization, the crowd, the energy. I just, I'm a happy camper right now. So it's interesting some of that dynamics in the industry is to, you know, okay, what's the important part? Who contributes to what? What fits where? Two years ago, we kind of had, you know, the hugging out as to, you know, the runtime and, you know, have the open source foundation step in. You know, big thing at the keynote yesterday.  It was a Moby project and Linux kit. Can you maybe unpack for our audience a little bit? You know, what is Docker, the company? What's the open source? Who are, you know, some of the main players? And, you know, it was the whole keynote so we don't have time to get into it. But, you know, what's real and what's there? Yeah, so you're right. That was the big announcement, the Moby project. So, you know, the, basically in an Excel, we launched Docker and we made it a product and an open source project all rolled into one. We just kind of adopted this hybrid model, building a product that would just help people be more efficient, developers and ops. And at the same time, we would develop that in the open. And that really helped us. And it participated in the appearance of this just huge ecosystem. And it was a big decision for us. And over time, both grew. Docker grew as a product and it grew as an open source project. And so over time, we had to adapt to that growth. And on the open source side, that meant gradually spinning out smaller projects out of the main one. So now we have dozens of projects. Literally, we've got Container D, we've got SwarmKit, we've got InfraKit, we've got all these components. And each of those is a project and we integrate them. And what we're doing now is we're completing that transformation and making sure there's a place for open source collaboration. Free for all, openness, modularity, try new things, move fast, break things maybe. And then there's the products that integrates, takes the best parts, integrates them together, make sure they're tested, they're solid and then ships that to developers and customers. So basically, we're saying Moby is for open source collaboration, it's our project. And all of it. And Docker is the product that integrates that open project into something that people can consume that's simple. So it's two mutually, it's two complementary parts to our platform. And could you talk a little bit about that there's kind of that composable nature of what you're building there. There's what Docker will build from it. And I think you've got a couple of examples of some of your partners, what's going to happen in the cloud, what's going to happen to some of these other, walk us through one of those. Yeah, so everything about Docker is modular. So really if you install Docker for your favorite platform, whether it's the Mac, Windows, your favorite cloud provider, et cetera, a Linux server, you're actually installing a product that's an assembly of lots of components. And like I said, these components are developed in the open and then they're assembled. And now with the Moby project there's a place to assemble in the open, start the assembly in the open so that other companies, a broader ecosystem can collaborate in the assembly and kind of experiment with how things fit together. The really cool thing about that is it makes it way easier to port the platform to expand it and to customize it. So if you're a cloud provider and you see all the pieces and you think, well, I could optimize that, I could add a little bit of magic to make it work even better in my cloud or in my hardware, then you can do that in the open. You can do that with the community. And then you can partner with Docker to test it and certify it and distribute it as an easy to use product. So everything can go faster. Yeah, so you mentioned open a lot there. Does that mean that Docker is now closed? You know, there's certain people that are very dogmatic when it comes to open for us. So maybe you can parse that for us. Yeah, so I think it's the same people that were complaining before that we were confusing our products and open projects. And so we think of ourselves as having a lot to learn and there's an ecosystem that's made of a lot of people and companies and projects that have had a lot of experience with openness in the past. So we spend most of our time listening, figuring out what the next step should be and then taking that next step. So people told us clarify the relative place of open source collaboration and your product. And that's what we did. Now I'm sure someone's going to say, well, I preferred it before. Well, you know, we just have to at some point choose. So the key thing to remember is Docker does everything in the open and then integrates it into a product that you can use. And if you don't like the product, if you want an alternative, then you still have all the pieces in the open right now. So I would say no, not only is Docker not going closed, we're actually accelerating the rate at which we're opening up stuff. Yeah, I mean, personally, I felt it was a nice maturation of what you've done before, which was batteries are included but swappable. But we've kind of taken the next step. It reminds me of those cool little science kits my kids get where it's like, oh, okay, I could pre-build it or I can do it or I could do some other things. That's a good, we've used that tagline. It used to be Docker has batteries included a bit swappable and you can make other batteries and we'll swap them into the product. We'll decide what's in there. Now everyone can do the swapping. It's a big free for all. And honestly, it's fun to watch, right? Is there any piece of Docker in the project outside of core Docker that Docker the company will refrain from building, will rely on ISVs to build or will Docker the company get involved or reserve for itself the latitude to get involved in development of more peripheral pieces of the overall project going forward? Yeah, so we spent a lot of time thinking about that. And honestly, there's so many different constraints. We've just decided we're going to follow the users, follow the customers. So we just want a platform that works and solves people's problems. And that's the starting point. And from there, we work out the implementation details, what technology to use, the order in which to build things and also what makes more sense in the core platform and what makes more sense as an add-on. So it's kind of on a case-by-case basis. Is there a grand vision document or functional service layered architecture that all of these components of the project are implementing or enabling? I mean, will Docker as a project ever be complete or will it always be open-ended? Will it constantly evolve and broaden or possibly broaden and scope continuously and definitely? Well, I think if you look at the Moby project on the one side with experimentations and all the building blocks, I think that's going to just continuously expand. And really, openness is all about scale. There's only so much one company can build on their own. But if you show the ecosystem you're serious about really welcoming everybody and allowing for different opinions and approaches, then honestly, I think there's no limit to how large that project can scale. I think Moby can go into tens of thousands of contributors as open source becomes easier and more accessible, which we're really working on. I think it could go into hundreds of thousands. That's going to take a while. So that will, I think, never end growing. I think Docker, the product, the company, the reason we've been so successful is that we've worked really hard to focus and be disciplined in what problems we want to solve. So it's a more iterative approach. We would rather solve less problems that solve them really, really well so that if you're using Docker for developing or running a production, you're really delighted. They're just every detail kind of fits together. So there's a roadmap, of course. We're going to do more and more, but we don't want to rush trying to do everything. Solomon, great progress on all of these pieces. So I've got the tough one for you. In the last year or so, Kubernetes has really exploded out there. Lots of your ecosystem is heavily using it. Is it that Docker Swarm and Kubernetes will just be options out there? I look at Microsoft Azure, and they're very supportive of both initiatives. Many of your partners are there. How should, how do you guys look at that dynamic and how would you like people to think of that going forward? Yeah, so I think it's actually, it's a great case study of why we're transitioning to this open project model with Moby. The whole point is that at any given time, Docker, the product will not be using all of the building blocks out there. It's just not possible. There's too many permutations. So we have to choose, right? And one of these building blocks is orchestration. And a year ago, when we decided to build an orchestration, we had really specific opinions on what it should look like as product builders. And we looked around and we decided, okay, it needs to be a new kind of a building block. So we built Swarm kits for our own use. And we integrated it. And now that there's an open project for collaboration, we're throwing Swarm kit in there so that everyone can modify it, extend it, and also replace it with something else. So I think the big change now is if you look at something like Kubernetes or Rocket as a container on time, or honestly I could make a super long list of all the components out there that are really cool and we don't use in Docker, now you can combine them all in Moby in custom assemblies. And we actually demoed that on stage yesterday. We showed taking some pieces from Docker and some pieces and taking Kubernetes as a piece and like plugging it together and saying, look, there you go, weekend project. I think we're going to see a lot of convergence and reuse of ideas and codes, especially in the orchestration piece. I think over time, the differences between Kubernetes, Swarm kit and others will really diminish. And we'll just integrate the bits and pieces that make the most sense. So I don't really think of Kubernetes as a competitor or a problem. I think of it as another cool component in the Moby ecosystem. And yeah, I think it's a lot of cool stuff. Absolutely, and I tell you, the Kubernetes community, it's just so thrilled that Container D is now open source. It really kind of solves that issue and really it hasn't been something I've heard a lot coming into the show. It was one of the themes we wanted to look at and it hasn't been something that is like, oh boy, fight war, anything like that, which is, hey, congrats on that. So I want to come back to turn back to your roots there. When I think about DotCloud to Docker, it was a lot about the application modernization. Fast forward today, and I mean, Ben's up on stage talking of the journey. How do we take your legacy applications and wrap them in, what do you think about that kind of progression? We kind of like that spectrum out there to help customers at least partially and be able to make changes. But I can't imagine that's when you started Docker, that that was one of the use cases that you really thought you'd use. So what surprised you? What's changed now? You build things, what do you see from customers? So actually, you'll find this surprising, but this actually was a use case that we had in mind from the very beginning. And I think that was lost in the noise for the first few years in the life of Docker because it became this exciting new thing. Come on, cloud native, cloud native. Yeah, exactly. You know, Docker is a huge developer community now and we spend a lot of time making it great for devs. The truth is, I used to be a sysadmin, I used to be on call, I'm an ops guy first and we learned how to help developers. Developers are the customer. And the Docker came out of our ops roots and then it evolved to help the developers. And that's something that's now lost in the noise of history. And it's a really pragmatic tool and it's built to solve real problems. And one design opinion we baked in from the beginning is that it has to allow you to do things incrementally.  The whole point is that Docker can adapt to what you're doing. So for example, you'll see a lot of details in how Docker's designed to allow for stateful applications to run in there, to allow for your own network model to fit before Docker, all the container resolutions, all the paths required you to change your app. Even things like port discovery, you have to adopt, you have to change the source code. And Docker did not require that. It gives you extra things you can do if you want to go further. But the starting point is incremental and honestly, I'm really glad that now that's resonating. We're reaching that point in the community where there's a lot of people using Docker interested in that. Because for a few years I was worried that that would be missed in the noise of early adopters that don't mind rewriting everything. So really from the beginning, Docker was not just for cloud native, microservices, 12 factor, et cetera. So I'm personally as a designer of products, as a pragmatist, I'm just happy that we're there. How do you see Docker evolving to support more complex orchestrations for data? For hybrid data cloud environments, private and public, you got the likes of Microsoft and Oracle and IBM as partners and so forth. And they have these complex scenarios now they're customers, a petabyte scale and so forth. What do you see that going? The data, the persistence, the storage side of the containerization under Docker going. I think there's a lot of work to do. I think over time we're going to see specialized solutions for different uses of data. Data has such a big word. It's like computing. So just like computing now is no longer considered one category, but it's specialized. I think data will be the same. And I think it's a great fit for this modular Lego approach to the Docker ecosystem. So we're going to see different approaches to different data models. And I think we're going to see a lot of modularization and a lot of different assemblies. And again, I think a lot of that will happen in Moby and we'll see a lot of cool open stuff. We ourselves are facing a lot of data related questions and requests for customers. There's stuff in there already. You've got data volumes, right? And I think you're going to see a lot more on the data topic in the next year. Yeah, like containerization of artificial intelligence and deep learning and all that. Clearly that's terra incognita so far because, yeah. We're seeing a lot of really cool machine learning use cases using Docker already. OpenAI is all on Docker. We watch what they're doing with great interests. Are you a member of that consortium? Let's say friends and family. Okay. Yeah, so OpenAI came out of the white Combinator ecosystem and Docker is a white Combinator company. So we spend a lot of time with them. I think AI on Docker is a really cool use case. I'm a big fan of that. Cool, all right, let's do it. Yeah, so Solomon, you know, unfortunately we're running low on time. Last question I have for you is, there's so many things we can do with Docker now. And I saw like, here's a bunch of the use cases. It's like, oh, I can run lots of applications. I mean, everything from Oracle's in the store now, things like that. You know, what is the, you know, kind of quick win when you're talking to customers and that gets started? What's the thing that gets them the most excited that impacts their business the fastest? You know, it's... And it never comes down to one thing. Yeah, honestly, we keep talking about Lego. I think it's like asking what's your favorite Lego toy. I think we're maturing in the model. I think Lego is just the perfect analogy because it's a lot of building blocks and there's more and more, but there's also the sets. And so we're, I think we're consolidating around a few different sets. And you know, there's maybe a dozen main use cases and we're seeing people identify with one and then we're helping them see a starting point there. Like here's a starter set for your problem and then it clicks. All right. So yeah, I hear that and I can't help but think back. You're the big green platform that all my Legos build on. So I can have my space stuff. I can have my farm set. You know, maybe the Duplos don't quite fit on it, but you know, yeah, it's the platform, you know, helping me to modernize a lot of what we're doing. All right, Solomon Hikes, always a pleasure to catch up. Congratulations on all the progress here and look forward to catching up with you the next time we connect. We'll be back. Jim and I will be back with lots more coverage here from DockerCon 2017. You're watching theCUBE.