Welcome and good day everybody. I'm Richard Ponziu. I direct the Global Governance Justice Security Program at the Stinson Center based here in Washington DC. And I'm very pleased to welcome you to this webinar discussion on from the Summit for Democracy to a League of Democracies which is organized by our colleagues at the Coalition for a World Security Community of Democratic Nations. This World Security Community as it's commonly referred to is a global organization advocating for the creation of a community of democratic nations to promote peace and security, defend human rights and tackle other global challenges. I will soon encourage our colleague, Didier Jacobs, one of our panelists to tell you more about the organization's ideas. And you can also learn more about this coalition through www.worldsecuritycommunity.org. And I also wanted to share that this webinar is being recorded, we'll be promoting it widely after today's discussion. As we're all too aware, democracy worldwide is facing multiple challenges from social media-driven fake news and foreign interference in elections in many places to the weakening of a country's democratically elected legislature vis-a-vis ever more powerful executive branches. Indeed, ever since 9-11, some two decades ago, democracy and human rights have suffered repeated setbacks across the world, according to Freedom House and of course the work of countless scholars. At the same time, deep rifts have emerged in relation between the West and both Russia and China with echoes of the Cold War and prominent international affairs commentators opine frequently that Western democracies are declining in power and influence relative to China and other emerging countries. Meanwhile, look no further than the latest news on the Omnicron variant that we're all experiencing just the last few days.  Against this backdrop, several world leaders including US President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have recently voiced support for greater collaboration between the world's democracies. For some, the emphasis is on repairing and strengthening democracy internally. For others, the focus is on tightening the bonds among democracies in order to tackle global challenges such as health pandemics and climate change but also more effectively engaging powerful autocratic countries such as Russia and China. In this webinar, we will explore these and related themes in connection with President Biden's upcoming Summit for Democracy which will take place next month on the 9th and 10th of December as well as with respect to the related idea of creating a permanent forum among the world's democracies to tackle global challenges. Before we jump in, I'll briefly introduce all five of our expert panelists before we hear from them individually on this topic and then we're gonna get the ball rolling by having me pose a specific question for each panelist which will then, they'll have five minutes to respond. There's a chance for all of you in our audience to engage the panelists. We encourage and welcome you to use the Q&A function on Zoom and we're also encouraging our fellow panelists to not only respond to questions from the audience but to build on and respond to the points made by your fellow panelists. So let's turn to our very first panelist, Dr. Titziana Stella who is the executive director of the Strait Council which is dedicated to carrying forward the ideas of Clarence Strait whose best-selling book Union Now advocated a union of democracy to combat fascism all the way back in 1939, start of World War II. This book arguably marked the beginning of the Atlantic movement and Titziana is a historian of US foreign policy and intellectual thought and is herself writing a book on the history of the union of democracy idea. So Titziana, let me begin with a question to you without going through of course the full history of uniting democracies unfortunately we wouldn't have time but could you tell us a bit about the few lessons that are really key insights that point to the need for far stronger bonds between democracies for tackling global challenges today? Yes, thank you Richard for the introduction and thanks to the organizers. It is a very exciting time to be here to discuss all these proposals on how to unite the democracies and how to use this union as a strategy to maximize the impact of democracy in the world. This was, I'm gonna present here in the limited time that I have some ideas and frameworks that I think can be useful than further the discussion. This idea emerged more than 100 years ago and precisely for the same purpose that we're discussing today how to maximize the impact and the chances of democracies in the world how to strengthen democracy both internally and internationally. It was presented ahead of World War I when it was hoped that it could actually be used to avoid the war and then became a major idea and in fact the main alternative scenario for post-war order and World Organization both in World War I and in World War II. In 1917 and in 1941, this was the prevalent option the idea that had the most support among the public intellectuals also part of the administration. And so it has a rich tradition and a rich logic behind it. It was part incorporated later in the Euro-Atlantic structures of integration and the budget partially and it is part of the DNA of the ideas that we are discussing today and the frameworks that we are trying to renew and upgrade. The basic idea since the very beginning was that democracies did have preponderance of power but their power was not organized and that they were the main cause of global instability. So one of the concepts was democracies should unite they should organize their power they should organize this power permanently but that was only part of the concept that was promoted throughout this period in the different variants by different thinkers and public intellectuals. The other element of the proposal was that democracy should not be limited just to a criteria for membership but also to become the method of the union and the finality of the union the finality for which this power was organized. And this was not just an ethical preference a moral preference but it was very much based also on consideration of real politic. The idea was that democracy cannot thrive in an environment of international anarchy together with deep interdependence and escalating violent capabilities that an environment that would be favorable to democracy would be instead one that would replace balance of power and power politics with internal sharing of power and external preponderance of power. And to create these conditions it was important that the union it became like a formal model at a certain point to maximize the impact of democracy in the world. And in this formal model the ideal scenario would be that this union will be small enough so they could have deep integration and therefore be able to actually bring in new members at the faster pace which was important in the race against external chaos. It also had to be continuously have a situation of preponderance of power so that the logic behind that it was that by doing that it would possibly be it was potentially possible to tilt permanently the world to work the democracy. And if you could kindly take no more than just another minute or so too. Yes, I guess I guess I want to probably the other thing that I really want to stress is that this idea became very crucial in the interwar where we had the league actually in existence as a world organization and the incapability of the league to prevent the global security and economic crisis. At the same time, we have the crisis of democracy. And so the two prizes are interdependent that there is a backsliding of democracy in the strong democracy at the same time there is the generation of the newer democracies into a liberal regimes. And so this was seen actually crucial to overcome the dynamics that were created by that scenario. And I think that's all that I can say in the time that I have at this point, yeah. Thank you. I would be glad to go back into more details later. Absolutely, now introducing the rich tradition of the idea and of course we'll be making linkages throughout today's discussion with next week's or next month's summit for democracy. Professor John Eikenberry is the Alberg G. Milberg Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Many of you in this forum will be familiar with his prolific career as a scholar defending the idea of liberal internationalism. 15 years ago, he co-authored a report of the bipartisan Princeton project on national security entitled forging a world of liberty under law in which he advocated for a concert of democracies. So we're hearing many terms today, Union of Democracies, League of Democracies and now concert of democracies. In his most recent book, A World Safe for Democracy, he notes that international liberalism is threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist populist movements. So John, building on Tiziana's leadoff remarks, what do you think is the right level of ambition for collaboration among democracies? What should it be actually and why? And on this topic, what role of any could President Biden's summit for democracy play? Thank you, Richard. It's great to be on this distinguished panel and it's great to have followed Tiziana because in some ways, my contribution is to offer kind of historical and theoretical arguments about the world of democracies and the project of cooperation. And indeed, we're here today, gathered together because for the last 200 years, liberal democracies have been searching for a way to build a world that makes them safe. From the very beginning, from the age of democratic revolutions, liberal democracies have had an internationalist aspect to their project, to creating what I would call a kind of environment or an ecosystem to protect them, to facilitate cooperation, to realize the gains that come from trade and openness, but also to protect from the world out there that is full of tyranny, brutality and tolerance. So there is, as Tiziana said, a kind of deep, deep impulse within liberal democracy to create an environment or a geopolitical space for contending with the problems of modernity. And I think we're at that moment today where we're doing that again. And I guess what I would say more specifically to your question that I would come down in favor of a kind of decentralized system, not so much a single unified union or federation, but to work to build across the global space, lots of different coalitions and platforms for liberal democracies to operate. I'm not a tactician and I'm not here to argue for one particular vision. I would prefer to make the case for intensified cooperation among democracies in an era where arising China is in some sense sharpening the stakes that are involved in liberal democracies getting their act together, finding a basis for common cause. But I would say a couple of things. I think that the Biden administration gets it. I think they understand what the environment, what the kind of world historical moment is. Think about Biden in his UN speech. He mentioned partnerships 16 times and alliances eight times in his short speech. He was making the case that the United States and indeed by implication, all the other democracies are in it together that there is no way that one state, even the most powerful state in the world, the United States can single-handedly protect and defend liberal democracy in a hostile world that it has to be increasingly going forward a group project creating a kind of critical mass in this world. I've already used a couple of terms that I would emphasize. One is ecosystem that we should think about liberal democracies trying to build an ecosystem that will allow them to balance their various interests and principles and norms and work together to aggregate power and wealth. And I use the term critical mass, that is to say in a world where alternatives to liberal democracy are creating their own internationalism. Think of China, think of the authoritarian internationalism that is afoot today, that it pays for the liberal democracies to create a kind of critical mass to drive reform agendas on international rules and institutions that increasingly in the 21st century, the competition with China and other countries is over platforms, protocols, regulations and regimes for the management of problems and not least emerging 21st century technologies. So finding a critical mass so that the countries that form the liberal democratic world have a kind of scale advantage that will allow other countries to in some sense be forced to come to them rather than the other way around when China starts setting the norms and regime principles of the international system. We know that we are lost. So I would just end by saying, I would say there would need to be a kind of double double agenda. One is to build these platforms often in very different spaces because they are different issue areas, artificial intelligence, cyber, trade. There's no one single coalition of democracies that can work in all of these different areas. So, and indeed it's better in some sense not to raise the stakes so that it is a single kind of mannequins and us versus them world but to build platforms that create attractive attractions for other states to join. So those kind of platforms. Then secondly, a kind of D10 and Ash might speak to this but I think that there's a kind of role for a group of senior states that might have as their writ the kind of surveillance of the world democratic situation looking for gaps, looking for opportunities for countries to work together to strengthen rules and norms in particular areas. So I think both the global agenda of finding areas for cooperation. And then secondly, I would put some money on this D10 concept of steering or of leadership. Just in by saying, I've written the book on a world safer democracy and one of the most striking things that I've found and looking back over 250 years of liberal democracies grappling with how to organize international order is that they have always felt with good reason that they are safer in a world where liberal democracies hold sway. And we live today in a world where China contests that world and therein lies the geopolitical and grand strategic rub. And so with lots of different ideas at our command I would say we need to work across these different levels to find a way for the liberal democracies to continue to hold sway. I'll stop there. Thank you, John, as just shared a model of decentralized cooperation among democracies today. This could be seen as an alternative or a compliment to the ideas shared by Tiziana as more of a union or a federation of democracies which I'm sure will come further into our discussion today especially when we hear from Didier in a few moments as well as Mariam. And also keep in mind the words that John referred to from President Biden's speech in September partnership and alliances, we're surely gonna see that quite frequently throughout next week's summit discussions. It's a virtual summit as people know. So now we're gonna hear from Ash Jane who is Director of the Democratic Order Program with the Scowcross Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. There he oversees the Democratic Order Initiative and as John Eikenberry just referred to the D10 strategy for him. He's a leaning proponent of the idea of a D10 and enlarged version of the G7 to also include democracies in the Indo-Pacific region. In practice, we've seen just in this past year UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson attempting to take forward the D10 concept inviting Australia, South Korea and India as well as South Africa. So I guess D11 to the G7 earlier this year. So Ash, could you tell us what is the current state of play of your D10 initiative as well as its potential of any to next month's summit for democracy? And I also understand you're working on an alliance of democracies concept. Please share a little bit on that as well. Well, thank you, Richard. It's great to be here with you to discuss these questions. Let me answer your question first by talking a little bit about why there is such a need for a closer cooperation among democracies today. This is a topic that is at the heart of the initiative that I'm leading at the Atlantic Council, the Democratic Order Initiative and we've been looking into these questions very closely. So as John mentioned, the world is entering an era of a strategic competition for the first time in more than three decades, the US and its allies are facing a systemic challenge from autocratic rivals. And as President Biden has noted on many occasions, the world is at an inflection point between democracy and autocracy. This includes China, which is growing more powerful and Russia as an autocratic power that is more assertive as they engage in coercive tactics to expand their influence around the world. At the same time, democracy is on the defensive, dealing with internal challenges and trying to counter with disinformation, cyber attacks, election meddling, and you name it. So to position themselves to succeed in this new era, the United States and its democratic allies do need to strengthen cooperation. They need new institutions, both formal and informal, and in order to confront today's challenges. One option is, as you mentioned, Richard, we have looked at is the idea of forging a D10, a democracies 10 that would bring together leading democracies, including the United States and Canada and its allies in Europe, as well as the Asia Pacific. The D10 would particularly reflect the increasing importance of Indo-Pacific powers by ensuring that Australia and South Korea and perhaps India are brought to the table, which currently focuses on the G7. So we described this in an Atlantic Council report that we released over the summer that lays a framework for creating a D10 to work out a common strategic agenda on shared challenges, including those posed by China and Russia. That initiative got a jumpstart when Boris Johnson tried to convene a D10 and formalize it in some way as an expanded G7, but it did run into some pushback from some of the other members of the G7. And so at the moment, the initiative still is out there as a potential framework for cooperation in the future. The G7 remains as the platform, the current platform for engaging democratic partners on at least a subset of global challenges. So in addition to the D10, we have also proposed to create a new alliance of democracies, which could provide another key platform to engage a broader group of democratic allies and partners around the world. Such an alliance would be political, not military. It would be aimed at forging common threat assessments and coordinating strategies among democracies to position the free world for success in this growing strategic competition. What would such an alliance do? We would contend that it should focus on three defining challenges facing the free world. The first is systemic competition with autocratic powers, as I've mentioned earlier, that the alliance can foster more coordination to deal with the assertive actions by China and Russia to undermine democracy. For example, coordinated sanctions with larger numbers of allies and partners against autocratic regimes. You could also help foster efforts to make democracies less vulnerable to economic coercion. For example, facilitating supply chains away from autocratic states when it comes to sensitive technologies and critical energy supplies. The second area it could focus on is democratic backsliding. The alliance can help hold states accountable for their own democratic practices at home and facilitate best practices among democracies to deal with challenges that all of our democracies are contending with. And finally, the alliance could serve as a platform to address disruptive technologies. As John mentioned earlier, this is a key issue and we need a framework where allies can come together and forge common standards to address advanced technologies that are consistent with liberal norms and values. It also could ensure that democracies prevail over China and others in the race to develop advanced technologies. So President Biden's Summit for Democracy offers a window of opportunity to bring such an alliance to life. Both the D-10 and an alliance of democracies could be mutually reinforcing platforms to advance democratic cooperation. And I look forward to talking more about practical ways that these kinds of initiatives could be brought to fruition. Thank you so much Ash, especially keeping the time and really glad you brought up the Alliance for Democracy, something our colleague, Mariam, is gonna speak about now, but just to highlight the three key points you emphasized, it would deal with systemic competition with autocratic countries, democratic backsliding and disruptive technology. So over to Mariam, she, I better try to print out your last name, Chick Lezade in the country of Georgia, please correct me when you introduce yourself, Mariam, who is a researcher and election integrity fellow at the Alliance of Democracies Foundation. This foundation was established in 2017 by Anders Vogue Rasmussen, a well-known former Prime Minister of Denmark and former Secretary General of NATO. So Mariam, then building directly on Ash's overview, could you tell us more about your foundation and its work to advance the idea of an alliance of democracies? And I'd love for you to also share your hopes for next week's Summit for Democracies in connection with your Alliance initiative. Thank you very much, Richard. Greetings from Tbilisi, Georgia. I'm deeply honored to be the part of this distinguished panel with the world's foremost minds who think about and write a lot about global affairs and the future of democracy. Being part of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, where we also research and discuss the future of democratic coalition, I might have something to add to this discussion. And mostly I will expand and build on Ash's points about the challenges we face and how the Alliance of Democracies Foundation has figured out some of the specific suggestions to address those challenges. Let me articulate the problems and the way we see it now first. Obviously, the number one is multiple times mentioned, raising authoritarianism and China and Russia specifically. They're increasingly aggressive efforts to challenge the democratic and the liberal world order and rules-based order, I would say. Both of them use multiple techniques and economic coercive tools, including them, but not only economic. And here comes the technology, which we also have mentioned previously. This technology, which is super rapidly developing, real and has the potential to significantly define the geopolitics currently. And these technologies in the hands of autocracies and authoritarian regimes becomes disruptive technologies and they actually give them the upper hand. The third, I would say, is also something freedom house has been warning us for the couple of years that a democracy in all parts of the world is declining. And the trust towards democratic norms, processes, such as elections, mainly, and institutions are declining, unfortunately. And the playground is gradually in more countries, not only in premature democracies, but also in established ones are taken by populist, illiberal leaders. That's also something at AOD we are disturbed with. So what are the, what we should do to overcome this challenge and to tackle those? Is there a single power which one would single-handedly do this? And obviously, unfortunately or fortunately, there is not. And here comes the need for unity and coordinated pushback against autocracies. And also there is, at AOD, we also think that there is a need for a platform where a member, a democracy after being coerced could turn to and urge for concerted response in case of a coercion or in case of a significant violation of a rule-based order. So to contribute to that forward-looking agenda and discussion, Alliance of Democracies Foundation launched the Charter of Democracies, Charter of Copenhagen Charter for the Alliance of Democracies. That's the full name, which has three major pillars addressing these three major challenges that I have laid out. The specific suggestion here is, for example, Economic Article Five, inspired by NATO Article Five. And this is an attempt to foster effort to make democracies coordinate economically more cooperate with each other so that they could counterbalance the cooperation which happens and the economical ties and coercion which happens on the side of autocracies. And also not to leave countries vulnerable against coercion perpetrators. Such measures would be democratic economic preference zones or alternative roads, circumventing autocratic powers and others. I guess the idea is that if Taiwan gets pressured by China or Georgia, by Russia, they are not left alone and vulnerable. And there is a support system there. The second, I think I would define this as the second component of the Charter, some more to the same way. There is a need of the tech democracies to come together and address the technology and the disruptive technology issue so that they create some future of internet and future of technology forum to address this lack of cooperation in this realm. And the third and probably the last point at this point is to create the support system also for democracies and especially frontline democracies. And we know they are in any parts of the world, I would name Ukraine, I would name Belarus, Myanmar and other countries. So to stand up for them and to stand up for those who fight for democracy in the streets and not only in the streets, that's crucial. So that, for example, as the Alliance of, this is one of the biggest initiatives of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which tries to curb the influence of and to the root of election interference. This is transatlantic commission on election integrity. But that's not the election interference and disinformation, which primarily makes frontline democracies vulnerable is not the only tool in the hands of autocracies. And they definitely use other technological tools to suppress and disrupt frontline democracies. So that's also one of the aspects I would approach this idea to. Yeah, very last ideas to just to sum up all those. I think that probably all those I have mentioned open more questions rather than answers them, but it's supposed to be complicated. It's a global affair. So I think what we should agree on is that when there is a big problem, the only way out would be to create the solution bigger than that problem. So I think there is a momentum for that. Thank you so much, Maryam. Greatly appreciated. And building on Ashes points about the Alliance for Democracies, because I see a lot of similarities with how Professor Eikenberry introduced the idea of a decentralized system of collaboration, used the word platform support system. And this is in some ways juxtaposed again, the stronger deeper collaboration inherent in a union or in the title of today's event, The League. And we're about to hear from Diddy and Jacobs on a coalition among democracies in a world security community. This coalition is, as you know, the main sponsor of today's event. And Diddy is the vice president of the coalition, which is a global organization advocating for the creation of a community of democratic nations to promote peace and security, defend human rights, and tackle other global challenges. I see many questions in the Q&A box after Diddy were gonna be taking those questions. We welcome a few more. But first for Diddy to tell us a little bit more about the coalition, what it stands for, and maybe the genesis for today's program and your own thoughts on today's themes. Thank you. Yes, thanks Richard for this introduction and greetings to all listeners. So our group, The Coalition for a World Security community was created in 2018 through the new shape prize of the Global Challenges Foundation. And the question that we tackled at that time was what global governance innovation is needed to reduce the risk of catastrophic war? And our response was a world security community of democratic nations. So of course we have the United Nations, which has both the duty and the right to protect all its members from aggression and all UN members are supposed to lend military forces to enforce UN decisions. However, as we know, the United Nations is very indecisive and in practice, every country is left to fend for themselves to protect their security. We believe that a more realistic approach, I mean, obviously we'd like the United Nations to shape up and that's the plan A, but the plan B, a more realistic approach is for the rich democracies to incrementally expand their umbrella of security to other countries. Unlike most countries in the world, the rich democracies are protected with each other. They are hanging together through NATO and bilateral treaties. They are very powerful and hence they feel fairly safe. So while we cannot just wish away the distrust that exists within the United Nations Security Council, we could, the rich democracies could at least extend their very safe security umbrella to other democracies that presumably they trust more. So that's the basic idea of our group. We could start with, as I said, there is NATO, there is all the bilateral treaties that the US has with Asian countries. Secretary Blinken himself noted that it's kind of strange that the United States has these European allies, the Asian allies, but the two are not working together which is a missed opportunity. Let's have a multilateral defense treaty putting all these allies together. And then let's open that treaty to other countries that we trust democracies, whether from Latin America or other countries. And to make sure that this trust remains, I think it's important to have a clear and somewhat stringent membership criteria to ensure that all countries abide by international law and respect human rights and democracy. And that will follow the European Union model that has been very successful at the encouraging democratization in Europe as the prospect of joining the European Union was a powerful incentive for countries like Spain, Greece to democratize. So at the same time, we do not want this world security community to undermine the United Nations. We believe that it should be really focused on defense, protecting its own members and intervene outside of its borders only with the approval of the UN Security Council which does mean continuing working with China and Russia on other conflicts as difficult as that may be. And that does mean that there's going to be ongoing instability in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, this world security community would be an island of stability and security in this turbulent world. And hopefully it would incrementally grow over time with more and more countries becoming democratic. And at the same time, it would not be threatening to countries outside. So that's in the nutshell, our response to the global challenges foundation to reduce the risk of catastrophic wars, rich democracies first, should stop starting wars. And second, they should extend their security umbrella to countries that they do trust and that's to other democracies. Now, just a few more words about the coming summit. Obviously our starting point has been security and security is the heart of international affairs. Heart power is the heart of international affairs. That's very important. But obviously a community of democracies could be helpful in many other areas like those of the summit, protecting human rights, fighting corruption and confronting authoritarianism. For this summit, we hope that first, it will not be a one-off or a two-off. I guess the plan is to have countries make some commitment this year and then meet again next year to check progress on these commitments. But obviously fighting corruptions and all these issues will not be resolved in a year. So we hope the summit will be permanent. And then it can start to be the next phase of what Professor Aikenberg called this ecology of institutions. And we very much hope that beyond unilateral commitment, it will develop some norms, some range of issues like election integrity and that it will foster and rely on other, including existing organizations like NATO and the OECD that are already intergovernmental organizations of democracies that should themselves expand their membership to other democracies. And so if we have this annual summit of leaders, then technical work done by NATO and the OECD and then expansion of these countries, we start to have this kind of ecology that Professor Aikenberg was talking about. And obviously, I'll just finish by referring to something that Tiziana said at the beginning, that the idea of an alliance or a committee of democracy is not so much, it's both to promote democracy internally but also the method of the committee itself should be democratic and that is something we also strongly believe in. We don't think that a large committee with many countries would function without democratic accountability and decision-making systems. And so that is something that should be developed over time as well. So that is the overview of what we stand for and look forward to the discussion. Thank you so much, Didier. And thank you once again for taking initiative with your colleagues in organizing today's very rich discussion. We have a whole bunch of questions to address over these next 15, 20 minutes or so maybe we could run a few minutes. And let's jump in and I'm gonna pose a question or two in some cases to each of our five panelists, kindly take no more than two or so minutes in responding if you can and feel free to build off of each other's points. Professor Aikenberg, the first question is addressed to the academic community and your thoughts on prioritizing education for democracy and launching a global initiative to support citizens making democracy work better. What can academics do to help citizens function better in democratic societies? But I also want you to pick up on the second question about the whole issue of backsliding, something important I think to the Alliance for Democracies concept and a country like Bangladesh which is in need of restoring democracy and human rights as proposed by Mr. Mohamed Hock one of our questioners. Next we'll hear from Titiana on the question from Chris Hammer. Let me read that after we hear Professor Aikenberg's response. But you'll see in the Q&A function to the other panelists questions addressed to each of you that I'll be posing. Professor Aikenberg. Well, I'm always a little nervous when we are asking universities to do things that are specifically directed at world politics. I think what universities can do is educate people and to reaffirm our commitment to enlightenment principles of reason, discussion of knowledge of respect for science. Universities have a huge role to play educating the next generation, illuminating the problems that the world faces. And I think in various ways incubating conversations that spill out of universities into the larger global civil society. A lot of what we're talking about today is about global civil society, finding networks and points of light and points of strength for groups and civil societies working with governments to strengthen democratic institutions in countries like Bangladesh where all the help is needed. And I think this kind of long-term effort at working the problem at all these different levels. Alliances of democracy, yes. Government, intergovernmental cooperation like the G7, the D10, yes. And then these larger diffuse institutions that support voter rights and election, fair elections. So I think my idea of an ecology, of an ecosystem where a lot of different kinds of people doing lots of different things creating an overall environment is where I would emphasize the importance of what we're doing today. Thank you, John. Tiziana from our colleague Chris Hemmer also from this coalition organizing today's program. I believe you are presently advocating a full-scale federation of democracies. Can you tell us a bit more about that? And what do you think, and do you think we can get there in one leap? A big bang approach or would have to be proceeding in various stages? Oh, you're on mute. Okay. Now, obviously I'm not proposing right now of federations of democracies and obviously I'm not proposing that we can get there in one leap. I just think that this as a model, as a former model and the dynamics that it shows is very important to keep it in mind as we envision ways to improve the impact of democracy in the world. So the idea that could be the final stage, of course, but it's just by looking at what the dynamic of federation can do in the relations among democracies inside and also outside and how that can help guide a little bit the discussion of where we're going, like as a target. So in terms of what policies we are choosing and what strategies we're using. Yeah, that's my answer. Thank you. And turning to Miriam. Sorry, one more thing. Please. I do agree with professor. I can vary that. Of course, there should be different platform. It can be decentralized. There can be functional areas where there's overlapping and there is also concentric circles. The outer level can be the level of the UN where the universality is a true certainty, but it doesn't necessarily be so. All the other levels, there are other ways to reach universality to democracy. And so the two things can actually work together. Great. Now I think we're starting to see a convergence, a building block approach with the Alliance for Democracies in mind, which is what I want to turn to with Miriam. We're going to come to the D10 questions for Ash in a minute, but Miriam, the question from John Davenport, and there's another related question I'll mention. I'm all dealing with China. He writes, we should be willing to consider different kinds of alliances or coalitions each with different nations as members. Maybe this will seem less threatening to countries like China, although the fear is that they're going to construe the formation of this alliance as a beginning of a new Cold War. And a related question by one of our colleagues was the critical problem at the moment is China's threat of military aggression against Taiwan? Could an alliance of democracies raise an effective stop sign against any such aggression? Thank you. Well, first of all, about China and partnership of democracies to deter it. Well, I wanted to stress on the point that that comes down to the question of membership pretty frequently. And that's one of the prevalent questions asked and discussed in this topic. So like if you exclude, do you exclude China or in Russia or other autocracies or do you exclude them both? It has the pros and cons. If you exclude them, of course you risk further antagonizing China. And it's quite logical to think forward about this, but should it deter us to unite? I think not because the biggest problem-solving potential lies in democracies who will be the game and the unity of democracies because together it's a group exercise, I would say, because single-handedly, as we have already many times stressed on, it is not as easy to counter. So together it's more plausible. And also about the second question, I would add that the second part of the question, I'm not touching Taiwan yet, also I think that economic cooperation and creating preferable economic frameworks to trade, lowering trade barriers, lowering tariffs between each other will make other countries also willing to join this alliance. So that's one of the ways also to counterbalance those who are rushing forward with coercive methods. And I think that's one of the ways to deter also the military expansion or aggression of an autocratic regime over the vulnerable country under the question like in the namely Taiwan. So many multiple tools of deterrence should be united to achieve this situation when you don't let this China and Russia undermine the liberal world order. Of course, one topic unity will not be able to do that. There is multiple approaches needed to be found. Great, I welcome using the famous two-finger sign if any of our panelists wish to jump in, build upon or respond to a comment made by one of your fellow panelists. Turning to Ash, there are three D10 related questions. Let me go through them all very quickly and they're all interconnected. The concern about a deep 10 is that it will include unstable and fragile democracies and countries that are increasingly autocratic such as India at the top of the table, according to one question post. Should one of the first tasks of those advocating for a leak or D10 be to promote action to a backsliding rather than creating a club based on economic power. And then the two other questions are very short ones. I'd like to hear more on Ash's take about which nations in the G7 objected to the D10 and why? And finally, why should democracies of the global south wish to join a group dominated by rich countries like those being proposed in the D10 or D11? Ash? Yeah, good questions. Let me take them on here. First with regard to the question posed about who's objecting to the D10 and why this is from John Davenport. Good to hear from him. So the concerns about expanding the G7 to a D10 basically stem around kind of two major concerns. One is would it detract from the effectiveness that the G7 currently poses because it is relatively like-minded. It consists of like-minded powers who at least share a history of cooperation and a kind of sense of maintaining cooperation on certain issues. If you start to expand that group, do you bring in others who might be less like-minded when it comes to say dealing with questions and challenges posed by Russia and China? Is South Korea going to change that dynamic? Would India in the picture change the way the G7 tackles questions about Russia? There are legitimate questions that have been raised about the impact of broadening the group. And then relatedly, there are others who are concerned about the optics of a D10 that expands to Asia-Pacific powers and then starts to look like it's an alliance against China more than just a construct that brings together democracies. This relates to another question about polarization and would groups like this, would polarize the international community? So that is another question that others in the G7 have raised. And I think because of those issues unresolved, the D10 concept sort of remains open. In terms of addressing those questions, I think they apply both to the D10 as well as the Alliance of Democracies concept. Would it polarize the international system? The reality is that the international system is already becoming polarized on its own. It's now more of a question of how do we, the democracies react to that polarization? China and Russia are taking actions that are undermining democratic norms and coercing using coercion against democratic partners. Does the rest of the international community to do the democracies, let this happen and try to deal with it individually, country by country or do we somehow coalesce? To come up with a common approach to dealing with these challenges. And that's what the D10 and an Alliance of Democracies wouldn't be about. It's not about trying to create a confrontation with these powers or to undermine cooperation in other venues. The UN will remain a place to go for dealing with issues like nuclear proliferation and climate change and other global challenges, pandemics where there has to be cooperation with a lot of countries, including China and Russia. So it doesn't replace that system. It layers that system with others where we can go when we can't get cooperation through that venue. And then finally, with regard to just very quickly on the question of why would countries like India and the Global South wanna be part of the D10 or part of an Alliance of Democracies? I think the answer is pretty clear. They share many of these countries that are democracies. They share the same concerns. This gives them a platform for influence to shape decisions and policies. And it allows for, again, this kind of cohesive approach to dealing with challenges rather than going after them country by country. There's more to say on these topics, but I know we're out of time, so I'll stop there. Thank you, Ashton. I wish to give the final word to Didier. But to build upon what I see as a central theme in today's discussion, maybe why he chose this outstanding group of panelists that Didier, the D10 idea, could you see that idea that Titsiana made earlier of a group of concentric circles, the Alliance for Democracies being even larger force than the D10? And then on the way to your vision for a security community of democracies. Now, I got two other related questions. Just feel free to choose one or two of these questions to respond to in wrapping up today's discussion. But one of them by a colleague is that is a security community of democracies could be only the first step in a longer-term process, building on these concentric circles, perhaps. Could you say a few words about where this process might lead in the future? And then finally, a wonderful question by John Vlasto, who's the chair of the executive team for the World Federalist Movement, which has been around as people know since World War II. Is there a risk that any organization of democracies will generate a non-democratic opposition? And so hinder global cooperation on urgent challenges such as the climate crisis. So, Didier, get the prerogative. Choose which of any of these you may wish to respond to. Yes, on the last one, I agree with what Ash has said and that there is unfortunately already a competition and we need to organize it. On the question of the larger vision, and first of all, I completely subscribe to this idea of an ecology. We are talking about one particular organization which is a defense alliance, but it can be one element of other element in an ecosystem of organizations that allow democracies to collaborate. All of them, though, do face one challenge and that's where the long-term vision, if we can finish with that. And that is global democracy. We are talking about protecting democracy at the national level a lot, but I think that we should recognize that all these global challenges like the pandemic climate change are really challenges that affect everybody. They are global organizations that do public policy around them. And from a perspective of fairness, I think it is important to say that these decisions, the global decisions that affect everybody should be made democratically as well. So that means having a community of democracies itself being democratic. And India has almost twice as many people as the European Union and the United States combined. Why shouldn't we have twice as many votes as them? And I know this is very revolutionary in a sense, but it's also a very common sense. I believe we cannot be pro-democracy and at the same time oppose this idea of global democracy. Now, this is a huge challenge, sharing power. And I believe that's the challenge of the 21st century and to the earlier question about what would incentivize countries like India or South Africa to join such an organization. Again, I agree with Ash that there are some self-interest that will lead them there anyway, but they will want to have a real voice and a voice commensurate with the weight in the world. And so rich countries will have to learn to share power democratically with the poor nations. I'll leave it with that big thought. Thank you, No. Powerful words to conclude on. Thank you so much, Didier. Thanks to all of our panelists, Tiziana, John, Ash, Merriam and Didier for your thoughtful contributions to today's discussion. Like to thank our organizers, members of the Coalition for World Security Community, especially Didier and his colleague, Chris Hammer, for organizing today's program. And finally, a special thanks to all of you for joining and contributing your thoughts both in the chat function and excellent questions post. Sorry, I know we didn't get to get to all of them, but it shows what a rich and robust discussion this is. We do want to conclude by wishing of course, season's greetings this time of year. I hope that everybody will follow the big summit for democracy next week and look forward to staying in touch on these critical issues. Thank you once again. Bye-bye. Thank you.


Hi, my name is Mirco Pinotti and I'm a professor of biochemistry at the University of Ferrara. Behind me you can see the department in which I'm working, which is the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. By this video I would like to walk you through the study we have conducted and that has been recently published in Human Mutation. The topic is a nonsense mutation and the point we would like to discuss and we have addressed is the question whether the nonsense mutations are truly and always new mutations and then later in a while I will show you the data and I try to demonstrate that in some cases nonsense mutations are associated to residual expression, that in some pathologies can have pathophysiological implications. So I decided to use some slides to make the concept more clear and to show you the essential data supporting the conclusion of our paper. So as you can see I just drawn a picture cartoon in which there is a stop mutation and for women who are not familiar with nonsense mutations, this mutation implies the insertion of a premature top codon into the coding mRNA. And in this way the nonsense mutation is associated to the production of truncated molecules that most of the time are not functional. And in some cases, especially for early nonsense mutations, this change leads to mRNA decay. In the scientific community nonsense mutations are commonly considered neuro-genetic conditions. But we have to consider that the translation termination, it means the stop of the protein synthesis at the nonsense triplets is not perfect. And in some cases also with a low efficiency the ribosome can read through over the nonsense triplet and give rise to a process which is called ribosome read through, which can lead to the synthesis of full length molecules even in the presence of nonsense mutation. Of course this process is not that efficient but even traces of full length protein and especially if they are functional can have pathophysiological implication depending on the disease we are considering. Our field is coagulation factor deficiency in which one of the factors involved in coagulation cascade is affected by the mutation. And we have addressed this issue on imophilia B which is the disease caused by mutations in the factor 9G. In this deficiency, nonsense mutations are relatively frequent, something around 10-15% and that are associated to the most severe cases. And in this disease even traces of full length protein can have implication for the clinical manifestation and particularly for the development of inhibitory antibodies. So we decided to investigate four different nonsense mutations that have been found in the database and are associated to severe imophilia B. As you can see there are four different mutations which are occurring at different point of the CNA. They are changing, they are at different position in the protein and they have different sequence. And based on previous data we know that the sequence and the sequence context of the nonsense mutation is an important determinant of the efficiency of rethrough. And as you can see the predicted rethrough over this mutation is different with the mutation 162 which is expected to undergo rethrough with the most efficient. So the first part of the study was addressed in plasma from patients. And I would like to remind you that factor 9 is the coagulation factor which is circulating plasma which makes easier for us to investigate the residual expression in the physiological side. As you can see here are the bands and by western blotting we were able to detect traces. You can see in this with the mutation 298 or with the 294 we were able to detect traces of full-length protein. But to coagulate this data which were obtained in patients we wanted also to in parallel to express all these recombinant variant and to check whether in geocreatic cells these nonsense mutations are also associated to residual levels of full-length protein. So we made mutagenesis into the phatonized DNA, we inserted the mutation and we expressed these recombinant proteins in the eukaryotic cells. As you can see in medium we detected level, appreciable levels of protein but by western blotting we discovered that the majority of these molecules were truncated as expected for nonsense mutation. However when we focused on the part of the gel in which is corresponding to the side of the full-length molecule we discovered that the mutation 294, 298 and 162 that I remind you is the mutation with the sequence context more susceptible to rethrow we were able to detect the full-length protein. At various one of these mutations the 103 even in patient and also in recombinant protein was not giving any, any appreciable trace of full-length protein. So in conclusion all this data for the first time for a secreted protein demonstrated that the ribotry fluid is occurring in vivo and may account for a residual level of full-length protein. And this finding if we consider hemophilia and correlation phatodeficiency can have pathophysiological implication. I would like just to thank all the people involved in this study and Francesco Bernardi for his illuminating suggestion. Pierparo Colusa, Alessandro Canella and Matteo Campioni who perform most of the work in expression study and western blotting analysis. And the group of Giuseppe Targariello and Castaman who provided us the sample from patients and the clinical picture. And last I would like to thank the agency that funded the study and particularly Telethon, the Foundation in Carife and Ministry of the University. And I thank you for your attention. I hope I was clear enough to convey the main message of our study. And I hope in the future to present some new data on how this process can, to demonstrate how can this process have really implication for the diagnosis and interpretation of the relationship between the molecular defects and the clinical phenotype.


Good day, May 40 here. So it's about 48 hours now since the Colorado Spring shooting Killed five people and it's still the number one story in the news So why is this particular shooting of five people? Colorado Springs the number one story in America right now is on top of New York Times calm as Compared to say 50 migrants boil to death and It's not even the number one story in America for an hour for five minutes Why is the death of 50 migrants? Right just completely insignificant, but the death of five people LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs the number one story of 48 hours later, and we need to have a mass conversation about the promotion of hate on the internet well because This is a sacred group. It was attacked right some groups are sacred and some groups are not so LGBTQ spaces and groups are sacred blacks are sacred Jews are sacred and other groups such as whites Christians and men Not sacred also because a drag queen in high heels helped to stop the gunman and because the news media wants to promote a Correction to the myth that gay people are not assertive and aggressive and brave So it's a wonderful story to promote how brave the LGBTQ community is against this avalanche of online hate So this story fits in with media narratives about how we need more censorship That the right wing is bad the drag queens are good drag Queen story hour is good That free speech on Twitter is bad that Elon Musk is bad That traditional values are bad that we need to be more open-minded the greatest threat to our society is ignorance and bigotry and The media has come along to correct our ignorance and to puncture our bigotry by telling us brave stories about a Drag queen in high heels who stomps the gunman All right. See drag queens in high heels. All right, they're gonna save America an LGBTQ friendly military is gonna save America and We've been having these wonderfully uplifting drag queen story hours for months and years now and You know, what kind of person could ever object only someone who was ignorant and bigoted look how brave These people at the club are look how brave this drag queen is All right, we need More drag queens to keep America safe both in our military and our clubs and in our law enforcement What kind of bigot are you? I don't see the need for more drag queens in high heels They're out there on the front lines combating hatred and bigotry and ignorance and it's According to the media narrative, it's it's Twitter accounts like the libs of tiktok They're promoting distorted and bigoted and hateful perspective on drag queens. They are the real enemies They're promoting this kind of crazy violence So this is why this group is sacred. This shooting is sacred and the deaths of ten times as many people Right can't even capture The New York Times is you know primary attention for five minutes let alone for two days


He's a cute one, huh?  It is an HD whoop. We call it the Digi-whoop. So this is Ron from OAS Hobby, aka Mr. OAS himself, the creator behind the Digi-whoop. So what were you thinking with this thing? There wasn't a digital product that we could do both indoors and outdoors and have a good fun flight experience with both of them. Really it's the solution for a digital product that can go indoors and outdoors. One reason I never liked switching to the Digi-digital FPV system was because the size of the area unit was too big to fit in just every ordinary-sized quad. I wanted to fly HD on something really small so I could fly through trees, so I could fly through tight gaps. Now with the KX Vista, we have that HD capabilities and now essentially you've taken that platform and put it on a smaller-sized drone with ducks that can fly well outdoors but can also fly indoors. I think it's the perfect solution for what we're going for. All right, let's fly. Oh man, I'm not used to flying three-self. What do you think, power-wise? I think the power is good. I think it's just a little heavy. The Vista adds a lot of weight. Like I'm flying it at mostly full power but I'm knocking into everything and I'm taking it back off. So that's nice. Yeah, I'm really on the throttle. But it's got good power. Oh, that's nice, okay. Like these tiny drones because you can really just fly them with confidence around. I feel like you're trying to get used to carrying the weight a little bit. Yeah, I am. It just takes some getting used to. It seemed like you were at first just trying to fly like you with your five-inch. This is really fun. It's like flying through all the gaps. Just lower speed. Yeah, like I'm not saying I'm going slow either.  This is so cool. Probably with a five-inch quad. You could do this, but one little extra blip of the throttle. I don't know. I don't know that you could fit through some of these. Oh yeah, some of these gaps you're definitely not fitting through with a five-inch. What? This is awesome.  Dude, go over to the building. My battery's done. Oh, you are done. Oh, seven point. Yep, yep. So, only downside I can really see to this quad is the flight time wasn't really that good. I probably flew around for a minute and a half actually air time. I was ripping it for probably the first 30 seconds. The power itself is really good because you're flying with more power. It also drops the voltage while you're flying. So it just kind of makes it feel a little unresponsive. But when you're just cruising around in the trees and everything like that, it's a lot of fun. There was no way I was gonna do that with a five-inch quad. All right, I wanna get a shot at this thing. I really like that you can get to the bind button without a special tool because normally when we're sharing a drone like this, having to get out that little poker tool makes switching the goggles that it's linked to kind of annoying. So that I can just quickly link this to my goggles. I'm happy with that. It's just a very different flying experience. I'm kind of having to like hold myself back from doing what I'd normally do, which is like bigger or more swoopy thingies and just like get really in this tight area and just enjoy cruising. These are the perfect trees for this. Oh yeah, you got to get on the throttle earlier because it's got some weight too. So it has power, but with that weight, ooh, that's a little sketchy. I feel the weight more when you're dropping. Yeah, when you drop, you got to get it on the power a lot earlier. But this building, this is pretty tight. Look at these little holes here. So I wanna try and dive one of them, but I don't know if I have the power to pull out, so. There you go. That's pretty good. That was a good one. It's stable upside down. That's nice. It's just the weight. So it's got weight, but at least it does have a really nice float to it. As long as you get on the throttle early enough, it's really not a problem. Only downside I'm really seeing so far is that the flight time is not really there. Well, you could get a larger battery. Yeah, but then you get more weight. And then you're still up in the throttle more, so you're just, there's a certain point where like, even if you go to a bigger battery, you're not gonna gain flight time because you just have to use more power to keep it in the air. What size of battery do you normally fly on, Ron? 450, I think. So 450, yeah, I've got a 450. You fly 850? 850. How many you got? A lot. Let me see your bigger battery. I just wanna see if the weight to power ratio is affected much by the battery. The C rating is based on the battery size. You also have to use more power to keep it in the air, because it's heavier now. You think this is the sauce, Ron? I think it really depends on your fly style and what you're concerned with, right?  If you're more concerned about being able to do cool things, I think you can go with a smaller, longer battery. It sounds more powerful. It's got more power, but I do feel the weight. So let's see, does it pull out? Oh, yeah, it's not heavy with the thick battery. Dude, I'm so not calibrated. That's so weird, because I could do it first try on the smaller battery. I remember my first pilot. There we go. Oh, and it pulled out. I don't know, Vanny. I might like it better. So I actually, off the bat, just hovering it. I like it better now, because I'm... But you do feel the weight. Oh, yeah, but like, the power is better. It seems that power is more consistent. So you have that weight to deal with, but on that smaller battery, every time I gave a throttle, my voltage was sagging big time, and now it's staying more consistently up there in the 12s. Nice, nice.  We're here, we're here, we're here. Now there's something you've been doing with the Vista to improve its performance. What's that? Yeah, so there's a feature in device settings called auto temp control. What that does is it basically allows the air unit or whatever unit you're flying to not overheat. So yeah, if the drone is sitting plugged in, like it is here, it's getting, it's already really toasty. And the Vista gets really hot. When you've got everything hooked up correctly, when you arm the quad, it should always go to full power. So the way auto temp control is supposed to work is that when you are not armed, it reduces your power output to help the device overheat less. Sometimes it doesn't always work 100%, especially on the Vista. This is an awesome product, but it just seems like sometimes that auto temperature control doesn't shut off with the disarming. If you guys are having issues with the Vista, whether it's on the DigiWoop or just your own personal use of the Vista, just go turn auto temp control off and just be sure to not leave it plugged in for too long. Otherwise you will overheat the unit. It'll burn your finger. It will do that. It also, it will not, you cannot record unless it's armed. Cause it's in low power mode. When it's not armed, it's in low power mode. Yeah, that's a weird little quirk. That's definitely a good deal. Okay, well, on the most recent firmware as of today, these are just some quirks that we've noticed when flying the Vista as opposed to the full size air unit directly from DJI. Turn off the auto temperature control and be aware that you might not be able to start recording until the drone is already armed. Vanny, what did you think of freestyling with the DigiWoop?  I just felt like if I had more power, I could pull off some more tricks. I think I need to do something else with the quad. Like I need to do more with it. Well, I think your style leans more towards like cinematic stuff. So I want to know if you can get some micro cinematic footage. Okay. And what better thing than good old drifting. Oh shoot. This is actually a lot of fun. I'm getting more used to like the throttle and the drone itself. It feels like what it would feel like if you scaled it down. So Ron's original spec for the DigiWoop used 1106 6000 KV motors. For the rotor ride version, we are using our dad motors, which is an 1104 7500 KV. Yes. So you lose a little, maybe low end torque because that motor is smaller. But you're going to gain more high RPM, which for us, I think we like cause we can kind of maintain a higher speed. It's going to give you more agility. Cause the motor's going to be a lot more responsive. The other thing I liked about the 1104 is it lowered the props to be more even with the ducts. All your other line of plots typically have a higher KV motor. So it makes sense for the rotor ride version to have that. And it does give you all the responsiveness of the tire profiling that you typically do anyway. So that's fantastic, right? But either way with the OAS spec or the rotor ride spec, you can fly with a three cell battery as we've been doing out here, which gives you more power when we're in a little bit of open area. But if you're in a, maybe a tighter area or even indoors, like you originally envisioned this for, you can step this down to 2S, right? Yes, you can step it down to 2S and Tyler over at their rotor ride, Tyler Crane, he did a fantastic job with the dump. I'm not going to take credit for the tune cause he did it. But what it is, is when you plug in a 2S battery, it automatically recognizes the 2S battery and changes your rates, changes your filter settings. And then when you go outside and plug in a 3S battery, it changes your rates, changes your filter settings. So there's nothing you have to do. Whatever battery you plug in, the droid knows what you're doing. It'll change it so that the tune is optimized for that lower battery. And I think we got to find a little indoor area, plug in a 2S and see how does it stack up when we're trying to fly even tighter areas. This is Kade, this is the rotor ride intern. Am I looking in the right spot? Hello. No, Kade, have you ever been flown a drone before? Wow. You know, we'll start you on the 2S, see if you can handle it. But I'd like more power for sure. If I were to buy this swoop, I'd probably go for the 3S. But I definitely think the 2S is doable. Well, you don't have to change anything. You just use either battery. That's true. So what's nice about the 2S is that lower power, lower responsiveness, I think makes it a lot more controllable. Yeah. I mean, you were flying through a lot of these tight gaps. It was definitely lacking the power. So let's see, let's step you up. Let's step you up to 12 volts and see what you can do with that. Oh, big boy, 12 volts. Feel like the 3S experience is, in my opinion, more fun. But that's also because I have more experience despite what this guy says. For someone who is either just getting into the hobby or doesn't have as much space as this wonderful warehouse right here with all the gaps that you could possibly want, it might be better just to bring it down to 2S. I was noticing with 2S, I was kind of right here on the throttle, which there's not a lot of, you don't have a lot of power there. But when you have a smaller environment, you don't need the power. But when you have a bigger-ish environment like this, I was probably around like 50%. And when I needed the power, as you saw with the dive gate and everything, I could just really go wild with it without any trouble. The battery is being so cheap because these small batteries don't cost a lot of money. So the nice thing is you can just get the same drone and buy a couple of batteries at both sides. And then, depending on what environment, just fly the correct battery. Personally, I think I would always just fly 3S. I think I'm with you that I would rather just get used to the more power and just learn to control myself and still be able to fly the smaller gaps. But if I was just starting out, it would probably calm things down a little bit. I'm gonna raise the camera til it's up just a little bit. I'm gonna try and just create a little bit of a race track in here and see what I can do with this quad. What are you glassing? Yeah. Oh, yeah, we got a little bit of a cable-broken light there. Probably a live circuit. All things aside, though, I could get very addicted to this because now it's got to feel like a bigger five-inch quad. Like, and then, the size of these elements I'm flying through, I'm flying around, I'm like, oh, this is like really fun because I can see everything and I saw the lights. I just, the timing was not there. But, like, you know, go up through the dive gate and whip back around in this speed and hear the sound and the feel of it. Like, it's really fun to fly. It's, I was like, okay, I'm gonna come up with a track. I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna get some footage for the episode.  Like, this is like, now I'm, like, hyped about racing. Like, this is sick.


This is Dave Vellante with Jeff Kelley. We're live at the Splunk.conf conference. We're here last year with theCUBE. theCUBE goes out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. theCUBE is a live mobile studio. We did 27 events last year. We did about 35 this year and continue to grow. Thank you everybody for the support, the tweets, great audience. Really appreciate you guys watching. Dennis Callahan is here. He's a senior analyst at the 451. He focuses on infrastructure. Obviously has an interest in Splunk. Dennis, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks, it's Dave. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. So what do you think of the Splunk conference? You know, let's start there. Well, getting a lot of good feedback from the end users that I've been talking to. People love Splunk 6. They're really excited about being able to extend more capabilities of Splunk to more users within their organization. Maybe not as much excitement around Splunk Cloud from what I've been told. I think people see it as more, or something that could help Splunk win new customers. But in this iteration, maybe not as useful just yet for the existing customers who've already built pretty extensive infrastructure on Splunk. Yeah, so that's a case, if I understand it correctly. You're talking to existing customers who have decided to go on-premise and you're throwing yet another cloud offering at them and they've decided not to go cloud, so is it your sense that it's more just reticence for the cloud or is it Splunk's cloud is lacking functional capabilities? What's your take on that? Or combination? The feedback I'm getting is, I think it is a little bit of both, but the feedback I'm getting is that in this iteration it's not quite ready for you to actually extend your internal deployment of Splunk into the cloud in a real way just yet. I mean, I think there's going to be some more feature sets coming that will make it easier for people to do that. And how about Hunk? What kind of feedback are you hearing on that? I'm not hearing a whole lot about that. I mean, I'm not really a Hadoop guy in honesty, so I'm not really asking that question just yet. Okay, so there's nothing wrong with Hadoop. Well, now the other thing I've heard from customers is I've learned a lot, of course, people come to conferences like this to learn a lot, and the second thing I've heard is it allows me, it makes me realize that I can use Splunk in a lot more, get a lot more out of it than I am currently. Are you seeing that in the customer base and what would you recommend customers that are trying to take more advantage out of Splunk? Well, I mean, it's a powerful technology. It's been a powerful technology since it first came on the market, which was eight years ago, I think, which is still not that long in time when you stop thinking about it, but what it's gotten better at with every iteration is easier to use, easier to understand, easier to create reports, easier to create queries and get information out of all the reams of data you have in your organization. So I think it's going to require some education for customers, but I do think the barrier of entry is now a lot lower for end users across the organization than it has been on previous releases. Now, your wheelhouse is the infrastructure business. The structure management. So, yeah, infrastructure management. So who are the companies that you're tracking? Let's unpack your space a little bit. So how would you describe that space and who are some of the companies that you see as leaders and thought leaders in that marketplace? Well, I mean, we cover every one of four or five one, but we do love the startups we always had since we were launched back in 2000. And so, you know, Splunk, they were a startup when we first talked to them. They've made it a successful IPO. They're doing great. So they're one of the all-stars. ServiceNow is another company that's very similar, similar trajectory, I would say, and you know, they're in the IT service management space and you know, they're doing a great job there. Companies I'm watching beyond that, AppDynamics, which is out here in our partner pavilion. They're doing very well. New Relic and other company application performance management. ExtraHop, they're here today as well.  Other companies beyond that, AppTO is a company we're watching very closely. They're kind of like in between IT service management, IT application management, they're focusing more on a financial and business management of IT. Okay, and then these guys are all competing with the whales, right?  IBM, yeah, the big four. CompUware, they're here today. They've got, they're a pretty big company. EMC, you know, still mostly storage oriented, but they're somewhat in the performance management space. VMware is a more credible performance management vendor right now, although still probably more for VMware-centric environments. So it feels like you've got this, I've been saying all day, all week here, this sort of renaissance of startup activity. And a lot of the traditional guys, some of the ones you mentioned, VMware's probably doing okay, but a lot of the traditional businesses are declining. You're seeing some real pain in the traditional, let's say, let's take IT service management as an example. You see, you see service now growing like a weed. And he, a lot of it, they're taking share away from a lot of the established vendors. Well, EMC got acquired, taken private because shareholders were not satisfied with the performance of the company. And why weren't they satisfied with the performance of the company? They are facing a lot more credible, competition from the startup space like ServiceNow, even to a certain extent like Splunk, even though they're not a direct competitor. Yeah, now, were you at the ServiceNow Knowledge 13? I was, yes. So, I was there too, we were there with theCUBE. So compare that customer base with this customer base, just in terms of sort of the vibe, enthusiasm, sort of the action that was going on at the event. Well, this conference has gone better, I think logistically than that conference did. So, you know, that could have prejudice some people's views, but they're very similar customer bases actually. They're very enthusiastic about the companies. They want to get their hands on whatever Splunk or ServiceNow is developing. They want to get more users, they want to find more uses for the technology. They want to get more users in their organizations involved with the technology. If you look at ServiceNow, I mean, they want to be more than just a hosted help desk. They want to be your IT system of record.  Splunk is trying to get vendors to build on their platform and build extensions to what they're doing, which they've done effectively in the most places I cover, APM, Application Performance Manager. So Dennis, you mentioned, we talked a little bit about cloud a moment ago. I'm curious, what's your take on the importance of Splunk having a real credible cloud presence in the long term? I mean, certainly this is their first iteration of the product. As you mentioned, there'll be a lot more developments. But how critical is having a legitimate, fully functioning cloud component to their portfolio to the long term success, you think, of Splunk? I think it's very critical. I mean, we're seeing a lot of traction around the cloud for log management. If you look at companies like Sumo Logic, they've doubled their customer account the last six months. If you look at Logly, just got a fresh $10 million of funding. Log entries in Ireland, they just got a fresh $10 million of funding. So the VCs obviously see the opportunity here. And the VCs do their homework. Of course, they're talking to people like us, but they're pouring money into this space. They see a lot of opportunity. Splunk has done phenomenally well in the years that they've been in business. But there is still a lot of opportunity out there that Splunk isn't yet getting. I think Splunk Cloud is going to help them to get more of that opportunity that they are missing. Because there's still a lot out there. I mean, VMware entered this space a few months ago and I think they determined that 75% of their customer base had yet to deploy log management, which I was struck by. But if that is the case, there is still a lot of opportunity out there for Splunk and the other vendors. Absolutely. So from again, back to the cloud, is it essentially, is the opportunity going to be among companies that want to deploy strictly in the cloud or what role does kind of hybrid deployments, which I think we're going to see a lot more of, especially in the space that I covered big data, I think as that expands and the whole industrial internet concept, kind of as that emerges, clouds are going to play an important role in that, as you're trying to connect whole industries really. So is that part of the play here where Splunk needs to be able to operate in hybrid environments?  And I think if you look at Splunk through their history, still relatively short history as a company, they've been, they've done an excellent job at giving their customers what they want, responding to customer needs.  We hear it all the time from the end users we talk to. You know, I don't want to deal with the HPs, the BNCs. They don't get where I am. They don't, you know, they don't respond as fast to feature requests and updates to software as a start-up would. You know, I have the start-ups here and I think Splunk's done a great job of doing that. So I think they're going to have to, they're going to have to continue to do what they've done well to this point, which is, you know, keep your ear to the glass, right? And listen to what the customer feedback is on Splunk Cloud and see where they can take it so that it is more, you know, it's already, I think, a pretty credible offering for new customers that are new to Splunk, but I think what they are going to need to do is make it a more credible, suitable offering for people who already have a pretty large deployment in-house on Splunk. So I mean, that to me would strike me as one of the challenges Splunk faces as they grow is keeping that focus on the customer. Obviously, that's a challenge when you've got investors, you know, pressure each quarter to deliver numbers. What are some of the other, do you think, key, biggest risks for Splunk going forward in terms of keeping up this momentum, which is really just staggering? I think they're going to be, I think as competition develops, they're going to be under more and more cost pressure. If, when you're talking to Splunk customers and you say, all right, they're not perfect, you got, there's got to be something you don't like about this company. You know, tell us, give us, what are some of the negatives? Cost is almost always the first thing they say. So I think that's going to be something they're going to have to watch, especially as the competition increases in this space and the competition gets more credible in this space. I mean, there's a lot of people with log management offerings out there. None really that I'm aware of have the capabilities of Splunk. None of the legacy log management products, right? You know, so I'm thinking like ArcSight, which is part of HP now, and LogLogic, which is part of Tipco now. I mean, I think Splunk, you know, won that debate already, but it's a start-up you got to watch for. Which I mentioned before, the SumoLogics, LogEntries, LogMatrix, you know, be wary of all these companies that have log in their name. So these guys, so the start-ups generally in Splunk specifically, you would agree have best of breed in this category, right? Is that fair to say? I would consider Splunk best of breed. Yeah, okay, so let's say, let's take Splunk specifically then as best of breed.  Best of breed or fully integrated suite. And you've got this sort of oligopoly of large whales sort of, you know, running the chess table and they seem to just absorb all the innovation and then, you know, wrap it into their cycles. Do you feel like in this space that there's an opportunity for a Splunk, as an example, to break out public company now? Can they become a large, you know, they're certainly disrupting, but they're still relatively small compared to some of the large whales. Is there enough room in the marketplace for a company like a Splunk to break out and thrive as an independent and maintain independent over the long term, over, let's say, a 10-year period or more?  A broader IT management play. Yeah, I mean, they've made an acquisition, bug sense a few weeks ago. You know, we cover tech M&A pretty closely and we think there's going to be more acquisitions from Splunk in the future. I think they're going to be very strategic about that. And, you know, again, as they grow, as they absorb new technologies, new talent, you know, they're going to have the same challenges that any other company faces in that position. I mean, ServiceNow, they just made their first acquisition a few months ago. They're facing that challenge too.  They've got to be a broader IT performance management player, you know, getting more out of your existing IT assets. I mean, that's the kind of things that you're going to be doing with Splunk.  You do a really good job. When we launched, we did, yeah. Right? And still, you guys still do a really good job of following startups. Of course, you expand. You got to follow Wales, right? Exactly. There's just so much market being driven by those guys, but it's hard to find an example of a startup that's actually, you know, sustained. I guess Salesforce is a good example, right? I would say so, yeah. They're one. I mean, VMware itself really isn't independent, right? I mean, they're 80% owned by EMC, so it's very difficult for these startups, but we're entering a period of disruption. That's why I sort of was poking at that. We're kind of out of time, but Dennis, I'll leave you with the last word. Things that you want the audience to remember, any research that you're working on or any thoughts about the Splunk conference? Final word. Research, they're working well. I mean, we did bet the company on startups, so to speak, when we started, but lately, we're more betting the company on cloud, and we're seeing so many technologies move to the cloud. I mean, perfect example of the Splunk cloud announcement. I mean, in my space, I mean, ITSM, APM, IT performance management, that's all moving to the cloud. We had a company, Casia, bought Xerion. First thing they did with the technology, network management technology, they put it on the cloud, SAS. Security, you've seen a lot of security move into the cloud. Yeah, even if your enterprise applications aren't quite there, even if your internal infrastructure isn't quite there yet, still the management applications are going there, and that's where we see the space going. That's where we're focusing our research. Awesome, Dennis Callahan, 451 Research. You guys do a great job. I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE. Please send my best of friends down at 451. Thanks for having me. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be right back with our next guest, Jeff Kelly and I, John Furrier and I. This is theCUBE. We're here live at splunk.conf13.