Okay so hello everyone I'm Luca and as Joe mentioned I'm working in Open Robotics and I'm mostly I'm as I'm gonna present the OpenVision Computer 3 which is which is an open source ROS based smart camera that we've been developing for the past two years.  Okay so that's me I'm Luca and I'm doing mostly like embedded systems development at Open Robotics in Singapore and then I have a bunch of years experience you know embedded systems design and let the last three years I've been actually working on drones in the NUS like TLAB laboratory and also a bit of intro on the company you know most most of you I guess if you are here you know Open Robotics so we are the company behind the development of ROS and this is this is maybe what you're not so familiar with there is you know our motto that we we create okay open software and harder platform for robotics but like we as a motto and like as a like as a reason behind our work we always have like openness so we try to make openness the the founding value of most of our work and okay you know just a bit okay of publicity so like we we are we have been founded you know from our co-founders are originally from California but they we have a big office in Singapore you know we are kind of spread all over the world. Anyway so to the back of the presentation so this is the outline of the presentation so I will start by giving a bit of background on the motivation why we developed OVC and then I just a tiny bit of history because the project has been going on for over two years to see what brought us to where we are today and then just give some some intro like the architecture the capabilities and how you can actually build your own and customize your own for your own application and then I will pass it to Brandon like to show some cool demos that he has been working on with the OVC. So first of all why OVC if I guess you know most of you people will be working in robotics and there is usually always a need for like smart cameras in robotics or you know like the Z or the real sense so what what so like the very basic feature that most of these cameras would offer is for example if you want to do navigation in a complex environment you will need a stereo in order to estimate depth of object and like to rule to the segmentation of objects so there is a solution for smart cameras but first of all none of the solutions existing are open source so you cannot really be customized for your own application and also some of them like the Z for example require a lot of processing from the require a lot of processing power from the host PC because they cannot do any processing themselves which is not the case for the interior sense because it can do stereo but the being closed source and not customizable point still remains for all these products so we develop the OVC which is fully open source so like all the way from the hardware to the software to the firmware everything is available free of charge on the on the github which includes an FPGA so it means you can you cannot board some of the computation to your FPGA so you don't need to have all the processing on your host computer but even if you don't want to get your hands dirty with FPGA which I don't know if many of your people work with it before but it's quite a lot of pain to get to work correctly even if you don't want to get your hands dirty we offer like the most commonly needed features out of the box which is the commonly the most commonly needed features being I like IMU readings that are synchronized with the images synchronized stereo images and some like simple feature detection like fast corner detection from the FPGA and then okay so let's let's give a brief history so the project started around two years ago you can see the date 2017 with the first OVC and which in which is there and it's also like the picture that was used in the meetup the the first OVC and all the OVC really have been sponsored by the the University of Pennsylvania so that's actually their drone that was used in the DARPA FLA program around two years ago and it includes an NVIDIA TX2 and an Alter FPGA so both the OVC one and the OVC two were tailored for the NVIDIA TX2 which I will just show actually now the the OVC two which is kind of like a similar design but it was designed to be modular so it can be more customizable in a sense so it's now a two a two board a two board set up but again both of those were tailored for the NVIDIA TX2 and as many of you probably know recently NVIDIA NVIDIA released a new computing platform which is the Xavier which the moment it was released basically made all our work instantly obsolete because you know we made so much work into developing like the the board connectors which are tailored for the Xavier for the TX2 then NVIDIA just released a new one the connector is completely different everything is completely different so it's completely useless which we which is the main issue that we had before that is that we were constrained to one specific compute module and then also extra aspects that like the sensor we were using before were very expensive so it was also not a very affordable vision system so now we it brings us to the OVC three which the OVC three is at the end of the day is literally just a USB device which you know similar to what you know the other the other cameras are so it's its purpose is not to be a fully self-contained you know computer plus camera but it just to be a device that you can you can then just connect through USB to your favorite computational platform of choice we could be a NUC it could be an NVIDIA Xavier it could be whatever whatever is the latest and most awesome computing platform and and then the nice thing about it is that okay so first of all we built as a simple version which features just cheaper sensor cheaper sensors but then we built we include like possibility to expand both in hardware so we allow we included additional connectors so you can add like better quality sensors so you can add additional cameras and in software of course because all the software is fully open source and also a plaza like we're using a computational module which has many pink compatible alternatives but then again the computational module here is not the core of this platform because we expect the people to use it with their own computation module so here you have a picture of the VC we just you know quickly highlighting some of the features so we have two so all the all the sensors are all the images are global shutter and we have two stereo two stereo monochrome sense like to monochrome sensors which can be used for stereo and one RGB sensor which is usually used for object recognition so if you want to do some deeper learning on your on your system and then we have the we have this four by five centimeter computing module who has both ARM processor and FPGA and you know some DDR some storage so basically this this four by five centimeter computing module can like runs a full Ubuntu distribution so it's literally just a small Ubuntu computer which from a power point of view computational power point of view is somewhere in between let's say better than a Raspberry Pi but worse than an Android something along those lines because it's still a quad core processor and then you can add additional features so we included a cheaper IMU because as you guys probably saw from the previous previous slides we used to have like you know this vector nav IMU who is the under of it was like in the order of thousand of dollars so no we just said okay we are gonna we are gonna have a basic version with cheaper sensors and then allow other allow everyone to just expand it by including additional sensors if they want but without forcing them to and then the USB the USB type-c connector which is both for the power and for the data that can be connected to your machine and then if you want additional connectivity of storage you know you can have Ethernet to connect to the internet or you can have SD card if you want to you know if you need more than eight gigabytes of storage which never happened in our case but you never know so as I was mentioning one of the keys like that it can be it can be just expanded out of the box so we added four additional connectors where and each connector can be can be plugged to an additional stereo camera so you could have if you wanted to up to 11 cameras running in parallel which is again you know it's a bit overkill but then we have the you know we have enough bandwidth we have enough processing power to process all this data so you know it could be interesting for future applications and then we also added you know some normal GPIO which for example nowadays we use which we use for example to yeah this is an example of an expansion board that you can design with the GPIO so for example we have some more fancy sensors like that you can see the vector nav or like serial console so basically every kind of peripheral you would need for your specific application so this was for a drone application and they wanted okay a better quality IMU for navigation they also wanted RS 232 to connect to the GPS they wanted connectivity for a lighter so you know this was a very it was a very simple design and it was very easy to get it to work compared to the main board and then okay as I mentioned you know you we also saw all the design now including the last two are open source so this is what the camera expansion board looks like which is literally just two images connected with a cable to the other board and this one is still under development this one we still didn't didn't build it yet this was from the other point of view but then if we look at the software so then the nice thing is that okay because because at the end of the day we are is the OVC is just a computer running Ubuntu you can just like you can use the whole Ubuntu ecosystem and you can run you like you so you can like build your own customer your own applications and you like you don't need to do any any low-level software or anything because you can use the existing libraries and additionally because we have an FPGA you can you can you know port your algorithms to the FPGA so to reduce the computational load on your on your machine and yes so currently we are doing fast corner detection on the FPGA okay now just just a bit of an overview on the architecture if you know anyone was interested in building their own like building it and using it for their own application so the way the way it works is that it's a USB ethernet gadget so it's something similar to when you connect your phone through USB to your computer and then you use it to connect to the internet so the nice thing about it is that it doesn't require any driver or any of any source from your machine so you literally plug it to your computer through USB you run a ROS master on your machine and then the OVC will automatically detect the ROS master running on your machine and you will start publishing all the data which in this case is images imu and features which is a nice to have because you know it's like it's basically fully plug-and-play you just need a Ubuntu and a ROS running and you don't need to install anything else and okay some details on like the hardware which we synchronized because it's very important for visual or the visual inertial odometry applications to have synchronized imu and images so we synchronize them together and we stamp them with the ROS time so again like the because we stamp and with the ROS time the the time itself is already in a format that is easy to integrate with any ROS package that you might be running and then okay as I mentioned you know we also like corner detection because this is again something that was developed with with like with U-Pen previously because they told us you know so we have a whole pipeline that we run on the drones but the most expensive the most expensive task that we that we need to run is the corner detection so can you guys port it to the FPG then we said okay let's do it we did it and now like now we just make it open source as the rest of the stack um so so we also output corner features which can be used for you know your visual odometry pipelines and now okay just the last few uh last part that is about how you can uh build like customize your own and build your own for your own application so again all the design files are available you know they're open source and I believe the license actually a very permissive license which can be used for like it's not gpl so you can use it for commercial applications I believe but I'm only 80 percent sure about that um and then and then you know as as nice to have um we also provide but like we also provide like binary images because I mean as a open source user myself I know that it's it's cool it's always cool to have all the source so it's like you know oh I have all the source I can change it I can modify it but 99% of the times I just want to take the thing and run it without bothering about you know rebuilding everything so we also provide binary image which you can just load on your on your OVC and also we provide a feature to automatically update it over the internet so so you so you don't like as from a user point of view you don't need to worry too much about you know developing or anything if you just want something that works and with the latest features so let's say let's say for example now you wanted to customize it for your own application well as I mentioned let's say the hardware is is open and it's been it's been designed with the with this eda software called keycap which is also open source and all the design all the design files are available in our repository for any source of customization you might want to do and then if you wanted to customize let's say the fpga part or if you wanted to customize the embedded linux again all the all the design files are available free of charge and the the let's say the minor issue here is that the tools themselves they are provided by stylings which is the is the company that designed the fpga and they are not open source but at least the like the version we are using is available free of charge because we are just using simple features a simple simple fpga board so we we don't need to actually pay any license like no one is to pay any license fee to actually customize their designs and finally the software which as I mentioned is uh because we are just running an embedded ubuntu then you can just you know connect to your embedded ubuntu and then like you already run sros so if you want to can run pre-existing ross packages or open cv or like anything that really is in the ubuntu ecosystem you can just run it on the computer and just as a small note here so like um actually what what what we used to do in my previous lab was something like push uh or to the fpga all the processing and just leave to the uh arm processor to the onboard ubuntu the higher level tasks like let's say uh decision making or like navigation so it's actually was it was quite simple to to make a device like not exactly this device but a similar device a fully um a fully like self-contained uh computational module for robotics application which was also cool because it's very low it's very low power it's very light it's very small but now let's go to the interesting part which is just a few simple demos about it and for that i will introduce brandon i'm learning about everything so like this is so this is my cutting yeah computer first how do i keep it okay thanks okay yeah so actually currently i'm running uh ross core on my computer so you can see that the ross core is running here and you can tell that uh the obc is connected because there's a internet interface over here so like if i actually wanted to write i could just uh ssh into the obc if i wanted to so and i mean hurry yeah but like we don't need to mess around with the obc inside so that's fine yeah so first things first i just want to show that like uh we have all the nice images so the left and right cameras are mono cameras so this is the left image this is the right image and then we have rgb feed as well in the middle camera and then like of course you can focus if you want to or not yeah yeah so so there's the image output demo uh for the next one uh we're going to look at some corners and you can see that we're finding a lot of corners so so that's nice uh let me run the corner detector and you can see that uh okay so so what you're actually seeing right okay is the corners that are detected by the fbg and then open cv in for comparison okay so like like the reason why there's actually a lot more corners in open cv is because like the threshold is actually set lower but then here the fbj algorithm has a separate threshold that we're setting and you can see that the corners that are detected are actually quite stable so that's nice okay okay let me kill that first so i can run my other demos okay uh for the next one actually uh i basically use the two cameras to actually fuse the images together to form a disparity point cloud i can actually do a live demo now but you can just look at the youtube video just to make sure that like you know yeah it works but let's actually do it live okay so like uh can i can't really see myself yeah so you can see that like the disparity actually works quite well i mean like you can see that the screen is getting captured and oh yeah yeah right i think having the lights really nicer but never mind this is fine yeah let me let me make it look 3d to you oh whoa yeah okay anyway yeah so if you have 3d point clouds right you can actually do a lot of cool stuff with it so okay let me just kill the yeah if you have 3d point clouds you can obviously do 3d mapping so actually this is the map of the office if it wants to load right but uh why not let's just make a map of this area hopefully with the lights on sorry yeah maybe all of them okay so i'm gonna need to set up some stuff let's give me a sec okay sorry okay so now if i just like selfie stick myself around the room we can slowly construct a map of the entire area so you can also tell that like uh because we have a point cloud in the ready we can actually do a bit of visual autonomy to actually tell whether to actually tell where the camera is actually pointing and where the camera's uh position is at yeah and then of course because this is rose right you can just turn the 3d point cloud that you generate into a navigable 2d map and then you can just like throw robots at it and then have fun you know uh of course you can also save this map and then i don't know maybe forever immortalize this meter in a 3d point cloud form uh yeah yeah okay so like if you want to actually look at the map itself right uh of course uh the further away your your points are from the camera the slightly worse the disparity matching will actually perform because you only have a two ten dollar cameras just like on the obc working and running but uh it's it's quite nice to see it working fairly well from like a single vantage point yeah yeah and then uh other applications that we've actually used it for uh are okay like i did cylinder segmentation for the point cloud to try to test out the object recognition capabilities of the obc so this is me with uh like a random portal and basically i'm leveraging pcl which is the point cloud library with rose to try to detect a cylinder so like uh you can see that it's detecting a cylinder and then basically uh we use that cylinder detection to basically get a robotic arm to just automatically pick up a water bottle yeah so the arm that you actually see there is the Berkeley blue arm which is supposed to be a low-cost research uh compliant arm you can probably ask me about that later so you can see that i have a movie interface interacting with the arm and i'm feeding in the cylinder detection into the arm control pipeline maybe i should speed it up but yeah of course you grab the bottle and that's nice but then like uh in order to make sure that like i'm not cheating right uh the next step actually has me tilting the water bottle and then you can also see that the cylinder is actually detected as a tilted cylinder and then the arm will just automatically move in position appropriately yeah so the reason why the arm is like that is because i just programmed it to just assume the pose that's like five or ten cm above the bottle center of mass and then to where he going for the approach yeah because it was a bit lazy but yeah so yeah it works great yep okay and then we also played around with uh two different algorithms so so actually the sterile disparity algorithms are available in the sterile image prog node that's available in the ross ecosystem users uh has two stereo algorithms that you can actually use mainly because it's built on open cv and this is just a comparison of the better algorithm and the worst algorithm yeah so as you can see over here right there are two algorithms there's the first one which is sterile bm and the second one which is sterile sgbm which stands for semi-global block matching so currently uh i want you to pay attention to this top right hand corner uh rv's window so you can see that the point clouds here are not that well formed but the moment i change over to the second algorithm you can tell that the point clouds are actually a lot more fully formed and i just keep swapping back and forth between them as you can see also that the fidelity of the point cloud is actually quite nice yep and then we go back to sbm it's not so good and then sterile sgbm is quite good so yeah and then of course if you have a point cloud you can actually do visual inertial automotry so i have a pipeline that i'm going to run now that's using the very cheap imu and the sterile camera capabilities to actually get some fairly fairly okay automotry for what it's worth yeah so so so let me just run it first okay so uh this visual automotry pipeline is actually leveraging the rtap map ross node that i was running to do the mapping just now but then uh now there's actually uh both okay okay so so if you actually look at the rv's window right you'll see a red arrow and a yellow arrow the red arrow is the post estimate that's generated by the visual automotry node and the yellow arrow is the is the sensor fusion of the visual automotry post and the imu post okay i didn't really tune the common filter that well yet so you might see some drifting but hopefully it works okay so if i turn it around right you can actually tell that like you can track it somewhat well as long as the visual automotry node has a map to compare against and because i just started it it's not really comparing that well yet but so i turn it okay maybe i've turned it the other way so if i move it up it goes up i move it down it goes down and yeah so pretty pretty pretty good for fairly cheap sensor suite uh you can imagine if you actually use this data with like encoders or better imu's or maybe like some gps you could actually get a fairly good post estimate okay uh when i drop this camera uh because there's no map it's gonna go crazy so okay and then uh i just got this working today but we actually have a slightly better visual automotry pipeline called svo that's actually done by ethc by ethc and i'm going to demo it for you yeah so uh if you want to know more about this particular pipeline you can go check out that particular website but the bad thing about that website is they only provide the binary they don't provide the source code so it's a bit sad yeah okay i'm also going to just show you how i started because it's it's quite annoying to to start it so uh i hope i didn't just kill something oh no okay i'll just i'll just rerun it yeah so the problem is uh because my computer is using ubuntu 18 uh with ross melodic but svo is only supported on kinetik and indigo so the solution is to use docker so i'm just going to start some docker nodes okay and i'm also going to go into my other workspace on my computer to do the visualization so just give me a sec okay so let's start the visualization first so this is the svo visualization and hopefully this works okay so now it's trying to look for features to detect okay they found some features already so that's nice so if i actually move it around you can actually tell that uh it's using both the imu and the visual automotry to generate the final post so i'm just collecting a bunch of features first uh if you want to see the image let me blow up the image first oh damn it oh it crashed let me restart it so you can at least see the feature detection first yeah so actually the way this works is it tries to find features in an image and then from successive images it actually tries to predict the depth to build a point called map and then uh from that you can actually get some form of visual automotry and if the map has been produced fairly well uh you can have a very dynamic environment and it won't actually run so i'm going to start waving my hands around in front of the camera soon after i minimize this image so just give me a sec so this is the point cloud from the features that's being generated you can tell that uh there's a bit of drift but it's fine if i raise my hand in front of the camera the automotry is actually quite stable which is interesting because normally if you have a stereo camera uh this will lead to this completely die yeah and then of course if i just move around you can actually tell that it's tracking fairly well yeah uh the wire is a bit loose uh sorry short so i can't really do much but so so that's nice yeah actually the the post inferencing speed for each frame is about seven milliseconds so this is something that you could actually potentially use yeah you can also like yeah if you swing it around too much then because there's a bit of a motion blur then it just loses the post yeah and actually that's it so uh i'll just pass the mic back to Luca uh yeah okay yeah um yeah okay so this is a bit of yeah okay so in uh we are okay okay oh let's do it hop right yes okay well the the surprise is gone but we are hiring so uh this is you see you can see our wonderful team at our latest wonderful team event where we went to play mini golf a few weeks ago uh so you know like we we have quite a few very cool projects happening in singapore we like the government like like automating the whole healthcare environment so no if you if you guys are into robotics and you want to like change the healthcare environment in singapore you know go and check the website send us a message and let us know oh and i think that is actually all yes um just okay just to to really kind of wrap up the presentation um i would say there is like two sides uh to this presentation so you know the first side was like the the whole hardware you know like there is this camera you can use it for your applications and so on but the second side and maybe maybe even more important that was shown by brandon is uh how the how mature the ross ecosystem is so you know once we get this data into the ross ecosystem uh how like how much open source software there is out there that we can just use to solve common problems such as you know uh object segmentation and the stereo stereo matching and like depth estimation or like mapping visual damage and all this sort of stuff so now if by by using you know sensors that are compatible with the with the ross ecosystem like what i personally believe is that you can really you know you can like speed up the development of your application and you know hopefully like by leveraging like all this open source open source solutions that someone else developed developed for you already instead of you know solving the same problem by yourself anyway yeah so that's all if you have questions me or brandon we will be happy to take them i thank you yes so you mentioned on the version two you switched to the jibber chip set for version three so now that uh jason nano has actually released that chip set as well are you do you have any plans for supporting actually you support the deep learning community as well you know so to support the gpu in but like i i guess you know because the um like again like the difference is that now this is only a device so like as long as you know let's say the jason does the jason nano have just you know a usb port that like you can use so like basically if you have a any machine with a usb 3 port you can you know just plug it and just you know get like get your data output basically so like it doesn't really make any difference whether it's a jason or is it our draw there is a full desktop or a laptop or the chip itself um i wouldn't say so because the nice thing about having an fbj is that we can have like a ton of peripherals that like maybe you wouldn't be able to have with let's say an immediate chip because you cannot reconfigure it so much so for example you know we can have i think right now we have like a lot of like different i2c communication happening in parallel spi serials like me before the cameras we have at least like 10 or 15 different like communications happening in parallel and if you if you went for a chip that you cannot really be reconfigured completely then i don't think you would be able to achieve that you know come all right all right so i will pass the the mic back to i actually talked about service reward and me and my team have been meeting talk mobile robot but uh i mean yeah since since it's relevant now i'm going to destroy it again so yeah this is one year later so actually uh we built this service robot called mobile robot uh based off of uh jose and robot framework yeah so robot stands for modern mobile robot so like it's meant to be top modular so like you can remove the the form and change all the different stuff uh we were leveraging stuff interesting uh human robot interaction principles so uh maybe focusing on the eyes and a bit of a voice so uh you can actually see the robot roaming around the exhibition so you can see the eyes so it's a cute boy and i also thought that looking at software actually makes it a lot more comfortable so like you can charge people with the little bit of robot and people will not really care that much so that's nice you'll just have kids like hanging around a bit and they really like to keep the peace out by the back which is sad but i mean so of course it's running ross uh it's running the ross navigation set uh and yeah i wonder if i sound yeah i can sound okay okay so that's this eye portion uh i just want to share that like the entire stack is actually on the hub with full with full documentation so uh if anyone wants to build their own mobile robot they can actually just build it yeah it is Google mobile robot uh please don't google moomoo because you might get scared with like uh kibbit pasta and scary stuff yeah and then actually for the emotions uh there's a package that you can actually just park and pay for any of the robots so the eyes actually can be controlled and they respond to the mobile system that you can send to control robots with and they bring uh because i can't get the sound working i can't really pay the voice lines but like you want to listen to the voices and then uh no no no i want to and i think i want to share it's uh thanks to those who uh his work has managed to get on the news so actually move on and up on the news so that's next yeah


Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Heather Conley, and I direct our Europe, Eurasia, and Arctic research here at the Center. I could not begin to tell you how important and timely this discussion will be. On the eve of the visit to Washington of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko before he sees President Obama before President Poroshenko addresses a joint session of Congress. And it's hard to believe it's only been 10 days after the NATO summit. A lot of world events have even transpired in those last 10 days. We have an opportunity to focus on not only the outcomes of the NATO summit, but an issue of increasing urgency as we move toward a potentially very cold and very dramatic winter in Europe. We have with us today, and it's our great privilege and pleasure, two stalwarts of the transatlantic community are coming together. And it's always important to highlight in a bipartisan manner to give their critical insights on NATO, on European energy security, and of course, the role of the United States. If I may begin to introduce Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio. Congressman Turner is a chairman of the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, and he also serves as a senior member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But Congressman, my favorite title, as you know, is chairman of the US delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. That's my extra favorite one. Thank you so much, so much, Congressman Turner from Ohio. We're so delighted that you could be with us. And then we have Congressman Bill Keating of Massachusetts. Congressman Keating serves as the ranking member on the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threat Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and also serves on the Asia Pacific Subcommittee. He also serves on the House Committee on Homeland Security and coming from Massachusetts. Congressman, we know you've played a key role in the committee's review of the Boston Marathon bombings, and we thank you for your service there. Congressman Turner and Congressman Keating are going to be in a dynamic dialogue moderated by our senior fellow from the International Security Program here at CSIS, Stephanie Santana-Costero. And after we get the insights from the congressional perspective, we'll take a quick break and then we will turn to an incredible panel that will be moderated by Sarah Ladislaw, our Director of Energy and National Security Program here at CSIS, of three colleagues from Europe that offer incredible perspective. We welcome Ambassador Zygmonteus Pavlonius, the Lithuanian ambassador to the US. As we know, Lithuania has been an incredibly active voice on bringing Ukraine closer to Europe as the EU Assession Agreement was and hoped to be signed at the Vilna Summit under their EU presidency, as well as the Lithuanian focus on diversifying their own energy supplies with liquefied natural gas. We also are very delighted to welcome Ambassador Ilan Solimanov, the Azerbaijani ambassador to the US. Azerbaijan will play a key role in again diversifying Europe's energy supplies through the Southern Corridor. And finally, we welcome Francois Rivasso, the Deputy Chief of Mission to the European Union delegation who will offer us some insights on the diplomatic track between the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine as they try to resolve outstanding issues on gas supplies and also the prospects for Europe's energy union. Again, I wasn't kidding. This is going to be a great conversation and an incredibly important and timely topic. So the most important thing that I can do is get out of your way and let our speakers begin. But before I turn it over to Stephanie, please join me in welcoming Congressman Turner and Congressman Keating. Thank you so much, Heather. As she mentioned, my name is Stephanie Sannikostrom, a senior fellow in the International Security Program here. And I would first like to turn to Congressman Mike Turner for some opening remarks. Mr. Turner. Well, first off, thank you for hosting this and for this opportunity to discuss what really is, I think, one of the most critical threats that we have facing the West. You know, as you look overall to what we're having the issues in the Middle East and ISIS, they certainly are emerging threats, as the President said, direct threats to individual nations. But what we see, I think, overall with what is occurring in energy security, what is occurring in the Ukraine, really requires a coordinated and strong response. As Congress is looking to step out here for the next seven or eight weeks, it's very good that we're coming together to have this discussion. So we sort of laid that placeholder of this is an important topic that needs to be addressed. I appreciate all of you and the tenants today. This is quite a commitment for everyone to come together to discuss these issues. Excellent, sir. Well, thank you. You know, it just seems like a few years ago we were having discussions about what the role of NATO would be. It really shows you how circumstances change things because those circumstances have made the role of NATO front and center. And it's front and center in terms of our cohesiveness with the European Union and with the US in terms of T-TIP agreements and economic issues, in terms of coming together, bonding together on sanctions against Russia and their aggressiveness, and of course on NATO issues as well. So we are really, whether it's an issue of reforming perhaps the contribution the countries make to NATO, which was part of the NATO conference just recently, as well as the energy concerns through Europe and the way Russia is using those things for their own aggressive ends, as well as looking at what we can do to bond even closer together. More than ever, the cohesiveness between Europe and the US is at the forefront of preserving democracy and economic prosperity. And it's an exciting time, a difficult time. Excellent. Well, thank you very much. And thank you again. I'd like to echo Heather's comments. Thank you so much for being here. To kick off discussion, I have a couple of questions for the congressman. And then I will open it for your questions from the audience just to let people know that we are live streaming this event on the web. And so we may get some questions from the web as well. But the first question that I have is in looking at the NATO summit declaration, and of course these things come out several pages long every time we have a summit. And the negotiations over them are always quite lengthy. But what I found remarkable is a section on defense spending. This has been something that the United States secretaries of state, secretaries of defense over the last 10, 20 years have been really talking about, we don't use the phrase burden sharing anymore, but we do talk about defense spending, the ephemeral goal of 2% of GDP. But what I thought about this summit declaration that was remarkable was that there's a section on there about a plan. A plan to get countries to 2%, a commitment at least in the declaration to pursuing that. And if I could ask first, Mr. Turner, why is 2% or why is increased defense spending on the Allied front so important to US officials? Well, it really is when you look at the issue of capabilities. But I think, when you look at the Wales summit, what's extraordinary, and I was talking to Tom Kerrick about this before when we came in, who would have anticipated that we would have gotten to the Wales summit and the topic would have been the defense of Europe? I mean, in the last NATO summit, we're gonna talk about Afghanistan and then we're gonna talk about the transition and this was supposed to be the NATO summit of what's after Afghanistan? Well, after Afghanistan becomes the core principles of the defense of Europe. Vladimir Putin has certainly made it clear that he will use his military force in an aggressive manner, violating treaties, violating sovereign integrity of his neighbors without regard to pressure from either NATO, EU or the United States or the West. So there has to be not only just core capabilities as we'd seen in Afghanistan and other areas to project force, but there also has to be the ability to sustain force to be able to defend Europe and our NATO allies. The 2% is somewhat of an arbitrary number, but it's also a very small number when you think that nations in NATO aren't making that 2%, you have certainly grave concern about their overall capabilities. But as they pointed out in the Wales summit, Russia has increased its defense military spending by 50% while the members of NATO have decreased their overall defense spending by 20%. But as Secretary Resmusin keeps saying about his concept of a smart defense, I think the United States also looks into NATO to the concept of, well, it's not just how much you spend, it's how you spend it. And that concept of capabilities to be able to sustain a force. As General Breedlove keeps saying, as you look to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, they're with the Russian forces that continue to amass on the border there and do snap exercises, there's a real threat. And certainly NATO would be threatened if either Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania became targets from Primersha as they appear to be suggestively might be. Thanks, sir. Earlier this year at the Munich Security Conference, there was discussions on this area, informal ones as well, but much of it was, well, is the US gonna step up and do more? Are they retracting? The real issue is, if we're gonna have a cohesive relationship with NATO countries, we all have to share those expenses. Now, if you look at last year, for example, there's only four countries. There is Greece, Estonia, UK and the United States that hit their 2%. It was good, I think, and a very welcome sign that five countries coming out of Wales pledged to get to that 2%. Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Turkey, I believe. But those are the ones that are gonna move forward. What Mike was saying is important too. It's not only the 2% as a benchmark, it's what that's geared towards. And the other guideline that's there that is worth addressing is the fact that there's a guideline of 20% for major equipment. And how can we do reconnaissance and intelligence and the things we have to do without that major equipment? And if you look back at who's reached that guideline, there's only four countries, UK, US, France and Turkey. So that those two benchmarks are important, not just because they hit a numerical number, but they're gonna show, I think, us bonding together in a common need. And if we are gonna bond, that includes these kind of purchases for defense and the commitment to that defense. I'm glad that both of you talked about capabilities because I think the 2% is just a number. And it really depends on what you're spending it on. And the 20% goal for major equipment to include R&D is an important one. Can you talk a little bit about, just briefly, when you talk to your constituents or when you talk to your colleagues in Congress, when they ask the questions about allies stepping up and European defense, how do you respond to questions from what are the Europeans doing and what kinds of threats are we facing together in the European theater? You know, this has always been a core issue. I think, you know, we're speaking of the bipartisan work as I'm Keating and I was, we looked to putting language in the National Defense Authorization Act that called for looking to the aspiring nations of NATO to be welcomed and also to restate our commitment to NATO. We did so first with a statement of calling on the NATO nations to reach that 2% and for their reinvestment in their military capabilities. The Alliance I think is something that intuitively, Americans understand that it's to our benefit but at the same time, they don't want the bill sent to them and there's really no reason why when you look at Europe and it's economic capabilities, there's really no reason why the bill overall should be shared so disproportionately. And the United States obviously has greater worldwide presence, greater worldwide capabilities but as a partner, even NATO nations and the NATO secretary will openly state that Europe needs to do more and we certainly try to impress that upon them. One of the reactions, frankly, in my district in an area where people aren't really honed in as much is that Russian aggressiveness. Just woke up the people in my district, I'm sure, and represent the Turner's district as well and that really, that focus has made people look back at what's happening in Georgia, what they're doing, the threats they impose through their whole region and I think they're beginning to understand that we have to really have the strongest relationship we can with Europe and how important that is for our defense and it extends and overflows beyond even NATO, hoping that this will create a new focus on the free trade agreement, the TTIP agreement as well and I hope that people can understand it's great a burden for Europe with the sanctions because of Russia's energy leverage that it does have yet this is something we're in together and I do see that something that was not really on the radar for our constituents is now front and center along with the other threats that we have in the mid-east. So I'm glad that you mentioned sort of the influence Russia can have on energy security and we'll get to that in a moment but before we do that, a couple of things that I've heard, we talk about capabilities, we talk about, Mr. Turner, you mentioned membership action plan, Mr. Keating, you just mentioned Georgia. What I found remarkable is that members from both political parties came together and signed a letter to the president earlier this year about NATO enlargement and I know as we talk about the Russian threat and we look to where NATO might enlarge, you two certainly have some opinions on where we should go next in terms of NATO as an alliance, extending membership, extending sort of longer term plans of who might be next in line to join NATO. Can you talk a little bit and this time I'd like to start with Mr. Keating if you don't mind, Mr. Turner and ask Mr. Keating, you mentioned Georgia, Georgia's on our mind. Earlier this year, I co-sponsored a resolution, bipartisan resolution, expressing our feeling for Georgia's inclusion in a MAP program and we understand the dynamics going into Wales where countries did not because of article five commitments, they wanted to take that off the board but I still feel very strongly that we should move in that direction. With Georgia, it's important, the Russian aggressiveness has been occurring over time, it just hasn't been, they didn't want to be provocative, I think, wisely so in raising that issue but now it's there and they're threatened and I think this would be an important step. I was pleased that in the absence of taking up any MAP steps during the Wales conference that they did move forward with defense and security related, security capacity building initiative where they did deal with other areas too, I mean, Jordan, Georgia, Moldova in particular and so that was an expression coming out of the conference I think absent any kind of MAP determinations that they are concerned and so I looked at that as an encouraging aspect. Excellent, Mr. Turner? Well, enlargement I think should be looked at not only just as a security arrangement, security agreements, it should be looked at as really the establishment of democratic institutions and democratic nations and as you look to the NATO enlargement, it is understanding that that process of not just moving to the West but moving to democracy and preserving that is certainly in the interest of all of the nations who are currently in NATO and the aspiring nations. I was encouraged that the Wales statement went a little bit farther than we had expected. The NATO nations, even in this administration were very hesitant to make strong statements about NATO enlargement but for example with respect to Georgia, they restated the commitment from 2008 to Bucharest that Georgia will become a member of NATO. But I'm very concerned about the process not just the environment. We used to look to NATO as sort of the leaning forward organization for helping that transition to democratic institutions. And many people have said, well how can NATO have an open door policy if no one walks through it? Well, I must fear that NATO has become somewhat of a bureaucracy where they have a clipboard and instead of being your partner to help the transition of democracy it's really like litmus tests and check marks as to whether or not you're able to move forward. That doesn't have I think the best interest of NATO because we should be as there's an aspiring nation to their partner because as their democratic institutions are threatened in the transition or not making the transition fast enough I think all of Europe can be destabilized. Yeah, the inclusion has such a deterrent effect. There's a little doubt in my mind that they'd be much more aggressive from Russia into the Baltic states except they are members and they realize that that intrusion has real consequences. So I do think these are important decisions but they're also important for our, the U.S.'s security and defense as well. And that's back to the bipartisan work in the language we put in the National Defense Authorization Act together. It's not just saying what is the current status for each of these nations, it's what is our to do list, not just their to do list. We called on a greater diplomatic push to resolve the name for Macedonia. We called for full membership being offered to Monteregros, Bosnia Herzegovina, the issue of the constitutional crisis there or the gridlock with a full diplomatic push could probably be resolved or at least steps towards its resolution. With each of these nations, we should not just be looking at what is their to do list, we should look at what are to do list. I think that's a very good point and just for the folks in the audience who may not be aware that the House of Representatives did pass the National Defense Authorization Act, their version of it. The Senate is still considering theirs and conference hopefully will happen sometime soon, but just as a reminder that the National Defense Authorization Act is not yet in conference. I did promise that we would talk a little bit about energy security and I will do that right before we turn it over to you all for your questions. Speaking of a letter that was co-signed by you too in terms of native expansion, you also have looked a little bit together at energy security and I would like to raise that at this point in terms of the overarching theme of this event today. Can we talk a little bit about Europe, energy security, a little bit about diversification? Both of you have talked about the importance of, if not counteracting Russian influence, at least acknowledging that Russia is exerting influence within Europe. This extends also to energy security and we've seen that. That is one of several pressure points that Russia can lean on in terms of Europe. I noticed I'll go back to the NATO summit declaration which is, we're now talking about cyber attacks and treating them as article five. As we start to think about more than just territorial integrity in terms of article five, we're thinking about cyber attacks, thinking about additional pressure points. Can we talk a little bit about energy security and why it's so important to focus on that now? I know Mr. Turner, in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I don't know if it's a declaration or a communique, I always get the terminologies mixed up, but in the latest statement from the Parliamentary Assembly, you in particular were interested in having energy security language. Can you talk a little bit about why that's an important area? When we look at all levels of partnership between NATO members and of course the EU and the US, one area that we're not coordinated and we have no plan that is certainly where we have shared interests and that goes right to the heart of security is energy security. And all we have to do is look at Russia's behavior to know that the two are linked because whenever there is either a military issue or a geopolitical issue that Russia wants to assert, they will assert their leverage with gas prom and with supplies. So our coordinated response is necessary as a result of of course their unreliability and their willing to use energy as a weapon. We have an ability to make a difference. We've seen as the United States has become a greater energy producer that the price worldwide has fallen, giving greater leverage because we're not importing as much. If we go to actually the other side and turn the spicket on and export, we can have even a greater impact. But I think a coordinated plan and certainly US presence and leadership and as we look to becoming an energy producer, it's certainly going to be within our capability to impact the situation. Well it's clear just looking at Ukraine, even trying to disrupt any reverse flow from Poland coming back, what Russia has in mind. They want to be disruptive and they want a cold winter and they want to use that for their own strategic military ends. Now Representative Turner is correct in the long term, US will have an energy surplus. That would be something that adds to our economic strength and influence. The short term, we have more challenges and that's the difficulty right now. We have a situation where even conveying that energy to the ports aren't ready for that. We're not in place but that's an infrastructure that should be viewed in the short term as a priority to get that in place if necessary. We also look at some of the strategic issues, the straits of Bosphorus and Turkey. How, let's get that settled so that we can have that kind of entry way in place if necessary. I also have to think, I believe, diversification is important and that's why some of the NATO programs, science for peace and security are important and older arm of NATO but something that might have new relevance now in terms of that. And we're seeing in our own country in the US what the military has done with our own military bases. They're almost at a point of, at least in one of my district in particular, 100% renewable. And so we should look at that diversification. We should look long-term at our natural gas surplus and we should make sure we're in readiness for everything we can in that regard because they're using it as an arm and they're using it as a force. And also, again, the overall cohesiveness with Europe. We should be looking beyond NATO also into TTIP and other areas where we can have a greater and stronger cohesive relationship. Well, thank you gentlemen. You've answered all of my questions so far. I'm sure I'll come up with some more as we go but I would like to open it up to the audience for questions. We've used up about half of our time with the gentlemen so I'd like to turn to the audience. Just as a reminder, if you could raise your hand, I'll call on you, a microphone will be brought to you. You could introduce yourself and give your affiliation and please ask a question. I would very much like to get to as many people as possible and that's only possible if there is a question mark at the end of a sentence. So if I could, the gentleman with the blue shirt sleeve right there, thank you, yes, please. Yes, Britt Mitchell, Renaissance Institute, Baltimore. I've been following this thing for five or six years beginning with Georgia and I'm still stymied and maybe you can help me with the answer to this question. Evidently ever since like 832 when the Russians arrived from Sweden, this line along the Sniper River has been a battlefield. Europe has actually conquered Russia more than Russia's ever conquered Europe. My question is when I look at all these countries lined up, the only one that doesn't seem to belong is us and I don't, are we destabilizing effect more than allowing this thing to run out on its own? That's basically the question. What are we doing there? I think history pretty much shows that we stand in between tyranny and freedom and I think we continue to play that role and we always have and we do now. Russia's not looking at liberating Ukraine. They're looking at dominating and taking away free choice and sovereignty. After having agreed by treaty, not to do so. So the, not only is our influence needed and important but it certainly I think is a leadership role in that it allows people to have the confidence to stand up when nations feel weak, they feel like they have less choices and standing together and standing with the United States gives them that ability to stand up for freedom. I think that people did doubt the U.S. commitment perhaps during the times I mentioned that the outset when we were looking for a mission again, a new mission for NATO, that's not the case anymore and you know what's interesting to mention back here at home and I think probably representative Ternis noticed the same thing. This aggressiveness by the Russians and this focus on our Europe allies has really I think lifted up the diaspora back home in our districts across the country. People coming from these countries that have families still there that have tradition with those countries, their voices are speaking up louder at home in our districts and I think that's an encouraging sign as well. I think obviously there's a deterrent aspect of having an alliance because we talked about capabilities earlier and it's always very important to have in a security alliance, put your money where your mouth is, right? We would like to see additional capabilities but there is a deterrent aspect of having an alliance and having U.S. and Canada, non-European nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization I think is sends a signal to Russia in terms of whether or not they can take action and whether it's advisable for them to do so. Right, the talk coming out of Wales is how the mobilization can be accelerated to a couple of days if necessary where any kind of military force is needed as well as I think the commitment and the pledges that came forward to step up the plate. Those are all signs of us working together and taking their threats seriously. And then just one thing to this. I think one other thing that's been very important in this whole dialogue is to understand that we have pursued a false narrative with respect to Russia. General Breedlove just recently said it. He said, you know, they are not our partner. NATO even at one point made the statement that it has no adversaries. Well, clearly, an adversary is someone who defines themselves as such and Russia has now defined itself clearly as an adversary. And the signs and signals that have been coming were ignored where they would violate territorial waters, airspace, the military buildup, all of the signs were excused. And even now, and I was very disappointed that the president would not formally declare that Russian tanks crossing the border into Ukraine is an invasion. Well, of course it's an invasion. They're not on a tourist visa. They are absolutely there on a military action violating the territorial integrity of the Ukraine. I think as we look through what our responsibilities are, part of it is to accurately state and see what's happening so our policies can reflect a response to that. Fair enough. Because they're coming in without any emblems at all. It doesn't really fool anyone. I think they're just trying to leverage that. They have their old tactic that goes back maybe to the Second World War, where they'll come in and try and disrupt things civilly, but it's actually military action. And we'll call it as it is. It gives them the opportunity, I think, to have deniability. But clearly, I think everyone is aware of what's going on and that remains a threat. The gentleman in the back, please. Yes, hi. I'm Mark Taftheres, the Podesta Group. Could you talk a little about Azerbaijan's role in providing energy security to Europe through the planned Southern Gas Corridor? Well, that's gonna be very important. The, as President Keating was talking about diversification, source diversification is really important. That's a major undertaking. The United States, of course, has been very supportive of that process. And again, as this gets completed, it is going to give that leverage for Europe to look at, again, those reverse flows issues, how are they gonna be providing gas to each other and through Europe, but also ways in which they can lessen the overall influence, both in price and supply for Russia. Yeah, and that'll have an economic impact as well because we're looking at this many times as our reliance on Russia or Europe's reliance on Russia, rather, for energy. Well, they're a tremendous market, too. And as these other alternatives come into play, I think, hopefully, the Russian people will understand this is a loser's game for their economy as well, so that as we get alternatives, I think they're gonna be more pressured economically. And we have to also be concerned with, as we see Russia's new aggressiveness and what they're doing with Ukraine, what has happened with Estonia, with additional threats, we need to make certain that Russia is deterred or we might be in a situation where moves like Azerbaijan become somewhat irrelevant as Russia looks to incorporate portions of that whole area. Yeah, it was interesting as Anders Rasmussen was looking at his time as secretary, that he hearkened back to the time that when he first was there, they were talking about building a relationship with Russia and how things have changed, just to show how quickly things are. Indeed. If I could make it maximally impossible for our staff here, if I could call the gentleman here in the front row. Thanks. Thank you. Archul Gagashita, Ambassador of Georgia. First, very shortly, I just would like to state that Georgia owes freedom and independence to the friendship and partnership that we've been enjoying with the United States over the two decades. And I'm very much thankful to our two friends, Congressman Keating and Turner for being so much supporters for Georgia and everyone in this town who supports our cause. And no less importantly, the developments in and around Ukraine, which is very much worrisome, including for us and probably we are one of the most vulnerable to these developments in the region. My question would be the following, that this morning I learned that on the Senate side, there is a bipartisan effort and then the bill was introduced on the title of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which speaks about increased support to Ukraine in many terms, including military and other terms. And among others, in it's section seven, it speaks, it says that Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are designated as a major non-NATO-LI country for the United States, which of course will resonate back to Georgia and Moldova and Ukraine, I expect so. And my question would be whether or not on the house side, you would consider the same bill to be prepared in the past. Thank you. If I could turn to Mr. Keating first as the European subcommittee. Yes, I think that our days are running out in a session and we have many challenges. So there's a logistical side of that, but I think it's important that that issue was surfaced by the time we left. And it's something I think that will cause discussion and I think we'll be able to deal with that issue. Question is, within what timeframe? But the fact that that came forward, I think is a strong message. And I think it will be followed up in discussion in the House. Question is, when will that be? There were a number of bills introduced in the House with respect to Ukraine. I introduced one calling for major military assistance for Ukraine, including strategic advice, intelligent sharing, military equipment. Unfortunately, there's not been, the administration's been slow to allow coordinated effort for even Ukraine to understand or get the military strategic advice that might enhance their success from us. But I enjoyed the concept of your statement of designating nations as significant allies, even absent NATO membership. And certainly I think that's something we could look at, perhaps incorporating in some of the bills that are currently moving. The designation, as many of you may know, of being a major non-NATO ally has far-reaching ramifications and it's something to consider very carefully moving forward. Next question, if I could call on that gentleman. Yes, please. Oh. Okay. It will get to you in a moment, sir. You want to, the tyranny of the podium, sorry. I don't have it back there. Thank you very much, Chairwoman. My name is Ye Jiang. I'm a research fellow in Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. At the moment, I'm a visiting fellow here in this school, the Institute of CSIS. My question is that, under the new situation now, it seems that the old dreams that expand the West several years ago here in the United States, you think that, you thought that there would be a expand West that Russian can be in, but now the dream is over. So, do you think that at this moment, the United States will change the pivotal strategy to the Pacific and then revival to the Atlantic Ocean? Thank you very much. And whether you will suggest the administration to change their mind, to repeat it again. Thank you very much. Before we ask the gentleman to my left to answer that question, we're not allowed to use the word pivot anymore. It is a strategic rebalance, right? So, I guess the question is that the executive branch and the administration announced a rebalancing towards Asia back in 2012. Recent events with Russia has that, will that have implications for that rebalance or what amount of attention will we pay to the European theater? Well, I think that when Secretary Kerry became Secretary of State, he went to Europe and I think that was a very important signal because I just never viewed the alliance with Europe as something that we were moving away from in the first place. And indeed, when you look at the fact that free trade agreement, the TTIP agreement, over half the world's GDP could come from that alliance. There was always that. I don't view it with a questioner. I don't view it as a situation where the United States shifted back. I prefer to view it even though issues weren't in the headlines that our interest was always there. And this is just, you know, reinforces that. The whole pivot or rebalance, I mean, isn't that one of those great foreign policy faux pas in that it's the type of statement that concerns both sides? No one, whether you're being pivoted from or to, or rebalanced from or to, are happy with the description. The reality is that it's really a misplaced type of focus. It gives the understanding that perhaps there's a limitation on our focus and that we can neglect one area for the other. There should not be any scales of attention. All of these areas bear our attention, and they certainly, if you look at the hotspots that are there, our interests that are there, the, I think, a redoubling of our efforts perhaps in all areas should be more of our focus than an issue of looking at competing interests. Right. What I'm going to do is I'm going to ask for two questions at a time since we are running short on time. And if we can go to this gentleman up here. We've got two fingers up. And then we will ask for that two-finger gentleman in the center aisle. Thank you very much. My name is Stefan Grohby. I'm with Euronews European Television. Tomorrow is the referendum in Scotland. Do you see this as a potential threat to the alliance in terms of, the alliance can be weakened if suddenly we have to focus on internal things. There's the tried-and-issue in Great Britain. But it's also the possible impact that this can trigger on countries like Belgium, Spain, et cetera. So what's your take on this? Thank you. Before we answer that question, this gentleman in the middle with the green tie. Good morning. Rob Tim from National Defense University. I would just like to ask the gentleman in light of President Poroshenko's visit to Canada and the United States this week, what would you offer as the one or two most important areas in which the international community in general or the United States in particular could be assisting the new Ukrainian government that's not currently being done? So first on Scotland, Mr. Kitty. I think that, and I hope that that doesn't occur myself. And I think having the site of the conference, the NATO conference in Wales to show the economic impact of that. So my hope is that that won't occur if it does. I think it's something that commentators will overstate. There'll be a great deal of people that have opinions. But will it change things significantly? No, not in terms of our alliances. But I hope and trust it doesn't occur. What failure of communication this will be if this does occur? Because I think that vote will be taken under an understanding that their status would not change within NATO, that their status would not change within the EU. And the ramifications both from a military standpoint and from an economic standpoint are extreme. When you think you're getting something new, but you get to keep what you have, it's less, it's more difficult to dissuade you from taking that step. But I think they don't realize the real losses that will occur. And certainly it would be a loss, I think to the alliance and certainly to the West, the amount of uncertainty that would fall upon both the EU, NATO, and certainly the UK will be just staggering. And the economic loss as well. And with respect to the upcoming visit. It's interesting, the president has come forward and asked in this CR for Congress to approve training and equipping Syrian rebels while stating that he has full military authority, he believes to do what he's going to set out for our military in Syria and Iraq. He's likely to receive support and have the support of the American public for taking that action. What's interesting is we don't get to vote on the reverse of those decision-making. This president has made a decision not to actively provide support to the Ukraine that I believe Congress would vote to provide. I believe the House and the Senate would absolutely vote to support military assistance to the Ukraine at a level that's much higher than this president is doing. And I think that's part of the symbolism of the visit that we're having is that it's a statement by Congress that we are support, that we do have strong support for the Ukraine and for involvement with the Ukraine. Watching this unfold, being just on the sidelines without trying to impact the outcome or at least make it more difficult for Russia to achieve its goals, I think is a mistake. And I think it's more than a symbol too. I think it's going to be an incremental move. But I do think this, and it's my own belief, that the greatest pressure that could be born that we can bring to bear is economic pressure. And that's where the cohesiveness with our European allies is so important. We have to, I think Ukraine has done a remarkable job with their army and the way they've assembled that and the courage that they came forward with. But I think our primary influence will be economic first. But that doesn't preclude other alternatives. And I think his visit here is important. And I think it's a very strong signal. His visit here and the way he'll be welcomed here, that we're not closing any options off as to how we deal with things. But I hope it's also a great signal to our allies in Europe that we need to come together on these economic sanctions because they'll bear the greatest fruit. What I think is interesting is that just last week we had the 13th anniversary of September 11th and in dealing with a terrorist threat over the last 13 years, it's been one sort of mindset. This is a very different mindset. This is a more traditional state-based mindset that we have in terms of how do we work with Ukraine to counter Russian influence and invasion scenario. It's interesting that we're going back to sort of that state mindset, which I think is necessary in this case, obviously, but we're learning now in the United States government how to balance the two, how to deal with asymmetric threats as well as more traditional state-on-state threats. And I think it's interesting, Mr. Turner, you talked about redoubling efforts around the world. I think that's something to focus on when we think about how we budget for, this is very unsexy, I guess, when you talk about budgets, but it's really, again, putting your money where your mouth is and how do you address these kinds of threats and with what kinds of capabilities? And we're seeing more traditional ways of thinking about that coming back to the fore. And that goes just to the issue of the false narrative that we need to now move on and recognize that these traditional threats are still there. You know, the presidential response with the brush's aggressiveness was, oh Vlad, that's our last century. But come on, that really isn't. It really is the traditional threats that I don't think anyone believed that as we went into a new century, evaporated. Yeah, I think it's, I think all of us, we scratch our heads sometimes because what Putin is doing is so much against his own country's interest that it's hard for us sometimes to fathom that he would take these initiatives and hurt his country. It's already hurting his country economically and it's just gonna get worse. But I think it just reinforces how illogical and unpredictable his strategy is. And we had hearings on this recently trying to delve into where his thinking might be. And the one thing that came out of that is his stubbornness. We were told that the sanctions, economic sanctions would work, but because we're dealing with him, it will take longer to get there. The rational actor model, right? Going back to that. If I can call on the gentleman in the back and then this gentleman in the second row on this side. Thank you. Good morning. Thank y'all for being here. I'm John Godwin. I work with Tesla government. It seems back in 2008, Russian troops occupied Abkhazia, south of Sedia in then Threat and Tbilisi. We get scared by the prospect of them taking Tbilisi. So we back off and basically south of Sedia and Abkhazia are a foregone conclusion. Now he takes Crimea. He threatens Luhansk and Donetsk and this absurd concept of maybe he's gonna build a land bridge to Crimea across Persa and Zebromisia. But again, now that's what we're worried about. And Crimea is a foregone conclusion. He has it. How do you counteract somebody who acts this way where obviously economic sanctions do not work on him? Time and time again, the Russian population has shown that to have a global reputation as a leading country is worth some economic sacrifices. And this gentleman up here. Thank you. Donaldson from members of Estonia. Actually, I have a quite similar question. You mentioned that Russian people themselves are suffering thanks to prison put-ins activities. And that sanctions, they take a long time. At the same time, there's a big question, how can we change prison put-ins kind of calculus of what he wants to do or might not do. So my question would be, what could be these extra leverage from the US side to really change the calculus? Two very similar questions. Well, I think first of all I don't agree with the statement that the sanctions aren't working and they're not having any influence. We're not just seeing that manifest itself, but they are. The rubble is going down, the economic effects are real, and as he continues, and if we have the, again, the cohesiveness of our allies, it's gonna get worse and they will be effective. And there's no question in my mind about that as well. But I do think some of the things that NATO is doing, where they're accelerating the time, where they can put troops in an area, where they're gonna do training within some of these areas to demonstrate that commitment and that even though they're not members of some of the countries, Ukraine, is not a member of NATO, I think some of those things are all important and they understand those things. He's evidently, one thing I do agree with, he seems to be getting some popularity back home, that I think that's very short-term. And all we can do is control the things we can control. And I think they have to understand that if they're trying to see if the US will blink, if NATO will come apart, if economic interests are gonna create a schism within our NATO alliance, I think he's finding out that's not the case. But we have to be very strong and consistent in saying that. When you look at Russia, I mean people compare their economy to the size of Italy's economy. You've got Russia, large Russia, economy comparable to Italy. Then you have Russia's military force, which is a force that's large enough to threaten Europe. The disproportion of its economy and its military force, I think shows that sanctions certainly are important and they need to be used in every diplomatic channel. But military obviously is an area where we need to do greater work. The issue of deterrence is important. Everybody locks their doors at night, but they don't lock their doors of their own personal home because they believe all of their neighbors are thieves. But they do recognize that there's a risk to their home and to their possessions and to their family. Similarly, as we look to the concept of deterrence, having a military force that can repel and change the calculus of those who would use a military force for wrong ends is incredibly important. And we look right now to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. You have Article 5, but we don't have the military presence or have put forth even the military response to Russia's military response on the border of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. General Breedlove has said that if you look at the exercises that have been going on in that area, that they pose a real threat to those nations. Now where would we be if Russia decided to go into Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania? We'd be in a situation where it would be a major war to try to repel them. And certainly you'd have Article 5 on the alliance of NATO being completely threatened. And I'm certain that all of you would see that that's something that Putin would want to have as a result. So it has to be military back to the NATO. We've got to get these nations not only spending what they need to, but in the types of spending and the United States needs to make certain that it takes to lead to respond, not just on an economic side with Russia, but also on a military side. And that's right, I think we've come full circle in terms of the spending issue and the need to step up to the plate in that regard because Russia can take country by country and have that kind of military advantage. But with NATO they're out number three to one in terms of troops and resources. And so we have to be ready and we have to have the resources, the major purchasing of defense equipment. Those things are not just numbers, they're very real. And we have to have everyone on board for their commitment to show that we're together. He's trying to exploit areas of differences. He's trying to deal one country at a time. And if he starts to see everyone fulfill that commitment to say that's important, to put their money where their mouth is too, I think those are gonna be strong signals because he is outnumbered and he is out gun when you look at what NATO can do as a force. Well, I think this has been a great session. We are unfortunately out of time and we must transition to the next panel. But I for one have really enjoyed having both of you here representing a bipartisan look at where are we going with Europe and European defense? What have we learned from the summit and the work that you've done on the parliamentary assembly? So please join me in thanking both Mr. Turner and Mr. Keating for such a great session. I appreciate it. Thank you.


This was a shocker. I don't quite understand it. So toward the end of the press conference, Aaron Boone announces that Jacobi Ellsbury, who had hip surgery last year, will not be reporting to camp with the rest of the position players. Now, pitchers and catchers are today, and then a couple of days later, it's the position players. He will not be here because he's dealing with plantar fasciitis. Okay, why isn't he in camp? They've got unbelievable trainers and doctors that are around the facility all the time. Why would that preclude him from reporting with the other players? Unless there's a deal that's being made and he just doesn't want to come in and answer the questions. If you look at it and you can all join in, you can contact us on Twitter if you'd like, that might be one of the worst free agent signings of all time. I mean, can you think of another one at the top of your head? Jason Bay was bad. Jason Bay was bad, but I have to say Ellsbury's worse. It might be worse. Ed Whitson was bad, but not the amount of money that they're lying. He's still over $63 million. It was so bad. Oh my goodness, and the guy can't get on the field. I'm not going to question the guy's injury, but everything broke down last year, and now plantar fasciitis is keeping him out of spring training? It would have been better off just resigning Cano. They didn't want to go ten years on Cano. They ended up going seven years with Ellsbury. They would have gotten more out of Cano in that span of time than they got out of Ellsbury. You're absolutely right. I mean, really, to think about, there's been really bad free agent signings by all teams in New York, but this one's epic. I mean, he didn't play in the playoff game when he was healthy. Right, and didn't seem like he cared. He didn't go into the majority's office and tip over the desk. He just dossily said, okay. Might have won it and thanked him. Again, there's the one curious aspect of this. Why is he not reporting when he's dealing with plantar fasciitis? You would think that the team could deal with that better than any doctor that he's dealing with, and again, my only guess is they're keeping away until they can make a deal. One deal that I've heard that could be out there. You trade Ellsbury to the Giants for Johnny Cueto, who makes a lot of money. He's not going to pitch this year. Tommy John surgery. Right. So they'll take Ellsbury's two years. You'll take what's left of Cueto, and when he comes back, you have yourself a pretty good pitcher, and insurance money this year because he's on the deal. So that he can maybe replace, I guess he can replace, yeah, no more deal, by the way. Right. You got to get that out of your system. Deal. So he can replace Cece. Yeah. Because then Cece's going to retire, and then Cueto will be your fifth starter. When Cueto's right. Absolutely. He's great. But for the Yankees' purposes, maybe then he just becomes part of the mix. That would actually make a lot of sense.