Delighted to be back with the Donahue group. The four of us so enjoyed just sitting around and talking about consequential things that we have absolutely no control over. So that makes it, I think, even more fun. My name is Mary Lynn Donahue. I'm the alleged host of the show and certainly enjoyed that position without any power attached to it. My trusty mates here, Ken Risto, social studies teacher and director of curriculum and assessment for the Sheboygan Area School District. Tom Pineski, math professor at the University of Wisconsin Sheboygan Campus. Cal Potter, politician, legislator, extraordinaire, former state senator. It's your turn this week. And assistant superintendent for library services at the department of public instruction. So we're here, we're talking about state issues but we had gotten so involved in our last conversation about Blue Harbor that we didn't really have a chance to touch on the county referenda questions relating to the nursing homes. Interesting issues and there are two questions that as I understand that are gonna be on the April ballot. One is whether or not the county can exceed its revenue caps in order to continue support of the two county owned nursing homes and whether just in general, if I have that right. Cal, you probably are. I haven't seen the wordage, exactly. Okay, this is going to be the advisory, I believe. It is advisory. And then in November would be the binding. And one of the reasons you wanna do an advisory referendum is that the language that is required by statute in a binding referendum is very, very limited and from what I can tell kind of confusing. So this is a way I think to educate voters about what they're really voting for and I know that the county board had a lot of conflict about how the questions were worded but that second question actually asks whether just in general, we can exceed the revenue caps. Sheboyne County continues to struggle and I think is doing a good job with its budget issues but we don't have a county sales tax. I think there are only 14 counties. I may be wrong but a fairly small number of counties that do not have a county sales tax so those budget issues are important. Just on the nursing homes, any predictions on where it's gonna land or what the decision is going or the advice is going to be for the county board? Well my advice would be that don't stray too far from the intent of the circulators and signers of those petitions. When you have 9,000 signatures that are submitted to you asking for a referendum that clearly clearly says do we wanna continue operating these nursing homes? I think that's a pretty direct intent by the circulators and signers. Now when you start getting into all the details you can I think get off onto revenue caps and tax bases and all kinds of other things that then all of a sudden people say these guys are trying to complicate the issue. Maybe the intent in some cases is not to do that but I think the public reaction here can be very very negative as to what the intent then of the people in offices. I mean people are generally very cynical about politicians and their intent and if these referendums on the April ballot and subsequently the one in November clearly don't match what people thought they were gonna get as a result of asking through this referendum I think there's gonna be a lot more hostility than a calming of the waters that you would think would happen. Actually I did see the language for both of the referenda and it was pretty straightforward I thought and it is difficult to craft a question. I saw the result of Senator Libam's poll that I think was printed in the beacon and I would just suggest Tom might disagree but I would suggest that the way the questions were worded may have suggested certain answers and that's always the issue that you face when you're trying to develop a neutral question but I thought that the two questions that I saw in the paper were pretty straightforward. They don't reflect the complexity of the issue and people do need to be educated on what it means to run a nursing home. There are clear pluses, there are clear minuses and I think what the county board is trying to do is just struggle with that balance and it's tough. Yeah they're related but I think the public really has in mind yeah you can ask me whether we want to exceed the cap on spending and whether we want to be more generous in our tax dollars but we also over here want to have a decision on whether we want these nursing homes or not so I think well they're related because obviously the running of these nursing homes includes the need for more revenue. The people do view I think these as two separate questions. You can ask me that but don't put them together and confuse me because then I might vote no when I really want to vote yes for nursing homes but I don't want you to raise my taxes so I think that's what the people are looking for as far as clarity are these two different concepts. Yeah well it'll be interesting to see. But where does that put us?  The way their structure is not an either or. That's why it's a complex issue that needs to be explained fully but people look at things a little more simply I think than sometimes the people that's why representative government for people to study the details but I think the people here have a fear that there are some that would like to just get out of the nursing home business and I think the general public out there says there is room for Sheboygan County to maintain nursing home services and the debate can be over what level but I just think that people are endeared to Rocky and Owl and Sunny Ridge and have been for years and have invested dollars unlike most counties in nursing homes that's true we are a rather unique county one of just a handful that continue to have nursing homes. Well and for example there's actually a charitable foundation set up with both nursing homes that collects donations that people just without even the county or nursing homes asking for donations because they don't but they have a balance of over $56,000 just because people feel charitable toward the institution that took good care of their parents or relatives so well it'll be interesting let's move on to some state issues as we are taping to me one of the most fascinating trials maybe not of the century but at least in the state of Wisconsin is Scott Jensen's trial I think I had made some bold statement during one of our last tapings that there was simply no way that Scott Jensen would actually go to trial and he's now well into the second week of that trial and it is quite amazing two things I want to talk about is as I'm reading there's not much in the Sheboygan press about it but as I'm reading online one I love the theory which is everybody's doing it so what's the problem and number two and I think this is something that just speaks to is a much broader philosophical question is all of these witnesses I believe are saying and I think Jensen's defense theory is you can't separate it you can't separate campaigning from being a legislator they go hand in hand and so to have some artificial demarcation between fundraising and doing the job is just a sheer impossibility Cal, I want your you've done it, I was gonna say you've done it, my first response is that's nonsense but you're the one that actually did it can you separate them? Yes, should you? Yes, you just don't make those phone calls in your office, on a state phone you use a... During normal working hours Right, you do a Democratic Party office phone or you do it from your own home and then you don't involve state employees you don't ask them on their own time it's on their vacation time, on weekends and evenings if they're gonna work for you as as a sort of a private citizen when they're off of work so yeah you can, it's manageable you can do it the contention that this widespread I would say yes it probably is when you start talking about million dollar state senate races you're talking about big bucks you're talking about putting together television buy packages you're talking about doing fancy brochures you're doing a lot of different things that cost a lot of money and it involves a lot of people so the crossing of that line by they using state time state phones maybe going to this business or that business or doing a television buy on state time or during working hours without claiming vacation or personal leave or whatever I'm sure those things have happened in other offices other than the four legislators who have been indicted I mean I don't think that all the ills of the political world today fall down on Fody, Ladwig, Jensen and Kuala I think that's a naive to say that and I think Jensen's attorneys are simply saying yeah my client is not Lily White here but he's just one of four that has been single out and I wouldn't doubt that they're going to lay out the broadness of this with the idea that when a plea bargain does come after the so many weeks of trial that indeed the plea bargain is one of maybe a misdemeanor or something like Ladwig got that he can maintain his office or whatever comes along with being a misdemeanor rather than a felony but I think they're making a point and then maybe the point should be made as we've had a guest in Jay Hecht from Common Clause this is happening on all levels federal, state, when you get big campaign expensive campaigns and shaking down of special interest groups and I think it has to stop because we need reform and maybe we need to continue to expose what's going on in a broader sense rather than say these are the four dirty people and if we can lock them up we've solved all our problems and we haven't Well and the interesting thing about the way the testimony is developing from state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser to anyone that you can think of it's apparently done all the time I read that the Republicans Tom in your blue sweater are furious with Jensen for not only hanging the dirty laundry out but making sure that there's a big enough breeze to flap it so that people can't can't not pay attention to it I've been following it that closely but I kind of agree with what you just what you started with what's the big deal?  It's really great I mean I was a city councilman I worked at the university here I had to teach classes I'm in my office I get a call from the mayor's office or something or someone I respond to make another call to somebody else and I'm doing city politics but I'm here at the university because the call came in I respond back but I get the job done now if I were kind of a I worked out in the field as a parks person cutting grass or garbage picking up garbage or some other painting and I took time for my job to do politics and not get the painting job done or the grass cut then yeah that's a very clear demarcation you're working on city time on taxpayer time but when politics is what it is you're in the office you respond to you know you get paid to do things but I think the issue here relates to raising money because hat in hand with the fact that you have all these campaign I mean they call them campaign workers although they are paid with our tax money were paid with our tax money what they're buying or what they're selling is influence and access and in exchange for money one of the things that I think we have to realize is that Wisconsin when the Conta Caucus staffs were created both in assembly and the senate they were meant to do research and serve the creation of and the forwarding of public policy studying of bills creating papers, issue papers where what's being done in other states and so it was purely issue and policy oriented now these folks have basically dropped so much of that and when we get into campaign time they're literally out there either knocking on doors or doing the really the campaign stuff and that's where the line has been crossed yeah and I just I'd have to agree with Cal I think that there's a way it's not easy and it would be much nicer to have just a seamless operation which is not only will I get the job done I will ensure that I have the job that I can get done and just kind of do it all in part and parcel but I mean as a taxpayer I don't want to pay for that whether it's and interestingly enough I mean I think Mark Green and Scott Walker are taking are getting chopped here a little bit because they were clearly doing this stuff for their they had they had some issues at least I mean Jensen has pointed fingers toward them as much as anybody else but it Doyle's campaign manager rich judge was a a campaign worker for an assembly person I believe I may have that wrong but it's an equal opportunity a kind of problem it seems to plague the democrats as much as the republicans I mean it's on a national level I mean I think Jack Abramoff probably gave a whole lot more money to the republicans but he certainly had his had his hand out to democrats as well and so I mean I think it is reflective of just how the whole system has developed and for me it's a problem well it's a problem because government the people we elect to office should be there to care about education the environment and many many other issues and not whether people who are on the state payroll are making enough phone calls to reach a million dollars for the next campaign that's completely opposite of what we send these people to Washington or Madison to do well I'm not sure all of you are quite as interested in this trial as I am but any predictions do we have a guilty verdict do we have a plea bargain well if the strategy is to go to the jury and say everybody else is doing it that's a recipe for disaster as a defense lawyer because I think those people who are paying attention to it or the jury that's watching this and they have no choice but to pay attention to it I think you're going to say well then we're more inclined to make an example of you than we are to let to exonerate you because everybody else is doing it I would still think you know I mean we're wrong but I still think they're going to I would agree but we talked off camera a little bit there's still going to be some sort of a plea here near the end because I just think that uh... this gets uglier and uglier as it plays out and it's it's an election year nobody wants this stuff in front of folks uh... it's just asking for trouble on both sides of the aisle nobody wants it it's not only that everybody else is doing it but the more people other people talk about it the more in depth the public sees this whole shenanigan stuff is and I think the more you're saying boy you did all that even though you may not have laid out all these on the other hand you have a prosecutor I'm a prosecutor myself and there are there are decisions that a prosecutor makes that take place in a bigger context which is how will the client react or how will the public react the district attorney is being different than just like the kind of city prosecution that I do but the longer this goes on the more I think it will be difficult for this DA to pull back and plea bargain and misdemeanor I mean this guy has dragged everybody through the mud and it was and it happened just so that he would there would be a plea bargain on a misdemeanor I don't think so and part of the problem is as I understand it if Jensen's convicted of a felony he is out of the legislature and so why he didn't take the plea bargain in the first place I mean you know like we said about Bill Clinton what were you thinking I mean I have to think I mean if I were that prosecutor a plea bargain was the last thing in the world that I'd want to do but well we'll the next time the next time we gather they'll either be a a plea bargain or a verdict just some interesting figures from the big money blog of the Wisconsin democracy campaign just to put in perspective how much money does have to be raised a total of nearly twenty three million dollars was spent on the two thousand two governor's race by candidates and special interest groups triple the eight million dollars spent in the nineteen ninety eight race some doily injection for this year forty yes that's what I've been reading thirty to fifty somewhere in there yeah so doubled with Doyle's record-breaking fundraising and the point of the of the Wisconsin democracy campaign as they pick on poor governor Doyle well poor is not the word he is pretty wealthy the unfortunate governor what's he done wrong this week well as you know i i like governor Doyle but uh... he's out tommy tommy tomson uh... tommy is still the all-time champion money raiser but Doyle is is is gaining on him quickly so far and this was the two parties are competitive there you go when the democrats do it it's you know i remember i remember i remember the uh... some uh... republican senator questioning herald icky's on some matter before the the this before congressional committee in the the senator says mister icky's where did you learn how to do that or what made you think that was right he said senator we're just doing what president reagan did a small point in any event uh... dwellers raised five point nine million dollars for his uh... reelection bid compared to three point two million that tomson raised at the same point in his last campaign so and of course we read in the in the journal sentinel this uh... this sunday about uh... former governor tomson is doing very well in the private sector and seems to be thriving and hasn't ruled out a return to wisconsin for for another race we'll see i'm interested in in the position of rust fine gold not even mentioned in a gallop poll as to the recent gallop poll about who would be most likely to be who would get the most support is uh... as the democratic party candidate in the same article though i read that uh... fine gold really does is the number one choice among internet voters and internet polls and and so far bloggers and bloggers are there are two kinds of internet and there's the republican blog and there's a democrat blog and of course uh... the real rapid uh... rabid uh... democrats like fine gold uh... they don't like this wishy-washy other senators fine gold comes out in supports their positions charlotte yeah and so they get these triangulators you know they know it they know it real well and they love it they feed on that kind of stuff i know you know i've i've talked to some people who have talked to him and then he actually is kind of fine gold is asking people what do you think i should do it maybe is considering a howard dean type of insurgency uh... and if you can avoid rebel yells in the middle of primaries maybe he'll go further than howard dean did but uh... i think he's giving it i think he is giving it a real run because i think there are others are there is a segment of the democratic party that would like the democrats to be democrats yeah i don't think i would call that being rabid i think it would be you know just uh... well trying to be part of the progressive uh... i say i call it rabid for the republicans side you call it right wing uh... religious something or other i don't know but yeah i it's i just think fine gold is a very interesting uh... in fact your wife gave me uh... her copy of the february vogue magazine not necessarily a heavy hitter in terms of politics long article on rust fine gold between makeup tips yeah it's your heart out you wish you had a nice magazine like that but um... it's called general it's called gq we do have a magazine like that you're supposed to shave more for television what can i say but uh... in any event remember fine gold came out of nowhere you know back in ninety two i think was his for the first year he was elected and uh... i for what i'm going to watch it with with great interest molly ivans has a fabulous column uh... both in her in her regular star telegram uh... but also i think printed in the progressive really taking on the democrats for not being democrats and for triangulating themselves to the point that that they don't mean anything to anybody anymore and it was it was a most interesting article and i think fine gold is enough of a renegade on both sides of the fence uh... i mean he he's he's hard to predict or at least so far has been hard to predict and so i think it's uh... no potentially interesting stuff i think he comes out of that race that you cited where he was primary where the other two candidates literally knocked themselves off and then he he walked right into this thing and i think he sees the potential probably on the national level with uh... somebody doing a howard dean yell or something and all of a sudden he being low on the list rises by his own pure image and clear image and stand on certain issues and that he could rise to be a very viable candidate uh... you know on paper he isn't i mean he's from the north he's from a smaller state he's a person who's divorced twice uh... he's got some baggage and as a result you would not do yeah he's doing it on the table right and so he's got baggage that people would say well with the population that controls this country is california texas florida you know arizona some of the other states uh... where's his where's his constituency where's his base uh... a lot of it right now i think is the liberal democrat uh... that was there to push uh... uh... george mcgovern at one time uh... jimmy carter came out of nowhere as well uh... people who saw the these people as good people uh... honest people and but they weren't electable nationally uh... where's i think fine gold is going to have to have a lot of other stars aligned uh... to get into uh... being a strong viable candidate for the presidency don't you think one of the things that we can agree on that just seems to me to be patently clear at local state and national politics is we're looking for leaders we're looking for people who actually seemed to talk and walk and think what they really mean and are willing to put themselves out in some kind of sincere way i mean i i think that's where mccain has legs is that i mean why democrats are willing to consider a carry uh... mccain ticket i mean mccain is a profoundly conservative legislator goodness gracious and yet he seems to have he has the image of credibility leadership which jen which uh... bill clinton had in spite of all his personal problems and his decisions and his love life he uh... was somebody that people respected that could lead the troops uh... he was companies intelligent and i think that's what repop frustrated republicans they couldn't drag down that image that he had is being a good uh... smart individual see i think that plays out in the primaries but i don't think a lot of people really knew how conservative better for worse mccain really really is and was you know and i think there's a there's a there's a sense in the primaries where you're you're really are pulling your base to come in and vote for you especially when you have closed primaries now where you get a candidate but when you get to the general election people really start they will certainly look at personality and leadership in those types of things the pressures to to get to the center and stay the center is artist awfully demanding and i still know yeah how a guy like mccain uh... well like find gold can actually negotiate that transition from if you ever would be getting close to getting close to a nomination you hear a lot about people looking for leadership looking for that person who can bring us all together but yet if you look at the voting patterns uh... people who are concerned about guns and abortion and gays those people they're very rigid in what they vote who they vote for why they vote for that person and i don't see those people changing a great deal but it's a senator too there's a senators don't normally get elected that's very true to president you usually get governors governors get elected uh... reagan carter clinton uh... clinton clinton bush governors get elected but they also have uh... they're in an administrative leadership role more so than a senator and uh... yeah i think it's very difficult to get elected out of the senate i mean historically i don't know why that is necessarily i would trust a senator it seems to me would have a better sense of national issues than governor arkansas or georgia or california most prevailing theory is is that senators have a hard time talking in sound bites they're used to the senate floor where they can bloviate on and on and on and when you get into the campaign where you have to reduce unfortunately you have to reduce complex issues into understand you know there you go again i mean or whatever sound bite you want you want to you want to make famous you know where's the beef senators also are considered politicians and where's governors again or administrators or there's sort of the darling of another level another world almost and i think that's part of if you're a successful governor you can turn and say i have a track record of success i mean what do you do at the senate you say well i voted here four times i voted here six times i got the bill passed and yeah and then you got the inevitable i mean you can look at a governor and see what bills he signed or vetoed but you have senators who are doing procedural votes and then you get the the political lie that goes on in both campaigns he increased your tax of seven hundred fifty five thousand times well because of procedural votes and they're up there tally it's an awfully uh... tough they killed a climb well it just you know in summary is as we wrap up the the state of politics in the state of politicians and such is just uh... not as good as it could be but we'll keep plugging away and uh... thanks for joining us


My name is Jeff Weiss. I've held a variety of positions within the IT field for the last 37 years or so. I have certifications from CompTIA, Cisco, CIW, Microsoft, and VMware. I've owned and operated my own IT consulting business, installing and supporting networks, and data centers at almost every level of the IT sphere. I've authored both courseware and certification exams from Microsoft, as well as this curriculum, the labs, and the certification exam that goes with it. For the past 20 years, I've worked as a consultant and trainer with a focus on the design of enterprise architecture for both VMware and Microsoft virtualization migrations and projects. In this course, we're going to cover several different topics, and we do it with a style called learn it, do it, know it. Basically, learn it is going to be the explanations that we're going to have. Do it is the ability for us to show you some of the things on the screen that you can do in the real world. There's also, sold separately, an option for you to do the labs. We have that coming up on the next topic. Also, we have know it. At the end of each of these sections, there's going to be questions and answers to reinforce everything you've learned within the chapter. And finally, sprinkle throughout the class our expert tips. Keep your eye out for the green icon. Earlier, we talked about the ability to access labs. We do have the ability for you to purchase separate online lab learning.  If you send an email to careeracademylabs.vmtraining.net, you can purchase this for $1,000. Access is provided through a remote desktop, so you can do it from just about anywhere, as long as you have a decent broadband connection. Once your payment is received, VM training's operations will provide all the necessary information. In addition to online lab access, you can also purchase separately from the course the ability to take and pass the CVE, or Certified Virtualization Expert Certification. This class will prepare you for that. If you're interested in taking the exam, send an email to cveatvmtraining.net, the purchase price is $195 per attempt, and you can go directly to the link listed on the screen if you want to go there and purchase the exam. It is 80 multiple choice questions. We provide two hours for you to complete the exam, and you do need a 75% to pass. If you do use English as a second language, let the person know that you're purchasing the exam from, and you can get a three-hour exam.


Oh my god this is Libya? Oh yeah, it'll be ok. Peter! No! Peter! Right. Good morning. Afternoon. Hey Yoko. Yeah, good thank you. You alright? It's alright. I hope he's paid. Right, you've got to sit down there for me young man. Oh, it's cold today man. It's very cold. Now some. Afternoon. I'll read. Alright. Hey mate, you alright? Alright. Hey Yoko. Good morning. You alright? Afternoon Scott. Alright, how you doing? Alright mate, you alright? Yeah, good thank you. Alright.


Greenlight is about to come on from now, takes her up, away they go. Robert Lambert has made a fabulous start, Freddie Lindgren out of shape, almost off the bike, runs to the back, but what a start from Robert Lambert out of gate number two, fabulous stuff from him. Robert Lambert makes a great start from two, determined to get across centre, Lindgren doesn't want to back out of it, he knows this is his chance to put three points on the board and he just battles into the corner, he's run through there, through the puddle, he's got the front wheel on the grass, leg back in a big, big muddle.


Today, when you leave your PC, with common Windows default settings, it will stay unlocked for 5 minutes, and anybody can access your sensitive data without your password. On top of which, if the screen is left on for 5 minutes, it continues to draw power. Login procedures can be quite slow and painful, and waiting for your PC to wake up for a long time can be quite frustrating. Sometimes, people even like to peek over your shoulder to see what is happening on your screen. This can present big problems for personal privacy, and sometimes it can be quite distracting when we're pressing keys during presentations when we want to switch slides. At ST Micro Electronics, we've considered how the accumulation of all these seemingly minor points can be quite frustrating for users, and we've come up with an interesting and practical solution. The Time of Flight Sensor plus suite of algorithms are monitoring the presence of the user in front of their PC and the surroundings. The Time of Flight Sensor itself is hidden in the top bezel of the laptop screen. The SD Presence turnkey solution enables a variety of use cases. Walkway lock and screen switch off, which improves the security of your PC by detecting a lack of presence and switching the PC off, so other people can't access it, and in so doing also extending its battery lifetime. Here, the Time of Flight Sensor detects the user coming back to their desk and automatically starts the Hello Login authentication with no key press or delay of any kind. Intruder alert. Here, the system detects a human presence that is behind you and could be watching your screen over your shoulder, and then it raises a warning. Gesture recognition. This can be used to control your applications without having to touch either the keyboard or the screen or the mouse. For your information, the SD Presence solution is qualified at Intel and Microsoft for catalog sensors and modern standby. So, what is the Time of Flight Technical Principle and how does it enable the presence use case? Here, we can see that the benefits are that the Flight Sensor does an actual distance measurement, and it is independent of the target color, shape or reflectance. It uses invisible infrared light, and it is highly accurate and has very low power consumption. It is also contained in an all-in-one package with the emitter and receiver included, and it is easy to integrate and hide behind a cover glass on a PC or a laptop. The Time of Flight itself does not generate any image and ensures user's privacy, unlike a camera. For more information about the SD Presence solution and the associated hardware evaluation tools and software resources, please check out st.com slash tof. Also, we invite you to contact your local ST sales representative.


Good afternoon. I'm Carol Christ. I'm the Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this special conversation between General HR McMaster and Lowell Bergman. This event is a collaboration between UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, the Institute for International Studies, and the College of Letters and Science. I can't imagine a more timely moment to have this conversation where we're all thinking about the challenges facing the free world, the case for responsible U.S. leadership in world affairs, and how that's all shaped by the media. I'm now going to introduce our two discussants. General HR McMaster is currently the Fuo and Michelle Ajame Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Bernard and Susan Lietow Fellow at the Freeman Spoli Institution, and a lecturer at the Stanford University School of Business. He was the 26th Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs during the Trump administration. After graduation from the United States Military Academy, General McMaster served as an active duty Army officer for 34 years. He holds a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's the author of Battle Grounds, The Fight to Defend the Free World, and the award-winning book Der Election of Duty, Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Vietnam. General McMaster is a highly decorated general who's been awarded among many other honors, a silver star, a purple heart, and an Army Distinguished Service Medal. In 2017, General McMaster succeeded Michael Flynn as the President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor. He resigned from the position in March of 2018 and retired from the military in May. Loa Bergman is the Emeritus Riva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley, where he founded the Investigative Reporting Program in 2006. Loa was a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline, a producer, reporter and director of investigative reporting at ABC News, and a producer for CBS's 60 Minutes. He's received many awards for his journalism, including a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, three Peabodies, and numerous Emmys. His reporting has investigated the tobacco industry, worker safety violations, the systematic violation of environmental laws, and al-Qaeda. Dean Henry Brady will close this program. He's the Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and the class of 1941 Monroe-Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Berkeley. So I'm so much looking forward to this conversation. Hi, thank you, Carol. Carol Christ, the Chancellor. By the way, this event has been planned by the two of us for almost two years now, so it's a great pleasure to welcome General McMaster finally to Berkeley. I wanted to just mention quickly that the Goldman School of Public Policy has done a lot of work on this and made this possible, and thank Morris Smith, Professor Daniel Sargent, Professor Robert Powell, and Hannah Young of the school. Now, I want to reassure all of you out there that we're going to have time for questions at the end. We're going to try to make sure that we block that out, but we have a lot of time, a lot to talk about with General McMaster and welcome General McMaster to Berkeley. Finally, it's virtually this time, but hopefully in person pretty soon. And I want to start out and begin by talking with you about something that makes you really unique. You're the first National Security Advisor to be a real historian with that PhD in history from North Carolina. How did that prepare you, that background in studying history to become the National Security Advisor? What kind of perspective did that give you when you took on that job? Hey, thanks a lot for this opportunity. It's great to be with you. Thanks to Chancellor Chris for the warm welcome and for the opportunity and Dean Brady and all of you who signed in. I wish I could be there in person with you and it's a real privilege to talk with you. Hey, thanks for that question. So you actually asked a historian about is it important to study history? Well, I know, but from a practical perspective, working for a president who doesn't. It's a great question. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I was walking down Walnut Street in Philadelphia, my hometown, and got a phone call on President's Day weekend, Friday at President's Day weekend. And it was Washington DC number asking me to go to Mar-a-Lago the next day to interview for the National Security Advisor job. It came quite out of the blue. I wound up going there on Sunday. Interview with the president on Sunday. He hired me on Monday. I flew back when Air Force One didn't live in Washington, was never stationed in Washington, was blown back to my house, came back Tuesday afternoon and started work. So there wasn't a heck of a lot of time to prepare. But what I was grateful for was the opportunity to have studied and researched and written about national security and foreign policy decision making into decisions and in the period that led to an American war in Vietnam. And so it was quite surreal to walk into the West Wing of the White House and into really what I thought was McGeorge Bundy's office, right? The National Security Advisor, who was a principal character in dereliction of duty. And of course, I resolved, as you might expect, I would to try to at least avoid making the same mistakes that I wrote about during that period of time. And foremost among those mistakes was the tendency in the run up to the Vietnam war to not really think holistically about the situation in Vietnam and the challenges that that pose and the nature of the conflict. We didn't, we didn't spend enough time, those leaders at the time didn't spend enough time applying design thinking and understanding the nature of the problem. So you are put into place in the National Security Council staff, what we call it a principal small group framing session where before we talked about, hey, what are we going to do about tax challenge to national security, right? Chinese economic aggression and Chinese efforts to establish exclusionary areas of primacy across the Indo Pacific and challenge us globally. We first said, okay, what is the nature of this challenge? What are our vital interests that are at stake? The second big lesson was that we went to war in Vietnam without a clearly understood and clearly articulated objective. And in fact, George Bundy had argued, hey, it's an advantage not to have an objective because then if we lose in Vietnam itself, hey, we never wanted a free and independent South Vietnam anyway, and it would give in George Bundy's words, Lyndon Johnson flexibility in the domestic political realm and this is why one of the chapters in that book is entitled war without direction, right? And then the third, the third lesson that I brought in with me that I tried to administer a corrective to do not make the same mistakes was that there was a tendency for President's advisors to try to decide, hey, what is Lyndon Johnson, why? What advice does he want to hear? And then they gave him what he wanted. And they gave him the single course of action, the course of action based on this flawed strategy of graduated pressure. But it was a strategy designed, designed really to allay the President's concerns that Vietnam would undo his domestic political agenda. And that was the fourth lesson is to try to create a process that was relatively insulated from partisan political considerations and to develop and assess courses of action for the President, options for the President based on what it was in our long-term interest. Knowing, well, hey, there are going to be people who are going to have their say, right, on the domestic political side as part of it. But I didn't want that to be infected in the process. And this is one of the reasons why I rewrote the National Security Policy Memorandum and changed the composition of the National Security Council staff. Now, in retrospect, in your book, in battlegrounds, you go through all the disappointments and disasters, the wars that we've been in from Iraq to Afghanistan, you go through the situation with Iran, even climate change. And you say that our missteps are due to something called strategic narcissism. I thought at first maybe you were reflecting on this psychiatric profile of the President, but you had something else in mind. Could you explain why you think there's a thread that goes through all of these major missteps and catastrophes in some cases? Well, this is, I think, the principal cause of our loss of strategic competence. The loss of our strategic competence, especially after the end of the Cold War. Strategic narcissism is meant to describe this phenomenon of which we tend, Americans tend to define the world only in relation to us. The problem with that is it's self-referential, and it doesn't acknowledge the degree that the other or others have agency and influence and authorship over the future. And therefore, we tend to create an understanding of the situation that comports with really what we would prefer to do rather than what the situation demands. We select limitations on the degree of influence and agency that we have over complex challenges and problems. And I think this tendency grew out of optimism, optimism that grew at the end of the Cold War. You know, we had reason to be optimistic, right? We witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War without firing a shot. We had the lopsided military victory in the Gulf War in 1991. And I think we bought in low to these three assumptions that I write about in Battlegrounds about the post-Cold War world, assumptions that turned out to be false and fundamentally flawed. And the first among these is that there was this arc of history that had guaranteed the primacy of our free and open societies over closed and authoritarian systems. Ideological competition was a relic of the past, was passe. Related to that was this notion that a great power competition. It was also a relic of the past. It was over, right? So even collapse China had not really yet grown in power significantly. And then the third assumption was that our technological military prowess would ensure our security far into the future. If O had the temerity of challenging the United States, that war would be waged quickly, cheaply and efficiently. But what I write about in Battlegrounds most, this was a setup. It was a setup for strategic shocks and disappointments in the 2000s, foremost among them, the 9 11 mass murder attacks, the most devastating terrorist attacks in history. And then, of course, the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we often want to debate, hey, should we have done it? Meaning, should we have invaded Iraq in 2003? I think we ought to debate more often who the heck thought it would be easy? And why did they think it would be easy? And then, of course, we have the financial crisis 2008 2009. And I think it was at that moment, at that moment when the Obama administration came into power, that that pendulum swung from over optimism, maybe some complacency associated with over optimism, and and a tendency to undervalue the costs and the risks of action, pessimism, and resignation, and a tendency to underestimate the costs and risks of inaction or disengagement. And I think we saw examples of that in the complete disengagement from Iraq in 2011, December 2011, and declaring that we're over when in fact our departure helped set the conditions for the rise of ISIS al Qaeda in Iraq 2.0 really, and left ISIS ultimately in control of territory the size of Britain. I think also you could see it in the, in the decision against enforcing the red line in Syria after Syria committed mass murder of innocent civilians with the most heinous weapons on earth. You could see it maybe in Libya where the Obama administration, in an effort to avoid what it perceived as the flaws in the Bush administration's approach to the Middle East actually exceeded those flaws. I'm not helping to speak Gaddafi by not, but by not doing anything to shape the political outcome. So, so, so low the argument in the book is hey, instead of strategic narcissism, replace it with strategic empathy, and in particular pay attention to the agency that others, including our adversaries, maybe especially rivals and enemies have over the future course of events. But, but you were, you were in the national security advisor for 1516 months right. And did you 1313 months okay 13 months. Don't you see what you were, what you were trying to do unravel and since then, how do you feel now that you look at the negotiations in Doha with the Taliban. You know, of course, you know, the president can do what the president wants to do in the area of foreign policy largely of course under the oversight and with, you know, with some checks on in connection with Congress. But I saw it as my job will is to is to give the president access to the best analysis and advice across the departments and agencies and to give him multiple options. And it was in the discussion of those multiple options and the comparison of them that the president oftentimes went against his predilections went went against what he instinctively had thought that he would do as president I think the most dramatic example of that is what we already alluded, which was the approval of this, the South Asia strategy in in August of 2017. I think that was the first time really low that we have had a sustainable reason sound policy strategy in place for Afghanistan I mean sadly, the Afghan Wars not a 20 year long war it's a one year war fought 20 times over. We already alluded and I'm sure that everyone who's here tonight knows, President backed away from that plan and prioritized as the Obama administration had disengagement from Afghanistan over what I believe is our enduring interest there which is to ensure that large portions of population centers strategic locations don't again come under the control of the Taliban and thereby also jihadist terrorist organizations aligned with them such as al-Qaeda, but also other groups, prevent another attack on scale of 911. I believe that our level of commitment there had gotten down to a sustainable level over time that was enabling the Afghans to take the brunt of the fight against the Taliban and to preserve the freedoms that the Afghan people have enjoyed since 2001. So I, of course, I regret, you know, back in back and off of the strategy that President approved and it was a good decision in 2017 and 2017 and a bad decision, you know, in 2018 2019 and into this year. Other policies and strategies though low I think stuck right I think the approach to China is shifting approach to China was long overdue and I think that that's a strategy and a policy that will largely be an element of continuity between Trump administration and the Biden administration. Well, let me go back to the Afghanistan question because it looks from the outside, like we now believe apropos of your strategic narcissism that somehow the Taliban isn't going to go back and do exactly what they say they're going to do and what they did last time. Aren't the women of Afghanistan at risk. Is it a tragedy like Vietnam. It's why I think it could be worse even low. I mean, you know, I think that what you will see in Afghanistan will be disastrous for the Afghan people. But it also will be a boon to jihadist terrorist organizations. They're already over 20 US designated terrorist organizations that exist in this terrorist ecosystem along the Afghanistan Pakistan border. And these are groups that in some ways are stronger today than al-Qaeda was on September 10, 2001. One of the reasons they're stronger is because they are orders of magnitude larger than the Mujahideen era, you know, alumni the alumni of the resistance to Soviet occupation and of course it was elements of that of that alumni who joined al-Qaeda and who committed the 11 tax members of it. So I think that that we have a problem that is large in scale and I'm talking about really the al-Qaeda alumni, the ISIS alumni, the masjid al-Tayiba alumni. These are some of the most deadly and brutal, you know, inhumane terrorist organizations in the world. But they of course are in pursuit as well of some of the most destructive weapons on earth. We are experiencing and seeing I think kind of the democratization of destruction in which many of these non-state actors now have capabilities or are pursuing them. So we are in a period I think of increasing danger and our disengagement, our disengagement from this complex problem alongside partners right across allies and coalitions and especially with our indigenous partners in Afghanistan. I think also increases the risk to us and to all humanity. And yet we don't see very much about those consequences in the media and in the news, while we talk about ongoing negotiations. Hey, well, where's the humanitarian outrage, right? I mean, you know, we have conjured up the enemy we would prefer in Afghanistan rather than the real enemy in connection with the Taliban. And you already alluded to, you know, we've tried too hard to disconnect the dots, right? We've described the Taliban as having a bold line right between their organization and groups like al-Qaeda and the Heqani network and so forth that there is no bold line. And also we've assumed, you know, hey, the Taliban will be better, they'll be more benevolent, right? They'll implement a more benign version of Sharia. What does that mean? I mean, is that mass executions in the soccer stadium every other Saturday? Is that every other girl's school bulldozed? In some of the areas where the Taliban have taken control during the offenses that they conducted during the peace talks, they've gone into communities and destroyed the schools in these communities already. So, you know, I think that this is an element of self-delusion, self-delusion based on this tendency towards strategic narcissism. Now, I have one thing about your book that you go through, whether it's the Paris Accords, the Iran deal, Iraq, Iran, and how we look at them and using strategic narcissism as the sort of your Occam's razor for trying to understand what's going on and what's real and what's not. And yet you yourself oppose getting out of the Paris Accords, oppose getting out of the Iran deal, and want to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it seems like- Well, yeah, I mean, well, that's because I was viewing these challenges through the lens of our vital interests. So to take those just quickly one by one, I argued to stay in the Paris Accord because I thought we needed to work within the Paris Accord over time to get to real solutions on climate change. But as I write in the final chapter of Battlegrounds, now as I've done more research and I've learned more about the interconnected problems of climate and environment and energy security and food security and water security, the Paris Climate Accord is a danger, right? It's a danger because it gives us a false sense of security. It actually has done nothing to address the problem of global warming and the principal cause which is man-made carbon emissions. And so I think it's time for us really to seek what Professor Richard Müller, who's a great physicist there at Cal Berkeley says, hey, we need real solutions, no more non-solutions to the problem of climate change. And that's what I advocate for in Battlegrounds. And on the Iran nuclear deal, you know, the title of that chapter is a bad deal. I thought it was a bad deal. Maybe it wasn't the worst deal ever, as President Trump has said, as historian, we tend to shy away from making those kind of hyperbolic claims. But it was a bad deal and it was a bad deal because we made too many concessions, right? It was a weak agreement, the sunset clause, inadequate verification regime. I mean, do you really trust the Iranians? I don't think we should, you know? And then it didn't address the missile program. And then of course the biggest problem is it divorced really that agreement, that weak agreement in which we made so many concessions that it really became a political disaster masquerading as a diplomatic triumph. We gave a big payoff to the Iranians in terms of really cash up front, but then in the form of the relaxation of sanctions. Hey, what did they do with that money? I mean, I covered this in the book. They applied that money to their four decade long proxy war against the great Satan, us, the little Satan, Israel, the Arab monarchies. And so my recommendation on Iran is, hey, force that regime to make a choice, right? You can either be welcomed into the international community and enjoy the benefits of it, or you can be essentially a terrorist state. You can't have it both ways. And I think one of the greatest flaws of the JCPOA is it did in effect empower Iran across the greater Middle East and did so in a way that accelerated and intensified the sectarian civil war in the region that has caused so much human suffering and caused really a humanitarian and a political catastrophe in the region. So before I want to make sure we get we bring this this in a sense this story back home. Are we guilty of strategic narcissism by avoiding listening carefully to what President Trump or watching what President Trump is doing now undermining the election that's an election that resulted in him losing. Are we avoiding what we're actually hearing from the tens of millions of people apparently who follow President Trump that for example, Michael Flynn former Lieutenant General. I'm sure you know General Flynn now advocating that the president suspend the Constitution and do another election. Is there a possibility really of and this seemed to come out while your book was coming out of the worry about real civil strife maybe civil war here at home. Yeah, I would say well, we shouldn't worry about it. I'm telling you it can't happen here. It can't happen here. I'm just saying hey you know let's let's look at the facts right let's look at what our what our what our founders set up our founders set up a system of government based on a bunch of worst case scenarios right these were people who had in their historical memory. The bloody wars of England in the 17th century and and so they designed the whole thing for a worst case scenario. They designed it for like an Oliver Cromwell right who is worse than Donald Trump right and and so what they did is they put into place a system in which the executive branch has no role in the transition. If the American people do the voters do you know and if there are challenges to the to the to the to the sanctity of our electoral system and charges of fraud those are adjudicated and they have been adjudicated, which shows the strength of our judicial system and the strength of due process and rule of law in our country. You know there's a lot of lamentation about you know hey gosh is he going to leave like you know he doesn't have a say if he's going to leave or not. You know if there weren't enough electoral votes to deliver decisive outcome which is obviously not the case, then it would go to the House of Representatives again, executive would have no role in this. And so low I just think that there's been a lot of hyperbole hyperbole about it, you know predictions of the demise of our democracy. Many of those predictions have been based on gosh look how divided we are. Hey, you know records numbers of Americans voted right and and of course if we weren't divided we'd be a one party system that looks that looks like China to me, not a good place spot to be in. So you know I'll tell you I just I reject this idea that, you know that we're living in Weimar Germany that some as some people have alluded. And we don't want to be complacent about the strength of our democratic institutions and processes, but but we also ought to not be, you know, unrealistically, you know pessimistic about it.  You know, what's what's what's sad about it is that is that the Trump administration vastly improved our deal with the security of our elections with cyber infrastructure security agency and what Sean and his team did there of course that you got fired. Right. Yeah. So, so, but you know, I'll tell you a little, we're going to survive this right we've been through worse, we've been through worse. And we're coming out of of course a quadruple crisis right it's a, it's a crisis as you as you mentioned of confidence, I think in who we are as a people in our democratic principles and institutions and processes and it's a crisis of the pandemic it's a crisis of the recession associated with the pandemic it's a, it's a crisis associated with the social divisions and racial divisions laid bare by George Floyd's murder and the, and the protests and the violence that followed and the, and the grave and legitimate concerns about inequality of the community in our country and unequal treatment under the wall, and this crisis of this, because this vitriolic partisan presidential election that we that we're still in the midst of okay but, but hey you know we're going to get through it well. And I think it's incumbent on all of us to bring our fellow Americans together, you know to have respectful, meaningful discussions right about the challenges that we face as a way to work together. And in the light in the book, I think in these challenges to national security, and these interconnected problems that we're facing. If we just began our discussions to try to have a better understanding of the problems, and then started really a conversation with a what do we agree on, and we can get a heck of a lot done. Well, you know, and, and, and what I'm concerned about is the centripetal forces you know that are pulling us apart from each other in many ways in the pandemic hasn't helped you know but in many ways this is already a trend. We are better connected to one another electronically, but we're distant from one another psychologically and emotionally and I think all of us have a role in bringing our fellow Americans together in a respectful environment in which we empathize with one another. You work together for a better future. You, you allude towards the end of your book that and a little bit in the beginning about the fact that and the fact that most Americans to get their information over and through the internet. And it's what it's the Wild West anything goes and we know that tens of millions of people believe things that are demonstrably false, like the election was rigged. That it wasn't the safest election in history. And there's a lot of anger out there. How are you going to change that reality. Well, I think it's what you're doing at Berkeley. It's what you're doing there. It's what Chancellor Christ is doing. It's what Dean Brady, and all the students especially and faculty which is to educate one another to educate ourselves. And I write in battlegrounds this was essentially a continuation of my own self education. And I think the greatest strength of our nation is an educated populace. I think it's a lack of education that leads people to seize on orthodoxies to seize on on conspiracy theories. And it's really ignorant what I've seen in places low where the situation's really bad. Where these there is tribalism and tribal identity and disunity and conflict and struggles for our and resources right what what what the problem is there oftentimes is ignorance. And that ignorance is used to foment hatred, and then hatred is then used to justify violence right. That's a cycle we don't want to see in our country. I think education education education are the top three answers to that to that question. But then also it's we need reforms right we need reforms in government. Hey you know I think we should be proud of, we should be proud of the great achievement of our revolution and the radical idea that sovereignty lies neither with King or Parliament but what the people right and celebrate the fact we have a saying how we're at the same time we can be disappointed that the unalienable rights in our constant in our in our Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in our Constitution went unrealized and realized in part because it took us a hundred years to remove the greatest blame on our history, which is the institution of slavery, but we should be able to take pride in the fact that we emancipated 4 million of our fellow Americans in our most destructive war in history. And of course again we can be disappointed, recognizing that a republic requires that continuous nurturing like our founders said it would with the failure of reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan and separate but equal, but then again celebrate the triumph of the civil rights movement and the dismantlement of this De Jorah segregation and De Jorah inequality of opportunity, recognizing we still have de facto segregation and inequality of opportunity that's something to work on, that's something we can work on together. You know, and so I think that that we need a better and a better informed view of history, I think well, and you've seen this in your generation, I think especially since the Vietnam War, in the academy of the academy in the humanities has been dominated in large measure by the orthodoxy of the new left interpretation of history, and and it has the cutting through it, a mild form of self loathing. And hey man we want to remain critical, we don't want you know a contrived happy view of our history.  Richard Wurte said, well, as Richard Wurte said, you know, the national pride is to nations with self respect is to individuals, you know, a necessary ingredient for self improvement. And so, you know, we all have work to do, I would say your profession has some work to do. I think the fourth estate is in bad shape. And I think I think it's in bad shape because it's been caught up in this vitriolic partisan polarization that we've seen. It's exacerbated by the pseudo media, and the, and the, you know, the conspiracy theories that sometimes our leaders aid and event, including the like this crazy Q and A stuff. And then you have, you know, the social media which uses algorithms based on the adversities country companies to make more and more advertising dollars to show us more and more extreme content and pull us further and further apart from each other. Okay, yeah, this is a big problem. Okay, but it's a problem that we can work on together. I believe we can come together as Americans and work on it, work on it together. So, some people I know are out there, want to know, you know, want to know things that are in your next book. So let's try a question from Douglas Goldman, General McMaster. Why do you think is just the book is just the my, my, my, my, the cookbook I'm working on low. Yeah, the cookbook, right. That'll tell us how you how you cook the books with Donald Trump. This is the question. Why do you think Donald Trump cow towels to Vladimir Putin, Mr. Goldman wants to know. Well, you know, I write about this, I write about this in in battlegrounds, you know, and, and what I try to do is I try to place this, what I see is irrational behavior on the part of the president that gives Putin, you know, too much of the benefit of doubt and it doesn't call them out for even the most egregious, the most egregious aggression against us, right. This is enabling Putin's implausible deniability, right. But I put it in the context of strategic narcissism. These are the Russia across three administrations. George HW Bush looking into Putin's soul remember that and and then you had Secretary Clinton, bringing the reset button to Donald Trump and Geneva, President Obama leading over to Medvedev who was keeping the seat warm, you know, for Putin saying hey well more flexibility after the election, and trading off of missile defenses and Poland in the hope of a better relationship with Vladimir Putin. And then you have of course have President Trump's inexplicable behavior, you know, Helsinki, you know, was, I thought I was gone. And, and, and the reluctance. Well, why do you think he does. Let me let me bring you back to the question. What you hear him say, what you hear him say right. I write about this extensively in battleground so I think ignorance of history contributes to it right. I mean there is this narrative. That hey, it rushes just you know they're a natural ally because they were allies during World War two. Well you know this the show is really the danger of knowing just a little bit of history, or abusing it right. And people forget about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Act and the fact that that the Soviet Union was complicit with with Nazi Germany, and that we were an ally that was not of by design. It was by necessity after after the Nazis invaded them in June of 1941 so I mean I just think, you know I think that you know there are, you know, there are there are explanations involved in lack of understanding of history, and seeing seeing Putin as as the bull work right the bull work against jihadist terrorists right and, and this affinity with him for that reason. And, and, and you know this is self delusional right Vladimir Putin as I write in the book is driven by a sense of honor lost and an obsession with restoring Russia to national greatness okay well a Russia can't compete with on our on our own terms right the economy is the size of Italy economy. So what Putin's theory of the game you know his strategy is to drag us all down. You need the last man state in Europe and, and these be Europe in the United States and, and to do so mainly through a sustained campaign of political subversion, a component of which is cyber enabled information warfare against us. And I think that you know the President has aided and abetted Putin by not calling out this behavior, not pulling the curtain back on it which is really the first step in encountering it. And, and so I you know I think that, you know across the political spectrum, what we what we need to do, I think is demand better of our political leaders. You've seen the tendency, I think on the part of the present certainly and most dramatically in recent days and weeks, but also in among other political leaders as well. It's a tendency to compromise our principles to score partisan political points. You know, I think the American people have to expect better of their of their leaders and, and ensure that they act in our interest. You don't get, you don't get nervous. When you see the President remove the Secretary of Defense and put someone with literally no background in administering a major department. And putting in the undersecretary role of someone who you dismissed from the National Security Council, a young man, a low low low low. When are we going to stop talking about Donald Trump. I hope so man. I mean I think you know a low, you know, I mean of course this is cause for concern. I mean a period of transition is already a turbulent period and what you want is you want your leaders to ensure a degree of stability and to ensure a smooth transition. Well I think the question then but that's not Donald Trump's DNA but but also I'll tell you well. Let's stop talking about Donald Trump. Is he just really a passing phenomenon but there still are tens of millions of people who believe and want change in a direction that he represents. Is he just the first part of a way. It's a democracy right. I mean, there are, there are, I think there are very encouraging results from this election. There are people who didn't want to sign up for the Democratic agenda. So, but they didn't like Trump so what did they do they voted against Trump and they voted down ticket for the Republican Party hey that's a good thing right that shows that our politics have become personalized and the people are voting on issues as they see them and what's in the best interest of of them and their families right you know what about this idea that that there was a hard block of minorities that was going to vote one way or the other. Well large numbers of minorities voted for the Republican Party as well as we ought to celebrate that we don't want people to define what political party they vote for based on the color of their skin. That's crazy right so you know I think there's some encouraging results low I've you know I'm not I'm not ready like you apparently are to announce the demise of our republic. No so so you know of course these are causes for concern but but we ought to also have confidence in the strength of our institutions right we're not a monarchy I mean heck we fought a revolution over there. So, one of one of the people Phil Strauss writes, and wants to know before we run out of time, what is Trump like to work on a day to day basis.  I'm joking okay but he's a unique guy right he's a unique person and and and you know he was elected president and my job was to to you know to ensure that he got access to the best advice and analysis across the departments and agencies that I gave him multiple options. When we did that it was effective. Now, you know I left you know after 13 months I can't really speak to what happened after I left. But but while I was there. I saw it as my duty right I mean I served in the army for 34 years this is my fifth commander in chief. And to provide the elected president with with options. I think there are those who took a different approach to their duties and responsibilities and I think this is really kind of the case and every white in us right there are those who are there to do as I was doing is as a career military officer who by the way I'd. I've never voted and I know that sounds strange I vote now and I encourage all Americans to vote. But I wanted to keep you know obviously a bold line between the military profession and partisan politics and I felt that it was important for me to take that the extreme position that George Marshall had done and taken and to not to not vote so I sworn into West Point when I was 17 years old and I just the last the first time I voted was in this last presidential election. So so you know I, I was biased already in favor of doing my best to provide the elected president options. There are many civil servants were also in that category I think Fiona Hill provided a great example of the civil servant who served with with great distinction and there are many many others with whom I interacted across the department today and season on the but there's a second group of people. They come into an administration, because they don't want to give the present options they want to manipulate decisions, consistent with their own agenda right on, you know, immigration or on, you know, power up and great important whatever it is right and, and, and what they try to do is, is to undermine a process that gives options and instead doing and runs and then there's a third group of people who kind of define themselves in the role of saving the country maybe the world from the present. Right this is the, you know the anonymous author and so forth. The problem with that second and third group of people is they're undermining the Constitution of the United States, because sovereignty lies with the people, and only the elected leaders are directly responsible to the people and, and that's the president and the vice president, of course it's elected members of Congress, and, and these long term civil servants and others.  And so I think it's really important when you serve in the government to understand what your role is. Maybe time, when you feel as if you continuing your duties and responsibilities will enable illegal action, or maybe enable unethical action, and hey that's time for you to go, right, but, but if you're there to serve the elected president, you're not there to make your own policies, or to obstruct that president's legal decisions to do so undermines our democracy. So, I got a Berkeley question for you, which has to do with dereliction of duty comes both from a Frank new house, new house or and of course you know the name. Anyway, it comes from Frank new house or and, and, and it's about dereliction of duty. Do you think the military would have won the Vietnam War, if a civilian government had led to the military operate freely. That would have been a good idea was the Vietnam War a good idea. What I write what I write about in dereliction do is very consistent with the greatest story of the Vietnam War George herrings interpretation is that, if that's really the right question is whether or not the war could have been one that we could have guaranteed really the freedom of independence of South Vietnam at a cost acceptable to the American public. I think that the answer to that is no what I write about in in dereliction of duty though, is how the way in which the war in Vietnam, the way the decisions were made, prevented any consideration of the long term costs and consequences, and therefore, in retrospect kind of it looks like Linda Johnson wanted to go and work. The war in Vietnam but he wanted to do nothing, nothing of the sort. So it didn't the word didn't come with the decision for war. I mean the war in Vietnam slunky and on cat's feet, right and, and that's what the story of the book is about is how the President's advisors compromise principle for expediency and hoped over time to get adopted. The strategy that they wanted, and they were complicit therefore and foreclosing on the kind of discussion that was necessary. If not discussion is particularly important in matters of war, which are really matters of life and death. It was the name Daniel Ellsberg that was flew out of my mind because I spoke spoke with him the other day and, and he his question is, if the military had gotten its way over Johnson, they wanted to bomb all the way to the Chinese border. We would have had a world war or a nuclear war as a result. No. Well, the question is, do you do worry. Do you think that the military strategy that that Johnson was against was something that should have should have gone into effect. I'm going to read the book man you read it at the time and you sent me a nice note on it so I mean, of course I don't. I don't cover that in the book and I don't argue that that I don't argue that the joint sheets and staff's proposals should have been should have been approved right in fact what what is important I think about the book and if the story of derelicts and beauty is really the joint sheets and staff proposed nothing of the sort. Instead what they decided to do is to mask those long term costs and consequences and the degree of military action resolute action, as well as the numbers of troops that they thought were necessary, just to get the next step up the ladder, just get the first bombing runs off. Well going back to January of 64 just get the first covert raids going under op plan 34 alpha, then just get the first bombing runs off, then just get the first troops deployed. And so it was this gradual approach to the to the to these to these decisions that mass the long term costs and consequences. If Lyndon Johnson had been confronted with the results of two war games in 1964, both of which concluded with in 1968 right was a projection for over four years from 64 to 68. The war game ended in 1968 with 500,000 troops in South Vietnam, with no prospect for success and the American people losing faith with the effort. Hey, sound familiar. And but but of course these, you know that these repeat these results were disregarded. And, and, and so what I argue in the book is hey these were people who not only should have known better, but who did know better and who did it anyway. Okay, we have we have a question about China and because we've passed over it. I want to ask you this question from Chris who've made it. Could you talk more about the tussles with China, especially the technology struck the struggle about Huawei. What's your long, our long game, if there's a risk of becoming less competitive by being more belligerent with China. Well, I would say we're not being belligerent with China. Hey, let me just tell you what I think are the three misunderstandings to be a little bit Chinese here. These are the three misunderstandings about the competition with China. The first of these is hey, this is a US China problem. And I think because of our new or statistic view and because a lot of people don't like Donald Trump, I know that might come as a surprise. The interpretation is well, Donald Trump is just so mean and belligerent, darn it, that Xi Jinping is acting out against that meanness of belligerence. Let's just take a look at the record just this year alone right. How about wasting COVID-19 on the world. How about how about going after and punishing the doctors that were trying to raise the alarm bells. How about subverting the World Health Organization against its very purpose. How about adding insult to injury with wolf warrior diplomacy across the globe, especially in Europe but across the globe. How about bludgeoning Indian soldiers to death on the Himalayan frontier. How about boasting that you're going to put additions on the on the concentration camps in which you've been turned 1.5 million Uighurs because because they really like being reeducated as Xi Jinping said in the last month. How about extending the party's repressive arm into Hong Kong. How about aggressive actions and sinking Malaysian and Vietnamese vessels in the South China Sea just in recent months. What would be the largest land grab in history in in in this if they succeed. The threats toward Taiwan. Look at the economic coercion at Australia. Hey, how about cyber attacks on our medical research facilities in the middle of trying to develop a vaccine to get us out of the darn pandemic. Hey, OK, explain to me again. How about taking your Canadian hostages right for now going on two years in captivity and Xi Jinping saying hey what do you mean you know I was just taking as part of our farm policy right. How is this a US China problem. This is a free world China problem. Yet the second misunderstanding is that there hasn't been international cooperation that there really has been international cooperation. And then the final was that the final one is that hey we face a stark choice right between either accommodation of the party or disastrous war. Okay, there's a lot of middle ground there, in which we can compete in a transparent way, and with partners to over time hopefully convince the Chinese Communist Party, they can have enough of a stream of national adjuvation without doing so at the expense of its own people and stifling human freedom inside of China, or at accomplishing its objectives at our expense the rest of the world's expense. And so that's the approach I think we really have to take is one of transparent competition and it's long it was long overdue I believe it when I came into the job as national security advisor. I think it's the most significant shift in us part foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, and it was long overdue and it was necessary. It's been imperfectly implemented.  There are some own goals in this but hey, I think this will be an element of continuity with the Biden administration. I worked very hard to make this a bipartisan policy at the outset. And I believe that the view that we have to compete much more effectively, you know, is a strongly held among among you know House members like Nancy Pelosi and senators like Chuck Schumer, as it is among the Republican counterparts for example. Well it's a natural point to ask, what do you think of the Biden administration to be the people he's appointing the policies he's talking about for instance reopening negotiations with Iran. How does that hit you. Well I mean you know hey listen these are these are these are great American citizens and certain public servants right I think we have to get out of this personalization of politics right we have to have respect for one another. We can we can disagree with each other. You know there's probably not a whole heck of a lot that certain members of the administration I agree on it from a foreign policy perspective hey but it's okay that's all right. You know and, and, and I wish them all the best I want him to succeed, I think the, that President like Biden's message to the American people about being a president for all Americans has been immensely positive and, and, and, and, and welcome. I think that some of the approaches to foreign policy are certainly nascent as you would expect because they're not even present not sworn in yet. But, but I you know I think there's a lot of talk about strengthening our alliances and that's good. Okay, but I think I would just say hey, your alliances are a lot more than you know a positive atmosphere in cocktail cocktail parties you know with our European allies right the alliances have to be for a purpose and I think there's an opportunity to galvanize more international cooperation on the threat from the Chinese Communist Party for example strengthening NATO against Russia's political subversion and acts of aggression that fall below the threshold that might elicit the military response. There is a way I think to galvanize multinational support for I think what is necessary a slight reversal, a reversal to the approach to Afghanistan, whether they'll do that or not I'm not sure. I think in many ways low, the greatest deficiencies in Trump administration policy has been where the Trump administration doubled down on the deficiencies of the Obama administration policy right but, but of course you know people learn from the past and I hope that they'll resist the impulse to do two things right once one is to hey try to turn the clock back to 2016, because I think that we were in a really difficult and disadvantageous position in 2016. And the second thing that I hope they resist doing is defining your foreign policy mainly as in opposition to the previous administration's foreign policy, and they look at these challenges on their own terms and recognize that there will be elements of continuity as I think on the on the China policy for example, and I think that they're there by necessity there'll be some elements of discontinuity. But I think the mistake you know turn the clock back. Turn the clock back on China. There would be a mistake huge mistake. Yeah, a huge mistake. And they won't do it I don't think they'll do it. I mean I really I think that you know I think that there's there's a great deals I mentioned a bipartisan support for the competitive approach to China. And if I could give you any advice would be hey don't fall for it. And it is Chinese Communist Party false promises for cooperation, like on climate change for example, in exchange, right for going back to a policy of cooperation engagement with China. I think we just made this speech right we said hey we're going to be carbon neutral by 2060. Watch what he is doing. They're building 70 coal fired plants a year, right, each one of those plants is probably many of you know, burns, you know a ton of coal every 10 seconds right and so these are plants that they're building not only in China, but across Africa. Right the largest carbon emitter in Kenya has just been constructed by China thank you, you know right next to a UNESCO World Heritage site right so hey I think we can't buy what Xi Jinping says, he quotes, you know, in the in the language of cooperation, an extremely aggressive policy in the language of a, you know, a community of common destiny. Hey, what does that look like, you know, look at some Bob way. That's the China model perfected at a micro scale. How's that working out for some Bob wheels. So I think, you know, we have to be clear right about the threat, and we have to watch what China does. Don't listen to what they say, because they're these are false promises. Okay, well we're, we're getting close to the end and I got a, I got a question from the East Coast.   You know, could do it could do it next year. I think with that, and with time getting close. I want to introduce Dean Brady, the head of the public policy school, and thank him actually for hosting all of this and being supportive of bringing you to campus and Dean Brady take it away and thank you. General McMaster. So what was fun. Thanks. Well, thanks to Carol Chris for the introduction, thank you to Lowell Bergman and General McMaster for a spirited and fascinating discussion of where we are in foreign policy in America right now. Thanks to Daniel Sargent for the cosponsoring this through the Institute of International Studies, the College of Letters and Sciences for cosponsoring it with us. Also, I want to tell you a little bit about a new center we're starting with Goldman school that's being started by Janet Napolitano, former president of the University of California, former Secretary of Homeland Security and former Governor of Arizona. Her new center is going to be on politics and security, and it's going to try to look at things like election security, climate change security, tech sector security, pandemic security, the kinds of issues the long term issues that I think we face. I think we face as a crucial part of our future security in America and around the world so we're really excited about the center. Stay tuned you'll hear a big announcement we hope in January of exactly where the center is going and what it's going to be doing. I want to thank the audience for being here. And thanks for your great questions. And then finally I want to note that there will be a recording of this on you see TV that will be available to people, and that should occur in the next week or two. Thank you for being here. Thanks again to General McMaster. You can tell that he's a historian, and we really enjoyed the historical perspective on so many important issues. Thank you so very much.