How can a hostage negotiator help civil engineers? Well, in this episode, you're gonna find out, because we're gonna talk to Dan Oblinger, who is a hostage negotiator by night, but he works with civil engineers by day to help them with their active listening skills and their ability to negotiate. Let's jump right in. All right, so now I'm excited to welcome our guest onto the show for today. By night, he is a law enforcement officer and hostage negotiator, and by day, he is a consultant for engineering consultants. Let's welcome to the podcast, Dan Oblinger. Dan, welcome aboard. Anthony, it's my pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. This is certainly, I think, teed up to be an interesting episode. We haven't had too many hostage negotiators on the show. Am I the first? Yeah, you are the first. Okay, you're not gonna forget this, buddy. That's for sure. So, before we kind of jump into, you know, what you're doing now for engineers, let's get into your background a little bit. Take us through your career journey, Dan. I was studying to be a priest for the Roman Catholic Church. That's where my career starts. And then I left that with a degree in philosophy and went out into the workforce.  But right after that, it's police. And I was like, dude, I can make that much money? How hard can it be? So, 20 years later, I got into law enforcement with a philosophy degree, which is a horrible mistake. Nobody should ever do that. Nobody should ever hire a philosopher and give them a gun and a badge. But I did, I had some interesting experiences early in my career that kind of shuffled me down a certain path in law enforcement. There's so many different jobs as a police officer. And I'm now a hostage negotiator. And what's interesting is before all that, I grew up in a family of AEC. My dad was a general contractor. Okay, hopefully there's still some people still listening to the podcast. And most of actually several uncles and my grandfather, they were all civil engineers. My other grandfather was a landscape architect. So I grew up in the AEC environment. I just never went into it as a career field. But about 10 years ago, my dad, he pointed out, he's like, you know, some of the things you know now and some of the things you can do, people in industry would pay to know that and be able to do that as well. Sure. So I started translating my experiences and my knowledge for clients. And wouldn't you know it? The people that immediately grasped the importance and the value and the profitability of that were consulting engineering firms and mostly civil. So now, although I know nothing about engineering, I know a lot about consulting and listening and negotiating value in scope and fee. So I get to hang out with engineers. Well, that's an interesting combination. And you know, myself who practiced as a civil engineer and of course since for the last 10 years or so, I've been doing a lot of coaching and training and learning about the inside and outs of companies. I can certainly see how the negotiating aspect of things can be critical in a lot of ways, not just the negotiating that someone might think off the top of their heads being negotiating with clients or prospective clients, but just, you know, negotiations in every day. I mean, you're dealing with contractors, you're dealing with teams, you're dealing with all kinds of things. So we're gonna dive into that in a minute, but before we go there, you know, you mentioned that there's a lot of different positions in law enforcement and you know, you had an interesting kind of road. You know, obviously right now, we got a lot of stuff going on in the country that you know, is all over in terms of, you know, with law enforcement and things like that. Just curious like from a mindset of going to work every day for someone like you at this point, I mean, I have a lot of friends in law enforcement and you know, they're good people and I know that there's been instances where cops have done not so good things. I think you get that in a lot of professions, but I'm just wondering since I'm able to talk to someone here today that's in law enforcement, is it just somewhere you have to go to work each day and just, you know, kind of say, you know, I'm gonna do my job and just kind of keep, kind of moving through this. I mean, it must be a little bit of a challenge because some of the stereotypes that are going on out there. Yeah, we, you know, I've been doing this work about two decades and it, yeah, it's very discouraging when it is very discouraging when someone in your profession brings it into a poor light and that is for any profession, but you know, my profession is a really special profession. You know, we are people of authority in our communities and we have to learn how to go about our duties and build relationships of trust in our community without using that authority, but there's no escaping the fact that you have the badge and you have these special missions in the community to use force when it's absolutely necessary and it's a constant balancing act in police.  So it's, yeah, in times of crisis, our job gets even harder and when we are the focus of the crisis, then it's just magnified and amplified. And so, yeah, you're very right to point out that it's kind of tough right now to be a cop. At the same time, I think this is from the inside, like looking, you know, out. I can just assure you, no matter where you are, if you're hearing my voice, you have really amazing people, men and women, that despite all that, still put on the uniform and come in and serve their community and you. And so what a blessing, right? So in the midst of all the bad, it's still mostly good.  And so, you know, thanks for sharing that message with us kind of from the inside. And again, it goes to Dan's point, that's applicable to every profession, you know, civil engineering, notwithstanding. I mean, civil engineering, we've talked about this on the podcast many times. You have quite a bit of power and authority as a civil engineer.  And that's why we spend a lot of time on ethics and you know, ethical training in civil engineering because of some of the things that have happened in the past on things. So I think it is, there are different professions have different types of authority and responsibilities. And you know, as a professional, you need to obviously be aware of that and hopefully you'll be respectful of that power. So with that, Dan, let's jump in a little bit.  A consultant to the consultants. A consultant to the consultant. So let's talk about, talk about how you, when you first got into this and you kind of went to some A companies and kind of pitched them on the idea of negotiation and how you might be able to help them. How did you tackle that and what was the reception? Well, it started, this is the interesting story. So I started providing training to contracting companies, to GCs, both vertical and horizontal, for drug safety. Because they would invest in that because some of them had to. Like, you know, if they were a DOT compliant, if they had some DOT safety training for like drug recognition. So that's how I started.  And I was like, well, I mean, really what I like to teach about is active listening and negotiations. They're like, sure, come on down. Like they didn't even care. Because by then it's just, it was about a relationship that I had. Well, I started doing that. And one time I did a joint architects, engineers and contractors conference. And I spoke about active listening, which I'd been doing for several of the bigger contractors in that area. And all the engineers were there and they're like, we don't listen good.  And so I started going into, again, mostly civil engineering firms to talk to their people. And again, it's from the lens. It's usually from the, how I get in to start is from the lens of business development. Right. And because that's a scary two word phrase for a lot of engineers, you know? Sure it is. But it's so important, right? And I discovered right away that in most firms big enough to kind of be able to specialize a little bit. It's the guy or gal in that group that has a natural ability to talk. All right, you're the business development person, right? So they don't have any, necessarily, they don't have any specialized training in sales. They definitely don't have any training in negotiation. And they definitely don't have any training in active listening skills that Haas's negotiators know, which are just like the magic unicorn food that just brings people to you. And so they were eating it up. That's when my practice, my side business exploded. I was beating engineers off of sticks because they realized, do this stuff works. So that's kind of my journey into the engineering field and kind of how my message and the services I provide have evolved. Because the topic evolved, but the delivery evolved too, because I started out with just like, I'll come in and train your people, right? Like, because I figured that's what they need. But then I realized pretty quickly, you know, what you need is to change your culture. And so now it looks very, it's much more like consulting in that you certainly training can help knowledge and a little bit of skill development can help. But what you really need is coaching and negotiation support, so you can develop basically champions for these kinds of activities inside of your engineering firm so that everybody sees business development as an important mission. And those that the way that it's done is by listening to clients deeply and then negotiating the value. And when you do that, guess what, scope creep just dissipates. The scope creep comes from a lack of confidence in negotiation. So, so there's all kinds of things. You don't want to say anything, you don't want to go against anyone. Just like, we'll keep you. If you're totally uncomfortable talking about how the job got bigger and therefore the payoff needs to get bigger, people sense that and they just start asking you for more and more and more. And the fear is that we'll make a dissatisfied client. What one thing I think most important thing that I think engineers get out of the work I do with them is to realize, dissatisfaction in a client relationship actually comes when we fail to negotiate. So. That's interesting. Yeah, cause imagine, we have to step out and think about their perspective. If I'm going to Anthony, who's the project manager on this project for me, he's my engineering consultant, right? And I get a suspicion that maybe they took me for a ride on that fee, like the scope was way too small and like they're making hand over fist and I test that by saying, hey, could you do a little bit more? And you're like, sure. I can do lots more and then you're like, can you live a little more? Sure, plenty of scope here, plenty of fee. They're like, wait a minute. When in fact, what you're thinking is God, dude, we're about to go in the red on this project but I don't want to make them mad. But what they sense is, is that you got a heck of a deal on me. And so again, it's, we miscommunicate cause we don't negotiate. Yeah, that's interesting. And quite a few things there that you said that kind of really, really resonated. I mean, one of them is that, a lot of younger civil engineers, there's like that elephant in the room that is business development that they know at some point in their career, most likely in a lot of consulting firms, they're gonna have to do it, right? If they want to move up, it's gonna become one of their responsibilities. And so, you're dead on that they don't have training in it. They don't have training in listening. They don't have training in negotiation, kind of all the things you need to do effective sales, effective business developments. That's definitely one issue where I could see you could really be helpful. But the other thing too that you said there in terms of the scope creep, I mean, honestly, in working with civil firms, that's one of the primary problems anywhere. Every one. It's one of the biggest sources of stress. Yeah. Especially for middle management and engineering firms. Yeah, and the problem, I think the problem with it is twofold. And I think you hit on both of them. One of them is younger civil engineers will get involved in projects and start doing some project management or interacting with the client. And they haven't yet been told what scope creep is. They're not really aware of it to begin with. They're just thinking that by saying, yes, we'll do this. They're being good engineers and they're servicing their clients. Cause yeah, we want to do whatever you need us to do. Right? Whatever, whatever, whatever. They're doing good, yeah. And that's kind of in some ways an honest mistake if they're not aware of the mechanics of the business side of the engineering projects. And then the second aspect of it is, the ability, the confidence and the ability to do what you're doing and say to someone, well, hold on. That sounds great. We have to do it, but it's not in our scope of work. So I'm going to need to charge you more money, basically, which is like, you know, in order to have the confidence to be able to say that to like a contractor or another consultant that you're working with is a lot to begin with. So it's two things kind of combination there is one, they need to be schooled on what scope creep is and you know, how to be aware of it and say, oh, I gotta better check the contract. And the second thing is then they got to have to wear with all like you're saying to be able to, you know, go and do that. So to that, you know, based on all that stuff, what should consulting engineering, especially civil engineers look for to kind of, you know, evaluate their abilities of for negotiation and communication abilities? Like how do they start with that? What a great question. I'm just going to give you five signs, because the first thing I do as a consultant, just like you all is I evaluate where we're at now and what would have to be done to have client success for this project, right? I'm not building a bridge. I'm not working on a wastewater plant. I'm looking at negotiation culture. So the first thing I do is I evaluate what's the competence in negotiation craft for your workforce, for your engineers? How confident and competent are they to mix it up with clients, vendors, subcontractors, the architects, the GCs on the project? How willing are they to go anywhere on any medium and have a conversation about scope and fee? And generally speaking, if you haven't done anything intentional with your culture, the confidence level and the confidence level are very low. And I'm not talking about project management. I'm talking about, especially if you're subprime. Yeah. Because if you don't have any skill in negotiation, you're just going to default to authority. Who's in charge? Okay, I guess we got to do what they say. But negotiation is irrespective of authority.  Now I was going to say no civil engineering company that I ever know answers that question high. Yeah, right. And if they're honest, but most companies can't answer high. What I'm talking about here are some pretty good benchmarks and they did a survey of, I think it was like the Inc 5000 and maybe like 1% of companies could say, yeah, we do all this. So the second thing I look for is how eager are your employees then? And it's a function of the confidence and confidence but how eager are they to have these discussions? The third thing I look at is do you have a system? So where it's consistent and measurable that you are preparing for negotiations, doing them well, but this is really important, debriefing them and learning from your mistakes. And then maybe the last two kind of related but team concept, are you treating it like a team sport or do you let your unicorns go out and do it? And again, I would call it the old model is well, whoever's got a talent or an acumen for it, okay, they're gonna go do it. Or does everybody view their job as having an impact on business development and project management? And when you negotiate really important stuff, are you using at least two people to do that? And again, that's where you start getting into some of those bolts of negotiation but there's a team concept so important. Negotiation is not a solo sport. And then again, the fifth thing would be is it a constant improvement both for your people and your culture but also for your culture? Are you constantly raising that negotiation quotient inside the firm? And when this happens, those five things, at some point you don't need me. Like I'm one of the few consultants that has an exit strategy. Like I know when it's like you guys got this because you have people that can continue to nurture that culture because they're champions and that's really cool to see. The thing I'll say is you have those five things in place, not only will you make more money, you'll have more satisfied clients and you'll have, I mean, the nature of AEC is it's relationship based now. True. So you'll have long-term clients that are just bringing work to you because they trust you. And it's because of your employees and the relationships that they built with their employees. Yeah, no, that's great. And I like that you have the framework because I'm sure going into a company you can kinda, engineers like to see frameworks and you can show them these things and try to work with them on increasing their kind of their competence across the five of them for sure, which is great. A great way to kind of see results because I do think based on the stuff you said, I mean, yeah, like you said, there's always gonna be people in the company that aren't gonna be confident that are gonna need assistance but it's kind of like identifying them and equipping them, better equipping them to do the job.  I mean, you're just always working on teams. You're usually working on big size projects or components of projects that have multiple people and deadlines and everything is kind of like a give and take. So it is really one of the skills that I can see that's most important for professionals in this industry just because of all of the back and forth. So it's good to kind of hear you talk a little bit about that. And the other thing that I liked that you said there was it sounds like having some kind of consistent framework to operate off of is very important. And the reason I like that is because engineers typically have that from the technical side of things with their projects, right? They have a checklist to go through to make sure they're hitting all the technical components. The colors are right on the drawings and the details are right. But it seems like whenever we get into things that aren't so technical, that aren't so quantitative, we're less strategic about it. And so I know here at EMI what we've always tried to do is constantly give people frameworks. Do you wanna delegate better? Here's a framework for delegation. Just follow these steps consistently and you'll get better. Is that something that you find yourself doing in your day-to-day hostage negotiations? Yeah, so people resist checklists, obviously. We talk a lot about the knowledge skill gap. So knowing what negotiation is and some dynamics and some, this is especially true too. I think a lot of people teach negotiations as tactics and that just doesn't work because you have a non-compliant counterparty. That's what we like to say. That's fancy terms for it. They don't have to do what you want. So it's much more important to develop really great habits and asking questions, making people give proposals to you about what they want instead of just demanding it. Listening well and managing emotions, managing your own biases and understanding what kind of language is persuasive and what kind of language leads to impasse. If you're doing those things well as a habit, then business development and project management become so much easier. But the danger is to think that once you have those good habits, you can just roll into a meeting and just knock it out and the good negotiators will tell you, like, I'm very good at my craft. The team I work with on the police department, very good at their craft. You know what we're constantly doing is preparing, briefing and debriefing and we are constantly paying attention to the details because they matter. So you have to have what we call a mission and purpose document for every negotiation that you do. And that can be again, business development, project management, internal negotiations with your talent. Like if you have a really critical conversation, before that you need to think about your mission and purpose, you need to anticipate emotions and bias, you need to talk about like what the dynamics will be for this negotiation. Who am I dealing with? What do I know about them on past experience and can I be open to what could be different this time? Yeah, that's interesting. And you know, you reminded me of a great quote by Sun Tzu from the art of war, which is the battle is won before the fight begins, which is basically, you know, it's all about preparation. And if you're getting to the point on an engine, let's take engineering, business development, for example, if you're giving someone a proposal, by that point in time, when you're handing them or emailing that proposal, it should be so geared towards their needs that, you know, the odds of them, if you've done it correctly and you've listened accordingly throughout the process and you've heard their needs and you've catered the proposal to their needs, the odds of you getting that business should be extremely high, whereas you don't wanna send someone a proposal and say, yeah, this isn't what we're really needed.  You didn't do discovery is what we would say. That's the language we use. You didn't do discovery with that potential client. And obviously there's tons of ways that, you know, civil engineers are winning work now. If you're in highway, obviously you're like, no, no, there's supplies. I'm like, well, I got something for you too because you can still negotiate with the government.  You didn't discover with the client.  And then that's the one you sent. So yeah, negotiation is so important because that discovery process is how you do so much with it. You not only, we call it discovery and people think, oh, you're discovering what they know. I'm like, sometimes you're helping your client discover what will work best for them. And when you were the one that did that out of all the people they're gonna bid for that work, guess who they're gonna wanna do business with? Yeah, you took the time, yeah. No, it's important and I don't know why listening. I guess listening is something that's underrated in all professions, not just engineering, but I know for sure from doing some coaching for engineering managers when you ask their team, how could your manager improve? They say, oh, he or she doesn't really listen to me. That's it. It's like the number one, it's like family feud. Number one, we surveyed 100 professional engineers in the civil engineering field and asked them what's wrong with their boss. Number one response was ding, bad listener. Right. But if you, and then if you survey the bosses, we surveyed 100 emerging leaders and number one problem with their teams, ding, they don't listen to me. It's universally poor skill. How about if you ask parents and children? How about if you ask parents and children that it'd probably be the same thing? Okay, so let's make it real. Like number one problem in communities in crisis right now where we have protesting and rioting that's gotten out of hand. Number one complaint of the people about their police, they don't listen to us. And number one complaint about the police of the people, they're not listening to us. It's just, there's a lot of talking going on and not a lot of listening. There's a lot of advocacy, but not a lot of discovery. So let's talk a little bit, if you don't mind about your work as a hostage negotiator for a moment here. I just want to try to understand like, in terms of what you do on a daily basis, it sounds like there's a lot of preparation involved. There's a lot of this discovery that you mentioned how you term phrase it out in terms of if you're dealing with a situation, you need to understand who you're dealing with from all angles, right? I'm assuming that that's what helps you to be successful in those situations. Is there, you know, maybe you can mention a couple of strategies that you use that you kind of like, from time to time or just trying to think of what engineers might hear from you here and maybe use them in some of their instances or daily conversations or, you know, negotiations. Yeah, I think, let's do, how about three? Three hot tips for engineers. Number one, the negotiation probably begins way before you thought it did. And I could give you, I mean, we could kind of break it down all the ways we went work, right, as civil engineers, but it's like, for instance, if you're waiting to get on a call with a client to kind of negotiate out maybe some of the potential scope for this potential project, well, did you consider whether a phone call was the best medium for you to do that? Because that would be, that's the negotiation that happens before the negotiation. You're like, no, we need to meet them in person, right? And I understand corona, but if you're like, no, for us, for our skill set, for the advantages we have in this process, kind of knowing who we're up against, we're gonna do better in person. Okay, so negotiate that you're gonna meet them in person to do this. Or if you're like, no, no, no, like phone's better for us. So there's this pre-negotiation. So if you wait to get on a phone call to negotiate, then you're accepting something at face value and maybe we shouldn't have. So there's all these little things that happen, like everything's negotiable. Everything's negotiable. That's where I talk to, if you're doing work in a state where there is no QBS and it's 100% fee. And so you're getting the QR after the QRP or whatever. And you're like, this is it, this is the project. I'm like, but yeah, but see there's people that created the scope for this project and you should really be having human to human conversations with them about that. In whatever way you possibly can to clarify and discover what's behind the project because you can't build anything just with like a three-page document, right? So you find out where they're going with it. You'll have a much better proposal, right? And probably you'll have a much more accurate fee for what they were anticipating based on what they wrote those descriptions for. So that's where the negotiation tends to begin way earlier than any of us think. The second thing I would say is become a master listener. And just to make that a little bit more concrete is you need to be asking better questions. Questions should invite stories. They shouldn't collect data. You'll get the data in the process of receiving the story. But what you receive in the story is the emotions of the person that's telling the story. And that's how we make those trusted advisor relationships with people is when we have an emotional connection with them. And I know that may frighten engineers. I'll tell you, it frightens cops too. So we've learned though that if you do not manage emotions, your own emotions of like fear and a lack of confidence, but also if you don't manage the emotions of your potential or current clients, that's when communication breaks down. So when people tell stories, we get the emotions and the facts. And that is complete communication. And then the last thing is managing bias. The discovery process is really for us to manage our own biases about projects and people. And also then to discover any biases that we have to correct using active listening and negotiation with the people that we are negotiating with. So just kind of three practical tips. The negotiation begins way earlier than we thought. So prepare, ask better questions, think of it like story collecting. And then the third thing is we gotta manage bias in ourselves and in the people we do business with. Yeah, no, that's great. And along the lines of asking better questions, when I went to executive coaching school, that was something that we really learned about. And they had us ask a lot of open-ended questions. And for those of you listening, that basically means that the question can't be answered with a yes or no, especially in the engineering world. If you're asking someone a question that they can simply say yes or no, they're gonna say yes or no and move on. And you're not gonna get kind of the story that Dan's referring to there, which is really what's driving that person, what's behind what they're asking for, and so definitely asking good questions that will give you that information that you're needing to go off. I mean, we talk about that a lot when we do our training on like building relationships is a lot of times an engineer goes to a networking event, they don't really know what to say. So we kind of tell them, ask really good questions. Hey, what has really been the favorite part of your career? What have you enjoyed most about being a civil engineer? A person's gonna open up, oh, I love this, I love that, I love this, right? But if you said, hey, do you like being a civil engineer? Oh, yes, no, it's kind of an easier answer. So really think about, I think that questioning one could be really beneficial for civil engineers in terms of listening because that's kind of what's gonna set you up to have the information to listen to as opposed to just keeping a shorter conversation which is not gonna be that helpful. Dan, before we move on to the civil engineering hot seat to wrap this one up, one last question I want to ask you is just about your own career. Is there a situation or a challenging situation at work? Could be a hostage negotiation, something that you dealt with that you really had to work at and you kind of got through it. Is there anything that you could share maybe that you learned from it or just any situation that you're open to sharing so people can learn a little bit more about what you're doing, how you use some of these skill sets? Yeah, you talk about asking good questions and the very first place to start sure is this discussion of closed and diverse open-ended but through my career, I've been put in situations where it's not academic, right? I'm not thinking well closed-ended versus open-ended. I'm thinking about how can I ask a question that's going to accomplish discovery when the person I'm asking the question of has a gun to another man's head and has told me that they intend to kill him. So that's when question asking as a craft becomes very real because you know how they say there's no wrong questions. There are about a million wrong questions when someone has gotten to the point where they're holding another human being hostage with a weapon and they want to kill him. And so I do have, I coach a lot of engineers and they're like, okay, so I should be asking more open-ended questions, right? I'm like, well, sometimes no. Sometimes a closed-ended question is the proper question. And this is where it becomes tricky in the beginning and then once you break through and realize that it is a craft and you just have to apply yourself to the craft just like engineering, right? Engineers get really good at it because up front they just want a checklist. Right. Okay, so which question do I ask then? I was like, I don't know, who's the guy? And they're like, well, I don't know yet. I'm like, that's right. You just have to become, you have to see questions as tools and you wouldn't use a hammer when you need a screwdriver. Right. And so for instance, probably in your class they said, so here are how you start good open-ended questions. Who, what, when, where, how and why. Is that fair? Right, yeah, fair. The interrogatives. Okay, why questions are absolutely dangerous. Never ask a why question of a man who has a gun to another man's head. Just like you would never ask a why question of a 14-year-old teenage daughter. Why did you do that? You hear it? Like the voice of authority and invalidation. So I'm gonna give you a situation. I was negotiating with a man.  So, you know, a civil dispute over scope and fee. And he got trapped in there.  And he's very early on, we explained, we exchanged pleasantries. I explain why we're there. And then he pretty much launches into this diatribe. He says, look, you're the police. I don't trust the police. I don't trust you. I'll never trust you. You probably think you're some kind of negotiator, but that's not how this is gonna go. So imagine that. That's how we started, you know? And I looked down at my vest that says negotiator on it. I'm like, all right guys, you know, pack it up. We're done here, right? No, I mean, that's where you have to earn. That's where, I got excited. I'm like, this is gonna be a good one, right? I'm gonna earn my pay. All those years of preparation, the team concepts gonna be put to the test. And I simply said, okay, how's it gonna go? You're telling me it's not gonna go that way. Okay, you got a plan. Tell me about your plan. I didn't say what's your plan, because what's that look like? I mean, I'm doing tactical collection of data, right? I said, okay, how's it gonna go? And he started to explain kind of what he wanted. But without me saying, what do you want? So he realizes, oh, this is a demand and Dan better deliver on this. No, it's just, how's it gonna go? Tell me the story. The best questions, the true definition of open-ended questions is, questions that invite people to tell you stories. Hostage negotiators love to say, hey, tell me about that. Grammatically, not a question, but one of the most powerful open-ended questions you can ever ask is just a really polite invitation. Tell me about that. So in that case, that gentleman eventually let the hostage go and then came out and surrendered in the street and we hugged. So it's like a hallmark movie. But the way you get from this is gonna end really, really badly to hugging in the rain, right? Is asking great questions and doing discovery and managing emotions. Just like engineers do every day when they do business development project management. Yeah, that's great. I love that.  Bring them all. And you don't know. All right, well, we're talking with Dan Oblinger. We're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna bring Dan back and finish up by putting him on the civil engineering hot seat. We'll be right back. Sounds fun. I hope you are enjoying this episode of the Civil Engineering Podcast, which is produced by the Engineering Management Institute. Please be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel here for more podcast episodes and for all of our engineering manager, 8020 Shorts videos that we publish weekly where we interview successful engineering managers. Now it's time to jump into our civil engineering hot seat segment. All right, we're back with Dan Oblinger and Dan, you're pretty much used to pressure situations. I like hot seats Anthony. The hot seat's not gonna be, this isn't gonna be that hot for you. All right, so the first question, Dan, are there any specific rituals that you practice every day? For example, do you have a specific morning or lunch routine or something that you do consistently on a daily basis that contributes? Okay, this is one, normally I would, consistency is really important to me. So I should be able to just recommend whatever I'm doing to every client I have. And I'm in the unenviable position of telling most people like, do what I say and not what I do, which is not great leadership. But I work nights, so I roll out of bed like nine-ish, which for those people out there crushing it and on Instagram, I'm just a total slob. But when you work the two or three in the morning, you gotta make some concessions. I also have six kids, so I'm not like, go to the gym, go for a walk, read three books. I'm like, no, it's survival, I'm surviving. I love that you say rituals because I don't really have a routine because I've been called out multiple times in the last two weeks for SWAT calls. So there goes your routine, right? The rituals are important. Make sure you're eating as regularly as you can. I make sure that I try to find balance and that I try to remember why I work, it's for my family. I do try to read outside sources, especially outside of my discipline, as much as I can. But this most important is I have a circle of other professionals who I rely upon to keep me sane and we talk a lot about our crafts and I make sure I have a couple people in my craft who I regularly talk to and work with on my skills. I have a coach and I think most people should too. So I have a coaching coach. That's great, awesome. All right, next one. Now you've written a few books yourself that we've mentioned earlier on and willing to those books. In addition to your own books, what is a book that you might recommend to engineers or just one book that you found to be helpful in your professional or personal development that you could share? I think that, I mean, there's a bunch of books on negotiation and there's not a lot of books on active listening. And I would tell you as an engineer, start with listening first. Okay. Start with listening first as a skill and then work into this complex activity of negotiation. Negotiation in and of itself, I don't think it's really a skill because it's a group of skills that kind of interlock. Gotcha. I think that start with know by Jim Camp is an excellent negotiation book for engineers. There are other negotiation books that I think are pretty good, but that one especially I think will speak to them to understand that know actually should be embraced and not run away from. I think scope creep comes from a fear of know. Yeah. Yeah. It's good to tell people know in certain situations and it's great to encourage them to tell you know. Like here's an example of scope creep.  We wanna see what's gonna work the best before we send it back to the GC to do. And then to be able to say, okay, it sounds like you want three more options that we hadn't talked about before. It's gonna be new work. And they'll be like, yeah, yeah, that's true. You're like, great. How do you wanna handle this since it exceeds the original scope? And just put it right back on them. And you can say, if the budget's still as tight as you said before, don't be afraid to tell us not to do the work. It's fine. Yeah, no, you're right. They might be like, yeah, no, we can't put any more money. You're like, great, so just run it as is for now. If that changes, let us know. So you're always signaling that we wanna take care of the client. You're always signaling that this is a discussion that you can have with us anytime you want. But we're also signaling that we think that the original scope and fee was fair and we're gonna stick to that. We love to work for you. So if you got more work for us, we'll take more money, right? And again, that's client satisfaction. They're like, cool, Dan's a professional, right? And we know if we want more work from Dan in the future that we should be prepared to pay for that because that's fair. And it comes from being okay with no and saying basically without saying the word in, oh, no. Yeah, and really the earlier on in that relationship you established that the better, right? Cause once you don't, it's hard to get yourself out of that hole. And we didn't talk a lot about internal negotiations, but if you have one person on your team that's not comfortable with that, guess who they're always gonna go to. And that's why we say it's a cultural competence. Although you will still have people that specialize in negotiation and business development. Everyone has to be able to be comfortable saying no, seeking no, but also just listening and doing discovery. All right, so next question you've, I'm sure you've had several managers or superiors throughout your career, of course. Everybody's got a boss. We all have. If you think back to some of the ones that you're your favorites, right? No need to name names here, but what we're getting at is if you're thinking of your favorite managers or supervisors, what made them your favorite? What did you find that was, you know, that, hey, this was my favorite manager for this reason? Were there, was there certain specific reasons that jump out to you of what makes a good manager? The, to me, the most important quality in all the managers that I have really put out for, like really produced for. The quality that was lacking in the ones I didn't. And the one I aspire to and the one I see in other professions that I admire is that the people that work for them always know where they stand. There's not a lot of ambiguity. Even in a new situation, that the boss and their vision and their preferences and their deal breakers are so clear to their team that they know exactly where, like they can begin to do the work knowing that you will back certain kinds of work and also that you would not be satisfied with certain behaviors. That is so healthy for a team. And you don't have to agree with all of them, but just the consistency and authenticity that it can be expressed with this clear vision of the team of where the boss is going to stand, no matter what, by the way, no matter the political pressure. That to me is the most admirable quality in a leader. Yeah, that's great. Having that clarity is really important in terms of being able to work effectively for sure. All right, so we've got one final question here, Dan. We call it the civil engineering career elevator advice question. If you've gotten to an elevator with a civil engineer and had about 30, 40 seconds with him or her and had to give him or her career advice in that short period of time, what would that career advice be from you? The career advice would come in the form of three questions. Oh, you've done this. I'm scared of giving advice. I'm a scary judge of what's best for people. I would say, what's the next big thing for you? And if it was a big, hairy, audacious goal, I would know that they're in a great place with a great culture and a great boss, and I'd be like, cool, just go. But if they're like, man, I'm just trying to make it through the end of the year, I'd be like, how come you're not happy? And, you know, because our brain, it can really only be in one or two modes, survive or thrive. Right. When we're under stress and we're in crisis, we are not thinking about adding to our skill set, improving our habits. We're just trying to make it through the end of the day. And then, so then the third question is, what would be best? What would be the coolest thing you could do in engineering? And because for some people, it's like they love their discipline so much and they love the work they're doing so much. I just wanna get really, really, really good at this, right? But for a lot of people it's like, I wanna lead a team. Some people it's like, I wanna have my own firm. I'm like, great. So it's more like, I wanna discover and nurture the good things you already have inside of you for your career path. And also really challenge people when they've allowed themselves to get stuck. And as a coach, I think you can appreciate that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, listen, we're about 100 and almost 150 episodes into this podcast. And I think you're the first person that answered that question with questions, which speaks to your profession. Think about that. For sure, yeah. I've done a lot of work with just questions because my answers tend to be pretty poor, but my questions tend to be better and that's how I know I'm improving. Right, and those questions that really elicit probably the most useful answers at the end of the day because it's coming from the source. They're more versatile. My answer is probably if I actually gave you three pieces of advice, it would probably work for like 5% of people. The great questions work for 100% of people because it really meets people where we have in common. Yeah, that's great. All right, Dan, well, before we let you go, where can our listeners find out about you or learn more about what you do? Master listeners. It's reversed. Masterlistener.com. But here's the, this is where I'll send them the first place, would be LinkedIn because it's free and it can't hurt. I have a, my step-brother from another mother, his name's Alan Zhang. He's a business negotiator and he's originally from Hong Kong via Africa and now he lives in Virginia. We put on a free live negotiator Q&A most Fridays. And this is an hour session and we just talk about our craft and we invite people to bring us their problems and there's quite a few civil engineers that show up because they know me. And it's an amazing way to connect with people and to begin to build up that knowledge base. And actually we get into a little bit of skill building too but you have a community of people that will support you as you grow. So I would really start there. If you wanna make an investment, reach out to me. If you go to my website, you can get a free consultation for 30 minutes and we'll just see where you or your firm is at and if there's a way I can help, that's great. And if there's not, I'll tell you that. Right, so. Or you'll ask a question, that'll elicit that. Exactly, there'll be lots of questions. Come prepared to answer questions if you go. All right, Dan Oblinger, thank you for joining us on the Civil Engineering Podcast. We appreciate your time. Anthony, people asked man, thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Civil Engineering Podcast on YouTube produced by the Engineering Management Institute. We're always looking for new ways to help engineers become effective managers and leaders. You can view all of our content on our website at engineeringmanagementinstitute.org and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel here for our weekly videos. Until next time, please continue to engineer your own success.


The introduction of artificial intelligence, a, based dental applications into clinical practice has been met with some resistance due to a lack of understanding and fears of being replaced by AI. However, this study found that female dentists are more likely to have ethical concerns about AI than male dentists. Furthermore, there is a need for better education and training, as well as regulatory policies, to ensure that AI is implemented safely and effectively in dental practices. This article was authored by Yelena Roganovich, Miroslav Radingkovich, and Biljana Malysik.


Okay it's last call. If everybody could come in and take their seats please that would be great. Good evening and welcome to the Center for Strategic International Studies. I'm Andrew Schwartz and I work here in External Relations. When the summer began I remember telling one of our new interns that they shouldn't be upset if things slowed down a little bit in the summer, you know, because not much happens in the summer in D.C. or in the world, but needless to say events around the world have intervened to make their summer a much more productive one and today is certainly no exception. Thank you for joining us tonight for what was supposed to be a very timely discussion on Iraq, Syria, ISIS or IS or ISIL and the future of the Middle East which I'm sure now will expand to include some of today's breaking news stories. I'm also sorry to inform you that CNN's the least lab it won't be able to join us tonight because of the multitude of breaking news stories that are transpiring but the good news is we've got CSIS's Heather Conley and we're going to talk through some of these great issues and what's going on. I'd like to welcome Bob Schieffer who has been so amazing. We've done over 50 of these together and Bob is just, you know, our partner in this and we thank him so much and we thank the Schieffer School, the Schieffer College of Communication at TCU. I hope everybody's wearing their purple. If you come to future Schieffer series you have to wear purple because that's the color of the horned frogs. We're very appreciative of our colleagues down at TCU and of course none of these discussions would be possible without the generosity and support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation whose commitment to CSIS is really unwavering and I'd like to welcome my friend Basili who's here from the Foundation and thank you Basili for all of your support and all of your help over the years. We also have the Iraqi ambassadors here tonight and I'd like to welcome him as well. With that ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Bob Schieffer. Well thank you all and thank you for coming. Where do you see Iraqi ambassador? I'm sorry, I didn't see him come in. Oh okay, good. Welcome Mr. Ambassador. Glad to have you. Let's, I want to just introduce the panel and it's really good. Kathleen Hicks, Senior Vice President, the Kissinger Chair here at CSIS, Director of the International Security Program, Veteran Diplomat Scholar, all of the above and Dr. Hicks, glad to have you. Dr. Kimberly Kagan is the Founder and President of the Institute for the Study of War Affairs. She is a military historian. She has taught at the Academy at West Point at Yale Georgetown American, author of The Eye of Command and The Surge, Military History. She spent time in Afghanistan. How long were you there? 15 months. 15 months and also then of course down at this end, our good friend and who's filling in today because to see an end reporter, Elise couldn't, could not show up and that is Heather Connolly who is developer, I mean director of the Europe section here at CSIS. So we've got and is also a veteran diplomat and scholar. We have a lot of expertise here and so we'll just get right to it. This was supposed to be about ISIS. What is ISIS? What is happening in Iraq? But with all that's happening today, I thought we needed to broaden this number. The second thing that's happened today is the Israelis have, as they said they would have to do, have launched the ground invasion into Gaza. That began just as we were assembling here and then earlier today, I'm sure most of you have heard about the plane that was shot down over Ukraine. Heather, do you have any late information about the plane? Right now it's really focusing on the missile, the anti-aircraft missile that brought down the aircraft. Obviously all sides are denying who was responsible. There's a sense of reports and again this is right now, it's speculation we don't know but there seems to be pointing to last month the pro-Russian separatists had overtaken Ukraine in military installation where there actually were some photographs of these buk missiles that were there. So there is a sense that the separatists had possession of missiles that had the range to bring down that aircraft. Interestingly, some of these Facebook postings that the separatists had done have been taken down very quickly. It sort of led a trail. Again, this is speculation. Interestingly, right as the story was breaking that the aircraft had been shot down, President Putin and President Obama spoke. This was at President Putin's initiative to talk about the sanctions that were announced yesterday and so we understand they did speak a little bit or at least informed about the aircraft. Right now obviously we're trying to understand and our hearts go out to the families of this unbelievable tragedy. How many Americans are bored? We know there are substantial numbers of Europeans because the flight originated in Amsterdam. This is an unspeakable tragedy and it speaks to me of the consequences of when you allow a conflict and this is I think going to be the stories you talk about the Middle East. You allow a conflict to escalate to a point where it becomes out of control and the unintended consequences of what happened today. So this is going to be a major story. The investigators, we hope they can get on the ground. The plane fell in rebel control territory so this is going to be very difficult. But hopefully this is the wake-up call to have Putin really begin to reign in these separatists but quite frankly it's unclear whether he's able to at this point and that's really the question. Well to quite the contrary, as I understand it, he has now put out a statement and he said it is all the fault of Ukraine because it happened over their territory and he says it would not have happened had they not re-armed. Again, we've had four Ukrainian aircraft shot down to military transport planes, a jet fighter just this morning. It's unclear to me that the Ukrainian government actually controls its airspace so I think again both sides are going to argue that denying the responsibility but we'll let the investigators hopefully do their work but again between the sanctions and if Putin does not take clear steps to de-escalate this. I think we're now entering a very new phase. This is going to be concentrated urban warfare potentially in Donetsk and Luhansk and this is going to get more serious potentially. One thing I think both, well I think everybody is now reporting and quoting sources out of the Pentagon that the plane was indeed shot down. There was some question and speculation about that. Nobody has yet decided who fired the missile although there's every indication that it came from these rebels. There was one report being put out by the Ukraine government just as I was coming here that they had heard the rebel, somebody on the rebel side talking. They claimed to Russian intelligence and admitting they had shot it down but it seemed to be suggesting that they thought they had shot down a military plane that maybe this was, do you know anything about anything more? I heard exactly the same reporting and Heather's been tracking this more closely today but the same which is that they had some belief that it was a military aircraft. That's a little hard to believe given the difference in signature and the altitude but I think as Heather said it's too early to really speculate too much on exactly how this happened and how intentional it was in terms of it being an airliner as opposed to a military craft. It really does underline though the uncertainties when these things start rolling down the track and the next thing you know it's something totally out of control as we have seen happen in Israel during this latest episode. Let's talk a little bit about Israel because we now know that Israel has decided to launch the ground invasion. There were more than 100 rockets fired out of Gaza into Israel after the ceasefire ended this morning. Israel had said they had hoped and at one point had announced yesterday I believe it was that they had actually agreed to a ceasefire that would start sometime tomorrow but then that quickly fell apart and once this brief ceasefire this morning was over they were bombarded again by rockets from the Gaza and Netanyahu had said if there is more violence after this ceasefire we'll probably have to go in and so they have cleared the way. What do you see happening here? I think the key question for the United States and the broader region right now is how surgical is this ground invasion? How much early reports are there focused on these tunnels that are coming in under the fence line from Gaza and Israel? If it's limited to that and it's short duration that's one set of outcomes that I think the United States will continue to stress the importance of no civilian casualties where the administration has been very clear about its disappointment, horror, etc. about the killing of children in particular in Gaza and the need for Israel to be surgical. But the United States overall message is defense of Israel is critical and important. So I think if that's one scenario and I think it's the most plausible scenario what we don't know yet is if the Israeli ground invasion goes beyond that and starts to have a much more significant effect on the entire region's politics essentially which would not be helpful right now. But again the United States stand behind the defense of Israel and so there will have to be a conversation about what Israel believes it needs if it tries to go beyond that point. How much of that is necessitated by the immediate attacks from Hamas? The ones most recently. Heather do you think there's any chance we know that President Abbas apparently is in Cairo along with other people in the Palestinian Authority? Apparently there are some people from Hamas that are there. Do you think there is any chance that anything can come of those talks here? Well I think again the Egyptian role here has been critical, has traditionally been critical. We were hoping that that ceasefire, that initial ceasefire which the Israelis accepted and unfortunately how it was responded to by Hamas was more rockets into Israel than we can, they can see that now this is again according to reports Air Sea Land electricity has been cut off from Gaza City. This is a serious incursion. We don't know the length of time and so I think it would behoove the Palestinian Authority to certainly try to see where they can stop this quickly and get back to the table immediately. Again to Kat's point we'll have to see in fact how far these Israelis are going to take this and again world opinion here we know again from Europeans we're trying to see how they could offer their good offices and try to get a return back to the negotiating table but I think this is going to be yet another area where we're going to have to work very closely. Well let's bring this now to what we originally came here to talk about and that is a rock and what's going to happen there. Dr. Kagan, what do you, do you see any of all of what we've been talking about here impacting on what's happening in Iraq? I do see that there is a trend in our discussions about Russia and Ukraine and in our discussions about Iraq, Syria and indeed the wider region. There are states and non-state actors that are actively seeking to shift the borders, the state borders that have come into existence and grown over the course of the 20th century. What we're seeing inside of Iraq in the Islamic state of Iraq and Shem now self declared as an Islamic caliphate is a force, an organization, a military organization that has organized itself with into an army that has capabilities to fight hybrid warfare like a terrorist group like an army and shift between those two capabilities. Why is it doing this? What are its strategic objectives? Well, to break down the state system for at least six months and possibly longer than that, ISIS has been running a Twitter campaign, hashtag Sykes Pico. Why? Because in fact redrawing the boundaries of the Middle East is at the top of their strategic priority list because it is in redrawing those boundaries that it can create the kinds of political vacuums in which the Islamic caliphate can and may be able to flourish. So as we look at separatist movements sponsored perhaps by other states in Europe, as we look at what is happening in the Middle East, I think that we're looking at our fundamental world order changing and we need to have the strategic imagination and vision to project that ahead and understand what that means for each and every one of us. You agree with that, Dr. Hicks? No, I largely agree with that. I think the United States, the crux of the problem with the United States right now, the real paradox for Americans is there are domestic interests at home that are very important. We have an almost endless list of woes in the world we've just gone through today. It took us 15 minutes to get through, if you will, today. Every day there's more that loads on and it's more than we can bear as a single nation and we risk overstretch if we try to take on everything everywhere. The paradox is you can't then swing the other way and it takes this careful calibration of power in all its elements to include hard power to figure out where to act and how. I completely agree with Kim that if you leave the Middle East to its own devices at this point, you very much risk the growth of these ungoverned areas, of which there are some already, but the growth of them, you risk credibility issues. We certainly saw that with Syria and the continuation of the humanitarian crisis in Syria now overspilling into all the rest of the region with Iraq being most notable in terms of its immediate and profound effect, but not the last place where this could happen to be clear. Jordan is a significant worry for us. So I think for the United States the real challenge is how do you calibrate all this and that's where it becomes important to hone those tools that we have to not think every discussion about engaging in the region means that we're talking about a large-scale American ground incursion or ground force, and I for one think the administration on Iraq proper now at this point has been responsible to date in thinking through how to begin to engage the Iraqi government on the political side and on the security assistance side to develop a program way ahead. The problem is it doesn't end at the borders of Iraq and that's where we need a broader regional strategy and that's really the challenge today. What is our strategy? Where and what? That's a great question. I love Kim, your point, you mentioned about Sykes-Picot, so that colonial British-French agreement of how the Middle East would be carved up, it's ironic to me this is the 100th anniversary of the First World War and any of you have not read Professor Christopher Clark's Sleepwalkers book. In some ways are we just sleepwalking into it, we can watch as these events unfold but we feel like we can't influence them, we can't control them or maybe our influence and our role is counterproductive to what is going on and I think we're really ending this era, and this is what in some ways President Putin is telling us, he's basically refuted the post-Cold War order. He said that was the greatest catastrophe, that's not my order and we're seeing this regionally, this profound challenge, we're going back to balance of power where there's not a unipolar power of the United States, even the bipolar era of the Cold War were two powers and you could sort of isolate and contain these regional, now there are regional powers with a multitude of agendas and influence, non-state actors, we see in Ukraine hybrid warfare where people take off insignia, they're trying to have deniable plausibility, this isn't me, oh you're confused, you can't prove that, where's the United Nations Security Council and all of this, our institutions are failing because they're not well-equipped for this balance of power, regional dynamic and I would argue quite frankly, US diplomacy and a whole range of tools in the toolkit, we aren't geared for this, we, the unipolar will deal with this conflict, this is today's message, this is today's theme, but when you've got five, six regional crises that demand strong diplomacy, the demand, all the tools of state, we feel like we can't catch up, we can't engage in that, so I would say we need to start decentralizing and this would be my message to the White House, you can't have a small group of people, they can't manage all of these crises, you need to empower your talented diplomats and bring in, the private sector has a piece of this, the non-governmental, the civil society and we have to be much smarter, much more adept at these regional challenges and right now I feel like we're clumsy, we're catching up, we're reactive and that is where it feels like, where's the US, where's the strategy, we're playing catch-up. Well it does what certainly appears so, I mean as we watch, but I think you bring up a very interesting point here and that is, is there too much of the power, too much of the decision-making now centered in the White House and should some of that be delegated out into the bureaucracy? I mean should the State Department be playing a bigger role here than it's playing? Should the Defense Department be playing a bigger role? Well I think when we feel like things are out of control, it's a human instinct to sort of grab it and say I'm going to control it, I'm going to do message control, it's going to be how I want it and I think what we're seeing again, this is social media, when I'm watching today's events in Ukraine, I'm getting Twitter feeds and this is, they're laughing government response, they are, which is going too far ahead of it. How are we in this dynamic information age able to get messages out and so the instinct is well I'm going to control it so I'm going to have a few people control that message and some ways you have to let go and you have to say look, we have very talented diplomats that are in the field, we have a lot of instruments of influence and power, we've got to let go and allow them to engage and not be afraid, they may make mistakes, but right now we're trying to control it and constrict it and we're not able, I think, to take opportunities of when situations begin to evolve in the regions, we can nip them early and not have them go into full progress. What should our strategy be, Kim? I really think that the United States has vital national security interests in the Middle East that include actually the preservation of states in the Middle East. We haven't really gotten or we haven't really had to say that for an awfully long time, but it is a core interest of the United States to maintain the state system as it is. It suits us, this world order suits us. It is changing, however, in ways that are not conducive to U.S. national interests. I believe that the United States is struggling actually not only to control a message, but to control the environment around it, or to try to shield itself from having to make decisions in an environment that is rapidly changing. In truth, the environment will continue to change rapidly and will deteriorate without U.S. leadership. What does the United States actually need to do? Well, for one thing, the United States actually does have to decide that it is a problem for there to be an Islamic state in the Middle East. We probably ought to have decided that back in 2012 or 2013, but that doesn't matter. We cannot actually hit the strategic pause button and then the strategic rewind button and go back and face those decisions. What do we do now? Well, first, we do have many instruments of power that need to be brought to bear. They are diplomatic, they are military, and they also include engagement not only with the government of Iraq, which is, of course, important, but with the tribes and the people of Iraq, and with the moderate opposition inside of Syria, which is the only bulwark that now exists between ISIS and really having an Islamic state that goes, frankly, from almost Baghdad, all the way over to, well, today, actually ISIS took over an oil field near Palmira in Homs province, and I think that they mean to go down to Jordan and I think that they mean to attack Saudi Arabia, okay? That is the kind of perspective that we need, and we still have a chance to nip in the bud those further attacks, those further assaults on the state system that are coming. So you paint a very dangerous situation. Well, let me just add, I just think it's important without in any way defending the actions of the United States and its foreign policy overall to date, there is a lot of blame to go around on the Middle East, and so I think that's worth saying, and thus the solution, obviously, is not a U.S. solution, it can't be. Again, we don't have the resources, but more importantly probably, we don't have the tools, and Heather's point about the regionalization of foreign policy, I agree with that fundamentally, but I think the key piece of that is what's going on in different regions varies, and so in a place like Asia where our traditional tool set, hard power, economic, statecraft, state-based ways of dealing with issues is still very applicable, the Middle East is a whole other ball game. So it's important to acknowledge that when it comes to Iraq, Iraq itself bears a lot of responsibility, but so do the Gulf States, Turkey, the U.S., Russia, Iran, I could go on, and of course the terrorists themselves, ISIL, ISIS, the Islamic State itself, and Syria. So there are a lot of parties that have to be brought to the table here to make a good solution and way forward. I think it was a positive sign that the U.S. met today with the Iranians. I don't know if that progressed in any way, but the fact that there was at least a conversation acknowledges the reality that it's not just Iran, but there are a lot of parties that have to be brought to the table. But fundamental to that, and where I agree with these two, is U.S. leadership is critical to that. It is unfortunate for many Americans that it's required, but we have to acknowledge that it's required, even if there are limits to what we can do with it alone.  Does that pose a direct threat to the U.S. national security? I would say so, certainly over the intermediate term. One of the things that the Islamic State is actively doing is recruiting English speakers from the United States, from Canada, from Australia, and other places in the world. I think that what we have seen develop, especially since January of 2014, when the Islamic State actually took over the city of Raqqa in Syria in a way that was uncontested, is the creation of a model sanctuary that has an element of its military power, an element of its civic power, and an element of its religious authority that it is trying to test. Raqqa is a center, a hub to which the Islamic State has been recruiting foreign fighters from around the world, has explicitly asked them to immigrate to there, and the continued publication of magazines in English aimed at an English language audience that publications such as one recently released called Dabik, which is about the place where Armageddon will come between Iraq and Syria. I certainly think that we might want to take them seriously a bit in their intention actually to bring a conflict that will harm directly U.S. national security interests, and we'll do so in part by recruiting English speakers and Americans for future conflict. Heather, what do we do about it? I could not agree more, and the foreign fighter question is absolutely paramount. We're seeing where European foreign fighters are there learning, they are returning back to the communities. This is not going to be contained even though to many Americans, this is far away and the Middle East, and if they're just killing one another, what does it have to do with us? We don't need to be involved in it. This will come home to us. I think Eric Holder and others have been very explicit in that. That is the challenge. Bob, your question of what we do about it, this is where we're running out of options I think very, very quickly, and how do you contain it? When we have ISIS taking over major refineries, they're going to have the economic tools. When they seek funding, it's no longer now for us stopping the banks and tears and fines and they just rob the banks. They take over the banks. How do you stop this? And again, to Kat's point, regionally we have states in the region working opposite sides of this problem. It's going to be incredibly difficult. This is where it's going to take an enormous amount of American time and attention when other issues in the world are getting our attention, Afghanistan, Asia, Ukraine. Nigeria, the Sahel, we can keep going on here, and focus and try to bring a coalition together to try to prevent work with moderate Sunnis that do not want to be under ISIS and try in some ways, like the awakening that we did many to work locally. They don't want this, but it was so much better than obviously what they perceived that was coming from Baghdad, which is such an extraordinary statement. We have to get involved, but we have to fundamentally believe that America has a positive role to play here. And I think in some ways in our own mind we don't think we have a positive role to play because of Iraq, because of our experience in 2003. Do you think there's a perception in that part of the world that we are somehow stepping back, that we are withdrawing? Oh, there is absolutely a perception, particularly I would say in the Gulf, I think in the Levant. Well, Syrians I think would certainly tell you that they're unhappy with America's response. I think the Jordanians, we work very hard. And the Lebanese and certainly the Israelis work very hard to try to reassure, but it is a message that is failing. You know, the Syrian crisis, if the de facto US policy was to contain the Syria crisis, that has failed. And that was essentially at least the unspoken strategy. So the pieces, putting the pieces back together again involves everything that Heather just mentioned on the Iraqi side, US Iraqi side. It involves fundamentally the governance of Iraq. At its core it's about strengthening the capability of Iraq to govern itself in a way that is pluralistic and is inclusive to the point where you can let the security institutions be respected and vested in the future of the country. But it's also about that training and equipping on the Syrian side because you've got to get an end to the Syrian crisis. And at this point I think the only realistic near-term end is just a ceasefire that allows some amount of humanitarian assistance to get in. I think the goals have to be very modest, but we have to put some effort there. The President's indicated we're going to put effort there, but we need to start seeing those results. And what happens if the Iraqi government, and I hope to ask the... Well, let me just ask the ambassador right now. Mr. Ambassador. Absolutely, we have the authority here. You're here. What's the latest news from Iraq? Is there a chance that this government can do the kinds of things that the US government is urging right now, and that is to be a more inclusive government? And where do you think all that is right now? Thank you very much Bob for giving me the opportunity. Well, we recently had the election. 60% of the people participated. In worse areas of unbarred 40% participated, and it was considered as a fair election by all standards. However, the situation has changed on the ground. What we have recently was the speaker of the parliament, which was a major handle, or hurdle, which was passed. We anticipate by tomorrow a nominee for the presidency will be within the Kurdish bloc, and within four weeks or so after that the premiership. So where previously it took six months and then nine months, now it looks like within six weeks or so. So in a way there's a great deal of momentum being created by all the parties for the formation of the government. As to how inclusive it will be, I think that's for time to tell. The politics is not clean, it's not quick, and certainly it's zero sum. That has to change, and that's where everybody is trying to work on. Well, what about the threat that ISIS is posing right now? The integrity of the state is in question. That's how the threat we're taking it. We're not looking at it likely. The ramification of that on Jordan and Saudi Arabia is a...  I will say sooner than intermediate. I will say it's a short-term situation. We're looking at changing the map of the region within 18 to two years. That's how soon it is. Yes, I would agree with that. I actually think that as we take a look... Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. As we take a look at the situation in Iraq and on the ground, what I deeply hope is that the government that is created will actually be capable of governing Iraq. I worry, and I worry very much because the government of Iraq has been losing control of parts of Iraq frankly since about October of last year when we first saw the Islamic State actually enter into Mosul and silence journalists by assassinating them so that the Western media and the local media did not really have full situational awareness of what was going on. The reason I bring this up is that I think that we as Americans do want to go back to tools of state in a region where indeed we hope tools of state will work. But we may be in a situation where the United States needs to find ways to engage social leaders, tribal leaders, local communities in order to stop the spread of ISIS and create the conditions in which over the longer term a government of Iraq should it be inclusive and should it be able to regain territory can actually govern. I don't think though that Americans have fully digested the idea that as soon as we get a government of Iraq and I hope it will indeed be soon we do not actually get change on the ground. The drivers of change on the ground right now are first of all ISIS and we have to consider them a player. I do not think they wish to negotiate. I think that they wish to fight because it is critical to their image and to their ability to continue the expansion of the Islamic State. We have players on the ground that include Iraqi Shia militias that have returned from Syria. We have Iranian forces on the ground. We have Russian pilots and Russian equipment. We definitely have a situation that is no longer in the box of a government. Kathleen, what do you think that Iraq will stay Iraq as we know it today or will it eventually break into three sort of separate places? One thing I have learned from long government services whatever answer I give you I will be wrong. So I choose not to answer that directly. I will say the risk is significant. I think well stated by the ambassador and Kim we are at significant risk of Iraq falling into a partitioned set of actors. We obviously have that I think already with the Kurds and I think this is where the United States has to do its best to try to build back the state for all the reasons that have been laid out but I think it is possible that will not succeed and we need to be thinking now about how you deal with the region. Again, it is not just Iraq. This is about a minimum Syria Iraq but well beyond that. You need to be thinking about it in that way and the borders may be more fluid than one would like. What do you think? I fear that we are already entering almost a fragmentary position now which already speaks to the severity of what is going on and I think you are already seeing the Kurdish regional government taking advantage of this fragmentation. We have to understand that that has very important implications for Turkey which is for a European and NATO watcher. I watch very closely any instability in Turkey because that has direct implications for NATO and for the United States. I grow increasingly concerned if both for Syria and Iraq where the oil wealth is held is where the economic power and the longevity comes in here and that is so distressing about as we are seeing these gains in the economic power of both Iraq and Syria. So it is deeply troubling. I hope we are not at that tipping point where things begin to slide to a point where it is very difficult and I certainly hope that the U.S. power and influence working with the region can help do this but to Katz's point on Syria we cannot wait three years to do this. Facts on the ground change so much. This is the problem with our delay and our waiting and our hesitation to support those moderates and the Syrian opposition that we could have helped and I fear almost now it is too late. We waited too long and the strategic hesitancy is really a problem. You do believe that had we helped that moderate opposition it might have made a difference here. Well we know by not helping them what has happened so that we can conclude. It may not have been it may not have made an enormous difference but I would have felt as if we would have tried to give this a chance and to see President Assad today you know the film of him deal the third time around what happened to Mr. Assad must go. So we have to be very careful with our rhetoric if our instruments are not there to help support our rhetoric. You feel that way. I do actually feel that the United States could have made a difference in the crisis in Syria really and through last summer through August 2013 by supporting the moderate opposition. I would actually call your attention in particular to the moment at the end of 2012 in the beginning of 2013 when the Syrian regime had actually run out of manpower and was completely dependent on aerial resupply for sustaining its forces. The reason I bring this up is that at that moment of weakness I do think that a change in US policy toward the Syrian moderate opposition would have and could have made a huge military difference. The lesson I draw from this as a military historian looking now at Iraq and Syria is that we need to understand that circumstances on the ground will create windows of opportunity that will go away. If in fact we see ISIS consolidating its state further on the ground through military gains in Iraq, we will have much, much, much more to do in order to displace it. And it just brings home to me the urgency not of taking drastic military action of sending hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq or tens of thousands of troops to Iraq. But military situations are delicate and action using military and diplomatic instruments can make a change only at certain times. We're in one of those periods and when ISIS actually consolidates we will have lost an opportunity and it will have gained one on us in the way that the Syrian regime was able to gain an opportunity created by delay to replenish its forces, to rely on Iran and Hezbollah, to reinforce, to reconfigure its command and control structure and actually to go not on the offensive in a way that definitively and decisively defeated the opposition but that was a major step change in its capabilities over the span of six months. How does all this relate to the talks with Iran on trying to rain in their nuclear capabilities? Which influences what? It's all interconnected. U.S.-Russia policy is heavily influenced by the desire to have a common approach to Iran, has been heavily influenced by that. That certainly has affected, I think, and I'm not putting judgment on this, but it certainly affects how the U.S. has approached Russia to be Syria over the past several years. And so I guess the way I would say it is that the highest priority, if you're just looking at actions, it appears that the highest priority for the United States in its Middle East policy really has been to get a negotiated way ahead on Iranian nuclear capability. And for that goal, other goals were tempered, and certainly Syria, I think, is one of those where the U.S. chose not to push Russia as hard as it might otherwise because of Iran. I think going forward, let me first say on Syria, just I want to comment on the same point that Heather and Kim commented on, I think I would just frame this going forward as chances are low, risks are there, but as I think they both well said, we've seen the outcome of the other approach and we need to invest ourselves a little bit in a different kind of outcome. And as I said, I think if we keep the goals modest, which are still great, which is to get ourselves to a ceasefire, to get some form of governance back into Syria, some ability for the international community to provide aid, some ability to get the moderates strengthened, a little bit of battlefield capability for them to help to persuade Assad to the table. That may be all we can do, but that alone is better than where we are today and will help. On Iran, Iran's a key piece of that outcome. It's a key piece of the outcome on Iraq, and of course we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, so we want to continue on the path with Iran itself, with Russia and other actors, the Gulf in particular, to get the Iranians to be a responsible actor to the extent that we can inside the region. Let's go to the audience here. Here's one right here. Tell us who you are, please. Hi, my name is Basam. I'm a former Syrian diplomat. I just want to talk about ISIS. I think the media here, they over exaggerate of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In a sense, in Iraq, what's going on is Sunni revolution and Taiteshiyat control, and ISIS is a small part of the big revolution, big Sunni revolution and Taitemaki. And when you talk with any leader of the tribes who are well connected to the U.S. government, they will tell you that we are willing and will fight ISIS when we have our rights back from the government, political reconciliation. When you talk about Syria, six weeks before the resort fallen into ISIS, the group of Syrian, Free Syrian Army, they met American officials, and they gave them what they need in order to cut the roots of that ISIS used between Iraq and Syria, and Americans said no. And the ISIS, when it went to the resort, they spent for a week, every day, one million dollars to give free food for the people, so they didn't go by force. They went by money, because people, they don't think. My point is that the ISIS in Syria doesn't have the social network that protected, but at the same time, there's no other side to support the moderate. In Iraq, it's the opposite side. The Sunni are majority. ISIS taking the lead in the media by Twitter, by social media, whatever. And the people are, both people are looking for U.S. to get support. Thank you very much. I throw that to Kim. I think that as a framing issue, we need to understand that ISIS is a fragment of the global al-Qaeda movement, which has been in a struggle, a fitna, as we have seen, essentially, two franchises of al-Qaeda, the former al-Qaeda in Iraq, now we flagged as ISIS, now we flagged as the Islamic Caliphate, and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria compete, not only militarily inside of Syria, but compete with one another about which vision of Islamic revolution is actually the correct vision. So what we are watching here is a competition between ISIS of an heir to Zarkali, thinking that, in fact, the right way to create an Islamic state is by force and by conquest, by accelerating sectarian war, and by creating political structures soonest, whereas you have in Jabhat al-Nusra a very different idea, it's a wider idea, that in fact we need to have an approach that is slower, that waits for the people to accept the Islamic revolution, and that will become the groundwork of the global insurgency that is al-Qaeda. As a result, when we look at groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, we actually see that they are better embedded into the social structure and social fabric of Syria, whether we are looking in Aleppo, for example, is a great example, or whether we are looking in western Syria, they embed themselves in existing social structures, they work through existing governing bodies that they then fund, that they then appoint their people to, and it is a much more gradual and insidious revolution. I think we need to be aware that we have these two different visions of revolution going on, and frankly both now have had some success, and so one of the most dangerous outcomes that I see is that we can find ourselves in a situation whereby we defeat ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra comes in, or we see Jabhat al-Nusra lose its capacity and ISIS comes up, or we see that we actually see them violently competing to harm the United States, western powers, and lay the mantle of global leadership before them. That's a dangerous situation, but I'm afraid it's one that we have to recognize and cope with. All right, how about right here? Ed Berger, let me indulge in a bit of heresy. We've toppled, we have directly or indirectly had a hand in toppling a number of leaders over the last several years. One can argue that in fact in each case, that has led to a vacuum of power in the sense of informing our judgments in the future. Should we reconsider this issue of leaving the dust pits in place for the purpose of avoiding the vacuum of power? That's a very interesting question. Who would like to answer it? I'll start. I mean, there's no winning on that one. I'll start. I think every country situation is its own context, so I don't think there's an answer to that that is global. What I would say is the United States has always maintained however articulated differently from administration to administration as a national interest, some form of values. For some administrations it's a very activist approach, let's just say in terms of spreading democracy or spreading universal values, and in some it's more muted, but it's there and it's part of who we are as a nation and it's part of what makes us great, is that we have a fundamental belief about human rights and rule of law and the role of the individual in society. I don't think the United States of America should give that up. Now, the question is how do you weigh that in a specific context against let's just call it generally security concerns with regard to how the United States interacts in a region? And I think that's something that is being struggled with, it's been struggled with in every administration I can think of. I think Egypt probably is the clearest example where we have struggled with that most recently, which resulted in my opinion in a pretty muddled way ahead, which is we don't quite know. We've essentially said security matters the most, but we're going to talk about the human rights piece, but we're not quite sure which of these. But I would say generally speaking, I don't agree in this administration, the United States has been a party to toppling governments. We certainly haven't been activists on that role, with the exception perhaps of support in Libya. But I do think it's fair to say that we work in each of these cases in the United States. We've been working on how do you exactly balance these interests that are fundamental when they compete, and my view is security typically has been winning out. Right over here. Nick Farmer. Could the panel speak to how Putin sees Russia's interest in this area and whether there's any likelihood that Russia would like to cooperate with the U.S. or whether in fact because of its oil and gas interests and others, it would like to see the U.S. continually bogged down with the nuclear issue in Iran, with Syria, with Hezbollah, with Hamas, and so forth. Very good question. Heather, why don't you? Thank you. Well, we need to take Vladimir Putin at his word, and he's been messaging to us that his vision for Russia and the neighborhood is what he calls Novorossiya, new Russia. But the concept is not new. It's actually 15th century Russia that extends Ukraine, Moldova. Some could even argue, you know, back up to the Baltic states and elsewhere. This gets back to, I think, again, Putin's profound refutation of the post-Cold War settlement, if you will. And he would like to recreate a Eurasia Union. It's not a union like we think of the European Union of independent states, but they're ceding their sovereignty to a greater power. This is a union where Russia controls the Union and the countries that accede to it would support Russian objectives and aspirations. What is existential to President Putin and his regime is that he cannot have a different model on his border. So he cannot have a Ukraine that embraces the West, whether that's trade and his greatest fear, which would be his immediate neighbors, the former Soviet states, joining NATO. So he must prevent this alternative model, because his model, and this has been, you know, as we've been all watching events in Ukraine, I think we have underappreciated the domestic consolidation that Putin has in his own country. We have not seen the control of media and the crackdown on opposition since some of the deepest days of the Cold War. This is truly a regime that is now taking complete control of society. And now he was able to do that using very powerful nationalistic themes, and that was really... So he could not lose Ukraine, and when Ukraine decided, when Yanukovych fled the former president, and Ukraine was going to join the West, was going to sign on to this trade agreement with the European Union, it was a complete failure of his own policy of making sure preventing the states from joining the West. So how do you avoid a strategic loss? You try to take a tactical victory, and the tactical victory was Crimea. It happened rapidly.  I think it even shocked some of Putin's closest advisors that he actually went so far to annex it. I always use the word Anschluss, because I want that historical resonance that this was... This is exactly for the same purpose, right? The protection of ethnic Russians wherever they live. Well, that's a powerful message to Estonia and Latvia that have 35, 40% ethnic Russian populations within their countries. So he got Crimea, and that was a success in his view, and his popularity increased dramatically, and even though sanctions and the markets didn't like it, this was okay, and everyone's very popular. But then he took a tactical misstep, supporting these pro-Russian separatists. He created a problem that did not exist in Eastern Ukraine. Yes, there was great sympathy for Russia, but they didn't want to separate from themselves. They want to be part of Ukraine, but they do want to have a stronger Russian identity. This conflict began by support of these separatists, and now this thing has spun out of everyone's control, and we see what happens today. I predict, and I hope I'm really wrong, I predict a prolonged period of instability in this region. We are seeing asymmetrical and hybrid warfare that should concern us greatly. The cyber warfare, the information warfare, we have not seen this type for a very long time, and we don't have a very good response to it. Mr. Putin has changed the entire security environment in that region. It has reawoken NATO. NATO is going to take a more robust role, and the U.S. is going to be a part of that. So while we're dealing with extraordinary events in the Middle East, we cannot lose sight of this instability. This isn't going away. I wish it was, but it's not, and we're going to have to be very strong and purposeful in dealing, because Mr. Putin's not going anywhere either on oil and gas, and I don't know what today's the price of oil and gas is today. It was probably 115. He can sustain himself for quite a long time. This regime can sustain. So I'm extremely concerned. This is, again, getting back to Sykes-Picot. This is saying this is not, I don't accept the system that has been forced upon me. I'm going to change it, and we can either allow him to do that or fight for the system, and that's going to take a lot of resolve. Would you like to add anything? No, I think that's just right. I agree. Folks, I think we've probably come to the end here, and it's always good when we still have people wanting to ask questions when we're at the end. So we've managed to hold your interest this far. I want to thank this extraordinary panel that we had today, and thank you all for coming.