Very good morning everyone. Thank you for coming here very early this morning for some of you and I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to Admiral John Richardson who is going to be our speaker this morning Admiral Richardson graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in physics. He holds a master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and would tell oceanographic institution and national security strategy from the National War College. At sea Admiral Richardson served on the USS Pache, USS George C. Marshall and USS Salt Lake City and he can commanded USS Honolulu in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. For those of you who are interested those vessels are submarine so Admiral Richardson Richardson is a Submariner. The Admiral also served as Commodore of Submarine Development Squadron 12 Commander Submarine Group 8 Commander of Submarine Allied Forces South Deputy Commander US 6th Fleet Chief of Staff US Naval Forces Europe and US Naval Forces Africa and also Commander Naval Submarine Forces and Director of Naval Reactors. His staff assignments include duty in the attack submarine division on the Chief of Naval Operations Staff, Naval Aids to the President, Prospective Commanding Officer Instructor for the Commander Submarine Forces US Pacific Fleet, Assistant Deputy Director for Regional Operations on the Joint Staff and Director of Strategy and Policy at US Joint Forces Command. The Admiral also served on teams that have been awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the Joint Meritorious Unit Award, the Navy Unit Commendation and the Navy E-Ribbon. He was awarded the Vice Admiral Stockdale Award for his time in command of USS Honolulu and the Admiral began serving as the 31st Chief of Naval Operations from September 2015. So it's a very illustrious CV. Thank you very much for coming to talk to us today. This is the time for thunderous applause, right? Well, thank you so much for that very kind introduction. It tends to be a bit technical, though, don't you think? It sounds I started to feel like this guy over here after an answer. I just want to go back to bed. I want to thank everybody for joining me in a magnificent hall here. And I think my natural tendency is to wander around, but I think for the media or something, I have to stay here. Is that right for the microphones? But I do want to just thank everybody here at King's College, the faculty, Professor Bone, Dr. Patelano. And I thought that we could spend some time today quickly going through how I see the maritime environment and then try and finish up my talk in about half the time that we have together and then open it up for questions, if that's a fair set of rules of engagement. What I'd like to do is highlight the front, you know, a critical question that faces us today, which is the question of maritime competition, particularly blue water competition. And so I'm going to my thesis is that we've not been in real competition for maritime superiority in about 25 years. And now as we sort of engage in this competition again for the first time in over two decades, we have to be mindful that not only the competitors have changed, and when we talk about competition, we're so often drawn to, you know, who's playing who, right? Who are the teams? But in the 25 years since we've last done this, you know, the very rules of the competition, the character of the competition itself has changed. And so I'd like to talk about that. So we will talk a little bit about the competitors. We'll talk about how the US Navy is responding to that challenge. And then some ideas about sort of the more nuanced challenges that faces. And then we'll open it up for questions after that, if that's a quick outline. So if this all works, we'll be in good shape. Okay, so I'm going to start with very few assumptions. And one of the first challenges that we face as we move into this competition is that the most of the people that I talk to have this view of the world. And this work, yeah. So all look how busy it is on the land, right? All of the labels, all of the features, the political part, the roads, highways, railroads, rivers, valleys, streams, mountains, everything, all of the politics centered on the land. The blue part that occupies 75% is really just a nice place to put labels, right? So they do label the oceans. And then when it gets particularly crowded on the land or a country or features too small, the label will go out into the ocean. And that's about it. That's how people see the world in many ways. It's, you know, their world around them is very land centric. So I thought I'd start by describing how I see the world, which is much more like that. Okay. And this land part divided by the oceans or surrounded by the ocean. So first and foremost, you know, if you go back, we're going to shift the perspective of the map so that we put Eurasia here front and center. Okay. And then you can see from our perspective, the east coast of the United States over here, west coast over here, you've got these two oceans that sort of separate our nation from Eurasia. And we'll just start building the picture at sea over a series of slides. Can you see the things in the back? Okay. All right. Great. All right. So first and foremost, a very traditional thing, which is we'll just lay on the sea lines of communication. Okay. Nothing super magic about this. It's about 4000 years that we've been going to see in some form or another. And so what you see here is the traditional lines of transit. This is the super highways of trade. 90% of the world's trade travels on these maritime highways. And so extremely important for all of us. You get a sense these green dots are major ports around the world and the size of the circle is proportional to the volume of business that that port does. And so we talk about a rebalance to the Pacific in the United States. And my goodness, you can see why, right? I mean, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, there's an awful lot rebalancing to the Pacific as these economies grow and just look at the port volume that they're doing in terms of maritime trade. So as I said, you know, millennium that we've been going to see some of these choke points that through which this traffic travels have existed since that the very beginning, sort of the new folks on the block or the Panama Canal here, Suez Canal. But if you think about Gibraltar, Malacca, Hormuz, Baba Mendev, very busy recently, some of these features which which shape this trade, it's, you know, if you go back to the earlier slides, one could be led to believe that it's all very homogeneous. But it's not, right? It's there's structure structure is imposed by these choke points, structures imposed by these ports. And so it's there is a structure here that can be it prevents opportunities and risks. Okay. But so millennia since we've been going to see and trading at sea. However, in the last 25 years, the amount of traffic on the world's oceans has quadrupled. All right, which is an astounding fact. If you think of thousands and thousands of years, there's been this steady build up. But in the last quarter century, that amount of traffic on the world's oceans has increased by a factor of four. Okay, this exponential shape that we'll be talking about in so many other areas and has driven the world economy, which has roughly doubled in that same amount of time, global GDP up roughly by a factor of two, you know, 80% or so. So very, very important, very busy, increasingly contested and crowded at sea, even when we think about very traditional types of uses of the ocean. Okay, but let's keep building. This is a depiction now these regions of purple are natural gas deposits regions of light blue are offshore oil. And with the advances in technology, you know, many of these resources are now available, accessible for the first time. And this has been another explosion in the last 25 years, which has, you know, again, made the maritime domain that much more important to the prosperity of so many people, so many nations. So there's this, this accessibility to resources here. In fact, you're probably much more well versed in this than I am. But even agriculture and now, you know, aquaculture growing very, very quickly as people move offshore, you know, not only for natural resources like minerals, oil, those sorts of things, but also now farming offshore, right? And in much more frequently, much more, much greater volume of our food comes from the ocean and that trend also increasing. As well, you know, so these are the oil and gas deposits, these these white diamond shaped dots are just minerals that sort of along the seams of the tectonic plates and those minerals also much more accept accessible with robots, robots remotely operated vehicles that can go down and get access to those types of things. So again, another dimension of busyness, if you will, let's see, and we'll keep building. The layer that just came on points us up to the Arctic. And in my 35 years in the Navy, the Arctic, the North Pole is as small as it's ever been. All right. And I think it's as small as it's ever been since we started taking measurements, you know, satellite measurements of the size of the polar ice cap. And so what does that mean, right? Well, certainly, there are trade routes open, you know, sea lines open across the north for, you know, on the factor of twice as often, right, twice as much time, you can take those routes across the north of Europe and Russia, even across the north of North America. That has strategic implications not only from a security standpoint, but again, you save a lot of time if you want to take that route rather than going down through all of these choke points. And so there's a, again, a commercial or a prosperity dimension to that as well as giving rise to, well, it's giving rise to rising sea levels, right. And so some of these nations in the Pacific really watching that very closely, right. They're not that high above sea level. And so, you know, tremendous economic impact and social impact of the rising sea level that's brought about by the melting ice cap. Okay. We'll keep building still. This is sort of a representation of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations hot spots in the world. Okay. And so you can see that one, they're right there in the middle of the map where we've chosen to put our center of gravity and they often overlay on these choke points as well. So they are right there where trade must go through, right. So through the South China Sea, about 33 percent of the world's trade travels through that body of water, through the Mediterranean and this sort of track through here, about 25 percent of the world's trade travels through there. So extremely important from an economic standpoint and then traveling through those hot spots that have continued to challenge the security of those areas. And so when you think about, you know, where the U.S. Navy, where we want to be stationed, you know, this is where the challenge is. If we want to be out doing what the Navy does, protecting our security and prosperity, these are the areas where it's most challenged. And as you see a little bit later on, this is exactly where our attention is. Okay. So this idea of just sort of the classic maritime, things happening at sea, very, very dynamic change in the last 25 years. So although we can think about, hey, let's just go to sea and get this competition on, maybe as we've done it 25 years ago, fundamentally different rules at sea, four times as crowded, access to resources, underwater infrastructure, all of those things new to the competition since the last time we were really in a competitive environment. And there's more to it. We'll one more layer. So this might be a difficult to see from the back. It overlays closely with some of the sea lines, but it's a little bit of a gold color undersea cables. Okay. And so this is a vast network of undersea cables, copper, fiber optic. On those cables rides 99% of the world's internet traffic, international traffic. Okay, this cannot be recovered, right? It can't be picked up by any other thing. It rides on those cables. A satellite constellation can maybe pick up 3% of that volume right now if those cables were disrupted. So again, an extremely important part of the ocean, we talk about the internet, we talk about clouds, right?  The truth of the matter is it's a lake. Okay. And all of that data, we should be looking to the ocean floor when we think about where that data resides, or at least where it travels. And so these cables interconnecting and the cables also giving rise to so this maritime classic maritime force is different than it was 25 years ago. Certainly there's another force out there, the force of the information world, which is completely new than it was 25 years ago. And so it's given rise to, well, the whole cyber element, right? Whether it's a cyber business, security, cyber warfare, you name it. That's a new phenomena since we last were competing at sea for maritime superiority. It's accelerated everything. We were just talking at breakfast, even politically, how fast this internet changes things and what a big impact it's had on the political environment. It's the same with the security environment, giving rise to cyber safety concerns, personal information concerns, you know, the whole thing. And the speed and the reach and the precision, the cost of entry for that world so low, right? Anybody with a laptop or even a smartphone can be a global player if they're clever enough in this new information environment. Again, an exponential type of shape, right? The amount of information in the world doubling about every two years. So this brings on at a challenge in and of itself. How do we operate in that sea of information? And how do we make sense? Where do we find truth amongst the noise in that is a challenge again? And so this information environment, a second force that's new since the last time we were competitive in this maritime world. And then finally related to that is the introduction of technology in the world right now. Related to information, there's an awful lot of information technology, but it's not just that, right? It's genetic technology, it's additive manufacturing, right? If we can three-dimensionally print everything that we need or more and more of the things that we need, I'll tell you from my standpoint that changes logistics at sea a tremendous amount, right? And then there's also artificial intelligence, right? There's a lot of investment reaching an inflection point in artificial intelligence, the AlphaGo you're all familiar with, this algorithm that learned its way to beat the World Go Championship, a champion. And then what that means for autonomy, unmanned platforms, that sort of thing. So there's a vast force moving in terms of technologies being introduced, and not just introduced, but adapted faster. So take the telephone, for instance, when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, it took about 35 years for 25% of the population to get the phone, right, in the United States. A smartphone, what do you think it was when the iPhone came out? How long to get? It's about three years, right? So and you know that that iPhone brings you a whole lot more than that Alexander Graham Bell machine gave you. So there's, again, an exponential dimension to the introduction of technology and what that means for us is, you know, it's about pace, pace and complexity. And I guess my point is, is that, you know, we could have the strongest team on the field, player for player, but if we are not ready to compete at the pace of the game, we'll just be outscored. Our defense will be out of position over and over. And so there's this need to become more agile, which is a primary challenge for us in the U.S. Navy. Okay, so lots changed about the character of the game in the last 25 years. And if we're not mindful of that, we're just going to be non-competitive no matter who are the competitors. But there are some interesting competitors out there. And so I just thought I'd step through those quickly here is depiction of land reclamation in the South China Sea. Okay, and so arising, in fact, these two competitors, China and Russia, I would say, are sort of competitors on a global scale, right? In just about every way you can slice it now. This is, you know, a Russian jet aircraft. We were just talking again at breakfast, you know, flying extremely close to the USS Donald Cook up in the Baltic. You know, I probably should have brought a picture of the Kuznetsov as it translated the English Channel, much more relevant here in the United Kingdom. And so, you know, 25 years ago, these competitors were completely different. We had the Soviet Union back then was our last real competitor. Russia, much different competitor than the Soviet Union was. China brand new onto the scene when you compare to 25 years ago. Okay, another group of competitors, I would say, is that competition posed by Iran and North Korea. Okay, not entirely as global as China and Russia, but truly another dimension of the competition as we just talked about is nothing is truly regional now, is it? Right, and so everything is at least trans-regional, if not global. Every, the dimensions of this competition are multi-domain, so we can't just wish away the fact that this is going to be a surface, subsurface, air, space, cyber, all coming at us at one time. And so we've got to be able to move, command and control, operate in all of those dimensions at the same time. Very, very challenging, even for competitors that we would not not too long ago have considered a very regional type of an actor. And then, of course, there is this pervasive, persistent, adaptive counterterrorism threat which continues to challenge us very greatly today. And so you've read about the four plus one, right? This is just a representation of that four plus one broken into, I think, three roughly distinct groups. Okay, so what do we do? Well, this is the mission of the United States Navy as we confront that competition, which has changed both in character and the competitors have changed as well. This is right out of US code, right? Be ready to conduct prompt and sustained combat incident operations at sea, certainly to protect America from attack, but also to preserve our strategic influence in key regions of the world, right? Nobody can be everywhere, but you've got to be where it counts, when it counts. Trying to capture this idea that it really has to operate proficiently from the sea floor all the way up into space and into the information domain. I will tell you that this deep water competition in the deep water is something that's returned. The idea of sea control isn't something we've had to think about for 25 years, and we're getting a lot more water under the keel as we think about sea control in the 21st century. And then, of course, our idea is to deter aggression, right? We want to be out there, want to be the absolute best US chief of naval operations, not fighting anybody. And I think I do that by being so prepared that everybody wakes up in the morning and says, you know what? This is not the day to take that on, right? And so, ideas to deter aggression enable peaceful resolution of conflicts on terms that are acceptable not only to us but to our allies and partners with which we operate so often. But we've got to be very mindful that if that deterrence fails, our mission is to conduct decisive operations to end any conflict quickly and decisively. And how are we going about that? We'll return to our picture of the globe. We've got operations in the Arabian Gulf right now, USS Eisenhower and her strike group conducting strike operations against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Again, this is the USS San Antonio operating helicopters going against the in the conflict in Libya, right? So they're doing strike operations, insert. Extremely important, sometimes so effective at being unseen and undetected that they get forgotten. But we're constantly have five SSBNs at sea providing that undersea leg of the strategic deterrent. And so critical that we maintain that capability. In the U.S. Navy, we're at a point, and in the Royal Navy, at a point where we have to reconstitute that capability. And then this is a picture of a destroyer of the USS John McCain kind of operating in the Middle East. It's been very active down there off the coast of Yemen and the straight of Baba Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea. In fact, that's where I'm headed right after this. We're going to get on the plane, fly to Djibouti, and I'll be visiting our teams underway in the Red Sea just to talk to them about how that missile attack went off the coast of Yemen. And so just going back, this is where the demand signal is for us. And this is where those forces are deployed. We have on any given day, within this circle that I'm depicting with the laser, about 100 ships of the U.S. Navy and about 65,000 U.S. sailors four deployed away from home inside that circle, meeting these challenges, progressing and ensuring peace and stability in those hotspots. Let's see. Okay, so since the end of the Civil War, really, we've been a nation that's been looking beyond our shores to increase our prosperity. We kind of started on the East Coast and the West Coast, worked our way in, but at about the mid-1800s, we started turning out. And this gave rise to Alfred Thayer Mahan and a lot of naval strategists coming up in the latter half of the 1800s. And the new dynamic now is that we've got this push out as other nations now are turning outward, right? Whether it's in their near abroad in Eastern Europe, the Baltic down through the Eastern Mediterranean, or out here through the South China Sea. I mean, this is something that I think nobody should be surprised about, right? Sometimes I, you know, you just have to raise your eyebrow that folks are surprised that this is happening. Of course it's happening, right? It's happened to every prosperous nation. At some point, they're going to go beyond their shores. And so we should be ready for this, right? It's not too surprising. So what does it mean for us? You know, another mission, how do we deter that conflict in meaningful ways? We'll go to the South China Sea here. And this is, you know, a depiction of those arrows as the People's Republic of China looks to the sea now to enhance their prosperity. And so how do you govern that business? How do you govern that new maritime environment short of conflict? And so we'll, you know, certainly there's the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, right? And so this depiction gives you a sense of the territorial seas. It might be difficult to see, but there's some red lines that depict sort of the 12-mile limit, if you will. Out from three, right? If you're a scholar of unclass, used to be three-mile limit, out to 12, okay, as part of that convention. And so that's, I think, pretty much easy for everybody to understand, and you just, there's rules of behavior when you're in another nation's territorial waters, but it's really just sort of an extension of their territory, and you've got to respect that. Take a look at the same region of the world now when we start to consider exclusive economic zones. And so, you know, again, a feature of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, and it starts to look a lot more crowded, right? And if, you know, one thing that I feel strongly we need to do is just sort of advocate, be present, and provide a stable force to advocate for behavior consistent with these ruleset that has underpinned this prosperity for the last 70 years, really, since the end of World War II. And even in this region of the world, you know, these economies, many of them have grown remarkably under that ruleset. And there is, you know, there are moves afoot to take these exclusive economic zones, for instance, which allow, you know, a fair degree of freedom of operation inside those, and make that ruleset a bit more restrictive, make, you know, move these EEZs more towards, you know, the ruleset that you would apply towards territorial waters.  They'd become essentially landlocked, if you will, by virtue of, you know, making these exclusive economic, the rules associated with the EEZs, you know, overly restrictive. And so, you know, finding just the right balance point. There was, you know, a great give and take as they negotiated that convention. Finding that balance point, a ruleset by which we can all abide, I think is the key towards avoiding that lucidity trap that a lot of people have talked about, right? And this will allow us, I mean, there's plenty of opportunity for everybody to grow still, I think, right? It's not a zero-sum game. And then, even when it does become competitive, I want to do so in a way that avoids conflict at all possible costs. And so these rules and norms, I think, are the path forward in that regard. And so, I think that that is my last slide. I hope I've delivered on my promise to just give you my perspective. And we've got a little bit of time left for questions, and I'm happy to open it up. Thanks very much for being here. It's remarkably early for an academic calendar, so I appreciate you waking up and joining me. Thanks. Thank you, Mike. I mean, thank you very much for was a very comprehensive and far-reaching talk. And very much up our alleys here at King's, where we strive very much to engage with these various questions. I thought that the looking at what is the meaning of the maritime domain, why does it matter to national security, was central to the talk. And it was interesting how you tried to touch upon traditional themes. See matters because of trade, because of resources in it, and, but also you added something new, connectivity, not just as a transport, but also as an information connectivity. So, this to me seemed to be one of the emerging new themes that you were discussing, how even in the contemporary world, where we think that the most obvious things, such as the clouds, drive us away from the sea, in fact, it's quite the opposite. They turn us even closer to the maritime domain the way we know it. And I think the other component that I thought was extremely interesting is how you connected this to the return of competition at sea. A couple of years ago, I was at the November War College, and I think I remember I used the expression, contested the sea control is back. And it's been absent for 25 years. This is the first time that this has been brought back into the discussion. Sorry, very much appreciated the fact that you laid out a very clear context as to based on these four core themes, trade, transport, energy resources, and connectivity. These are also where potential friction could emerge. And you had clearly identified this four plus one, four state actors. And I think the contested sea control is back. It's part of this state actors being back at sea in that sense. It identified two potential global actors, Russia and China, two more original one, North Korea and Iran. And of course, one non-state problem that is transnational in nature, and there's connected to terrorism. And I think the key element that I take away from this is how to manage, prevent things from escalating beyond the point of no return. And of course, that brings in the key question of how do we govern this space that is complex, is multi-layered, and require us to have some shared principles and values. And the emphasis towards the end of the call, the talk was really very much about how to accommodate what this evolving normative framework that existed before Anglos, now with Anglos, and perhaps we're entering a stage where there are different perceptions and understandings of Anglos. And so I thought it was very interesting how in this respect, you're trying to combine traditional way of thinking about the maritime domain and sea power as a competition at sea between sort of zero-sum forces phasing each other to one whereby that component still exists. But at the same time, there's a new component that is about exploiting the maritime domain as a rescue monist, as something that is we all have in common and whereby we can find by agreeing on the principles and rules ways to manage and keep conflict under control. You said it so much better than I did. That's what I meant to say. So without any further ado, what I'll do in the convenience of time, we'll go back to 20 minutes. So I'll take three questions at a time and then the ambival will come back to you. Steve and then the lady on first one. Could you please introduce yourself, please introduce yourself. Yes, of course, just in my time as a professor and as a critic on the day master, I and I, with the Symesia Monoclonis, have discussed the matter of 20 years ago. What I'm really curious about here is being what you call the sea control problem. Because it seems to me that there was a real change in the problem of sea control, again, in the 19th and 19th century, ushered by technology, which technology, theoretically, in the middle of the submarine, seen now with a change in balance in sea control. But it seems to me that now you've got something else that's happening. It's not the same, I think, but it's here, it's rather difficult. And the difference there is the hybridity of the threat. And I know that being Chinese in the South Island Sea, for example, I see the PLA, I see the Chinese Pesco, and I see the Maxine Mission. I see it in the Gulf, of course, the Gulf Mission in the Gulf, forces operating out of the Gulf. How do you cope with this kind of threat? It seems to me that it's posing a real threat to making it gear up to traditional sea control, but how will ships be able to ships in major sea competitions, or the basin of sea, I suppose, in the Soviet era, up until the 1990s? Where is something new now? What is the amount of space needed here to prepare for the challenge that might occur? Lady of the front there. Yes, yes, yes. Please introduce yourself. You also mentioned the opening of the Arctic, so it's possible that that could open a sea lane for Russia. On the other hand, we've just seen the election of Donald Trump in America, and the risk is that America becomes an inward-looking country. I'd like to hear your point of view on how the dynamics at sea are going to change given these circumstances. Thank you. He took a minute and 25 seconds before anyone mentioned the president in the lecture, so we're doing very well right now. Anne-Lucy, at the back. Anne-Lucy Norton, Department of Justice. Thank you, Admiral, for an extremely illuminating talk. My question is, what does agility look like for the USM? I don't know. Which one? Each one of these questions would, to answer it properly, would consume the remaining time, but I'll give it a shot. And I'll go in reverse order, I think, if you'll allow me. With respect to agility, the way that we're dissecting that, if you will, is really in terms of everything that we do. And so if you read into this design for maintaining maritime superiority, it really describes an approach along four lines of effort. One line, we've coded them by color, right? So the blue line of effort talks about operations and warfighting at sea. And what the vision is is that, well, again, it goes to this hybridity or multi-domain type of an approach where you've just got to be, you know, if you're the fleet commander, the conductor of an orchestra, your orchestra just tripled in size. You've just got that many more things to keep on the same sheet of music. And so traditionally, you might want to think about physical movement of ships in the environment. Now you've got to think about not only that, but that's got to be coordinated with movement in the electromagnetic spectrum, which is an increasingly important part of our business at sea. It's got to be coordinated with space maneuver. And so there's this space dimension as well. And so you can just see these layers starting to emerge. And all of that has got to be much more responsive. And then as well as there is, in addition to electromagnetic, there is this information environment that has to be coordinated. So that requires sort of a dexterity and a flexibility in operations, layers and complexity of command and control that we just have to continue to war game and wring out how to respond at the speed of conflict in those multiple domains. But it's not just that, right? It takes us forever to design and build a new ship, for instance, right? It takes far too long. And so we've got to become more agile in our acquisition processes to be able to deliver those types of new capabilities in a relevant time frame at a cost that's not prohibitive. With respect to our personnel system, how we recruit, train, retain, that is the heart and soul of our success. And so we're spending a tremendous amount of time and investment updating our personnel system into a 21st century system that allows us to better match each of our sailors' skills and priorities with the missions in the Navy. We just honored Admiral Grace Hopper, one of the founding fathers, founding mothers of computer science. And I think some of our personnel databases were coded by Admiral Hopper herself in the 1950s. So we just really have to overhaul that system to get our people. The way we learn, there's been, again, you know, I'm preaching to the converted here, the way that we've learned, we've discovered a tremendous amount about how people learn, right? And so how do we incorporate that so that our sailors, our recruits are learning as fast as we can, both as we inculcate and do that genetic engineering to make them all sailors, but also how do we learn on the job in a much more dynamic and agile fashion? And so it really spans all four lines of efforts, this agility question in terms of, you know, just being able to do things, not just quicker, but, you know, quicker with precision and effectiveness as well. So with respect to the election, you know, my crystal ball says, just don't talk about that. So I'm going to go past that to the question about hybridity. I think that even classic seat control to get at the beginning of your question has changed, right? And it is very much married to technology. And so I just wrote a piece recently on what I think about the term what is anti-access area denial, A2AD. And it just struck me that, well, what, it's not a term that's very useful, I guess, at the end of the day.  It's like, oh, I got that part. It's not very helpful. It's just too general to be very useful. And similarly, it's not, again, like these nations moving out to the sea to enhance their security and prosperity. You know, we should not be surprised at this trend of trying to reach longer with more precision, right?  So it's nothing really new. Just the technology has changed. But it does change sea control challenge when you can do that at a range that is now in the thousands of miles with some, you know, pretty good precision in that kind of reconnaissance strike network. And what that network looks like is different depending upon which part of the world you're talking about, which is why I don't like the blanket term. But there is something to it, right? There's something as a substantial challenge that changes the nature of sea control I think we would all agree that a thousand miles out from shore, that's blue water, and yet you can be challenged with great precision from a shore-based system with a ballistic missile. And then there's the challenge that you highlighted, which is this hybrid nature and the increasing complexity of what I would call maritime security, right? It's not, you know, in terms of the missions of a navy, sea control in my mind is just as you say, our ability to control the seas, right? A coercive kind of classic battle, if you will, if it comes to that. But these are sort of, you know, bending the rules, testing us up to the threshold just short of a kinetic response, if you will. And so this is, you know, when we said maritime security even five, 10 years ago, what we really meant was narco-trafficking, you know, trafficking in illicit people, that type of a thing. Now we're seeing maritime security mean something much more different, and I'll be honest, it's highlighted in the design as something we've got to think about because it's something we don't really have a creative solution for right now. And this is just a maritime dimension of what we see in Crimea and Ukraine.  And we've got to, I think that the answer has a lot to do with enhancing the strength of regional security structures. And so it just makes them more resilient to these types of activities in and of themselves. And so we're spending a lot of time and effort working with partners, making sure that we're contributing in the most effective way together to regional security and make those parts of the world, whether they're at sea or in land, a little more resilient to those types of hybrid activities. I think, conscious of the time, I'll probably take two questions. John Vendor back and Van here at the front. Sir. Hello, Jonathan Beal from BBC News, Defence Correspondent. A group of MPs, the Defence Select Committee in the Commons, recently published a report saying that the Royal Navy with 19 frigates and destroyers, that number was woefully low. I wondered if you would concur with that view as our key ally. And if you want to dodge the question, which I suspect you might, could you just tell us what you think is the minimum for a navy to have as a credible force? I should just point out that some marinas never dodge. They're just beneath the water, in fact, from below. Just to make things clear. Bill. Bill Hayton, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, occasional right on South China Sea. There was talk earlier this year that the US Navy physically deterred China from building on the Scarborough Shoal and has maintained, in effect, a century duty ever since. I wonder if you could tell us anything that you're undertaking the South China Sea. So, if you're asking any chief of navy, if he wants more navy, I mean, it's a pretty easy quiz, right? The answer is yes. But as I'm sure you know, and everybody in this room knows, that the size of a navy in a liberal democracy is not just up to the chief of navy, right? And so, it's interesting a lot of times how these conversations happen. It shouldn't be a surprise that these ships take time to build. They have to be, you know, approved. The funds have to be set aside and applied to these types of things. And so, this isn't something that came on us as a surprise, any of our navies, right? I can speak, I think, globally in that regard. But I think it's much, you know, I just had dinner last night with the first sea lord and we spent an awful lot of time together as very close partners. And we talked a bit about this, you know, much different picture going forward. And I think very optimistic times for the Royal Navy. And so, again, also, you know, when it comes to this question of agility, right? Absolutely key that you can turn, you can see that just in the last five years, so much has changed in terms of the security environment and the demands and the responsibilities that are placed on the Navy of a maritime nation. And I think this is something that the United States and the United Kingdom both share. To be able to respond to that is absolutely fundamental to staying relevant as a Navy. And so, if you've got a security environment that's changing on a frequency measured in single digits of years, but it takes you double digits of years to respond to that, then again, that's a recipe for irrelevance. And I know that we're all looking to increase that agility so that we can be more responsive. The other thing is we've got to, you know, build these ships with as much flexibility as we can, right? So that they can have a broad sense, a broad spectrum of response, a lot of words escaping me now, but flexibility in terms of meeting different challenges. One of the first things I had to do when I became the director of Naval Reactors was to give a speech to inactivate the USS Enterprise. Okay, so this is the very first nuclear power carrier had been in commission for 51 years, you know, since 1960. And just take a look at what has happened in our security environment in those 51 years, right? It had, well, she was built, and her first mission was to go down and serve on duty in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And then she was at Yankee Station off of Vietnam, and when she finished her time, it had responded to a number of humanitarian crises around the world, and when she came across the ocean and moored in Norfolk, she had just come from Operation Enduring Freedom supporting strikes in Afghanistan. And so, you know, look at the change that had happened in those 51 years, and yet Enterprise remained relevant for that entire time, right? The air wing adapted. There was enough space, weight, and power built into the ship that she was able to reconfigure herself and remain relevant for those 51 years. Similar going forward, right? Some things are just going to be physics, right? The hull, the displacement, those sorts of things. But within those enduring pieces of a ship, we've got to allow for modularity and adaptation. We've got to follow that technology curve that we spoke about. And the Royal Navy, they're absolutely onto this in every way. In fact, we're learning from them in many ways as to how to be as flexible as possible going forward. So I think the future is varied by picture indeed. And then the question here, I'm sorry, was... Scarborough shows. I will tell you that I'm a firm believer in conventional deterrence, not just strategic, but also conventional deterrence. And you've got to be there and provide decision makers and partners with options, right? And so that's really what it comes down to, is that you're visible there, right? If you're not there, it's very hard to take credit for any kind of deterrence. And then you've got to provide capabilities that allow options to unfold, right? And so this might be from... Those options may be some kind of a cooperative engagement or an exercise together for a partner and certainly provide more coercive actions that would deter somebody from stirring something up. Whether that directly applies to Scarborough show very, very hard to determine this game theory. It's kind of infinite game theory now, isn't it? Rather than finite game theory. So to say that anything with finality, we deterred, for now, hard to say, right? The game's still in play. And so what I think is very important, though, is that we're down there, we're present, we're advocating for that rule set, those norms of behaviors that allow us all to compete in a way that doesn't necessarily drive us to conflict. All right? Thank you very much. I think this brings our proceedings to an end. I think it was a remarkable start of the day. We started exploring the challenges, new and old, to the modern domain, and we ended up on a note that how we bring up to date traditional ideas about operating in the modern domain in the 21st century. I mean, it has been a delight, a pleasure, and we wish you all the best for your next commitments. And also happy Thanksgiving, and Gerardo is going to be very soon behind us. Thank you very much. Thank you.


Rhaid i ddweud o'r cyfnodd ddechrau i chi i gyd yn dweud o'r cyfnodd. Rydyn ni'n dymrwy, a'r ddechrau i chi i chi'n dweud o'r cyfnodd a dda chi wedi'n dweud o'r cyfnodd o'r cyfnodd o'r cysylltu i chi, ond byddwn i chi ddweud i chi i chi'n dweud o'r cyfnodd. Dydyn ni'n ddweud am y dyfodol, rydyn ni'n ddod i chi ddweud o'r cyfnodd, i iciwch yn ystod y gallwch gyda'r drwnw, efallai mae'r mwyaf ysgol yma hwnnw, gofyn o'r yr unig ar gweithio'r pwysig ar y gyfer. Mae'n gwaelwch, gydweithio'r gwaelwch ar all ni, a'r gwaith yn ddiddordebwch er fydd y gwaedden yn gondol, ac yn gwych i'r brwysig, mae'n ddiddordebwch o'r gwaith. Felly ddwy'r gwaelwch yn ddiddordebwch mae'n gwybod er fwyf, ac roedd gyda'r traerau ac arweithio'r traerau yr unig cyfnodd yr oedd yn dweud i'r gynhyrchu'r oedd ymlaenwyr ar gwrdd y dyfodol. Mae'r gweithio'r rhan o'r fwyaf sydd wedi'i gynhyrchu'r cyffredinol o'r ffais ymlaenwyr sydd yn ei gynhyrchu'r gwrdd. Felly, o'r bwysig, yn ddiwedd ar gyfer jade. Woodriad asko. How do you plan on improving wellbeing in schools following this? Personally I think the first few weeks back should be wellbeing weeks, positivity groups, Building friendships and working on how this has affected them and their mental health. Well Jade, I couldn't agree with you more. What we know is unless we address children's wellbeing then we cannot get learning to stick. That's why we've given some freedom to our headteachers a mai hynny dwi'n ardal i ysgolio'r llwytaeth ywlad yn gyfnyddio'n torri i gyd, os ydych chi'n gynhyrchi'r fforddau, diogelio'n i'r sgolio'r hyn mae ei hyn yn ei fawr.  So you're absolutely right, and what's really important is that this has been recognised by our chief inspector of schools. So, Maly Rowlands, who is the head of Estyn, our school inspectorate, did a review into how schools have been supporting children during this time. i ddweud i'r cwmpar o'r meddwl ei wneud o'r ffordd i'r wneud i'r rhaid i'r mwneud i gael agnodd gweld bwyd, ac i'r rhaid i'r prirrequisit, ddim yw i ddweud i'r ddweud i gael ei wneud i'r wneud i'r pwyd yn iawn i'r pwyd yn cael eu cyffredinol, ac i'r pwyd i'r lluniau. Welcome to the National University of Ireland, where we will now go to Sean who asks, are you willing to look at revising your plans for older children to return to school given the falling numbers of infections continuing, the hospital admissions falling and peers in England returning to school many weeks before Welsh students along with plans to open up tourism weeks before planning on sending some age groups back to school. gyda'r gweld.  I would say... Please have a look for yourself. All the science���Qs that Guides my Decision is published on the Welsh Government website, and you can have a look, as to the advice I'm receiving, and how that advice then translates into how we are opening up education again. The UK-wide advice and the Welsh advice is, that any return to school has to be done carefully and cautiously ac mae have to return some schools, weight to ensure that there are no adverse incidents as a result of that, that we don't see as spiking infections, that we don't jeopardise the hard won gains that we've been able to make against coronavirus and they would like that to happen in spaces of three weeks. And that's why we have foundation phase back this week for three weeks to monitor that situation. ac mae'r caffiec a'r ffordd y ffordd yw'r ffordd yw'r cyffredinol yma yw'r ysgol yn ymgyrch, mae'n gwybod i'r rhai ymddiadau yma yn y 15, a'r gweithio yma yn y 11 a 13, ac mae'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r 10 a 12 yn ymgyrch. Yn y ffordd, mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio, ond oedd yna gweithio mae'n amser i chi amdano ni oherwydd, ac mae heddiw yn ymgyrch pray o'r gweithio'r gweithio yma, mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r cyffredinol gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio'r gweithio'r cwrthogaeth yn g awkward yn gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio geithasol. Ond yn ystod yn ei gweithio'r gyfoeth yma ychydig o'r disbyn am hynny yma, a gychydig o flaen i gael o syniad ymgyrch, Mae'r cyflau ar gweithio'r cyflau sy'n gyffredinol yn y Cymru, yn y fflusio yng Nghymru, yn y Udda, ac yn y Cymru, yn y Cymru. Mae hynny'n gwneud hynny'n gwneud ym Mhwyddol Cymru, yng Nghymru, ac ym Mhwyddol Scotland. Bydd ydych chi'n ymddangos cyflwyneu o'r adnod, ac yn y gwneud, yma yw ddiwylliannod, yw ychydig chi'n gwybod gwybod gyda'i sgol yn gweithio ac yn gwylltig, Felly, mae'r llaw mwy o hynny, os gallwn ni'n gweithio'r ddannu'r llaw. Myth nhw'n rhan o ydychweddlu ar gyfer gwaith, a chymeddderon wrth ar gyfer gyllideb gwrteng i hoffin umsgol ac yn ddiddordeb gwneud o'r ffordd i chi chi'n gweld, yn gweithio'r ferwyd. Lliad ar hyn o'r llwyddoeddŷn ar gyfer gwahanol o'r hynny, mae ymddangos cwrs ni'n nid o'r goddamnu hyn o un o'r llwyddon i hefyd o'r llwyddon o'r llaw i hynny. Get the clearance to get more children back more quickly. I think the reason why we're having to be especially cautious and think it's important to recognise this is the presence of the new variants. I think if we had been dealing with the old original variant of Covid we'd be in a very different position. But we know that the new variant of Covid is much more transmittable and so we have to take that into consideration. Ym hyn ysgol I'n ystynadol, y dyfodol sy'n dosudio gyda H Farfwyr Finyddionol... ...y gyda Spy M, ti wnaeth gwybod. Spy M ym gyfrifydydd yn yr ysgolio'r gyfer ystod Ysgolio Ysgolio spy N am fyddwyr ddechrau deithas anaf. Ysgolio'r cyntaf, yn ymgyrch, mae hynny'n gwisech o fofеж yn registerllion rhani, ac mae'n meddwl fy nghymru nad yma ac yn ysgolio ydyn nhw fyddwyd yn de서� yn gyffredig... If community levels of transmission get out of control again, that has a devastating impact on our ability to keep schools operating. So they say that a big bang approach really risks jumping R above one again and we've worked really hard to get it down and we need to keep it down and that's why our approach here is the one that we're taking in Wales and I'm not aware of any country anywhere in the world that has had such a long period of lockdown, such a huge peaking cases which we're tragically having to recover from how they've opened up their schools in a single and a single go. So we're following the science and please you know the science is available for you to have a look at and take a look for for yourselves but we're constantly checking and seeking new advice, new modelling, new data and we will move as fast as we think that it is safe to do so. Moving to Jessica, Jessica asks why have teachers not been prioritised for vaccines and why are we sending younger children back first? Well Jessica, the Welsh Government indeed as the other governments in the UK do, we're following the advice on vaccinations that was given to us by the JCVI. That committee is independent of politics and politicians made up of experts who give advice on how any vaccination programme, immunisation programme, should run in our country and they have identified those groups who are most likely to suffer severe harm or death as a result of contracting COVID-19. So it's very much a risk based approach and those groups are outlined in sections of one to nine. Thanks to the tremendous efforts here in Wales we are making fantastic progress moving our way through those groups and we are confident that we'll be able to get through groups one to nine offering a vaccine to everybody who in those groups want to take up the opportunity and I would urge you to take up that opportunity when it is your turn. We'll be able to get through those groups now by April and then we will await further advice from the JCVI on which groups of individuals should be vaccinated and next. I understand that that advice is imminent because of course we're getting to the stage where we're going to have completed the first one to nine. I think it's important to recognise how anxious teachers, teaching assistants, those involved in getting our children to school, those working in cleaning and cooking positions, all the people that are working in our schools. I understand how anxious that they are but if you're most at risk because of your age or an underlying health condition then you'll be picked up in those initial nine groups and in the hope of offering you some reassurance studies show that teachers and those working with children in our schools are fortunately no more likely to die as a result of Covid than the general public. Indeed other studies have shown that they are no more likely to be hospitalised as a result of contracting Covid than the general population and a recent study in Scotland showed that they were no more likely to test positive. The best way we can keep our schools working is to make sure we keep community transmission levels low. That's where the real risk is and that's why we're taking this cautious approach to returning children and why the youngest children. Well we know that the youngest children are the least likely to contract Covid and thankfully the only silver lining it's a very thin one I know but we can be thankful that we know that Covid fortunately is a relatively mild disease or a very mild disease in children but we know our youngest children are least likely to contract Covid and therefore are least likely to pass it on so this is the lowest risk group of children in terms of transmission of the disease and we also know that for our youngest children the distance learning which has been a challenge for everybody and I don't want to diminish that challenge but it has been particularly hard to deliver the foundation phase through distance learning despite the best efforts of teachers so that's why it's that cohort of children that have been prioritised first and as I said you'll see the same prioritisation in Scotland and in Northern Ireland and I am delighted that they have been beginning to go back this week and just to talk to those children this morning they were really really pleased to be back seeing their friends seeing their teachers and back learning and playing together. Michelle asks my daughter is in year 12 and I'm wondering how she can possibly sit A levels next year having no experience of sitting exams she did not do GCSEs nor will she do her AS levels she's applying for university so for a student with no experience of having the pressure of sitting all on nothing exams there's so much resting on the results well first of all Michelle the best of luck to your daughter and I find myself in exactly the same position and I too have a daughter sitting who's in year 12 and the last formal exams that she will have sat were back in year 10 and it's only natural that you and she are anxious about the prospect of exams I do hope that we will be in a public health situation that exams will go ahead next year but please be assured that we will be working with schools recognising you know the challenges that your daughter and others in her position will face to ensure that they are prepared as well as they can be to to get ready for those to get ready for those exams so there will be you know extra support put in place because we recognise that it will be a specific challenge for those children that have not sat their year 11 exams or not sat their AS level exams and your schools and colleges are aware of those issues and we will be looking to support children and I'm sure it's something that our regulator and our exam board will be considering as we move forward but best of luck to her and her applications to university let's have a look Alison says do you think people should go back a year to catch up well Alison there may be some cases that perhaps you know that is in the best interests of the child but I think it's important to remember that all children have had their education interrupted but they have continued to learn and experience things even whilst they've been out of face-to-face learning what's really important is that we put together a package to support those children to re-engage in their learning and continue to get back on track and to make progress I think it's absolutely of course tempting to think about pouring extra pressure and extra lessons and extra content on children but I'm always reminded by a quote which is attributed to Yates that education isn't about filling a bucket it's about lighting a fire and that takes us back to the point that was raised at the very beginning about addressing well-being we really need to recognise the challenge and situation that children have faced and then we need to re-engage them in their learning and then support them to make the progress that they need to make recognising that all children's lessons and learning has been interrupted there will be particular challenges for different parts of the cohort we know that this has been a particularly difficult time for children with additional learning needs we know that this has been a particularly different difficult time for those families where it's been really difficult to engage in distance learning we know it's been a particularly difficult time for those parents whose children are in Welsh media education but they don't speak Welsh at home so there will be a need to make sure that there's specific support for different cohorts of children and then for individual children we know that there will be some children that will really need that extra individual help now we've already employed an additional thousand members of staff in this academic year and I will be announcing very shortly a longer term strategy for the medium and longer term of how we can support children's education going forward but being confident you know that our teachers know what needs to be done to move children forward in their learning and we need to make sure that they're given the resources and the ability to do just that let me also then have a look at Katie I think yeah Katie there's a lot of speculation that the summer holidays will be cut and also longer school days is there any truth in this well Katie there's long been a debate actually in education about whether we organise our academic year in a way that is best for children and best for learning we do know that that six weeks summer holiday period can be really really challenging and many professionals will tell you and talk to you about how those first weeks in an autumn term in a normal year is about reacquainting children with school and catching up and and getting them back to where they were when they left the school at the beginning of the summer at the summer holidays so this is not a new phenomena nor is it a new debate so so I think then we need to have a debate about whether we organise our academic year in the most optimum fashion but I think it's also important to recognise that that children and families and those that work with them will need to have a break this summer so that's really important as well and if we were to shorten the summer holidays in any way at all we would want to make sure that that time was reorganised later in the year and again I know that we're feeling much more hopeful that the vaccination is coming forward and giving us real hope but you know we also need to be cognisant of the fact that our scientists are a bit worried about what COVID might do in the autumn and the winter so I think there is a debate to be had about whether we have a slightly shorter slightly shorter summer holiday and then add those weeks on maybe to the Christmas holidays when we think maybe we could find ourselves you know in a bit of a challenging situation again in terms of the summer though what I am pleased to say is that every summer we run a very successful food and fun programme in many of our communities where our junior children are able to go in and participate in lots of activities we're doubling the amount of investment in that programme this summer so many many more children will be able to avail themselves of the opportunity I hope to engage in food and fun there's lots of sporting activities art activities science cooking a really really good time as well and that's something that will be expanding to more children as for extra hours again I think we have to be mindful of not overloading children and getting them back and then overwhelming them with with extra extra lessons so we've got to work thinking about what is best for children yes in the short term but also making sure it's sustainable for them and having a longer term plan not just for this academic year but also for further academic academic years let's have a look at the next who else have we got here Jane Jane says some staff are in school but have no access to lateral flow tests that's not what they expected well Jane I'm sorry to hear that a lot of tests have already been delivered and all schools will have those tests by the end of the week indeed the school I was in this morning it was great to hear that those tests have been delivered and in fact the staff this morning had been administering those tests so we'll be expecting any outstanding test deliveries to be completed before the end of this before the end of this week so I hope that they will be with you very very shortly okay let's have a look what else is coming in Ashley. Cyncae Stee Williams please explain why the government is looking reviewing to open non-essential shops and hairdressers before all children are back in education well Ashley I know that people are joining all the time and this kind of relates back to a question that we had earlier but I think it's really important that we talk through the process about the decisions that we're making the science tells us that we need to introduce children back into school gradually in tranches and then to pause and to ensure that that reopening doesn't negatively impact on the public health scenario that we're facing in and we're doing that as quickly as the scientists advise us to do and that's in three week periods so that first tranche of students our foundation phase going back from this week and that will happen for three weeks and we are confident if all the figures go in the right way then we can on the 15th of march then move to having more children back for face-to-face learning but as I said earlier frustratingly Easter is really really really early this year and then we bump up against the Easter holidays before we've had a chance to review the impact of the second group of children going back on the public health situation believe me the priority for the Welsh Government is to use any headroom that we have got to unlock restrictions on education at first but because potentially we are running into a period where children are out of school because of the recess government is also looking at whether there are other things that do not present a massive risk to our spiking again in cases getting out of control again to see whether there are other things in again and a slowly and a considered way that could be unlocked and the First Minister will be making an announcement on that basis at the next review but education remains the government's and has always been the government's priority that's why we've got children back in school this week and we haven't been able to unlock any of the further measures and as I said we're constantly reviewing the advice and the guidance that is coming we're learning all of the time and and if the advice is that we can move more quickly that we don't have to wait for these three week periods and there are opportunities to get children back more quickly at this side of the Easter holidays then believe me then I will grab that opportunity because just like you I want children back in in their schools in their classrooms with their teachers as quickly as we are able to do so. Let's have a look at what is coming in. Okay we've had a question here from Rebecca about masks and the delivery of masks. Well Rebecca I'm sorry to hear that masks haven't been delivered we're the only government in the United Kingdom that has paid for schools to be supplied with their face coverings for both pupils and staff but it is for each local authority to ensure that those supplies have got to you they are they they are we've given them the money and they do the job of buying those supplies and then distributing them so I would urge you to get in touch with your local educational authority to understand when those face coverings will be with you and I hope but if you wanted to confidentially drop me a line about which one then obviously we can pursue that for you. Okey dokes well there are lots of people I can see asking about universities and understandably we spend a lot of time talking about schools but obviously we're managing this process for FE colleges and as well delighted that we're able to get more of our FE students back this week especially those students that are taking qualifications that require them to do a practical element to demonstrate those skills and again on the 15th of March we're hoping that only will we get some more of our children back to face-to-face learning in schools that's also the same for FE colleges if your child is studying equivalent qualifications in a sixth form college or your local FE college. With regards to universities again we're working very closely with the university sector to manage that return back cautiously and carefully prioritising students who have practical elements of their courses which make it absolutely you know really really really difficult to be able to do for home so whether that be our medics for instance or our nursing students we are seeing some more students back in university this week again asking universities to prioritise those that need access to the facilities that they can only find on their campuses and we are working with other governments to understand you know how we can extend that process that process on but again we're doing it carefully and cautiously mindful of the science and prioritising those students that really really need to be on campus to be able to complete their studies. Clearly there's a lot of cross-border flow so we've got lots of Welsh domicile students who study in England lots of English domicile students who study at Welsh universities are working very closely with the Westminster government on arrangements for testing and travel and to make sure we're working collaboratively across the country because we recognise that students potentially are traveling across borders and hoping to make announcement very shortly on enhanced testing that will allow more students back onto campus as quickly as we possibly as we possibly can. Just to remind you that if you are a parent of a university student and you're worried about financial difficulties that your son or daughter may be experiencing we have invested some 40 million pounds in Welsh universities first of all some of that to support mental health services to ensure that students have access to mental health support but the vast majority of that money has gone into hardship funds so if your son or daughter is having some difficulties financially worried about finance then they should approach their university for support and to ensure that that 40 million pounds that the Welsh government has invested gets out into students to support them recognising that many of them have got extra expenditure or have not been able to get those part-time jobs that help sustain them through study so that's any student that is studying at a Welsh university if you're a parent of a child who is studying in another part of the kingdom then separate arrangements are made available and they should approach their university to understand what levels of support that may have been made available in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Well can I just thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to send your questions in this evening we will continue to provide updates on latest announcements decisions and policies are on the Welsh Government media channels as well as on the Welsh Government education channels but thank you very much for joining us this evening and good night.


Hey everyone! In this video, I want to talk to you about the best way to short stocks using options. We're going to go over five different strategies, and then we'll go to the platform to take a look at a real example. Strategy number one would be to simply short the stock. The advantage is that there's no expiration date. We know that every option expires at some point in the future, but if you're simply shorting the stock, you don't have that expiration date to worry about. The disadvantages are, one, it requires a lot of capital. So yet you're having to put up a lot of capital just to sell that stock. And if you have a margin account, you may only have to put up a portion of that capital, but it still requires a lot. Second, the risk is undefined. Theoretically, a stock could keep going up, up, up, and up forever. Now we know that that's not realistic, but there are times when stocks can have explosive moves to the upside, and that's your main risk. Third, you can't short stock in an IRA. So unless you have a margin account, you're not even able to short stock. Fourth, it's a 50-50 bet. As I'll show you on the platform, when you're just simply selling stock, there's no probabilities in your favor. It's really just a 50-50 bet. And there's no premium decay. You don't have that theta component giving you that time decay that options give you. Strategy two, you could buy a put. You could go long a put. The advantages are that there is minimal capital required. You have to put up a lot less capital to simply buy a put. Second, they are tradable in an IRA or a margin account. Either one is fine. And the upside profit potential is still unlimited, so you still have that undefined profit potential, and your downside risk is defined. So you know exactly how much you're taking on as risk when you put the trade on. The disadvantages are that they have negative theta. That premium decay is working against you every day that you hold that position. That premium decay is working against you. And because of that, it makes it less than a 50-50 bet, not in your favor. Strategy three, you could buy a put vertical. The advantages are there's minimal capital required. You can trade these in an IRA or a margin account. The downside risk is defined, so you know exactly what your risk is at order entry, and they can be a higher probability than simply shorting stock if you set them up correctly. The disadvantages are that you have upside profit defined.  Strategy four, you can sell a call or short a call. The advantages are that it takes minimal capital compared to just shorting the stock. It gives you a much higher probability of success than shorting the stock, and you have that positive theta decay, that premium decay working in your favor. The disadvantage is that the upside profit is defined, so you're capping your upside, and the downside risk is undefined. So if that stock keeps moving up, up, up, and up, that's going to be hurting that position. And selling calls is not eligible to trade in an IRA. Strategy five, short call vertical. The advantages are minimal capital required. You can trade them in an IRA or a margin account. The downside risk is defined, so you know exactly what your risk is when you enter the trade, and you can set them up as higher probability trades, than simply shorting the stock. The disadvantages, again, you have upside profit that's defined. You're capping your upside. Let's go to the platform, and I'll tie this all together and make sure it makes sense for each strategy. So the stock that we're looking at in this example is Facebook ticker FB. So you might look at this chart and say, okay, Mark Zuckerberg, you've got a great company. It's been really powerful. The stock has performed really well. It's trading at all-time highs at over $165 per share, but I think that it's going to pull back in the near future. What goes up must come down, right? So if you take that assumption, then you then you want to figure out, okay, what's the best trading vehicle? What's the best strategy for me to use to get short Facebook? Let's take a look at the different examples and go through each one to see what makes the most sense. So the first strategy we'll look at is selling stock. So I've clicked the box down here where we show selling 100 shares of Facebook stock at the current market price, which is about $165.29. If we put our price slice to right where the stock is trading right now, you can see it shows the probabilities on the downside about 49% and the upside about 50%. So like I said, it's about a 50-50 bet, whether you'll be profitable on this trade or not. And as far as the amount of capital, because it's trading at $165.29, you're going to need to put up $16,529 to short 100 shares of Facebook. So that's a lot of capital. Again, if you have a margin account, you'll have to put up a portion of that, but it's still a large amount of capital to put up just to short the stock. The next strategy we talked about was just simply buying a put. So if we're going to buy a put at navigation trading, we're going to do a deep in the money put to minimize that negative theta decay. And so this is about an 80 delta put, which is pretty deep in the money, but you can still see the difference between the pink line, which is our current profit line, and the teal line, which is expiration, is about 164, if you watch this number down here, it's about 164, 165 dollars. Okay. So price just sat right here between now and expiration. We'd lose 165 dollars. Or another way to look at that is if you look at the theta, you're losing about $3.82 a day if the stock just sits there. So it needs to make a move in your direction fairly quickly for you to profit. And the more it moves against you, the more negative that theta gets. As you can see, the theta number continues to go down as I move the hash mark. Okay. So one of the advantages as I mentioned though, is you're putting up a lot less capital. Whereas to short the stock, you're putting up over $16,000 to buy one put.  Okay. So about about 10% of the value of actually shorting the stock. Okay. So the next strategy we looked at was buying a put vertical. Okay. So this is simply, we're buying a put vertical and I'm taking the strikes that are kind of straddling both sides of where the current price is. The current price is about $165. So I chose the 170 and the 160. And what this does for is it's simply, it's still about a 50-50 probability of success. However, we're capping our downside risk to $485 per contract and the upside potential is $515. Okay. So this is simply a short stock replacement and it expires in the future. So this could be, this could be an option depending on if you are in a period of low implied volatility or high implied volatility. The next option would be to sell a call. Again, you can't do this in an IRA, but if you have a margin account, you could, you could sell calls in Facebook to take a short bias position. And so what you'll see if we move the hash mark to our break even point, you can see we got to change this calendar to the expiration date, which in this case is 916. Okay. So what you'll see is now this has about a 75% probability of success. So if price just stayed right here or moved even up all the way up to 177.89, we can still make money on this trade. So it gives you a very high probability of success. Now if Facebook can Facebook continues to explode to the upside, that's where our risk lies. And so you can see this risk and you can kind of see the potential loss depending on how high Facebook got. So you're trading off that high probability of success for, for that upside risk. The next and last strategy would be to sell a call vertical. So this should be done again in high implied volatility. And the difference is if you don't like that unlimited upside risk that you had with just a short call like we just showed, you can define that upside by doing a short call vertical.  In this case, the max profit for one short call was $290. And with this, it's 177 because of the amount of credit that you receive. But for giving that up, you are capping your downside risk. So no matter how high Facebook were to charge, no matter how high were to go, the most you could lose on this trade, as you can see is $823. And that would be at this level here. So there's no right or wrong strategy. It depends on a variety of factors. One, where's implied volatility? If implied volatility is high, we want to be net sellers of options. If implied volatility is low, we want to be net buyers of options. And we want to be cognizant of the amount of capital that we have in our account and figure out what the best strategy is. Also, are we trading in an IRA or a margin account? These are all factors that come into play along with the other positions that we have in our account. So I hope this was helpful. If you'd like to learn more about the different strategies that we use to make consistent returns, come see us at navigationtrading.com. We've got a ton of free resources, including the navigation watch list, which is a list of the most profitable symbols to trade for each type of strategy. We've got the volatility indicator, which you've seen on my charts. You can download this directly to your thinkorswim trading platform. And we've got a free options course called Trading Options for Income, which is a step-by-step guide to get you making consistent trades right away. We look forward to seeing you there.


The longer the distribution comes below the 50-day moving average, as soon as it reclaims, it starts a really aggressive potential for the next leg up. And if the Russell gets pulled up, you sure as hell know speculation money is going to come into all classes. So again, welcome to Access a Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, good evening everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Access a Trader dot com nightly wrap up show. Hope everybody is doing well. Hope everybody had a good trading day. It really is amazing what you could accomplish in life and especially in trading when you don't settle, right? When you don't settle, when you don't prostitute your beliefs or in trading's case, you don't prostitute your money and just have the discipline and patience to let things play out and trade on your own terms. You know, we've been talking about the last couple of days how channels have been condensing, right? They've been contracting. A lot of people are away. They're going to be away to laugh the labor day. And the key is maybe you won't get five, 10, 20 trades, right? But you maybe to get that one, that quality over quantity. And the greatest part about waiting and not prostituting your money and really having a belief in what you're doing and what you're about to accomplish is you're putting yourself in a position to let the trades fall into your lap. And we don't know, and I said this last night and the day before, we don't know when channels are going to start to expand, okay? Only thing we can do with a common denominator every single night is put in that work, right? Go with those charts, put in the research and be prepared for the day. And, you know, I came in today just like I came in yesterday. I had no expectations. I had a good game plan that I believed for the day. I had a really good game plan. And the question was, how many of these things are going to wake up, right? How many things are going to confirm? How many of these things are going to reclaim major levels? And is there going to be anything materialistic that could potentially throw a monkey wrench into the plan? And I tell you one thing, and I think I can speak for a lot of people, especially in the webinar, incredibly aggressive day today. It's a really, really aggressive day. We got very fortunate that Coin came out with some pretty good earnings. Letter U came out with some really, really good aggressive earnings. We got upgrades and Splunk. You had other names like Boeing that we covered yesterday. We had a lot of stuff going on. And the only way that you could have taken advantage of all this, you have to be prepared. And again, anybody who wakes up at, you know, five minutes before the open and starts looking at the pre-market high list of what's the quote unquote hot stock of the day, you're going to be behind the eight bull for the start of your career. And unfortunately to eventually the demise of your career, your trading does not start at 9 30 in the morning. It starts from the previous day, the grunt work, the research, everything, you know, taking, you know, a million charts with a fine tooth comb and finding those diamonds in the rough, those gems that fall into your specific process. And today was just one of those situations that everything lined up perfectly. And the market just did incredibly well. And we'll get to individual pivots in a second. I just want to kind of touch up out what we're looking at for the macro picture. This is a chart of the IWM. Again, I don't put a lot of emphasis on the IWM, but this does represent speculation money. If you look at the cues where they are, they're well above the 50 day moving average been there for a long time. You look at the diamonds. Same thing. You look at the S&P 500. We'll talk about the spies in this case, well above the 50 day moving average. And every single time we've hit the 50 day moving average, just on the S&P 500, you can see the aggressive bounce that we hit. So the IWM has been kind of the lager, right? You can see it has been the lager for quite a while, but this does represent speculation money. And this is a very important point because it has a lot of the smaller cap names that traders are chasing or trading whatever you want to use, right? There's a lot of names in here that represent the overall spectrum of market sentiment. And I started looking at the indexes and I said, well, we know what's going on with the cues. We know what's going on with the S&P. We know what's going on with the diamonds, but I want to see what's going on with the IWM. And I started looking at it and I go, well, there's something very, very close to sparking an end of the summer rally. Again, I don't know if it's going to confirm tomorrow. I don't know if it's going to confirm next week. I don't know if it's going to confirm. But the longer a position, right, let's just say a longer an asset class gets bumped above the 50-day moving average, right? And you can see how many times it got rejected, once, twice, three times, four times, five times, six times. The longer the distribution comes below the 50-day moving average, as soon as it reclaims, it starts a really aggressive potential for the next leg up. And if the Russell gets pulled up, you sure as hell know speculation money is going to come into all classes. So again, is it something that I'm watching for tomorrow? I'm not. No, I'm really not. But I'm very, very conscious to know that if the IWM can reclaim this 225, 225.5 level on a close, you're going to see a very, very aggressive start into the fourth quarter that we can really take advantage in all asset class.  But it really starts to spark in the high beta names that are Wall Street darlings that everybody wants to own, especially into the fourth quarter and especially into the first quarter, to have on their books.  Again, your point of reference, how important is the 50-day moving average? We talked about bowling yesterday, right? We said how many times bowling got rejected off the 50-day moving average? Once, twice, three times, four times, five times. Again, today it reclaimed the 50-day moving average. You can see what the stock has did. I actually traded bowling today. I actually did wallowage bowling today. I was shocked as everybody else, but it really does show you how important that 50-day moving average is. And the Russell, if they could finally reclaim everything will light up like a Christmas tree. So going into tomorrow, again, there's going to be some longs. There's going to be some shorts. We discussed that last night in the video. I wanted to make sure, this is last night's daily pivot list, I wanted to make sure that we were kind of covered on both sides of the equation, not only from fresh pivots, whether it's story stocks, whatever the case may be for this morning session, but I wanted to make sure we had some longs, we had some shorts, and the market was incredibly aggressive. Something for everybody today, and some really good value. So let's talk about this Netflix. And I still like Netflix to the downside. The Netflix, again, not a huge aggressive move, but 312 off the macro channel, it confirmed today. This is the lowest close in this whole formation. I still liked it lower for tomorrow. You can see it took out the 12 when all the way down to nine. This thing takes out nine. It's going to go back to this 504 level. Again, nobody saw my destruction and prices. We're just trying to take advantage of some channels to the downside. Amazon got absolutely hit pretty aggressive today. Amazon 3314 and 3298 macro. Here was Amazon. This is from the daily macro list. So it took out 3314. It took out the 3298 and went right to the next support at 3277. Again, if this Amazon gets pulled one more time below this rising support here to 3272, you still got about a, you got 70, 80 points of downside. Again, I don't know if we will, we're just trying to get prepared for the next channel. Microchip didn't confirm Roku, 377 short. Roku got dismantled today. Here was Roku, right? It took out the whole 377 channel and all the way down to 361. Huge move there as well. CPRT, not quite yet, right? 143, 142 on the short side. Not quite yet, right? Not quite yet. It's almost ready, but not quite yet. It got down to 142 level. It just needs one more bump to get this thing going lower. Boeing, we talked about Boeing last night. We talked about Boeing this morning. 3750, 238 needs to build. Again, we saw a bunch of 240, 242 and a half calls, weekly calls coming in for second day in a row. It took out the 3750 that we talked about last night and closed pretty much at the high of the day, 239.50. This thing gets above 240. You're going to see a channel go to 248.250. Let's see if we can see more aggressive channels coming in, more aggressive option flow coming in for near term expiration. Pinterest, 5670 short. Here was Pinterest. It took out the 5670 short. That was the low of earnings when all the way down to the 55s. Again, not a huge move, but again, the point is we want to be prepared on both sides and Letter U reported earnings 112.50, 113. This was a really good move here. Look at Letter U. They came for, here's the 12.50, 13 area. They came very aggressively for the 125 and the 135 near term expiration calls. It took out the 13. It took out the 15 and the stock closed all the way at the high of the day in the 120s. This thing looks like any dip tomorrow, like any dip tomorrow. This thing looks ready to go into this 124, 126 channel. It looks really, really good. Then you start looking at the daily pivots. Again, some of the names were the same as well. Letter U exploded, Splunk upgraded 175 price target, 146, 148 macro levels to build. Here was Splunk. Here was Splunk. It got upgraded today. It took out the 46. Here it is right here. It took out the 46, took out the 48 and traded all the way up to 49 before a kind of reverse course. Coin was a monster, absolutely monster move for all you crypto heads in the house and experienced traders only 284 is supply it needs to reclaim. Coin went nuts. We actually saw short term 320 call buyers. It took out this whole 84 channel and went all the way up to 294. They came for the 320 September call. So there's still, you know, there's still action on there as well. Roku again, we discussed, got murders, CPRT, not quite yet. Boeing again, just exploded, went to the highs. I still like higher prices there. Microchip didn't trigger. AMC, AMC 3125 is support. Any clothes below can see last week's lows. Here was AMC. It took out the 3124 area went right down. It didn't quite test last week's lows, but got down to 2940. Guys for all you guys who are investors in AMC, this is your line in the sand. It's 2890. At any given point, any clothes below 29, folks, this thing has a lot of room down. So you got, you want to definitely pay attention to that as well. Yeah. Excellent open today. Again, August 23, 20 call buyers. Awesome move on you. There was a really great moves here, 2240, 242 call buying, 150 next supply, 17s printing, 21 printing. Roku just got murdered. I mean, so again, it's amazing. It really, really is amazing how much value there was today. We had no, we had literally no, no reason to believe that today's day was going to be like yesterday's session. And the ironic part about going into tomorrow's session, yeah, I mean, there's definitely names I like both long and short, but there's no guarantee we're going to have expansion tomorrow. Again, keep this in mind. We are still in the last leg of summer. Is it possible we could have a repeat of today's perform? Right? God willing, knock on wood. But again, you can't rely on it because everybody is still on vacation. One trade at a time, one day at a time. We have the research for tonight. The game plan is ready. The key again for tomorrow's session is how many of these things are going to confirm. So let's talk about some ideas for tomorrow's session. I kind of like Etsy, Etsy for all you guys who are online shoppers and all that good stuff. I don't know if it's going to go back into the top of the range here, but this is the highest close in this whole formation here. If they can just reclaim the 50 day moving average, it's just like we talked about the IWM, just like we talked about Boeing, if it can reclaim the 50 day moving average, then you have all this room here to fill in this really monster gap. So there's a lot of potential in this thing that it might play out on a two day basis. We have to keep this on very closely. Any remount of the 50 day moving average is super bullish. I like dash again, door dash, a play on the whole stay at home movement. Not every stay at home stock is reacting. Netflix looks like garbage. Zoom looked good for a few days. Now it's looking like garbage. Docu again, the whole stay at home movement, reverse course a couple of days ago. So door dash is actually standing on its own two feet. If they can reclaim this upper channel here, you might start the next leg up. Obviously Boeing, any dip, any dip on Boeing tomorrow into the rising 60 minute support, first close of the 50 day moving average that's super duper bullish. Letter U same thing, monster move today, any dip tomorrow into rising support. Keep an eye on that as well. And a little name, this rocket mortgage looks interesting. Again, maybe not for tomorrow, maybe not for next week, but I kind of like this little sneaky channel here. Keep it on your radar. Again, I don't think it's going to confirm tomorrow, but you never know on this tape. So keep an eye. There's like seven candles of distribution here. If it could get above here, maybe it goes back to the 50 day moving average. So that's it guys. So get a good night's sleep. Don't put, you know, don't carry over today's, today's action tomorrow. Okay, not mentally. Okay, we know we have is today kind of an idle exception to what we're going to see from now to Labor Day. Very possible. Is it possible we have a day two performance like we had today? Everything's on the table.  Guys, have a great night. God bless and I'll see you a lot of you guys tomorrow.