For the distinguished guests we have in attendance this evening, my name is Cadet Colonel Matthew Cutting. It is my pleasure to introduce the Peace and War Center Director and Military Writers Symposium Executive Director, Dr. Travis Morris. Cadets, please be seated. So good evening and welcome. So welcome to the 27th season of Norwich University's Military Writers Symposium in Northfield, Vermont. It's an absolute pleasure to have each of you here. The Symposium is a signature event of Norwich University's Peace and War Center and it's the only event of its kind in an American university. It has brought some of the most prominent military intelligence, international affairs writers of our time, to Central Vermont. It's designed to educate, enlighten, challenge, and inspire. The Symposium is designed to be relevant and it tackles significant issues head on. So a brief history. In 1996, the Symposium was conceived by co-founders W. E. B. Griffith and Carlo Deste with support of former North's President, Major General Russell Todd. The US Army retired. Its inspiration was to bring influential writers to Norwich University. So in the past, we focused on various subjects that ranged from cyber warfare, war one, PTSD, weaponizations of water, the impact of war one, Iraq, Afghanistan. This year, we focus on the Arctic, specifically the theme global conflict or cooperation, evolving Arctic security. So to my left, you have some of the globe's leading experts on the subject and we are honored and privileged to have them with you and to sit before you. So before I introduce the moderator, I would like to recognize and thank several people who make tonight in this event possible. When I call your name, please stand. North's President University, Mark Anarumo, who is in the back, sir, thank you so much for your support throughout this event. Provost Fitchu, our Coby Award winners, Dr. Steve Sodergren and Mark Treanor. Please stand just to be recognized. Thank you very much. May have a seat. I'd also like to thank those alumni and supporters who are both on and off campus to make this event possible. We certainly appreciate your talents, your time, and your treasure. I'd also like to thank the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. Their partnership has made this event possible. We certainly appreciate their cooperation. They definitely enhance our educational opportunities both for on campus and off campus activities. I would also like to thank those of you that are joining online. We certainly appreciate you being with us this evening.  Many of you in the future will be leading others in complex and challenging environments in places and situations right now you can't imagine. Some of them could be the Arctic. That's why you're here. And that's why we're here. The Arctic may be not on your radar at all. Maybe something you haven't ever thought about. But it's something you certainly would. And this is why we're having this event. And this is why we want you to be aware of what's going on to the North. The symposium is meant to make you aware and to be proactive cognitively of a very fluid situational environment. So a few housekeeping rules before we begin. One, please make sure your cell phones are off. There will be a time for Q&A session at the end. So as you're hearing the panel proceed, think of a question. When you see Mike's position to your left and to your right, you can go ahead and start lining up and have your questions answered. We are very fortunate to have our moderator today, Master Sergeant U.S. Army Retired Troy Buffard. Just a brief background on Professor Buffard. He holds a Master's of Arts in Arctic Policy. He's currently completing a Ph.D. program focused on Arctic Defense Strategy and International Law. He's the director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Center for Arctic Security and Resilience. As a defense contractor, he is co-principal of investigators for the Department of Defense Arctic Defense and Security Orientation Program with U.S. Northcom and ALCOM. He's a network coordinator for the North American and Arctic Defense and Security Network, NADSEN, and a non-resident research fellow with the Center for Defense and Security Studies in the University of Manitoba. He works with NATO, the Arctic Council, and is a sought-out speaker. He's also a frequent speaker on international Arctic events. He's well-published and he regularly engages with the media. It's my honor and privilege to welcome Professor Troy Buffard to the stage. The floor is yours, sir. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for being here. President Annamurma, provost, esteemed guests, and especially the Norwich military cadets who have chosen the difficult path to join the future leaders of the world's most powerful and dignified military in honorable service to this nation. It is a profound honor to be in front of such a distinguished company, including yesterday's proven veterans, today's expert warriors, and tomorrow's brilliant leaders. Thank you for sharing your time with us and allowing us the opportunity to offer thoughts and perspectives concerning today's topics, the Arctic and the World Competition. I'd like to introduce our panel to you. You have information in front of you in the program, but there's some stuff that's not there. It's not in the program. You don't know it. It's not on the internet, but I have a good, a meaningful connection with each of the panel members. It helped me to improve and develop my writing skills. They've been inspiring to me for many, many years. Not by design. It just happens that this panel has a meaningful connection to me and I'd like to add a little bit more about their background. Dr. Whitney Lockenbauer. In the last couple of years, no one has supported and propelled my professional academic development of my friend and colleague, Dr. Whitney Lockenbauer. Whitney has shown me what it means to be an ambitious and contributing intellectual, a world-class thinker, a thoughtful mentor, and an empowering enabler for individual potential. My relatively new journey into scholarship will forever benefit from his example. He's a machine. I've never seen anyone produce as much as he does. Whitney's inspiration and professional work influences many, including many of the northern defense commands around the circumpolar north. The Canadian rangers throughout his home country and the network of academics and executive practitioners on the continent. Simply put, Whitney is an absolute scholar, force of nature for the North American Arctic. Dr. James Kraska is one of the very first experts I ever heard of when I began my journey into the world of Arctic Security long ago. I typed his name, I typed Arctic Security in Google, and his name popped up first. I was reminded of his book when I saw it today on the table. It was one of the first books I ever read on Arctic Security. I got a sense of what it meant to be a true expert by reading his publications. His portfolio and activities are sophisticated and influential in all the right ways. His work inspired and frightened me at the same time because I started to learn what it meant to be a responsible and accountable for the information involving some of the most difficult issues, challenging the world. He's mentored and supported development on my own work, including maritime law, of which he is one of the world's foremost authorities. In addition, Dr. Kraska also offers substantial expertise concerning another leading adversarial challenge in the West, China. Sam, I've been extremely fortunate to know Sam for many years and have had the distinct pleasure of knowing his family over time, including his absolute superhuman wife, Kim. His two sons, Tulf and Coco, his mom, Jeannie, the very definition of a loving family matriarch. His father, Clarence, who once received a very prestigious award from President Obama for his unprecedented stewardship of the Yukon Flats. His sister, Stephanie, and his brothers, Dachau and Edward. Sam has walked in several worlds. His identity is complex and impressive. He is a West Point graduate, an infantry officer, and a member of the US Special Forces, like Lieutenant Colonel Morris also. He is a US Ranger. Sam is a Gwichian warrior and a longtime international delegate of the Arctic Council, the highest level Arctic international forum in the world. This evening, you'll learn much from him. Additionally, I'd strongly encourage you to ask him about leadership and how his courage is the reason that the tallest mountain in North America was renamed to Denali. I'm able to be here today as an invited guest, largely because of the support of this panel. Mentorship and friendship of James, Sam, and Whitney, I'll never forget. With that, I'd like to turn over to the panel. I'm starting with Sam for opening remarks and then we'll roll into question and answer session. I'd like to start with a suggestion from the region to fight North Korea, a suggestion from China. I said, you know what, I am not in, you know what, I am not in. I said, you know what, I'm going to be Sam O'Lizander, and I just came from Fairbanks, even though I just got in last night, and I woke up early this morning, I was really happy to be around, and I saw a lot of young warriors, and that's a good thing for me to see. I mentioned I served in the military myself, and so I understand the experience that you're going through right now. It's a difficult experience, but it's a rewarding experience from the lens. So the conversation is about art, security, cooperation, and competition. And right into this, I thought to myself, well, you know what, can I add to this conversation? And I thought, well, maybe we need to have a little bit of an indigenous perspective and so it reminded me of a story that's occurred to me years ago, I mean, four or five years ago, I went out hunting with my father over here, I went out hunting for moose, and he was on the river cruising around, and I was looking for his backs, and I saw this real fat black bear just rollin' back on the side of the river, and my old man pulled up his rifle and said, I didn't shoot for sure. It was delicious. Then he put his rifle down.    And I was like, well, is this some fortune cookie? Why is he telling me? Like, I can't figure it out. And then they turned the corner and understood who's the one. He always knows. How does he know?  Well, he knows because we have thousands of years on the land and he understands how the animals operate. He told me a story when I was filming one, and I said, we have to go care about a pair of brown bears. Come up here, pretty soon, go care about it. And he said, you know, one time I was on the moose hunting, it seemed like the animals would talk to each other. And I said, what does he mean? He said, well, I was, well, I saw the trail of the moose trail. I saw the tracks, I started walking after it. And the next thing you know all these animals that I typically be hunting just popped up out of nowhere. And I wanted to shoot them.  And he said, well, I remembered. He said, I remembered that the animals talked to each other and they were throwing me off the trail. Because they knew I was hunting for moose and they were trying to protect that moose and they were getting me away. And so I ignored them. And I continued, and I continued hunting on the chopper. So here I was, I went along the lake, and I started to see the moose tracks. I said, I'll be there in a minute. And I followed the tracks in my eyes and I looked up and there was a moose standing right there. I said, hey, do you see the moose? And I said, I saw that moose, he was standing right there. He said, let's go back and shoot him. And I said, hey, we said we were going caribou and he was trying to throw us off the trail. And a few years later as I was thinking about getting out of the military I was driving down the road I was driving up the national station in Fort Campbell. And I was, you know, I told my boss I was going to get out. All of a sudden all these great jobs started popping up. And I said, hey, we can go through this other job. You know, you don't have to go to Fort Fort, Louisiana. You can go over here and work with these people. You can play the flow of this life. That sounds pretty cool. I like to do that. They're trying to throw me off the path. And I said, maybe this is what that old man was talking about this whole time. You know, he knows. You know, when I was growing up I didn't speak my name or language. You know, did you use that language? I was just speaking. And so when I was growing up I really didn't appreciate the elders in that community because they just speak English very well.  So they're very complicated topics and very complicated concepts that we wanted to talk about. We didn't talk about it because they could speak English well. I didn't speak a word. So I never really appreciated their knowledge of how I learned the language. So I actually have gone back and listened to old recordings of these people 45 years ago. And here are the things we have to say. Very, very complicated concepts that they talk about. A lot of knowledge in those stories. A lot of conditional knowledge. And so you know, one of the things that we're told when you're in the military is to know your operational environment. You got to know your operational environment. That's a critical aspect when you're fighting thinking about creating a plan and knowing your operational environment. In the Arctic nobody knows the operational environment better than the indigenous people. Period. You will not know the operational environment better than the indigenous people we are on. You just won't know. And if you don't understand the language or take your time to understand the people who will never have access to the knowledge that's going to allow you to understand that environment and that doesn't just apply to the indigenous people Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia. It also applies to the indigenous people of Russia as well. There are indigenous people in Russia if you look at them you think they're Native American. So you know one of the things we talk about within special forces is they say you work by with and through indigenous people work by with and through indigenous people. How are you going to be able to do that? Well first of all why do you do that? Because it leverages available knowledge of manpower. That's one of the things what the other piece of it is in order to be able to do that you have to familiarize yourself with the indigenous people. You can't just go in there and think that the customs that we have and the communication that we use are going to resonate with those people that are going to be very important to your success. You know this conference we talk about cooperation conflict. I will tell you this from an indigenous standpoint there's a reason why there's really it's really in Alaska primarily you have only indigenous communities not the road system. You have a lot of people that are not Native and move to Alaska and they try to survive on their own but they really don't they've been here for a couple of years but they don't last very long and the reason is because the most fundamental thing being successful in the art of this cooperation everybody needs to support everyone that's it my brother who was hunting over years back I won't mention which one but he broke down broke down my father my father was running down gas and sure enough ran out of gas and broke down and this guy and my brother turned the corner and there he was these guys don't like each other they come to discuss but the guy sees him and he pulls over picks him up and he goes back to the house even though they don't like each other that's how it is in the art the only way to be successful up there is to cooperate you probably heard the term here it's a few things cooperate and graduate maybe not alright cooperate and graduate in the art just to survive I'm not talking about going beyond that but to survive you have to cooperate you have to understand your operational environment don't be a detriment to your units when you go to these places because you're unprepared right now you're in the best place you can possibly be to be prepared to prepare yourselves for the challenges here in the future when it comes to conflict and whether it be conflict or cooperation in the art it doesn't matter because all of you when you hear it you hear it from your instructor and I'll tell you that you will be the leaders of this country in the future that's what will happen whether you want to be a product you will be called upon you will be called upon to serve you've already been called upon and you will be called upon and you need to be prepared so know your operational environment respect the indigenous knowledge to the best of your ability remember that our religious people especially our Native people of Alaska we want to support the seated success of our military out there so make sure that we respect them respect the knowledge that they have thank you I'm reminded much of what Sam just mentioned is not new to us the Arctic as this emerging operational contested environment that we'll talk about more tonight is not unlike what we went through in the desert and we went in assuming too much not knowing, not learning, not listening not thinking and it cost us dearly so we're not on the Arctic and this is our home and we're trying to adapt to this as quick as possible different in the Arctic in terms of this we're seeing not only the military but when it comes to indigenous and non-indigenous working together how do we even talk to each other if that's kind of an issue but we're trying to do that and this is part of the military, DOD defense agencies, diplomats researchers but we're learning that if we just listen a little harder they have ways of knowing indigenous people have ways of knowing that one way or another we're going to listen to we're going to use it to get to success and until we do and we listen to that those ways of knowing we're not going to be successful luckily we kind of have a purpose of the environment to do this in some time and I'm seeing good stuff happen here so thank you Sam Dr. Krasner Thank you so the Arctic region is a the Arctic region is a perfect example of cooperation and conflict and what I suggest is that you're going to face both of those sometimes in the same location China is the greatest pacing threat for the United States it's the only multi-dimensional threat which has economic power has military power as well as even political power the Chinese governance model that's reflected in Confucian tradition and it's popular in Asia is championed by China and other countries for example China's claim of governance superiority in its response to the COVID pandemic and how they've been able to deal effectively with that so this is the multi-dimensional pacing threat for the United States and our friends and allies throughout the globe the Arctic region is a perfect example of both cooperation and to be ready simultaneously for the potential for conflict China regards itself as a quote near Arctic state a near Arctic state and rather than being on the periphery of the Arctic region China has unapologetically inserted itself into the fabric of Arctic governance and Arctic power China joined as an observer the Arctic council in 2013 and it also issued a comprehensive foreign ministry white paper on Arctic policy in 2018 some very interesting aspects to this paper so China accepts that the Arctic region like all of the world is governed by the Charter of the United Nations also the Arctic is an ocean and so those aspects that are maritime are governed by the UN convention on the law of the sea and there are some other international agreements that apply in the Arctic such as the Spitzbergen Treaty which allows some 40 states to have access to the Svalbard archipelago that is part of Norway but under this treaty of 40 states including China can fish and hunt and access those islands for mineral rights, for mining and China wants to be part of this and asserts that it is it also asserts a special position for a special right because it is a member of the permanent five of the UN Security Council one of only five thermonuclear powers that is states that have not just nuclear weapons but a hydrogen bomb so China looks to these governance institutions and mechanisms and says that it will comply with them and that's a good new story China is interested in marine scientific research in freedom of navigation and overflight fishing and submarine cables pipelines access to minerals on the international seabed area China claims the rights to all of these under these treaties principally the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and in fact China does have a legitimate right as a member of these institutions to claim access to the Arctic Region China is interested in advancing science on climate change and in participating in regional governance and global governance that affects the Arctic and it also claims usage for the sea routes which it names as the Northwest Passage through Canada, our neighbor our ally through Russia and a trans-polar route through the middle of the Arctic Ocean and China claims access to all of those as part of its right of freedom of navigation and overflight China says that these routes are going to have a quote huge impact on the global economy and on the Chinese economy, the Chinese development as well as energy and it has incorporated these into its concept of a polar silk road part of the Belt Road Initiative where China seeks to be the hub of global trade that connects the East Korea, Japan, China and other countries to the West Europe and North and South America and so China claims that the Arctic Ocean is going to be part of this Belt Road Initiative the greatest global infrastructure network in the history of mankind so China it has capital technology, it's got a huge market and it also claims quote knowledge and experience unique to the Arctic that it seeks to apply and exploit and be respected for so they want to facilitate economic and social progress in the Arctic region in the Arctic states and they're already present there one of the major groups of delegations for green scientific research in the region and also in Svalbard Archipelago and their goals are some of the goals that we share such as understanding and be more resilient and responsive to climate change to understand the science not just in the climate but also the biology and the geophysical environment China seeks to develop technology in particular green energy the same types of things that are attractive to to us China also insists on its right to participate in the governance in this region and we should be satisfied somewhat that China represents that it's committed to the frameworks that exist the UN Charter, the law of the sea convention and these other agreements in particular China is very active at the UN specialized agency for maritime matters the international maritime organization active in the UN framework on climate change it supports the Kyoto protocol toward these goals China also joined a 2019 fishing moratorium on fishing in the central Arctic Ocean beyond the waters of the coastal states China also seeks finally to to work out new rules for marine genetic resources these are chemo synthetic organisms that collect around seabed hydrothermal vents and they're the most unique life form on earth they don't require the sun's energy for life totally unknown until just a few decades ago and each of these communities on the deep seabed we believe are unique they have unique genetic properties and could be the next cure for cancer down there 5,000 meters below the surface of the wall China wants to participate in that and it insists on having a quote fair and equitable sharing of the benefits so of course the west are the leaders in biotechnology and medical technology and China is working with other countries to insist on a share of that well it's a good news and a mixed story because China respects the Arctic Council and observes the agreements, the treaties the Arctic Council has negotiated even though China is only an observer it's not a participant there's agreements on search and rescue for aviation and surface ships there's an agreement on oil pollution and marine science China also has bilateral agreements with the United States with Iceland, Russia and there's a trilateral agreement with Korea and Japan and China for work in the Arctic so there is cooperation but there's also the prospect of potentially conflict or at least cooperation with China and I on trust mechanisms and on the level of investment that the Arctic States United States and the other Arctic States can act with China because China's acceptance of the rules in the Arctic that are liberal and open and the Arctic States such as China also apply in areas near China such as the South China Sea the East China Sea the mid-Pacific ocean the Indian Ocean the South Pacific where China has for example huge fishing fleets that are poaching fish off the coast of Ecuador in waters under Ecuador's jurisdiction so China has a global presence and it's great that China is at the table and participating in the mechanisms for Arctic governments but this is in contrast to China's lack of compliance non-compliance with these same agreements in areas that are closer to China and so this raises the prospect of of course a double standard likely of the attention that's why as leaders you'll be confronted with not a binary choice of will there be conflict or will there be cooperation there will be cooperation and there also is always the possibility you have to prepare for conflict thank you thanks to the organizers it is a great privilege to be able to share some ideas with all of you and reminding all of you this event is for you so I'm looking forward to our conversations Sam Lawson for your insight for yours and thanks George for hosting here I come to this topic from various perspectives and levels of analysis and I agree very much that there's also often a false binary setup asking whether we should frame the Arctic or expect that the Arctic will become a zone of conflict or cooperation in a competitive world this is a false binary we have and we should expect as we just heard cooperation and competition in the Arctic within a world of similar binaries so competition between Arctic states and non-Arctic states will continue but it does not mean that we are equally vulnerable in or across all domains scales and levels or that conflict is inevitable there's also a tendency to treat what goes on at the international level as separate from what's happening in the Arctic as a region and the dramatic transformations in the environment the ways of life of these people who live there as Sam is so eloquently shared with us this morning and tonight must be on our minds I've been very privileged over the last couple of decades to have traveled extensively in the Canadian Arctic Canadian ranges reserve members of our Canadian Armed Forces who serve in a non-kinetic role in the last years and voices their whole communities in the military and then the military's voice in their communities with an essential dialogue and connectedness that sounds magnified this morning I talked a bit about the benefits when we're thinking about the Arctic in terms of the threat environment to distinguish between threats through the Arctic threats in the Arctic or threats to the Arctic I think there's a conceptual danger creating all threats the same not being attentive to what kind of threats we're talking about and what exactly our competitors are targeting in the Arctic so I want to take a few minutes here and just share with you what I see as six myths about Arctic defense and security to persist in 2021 first is that Arctic state sovereignty so the sovereignty of states like the United States and where I come from is on thinning eyes that somehow we're facing the risk of losing our Arctic territory or our sovereign rights to offshore resources because the crisis is changing because the ice is melting this idea is implied in many of the 50 sentences that we see starting Arctic strategies and policy statements that bundled together resurgent major power competition climate change uncertain boundaries increasingly accessible resources emerging technologies all as drivers of rising Arctic defense concerns but conflict emanating from growing major power competition at the global scale that spills over into the Arctic is a very different set of causes I'm going to argue than thinking about sovereignty threats in the Arctic as actually precipitating or causing conflict long standing well managed disputes or differences in legal positions in the Arctic don't keep me up at length I want to emphasize need to be more precise in identifying which type of threats in which domains or across which domains are heightening the risk of conflict and which aspects of these threats are specifically Arctic and which ones do we best manage at the global strategic level so I think that Arctic states like the United States needs to adopt more coherent or precise strategic messaging to make sure of the changing Arctic security environment the second benefit as I see it is that climate change and access to Arctic resources and uncertainty over Arctic boundaries are driving the hard security agenda in the North American Arctic right now as we find ourselves immersed in this era of the emerging great power competition I'd suggest to you it's dynamics outside of the circumpolar Arctic that are really driving competition and heightening the risk of miscommunication and of escalation so I see a strong analytic value in distinguishing between threats that pass through or over the Arctic we get things like bombers and missiles or glide vehicles that pass through Arctic airspace or aerospace or the space above the Arctic outer space above the Arctic distinguishing between these threats and those that are from or are threats to the Arctic that actually arise from Arctic regional dynamics so I'd suggest that the dominant variables in play right now are grand strategic rather than regional Arctic ones and a key one is technology in the form of faster more maneuverable delivery systems as well as vulnerabilities to be faced in the cyber and influence domains something that North University specializes in studying Hyperglyde weapons the latest generation of cruise missiles are not affected by changing Arctic environmental conditions nor is the ability for adversaries to try and polarize the bank using social media or cyberspace or their state control news media now I've been talking about the Arctic in this sweeping way like our map shows it's the single space which is ironic because the third man I want to share with you is the idea that the Arctic is a single geostrategic theater I'd highlight there are very significant differences between Eurasian Arctic the European Arctic the North American Arctic there are obviously vast distances between them in certain domains where this applies and this makes it essential that we not get caught up in generalizing about Arctic threats as if those in one part of the Arctic are the same all across the Arctic inherently the immediate threats posed by the Russian army to its European Arctic neighbors with shared land borders for example are different than those posed to certainly Canada and the United States we also need to think about the Bering Strait right between Alaska and Russia you see on the left hand side of your map or the Greenland, Iceland United Kingdom, Norway got you think of Europe and that access point to the North Atlantic I think we need to think about these as access routes to the North Pacific to the North Atlantic without getting too fixated on them as Arctic spaces and what they offer as ways out of dilemmas for countries like China who could find themselves constrained or contained in Asia in conflicts going on say with India where this would offer them a way out so it's important that we not look at things only through a circumpolar lens and around the North Pole lens but also think global the fourth myth is that the Russians have aspirations to conquer Arctic territory from rival states that their preponderance of icebreakers their expanding footprint of Arctic bases and units and their self-perception as the foremost Arctic nation means that they think they can win in an Arctic conflict no way they want to flex their muscles in the Arctic for strategic effect the Kremlin knows it cannot win in an Arctic war especially against the United States Russian officials often admit correctly if I'm wrong that the US and NATO are militarily superior they can't win in a conventional period of your conflict so I think we need to really focus on a hybrid below the threshold and geopolitical spaces first and foremost when we're thinking about Russia as an Arctic competitor the fifth myth and this is building up to what you said James quickly is that China is a peer competitor in the Arctic it's a competitor to the Arctic states in several respects but it is not a peer in the Arctic and serious analysts in China recognize this as does the Arctic policy release in 2018 so yes China promotes itself as a near Arctic state but this invented status doesn't give it any priority status over any other non Arctic state actor in terms of international rights or access so I think we must be careful not to dedicate disproportionate attention to China's potential aspirations and say the maritime domain if this means redirecting resources away from areas where we are certain that China has core strategic interests, capabilities and revisionist intentions read South China Sea don't let Arctic moose distract us from the caribou that China is actually seeking and last is the myth that the Arctic is somehow exceptional in the world of international affairs this idea takes several forms the classic one is that the Arctic is uniquely peaceful and cooperative and should and could be kept separate from broader international dynamics I think, but frankly this is naive in a globalized world I think that this ideal of a purely exceptional cooperative Arctic space is what is in danger much more than actual peace and stability in the circumpolar world another way of thinking about this is that the Arctic is somehow exceptionally vulnerable or becoming exceptionally unstable or explosive this kind of thinking tends to overlook or forget the broader grand strategic implications that such moves in the Arctic would have for all of the actors and protagonists involved so climate change is amplifying certain types of Arctic threats in certain domains and it's certainly changing the face of the region for its inhabitants and for the international community but it doesn't mean that heightened international interests need competition is inherently going to negate cooperation or bring about conflict some of these ideas might be provocative but I look forward to the discussion and especially hearing your questions and please feel free to challenge me on any you put all of it so to add a little bit to this what James and Whitney just spoke about what does that have to do with DOD a lot of this stuff sounds like the purview of the state department for them to manage what does that have to do with DOD I'll tell you for one thing there's no direct responsibility with DOD in the state department other things you can expect major issues in competitive environments for DOD to continue to maintain a supporting role we do this constantly sometimes largely not visible to the public but you can expect this to happen what you can expect in the future especially when we're going up against those like China and Russia who have global ambitions is for them to increasingly frustrate us with international norms, laws, stuff that Dr. Kraster talked about push those to the edge not cross the line necessarily but interpret and implement and use those to their advantage in a way we've never seen before push us into those zones of calculation for elevating escalating issues this is what you can expect in the future more sophisticated use of this is happening in the South China Sea and in the end what our adversaries are looking for us to do is to make a mistake if we make that first step that first mistake that justifies what could be very bad power on actions this is kind of the world we're seeing develop in front of us and you're going to get into a role you might find yourself someplace on the earth including the Arctic where you get pulled very rapidly into a mistake that's what our adversaries like so the more we learn the more we can be prepared and more we can be part of the solution so before we get into questions from the audience I've got one question, four panel directly for the today's future leaders from a military perspective James, Sam what do you know now that you wish you had known when you came in the military and how would you apply that and Whitney from an academic perspective we're all continuing students for life what do you know now that you wish you had known when you began and how would you apply that because there's two things I'm looking at you very well I had no idea how important being able to write well actually doesn't matter that sounds kind of crazy but it's true you know I'll be honest I grew up in a small village and like I said a lot of people didn't speak English in the first language so what we call village English you probably hear a little bit of an accent and so I didn't really take writing seriously until I actually I didn't take writing seriously until I went into special forces and I'll tell you the most important thing that I did was pretty much the entire time that I was a special forces team but I was on an ODA on operational attachment also for 37 months and in that time I did two tours with that ODA and additional counter-narconics tour once in those countries and the most important thing I did was write my David Sib wrap and it's kind of crazy you're like whatever man, whatever guy what happened to me? I had a good friend he was company commander infantry unit in Iraq and he said I got this problem these guys I work with are called the sons of Iraq they're not getting paid it's been three months since they got their gun paid they're about to all quit and it's going to be a massive, massive problem within my sector because they're not going to provide security anymore I said okay that's interesting I'll send one of my guys over so I sent one of my NCOs over came back and I said hey Phil what did you see sorry anyways, what did you see and he said they're not getting paid, they're probably going to quit soon and this is what's going to happen if they quit I said okay and so I wrote it up in a report and I said hey here's my Sib wrap the next day I get an email it's from my buddy and it's a forwarded email to me and so I had to go all the way to the bottom and it was an email that his battalion commander sent him and I was like oh and then I go to the next one it's from a brigade commander and I go to the next one and it's from the division commander and then underneath where the division commander was in charge of thousands and thousands of soldiers was a blurb from my Sib wrap and then it said underneath it to the brigade commanders all full bird colonels you have 24 hours to fix this and then I went down to the time commanders and says you've got less than 24 hours to fix this and then when all those company commanders they said you better fix this now and guess what that's what they did and all those guys got paid it's because I wrote that one report and I wrote it well and it really hit me that everybody was they actually were reading when I was writing and that it mattered and I needed to be able to clearly communicate what the problem was and I resolved that problem at least provide recommendations and so that was that was a pretty massive thing for me to take away and I I don't think I quite fully appreciated that when I was a cadet I'll be honest the other thing I didn't appreciate as a cadet was that I would be kind of in the position that I am now here we are we're talking about international affairs actually it was almost 20 years ago 20 years ago this month I went to something called the student council on U.S. affairs it was a conference that they had when I was a kid and we I can't remember the topic it was like old security in the 21st century this was in 2001 so this was right after September 11th we were going to talk about this and so there we were a group of students and we were like what do we know? we're going to write out some things and put out this white paper and put out our ideas of how we would solve these problems what I didn't realize is all the people that were involved in that conference years later would still be involved and then the next thing you know you're sitting across from the secretary of state talking about the J-Tree that's what happened to me I looked across the table there was John Kerry I looked across the table there was Rex Tillerson that's going to happen you're going to be in that position and so your time here as cadets there are a lot of great opportunities that have been presented in front of you and you have a lot of things that you have to balance I understand that you're busy people you probably get like 5 hours of sleep at night if you're lucky but when the opportunity comes to be involved in especially these things where you're talking about international affairs you're trying to come up with solutions get involved you might not have the right solution that doesn't matter you need to understand the process be a part of the process and then when it's your time because you will get tapped at some point you will be ready to be a part of that process so we didn't coordinate at all these comments but one of the thoughts I have three things the first is when I was an undergraduate I thought that English writing English was just something that sort of came along and so I wanted to do another major international relations and I thought well I'll be able to sort of pick it up as I go along so I've written I don't know probably 75 articles and 10 or so books I just cleared my last page proofs for a book and I'm still looking up on the final these are proofs that I've already read and then sent to the publisher and they come back to me for a final look and I'm still looking up and improving and perfecting and I probably should have made fun of the English majors like I did and so you don't have to be an English major but you have to you have to be a part-time you have to everything that you write you have to perfect it now and learn the English or you will be looking it up when you're 50 or 55 and so this is one thing get the elements of style is insert on writing well the little brown handbook some of you may be familiar with you may have had it in high school or you may have it in college get some of these resources and keep them on your desk and look things up the second is I would recommend teaching as soon as you enter into whatever your career path is you will quickly begin to acquire special knowledge and think now that you won't but you already know some things many people don't for example there are many people that have no military experience you already have some so we've already started to develop skills it could be outdoor skills survival skills engineering skills and my recommendation as soon as you begin your career at the earliest opportunity if you're in the military and you get a sign somewhere call up the local community college and say hey I'm pretty good at whatever it is can I teach a class and as you progress you can end up teaching at anywhere really and you never really master something until you've taught so that's the next thing and the third thing is I did the teaching relatively okay a year or two out of law school I started to teach but one thing that I didn't do the third thing that I didn't do is I didn't write and publish because who be it for me two years, three years out of law school five years out of law school I mean probably everybody maybe what I think is obvious but that's also not the case you can shape and influence a broad discussion and engage in the public dialogue by writing and publishing it could be for Marine Corps Gazette it could be submitting something to as an opinion editorial to a newspaper it could even be a top newspaper Wall Street Journal, Washington Post state newspaper or you could write an article or even think about seriously beginning to write a longer monograph but I would recommend that you think about and engage in the public square by writing and publishing and don't don't stop yourself if you have inclination now of course it takes time takes you know instead of watching of friends on Netflix whatever you're going to have to do that on the weekends but nonetheless I think that you'll find it satisfying and it will it will build on itself people will contact you you write one article on something or two articles on something and suddenly you're perceived as an expert and you'll start to get inquiries media will start to call you so that would be my third recommendation thanks so at the risk of echoing your observations maybe a bit of a different tact first would be when I look back I wish I wouldn't have felt as shy as I did or reserved as I did when time came to ask questions second guessing looking around a room saying oh my gosh everybody's probably smarter than me I don't want to ask a question that's going to make me look less intelligent than everybody maybe I'll just sit here and as I still feel that way often the first to admit that I feel intimidated being on this plane like butterflies in my stomach before getting up before all of you that's all healthy and natural but I think what I've learned is embrace that see that it means I care but put yourself out there ask the questions, I know it's almost so simple for me to say that if you have that question chances are other people do as well and you'll be the voice for some of those people who are too shy to ask it along with that ask honest questions questions that you don't already know the answer to which is a form of grandstanding I'll say especially as Sam described if you're going to go to communities and you're going to be and I'm going to come back to relationships in a second building relationships to people you look and meet with a glitch in elder they've had a lifetime of learning how to fair it out and be able to see through somebody who's a fraud and if you go in with an honest question and they'll see your soul and see your heart through your eyes if you're asking an honest question you can make a lot of faux pas and small slips and things that may not be culturally you don't want to do anything egregiously culturally inappropriate but it will overlook because you're being honest and you're being humble and if anything if I could go back to some of my first experiences I thought I had credentials that I've come to learn over time even now declared in some southern circles as an expert I know very well when I enter into rooms in the north I am the least knowledgeable person in the room embrace it own it and my second point is be curiosity driven one of the best piece of advice I got from my doctoral supervisor was he said Whitney if you're interested in a topic work on it because if you're interested other people are going to be interested or you'll make them interested in it seize that in whatever you're working pick papers for each of your courses or assignments that you're excited about it will help to get you through it convert that I will try to woo I got it done and to hopefully enjoy the experience at the same time you've got a wonderful environment here at North University to embrace being multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary I was trained as a historian I love the tools that I built as a historian but collaborating with colleagues in the English department has been eye-opening legal colleagues like James has changed the way I refine my language and have to think about the implications of maybe what I'm suggesting working with geographers or anthropologists and dare I say even more exciting for those of you in the social sciences and humanities working with your colleagues and having conversations with your colleagues in the physical sciences in engineering you've got a wonderful opportunity because of the wonderful spirit here and culture that you have here at North University embracing if anything has transformed my approach to scholarship and where I fit within these conversations it's realizing I don't need to know at all quite the opposite I can relish and wrap my arms around but I don't know and know that there are really smart people who I can have conversations with and then when it comes time to publish sometimes it'll be co-published and we'll have already done that first round of peer review which some of you may have heard about the last and I think Troy your opening comments exemplified this much better than I will so I won't go into details is the centrality of relationships it's the relationships you're building with one another that you're going to carry through out your lives it's those relationships that create opportunities open doors seize them where it's appropriate where it's safe to do so but also if you have strong relationships and strong arms around you you can act on that model I will try try that's what's being asked but you don't always have to have it work out those of you in the sciences know an experimentation an experiment that doesn't yield an expected result can sometimes be just as important as the experiment that does if you've got relationships in place you'll have opportunities you'll also have strong arms to catch you or just help to orient you to point you in directions when you're taking those measured risks and being able to act upon that curiosity ask those questions and embrace these wonderful different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing which I think this panel hopefully is signaling and I'm learning from so thanks so good advice if you're taking notes alright let's ask some questions please line up Russia, China, the Arctic and leadership now's your time good evening gentlemen I'm John Piper I'm a mechanical engineering major I wanted to ask questions about the possible industrialization and militarization of the Arctic Circle like you said Dr. Kraska the northern routes like the Northwest Passage are opening up to regular nations without ice breakers or submarines to go through and the maritime law says that all the countries with the maritime force can go through them just like Dr. Lachenbauer said but we saw in World War II and the Cold War industrialization militarization in hubs like Murmansk and Archangel and the Vestjords and across the Bering Strait in Kamchatka city but what would be the impact today like with climate change and everything happening you see hubs going up in northern Alaska or Norway, Sweden or the Scandinavian countries and how would that impact the native people like the Sami and the Native Americans and Native Russians I feel like you were going to be do you want me to go I'll talk a little piece about it but at least industrialization and the impact so you know throughout the circumpolar north industrialization and resource extraction has been problematic for indigenous people you know if you take a look at Norway, Sweden you have mining interests that have pushed the indigenous Sami people off their grazing lands if you were to go to Russia where the Nenet do their ranger herding it's the Yamal Peninsula pushed them off their prime ranger herding lands and recently we had there was a spillage of like 20,000 tons of 20,000 gallons of diesel you know one of the major rivers in Russia and so the impact obviously there on the native people so yeah you're right every time we have these the Arctic is a very sensitive environment it's very difficult to clean up you know I always ask people would you rather do a cleanup spill of oil, of an oil tanker in the Gulf of Mexico or up in the Chakchi and they're like I want to go to the Gulf of Mexico I'll drink Mai Tai while I'm launching this thing it cleaned up and I want to freeze while I'm doing it and so it's obviously very difficult to do that and so you know it's a complex question I would say that over time this is just my opinion but it does appear that there is a kind of a there are limitations in terms of what resource extraction will occur within at least the North American Arctic so in the US and Canada and so you see less development occurring within those territories or within that land within the Russian Arctic I think is where we probably have more concern regarding the industrialization and impact on the indigenous people there the Russians do recognize environmental issues are issues for them as well and so they're not as haphazard as they might have been in the past but I would I'd like to hear what you guys think Thanks for the question I'll talk about just the governance piece of that if I could we are we live in a globalized world and I don't think that in a major way that that will unwind and the Arctic region is part of the globe and it likely will have more and more relationship with global trade and what I would suggest is that we work hard in a multilateral way to manage that trade and freedom of navigation and overflight through international institutions we've already done that to some fair extent through the IMO with the marine pollution convention which has an annex on CO2 emissions from ships in January of 2020 they were tightened once again to reduce the carbon footprint of merchant vessels so about 90% of everything that we that we trade with other countries goes by sea international trade and these Arctic passages may indeed be avenues for some of that I don't think that you can stop that because we as I mentioned this afternoon we live in a world in which the United States and Canada is in an island a continental sized island and we want and cherish connections with the outside world and therefore we have to recognize that other countries also have those rights but we can develop rules and continue to strengthen rules such as Marple NX6 there's also the IMO Polar Code which makes vessels compliant with areas that are ice infested or that are in the Arctic or Antarctic and global trade by sea constitutes about 2.5 or 2.7% of carbon emissions globally and that's for 90% international trade not too bad it's about the same for international air travel also about 2.5% so I think we want to drive that down and reduce the impacts while preserving the trading relationships thanks why is China more willing to follow guidelines from the UNCOOS in the Arctic whereas in the South China Sea they tend to push that boundary especially with their 9-dash line very easy and thanks it's a great question the reason why is because in the Arctic region China is a user of waters that are under other countries jurisdiction whereas in the South China Sea China is a coastal state and it's asserting jurisdiction over those waters and then not recognizing the same rights that it takes advantage of in the Arctic Ocean that's the central dilemma and of course we have to hold China account to account for that as well as other countries that have unlawful claims that would impede legitimate commerce or even peaceful military activities if I can just do a quick hot follow-up and just playing off your question one of the potential futures I see is exceeding China behaving as an exemplar in the Arctic because again core strategic interests are involved as a user state where it could point the world to saying why are you complaining about our behavior look at how conforming we are with a lot of your governance measures or how we are in compliance with international law why are you criticizing me so I think we also tend to drift as strategic analysts towards illegitimacy unfavorable patterns of activity when we might expect China as a legitimizing actor in the Arctic trying to also use the Arctic as a vector to legitimize its place in the world and hope that it deflects attention from unfavorable things that would like us not to look at elsewhere the perfect example of I got to pay attention to the rest of the world in many ways in order to understand the Arctic we can't just study the Arctic so the South China Sea providing this awesome example and the extent to it does apply to the Arctic we need to know sir Good evening gentlemen I just wanted to ask about like we've seen the like how how much traffic and whatnot in commerce goes through like the Atlantic and the Pacific and y'all were talking earlier about how the Arctic is just like starting to become more of like an avenue that we can explore do you think that the importance of us focusing on the Arctic now is just because it's opening up as a new frontier or if there's like another reason for why we should be focusing in on the Arctic now so you want to talk a little bit about shipping in the Arctic I would say I'll throw out a thought about that I'll throw out this thought to you to all of you to consider who is the Arctic most important to what country is the Arctic most important to financially economically who is going to be going to be impacted the most in the opening of any shipping lanes within the Arctic and I would argue that's Russia and so the Russians all have the greatest exposure within the Arctic when it comes to the potential for a downside really if something were to happen in Alaska Alaska I love my state but we don't really contribute that much sometimes to the US other than being an Arctic you know place so if something were to happen to the economy of Alaska you know it's not going to be a big blow to the United States and you know if something were to happen probably like the NWT or YT in Canada they'd be like well you know the Quebec quality probably like oh whatever but if something were to happen to you know the Russian Arctic in terms of their ability to really get resources out of there as a whole other story and that's something I would pay attention to so sir off of that when we were just talking about how China is kind of flexing its muscles in the south trying to see y'all were just talking towards the very beginning when you first started talking that Russia is starting to do the same thing how would the US like want to respond to that in terms of the like Arctic law and whatnot well we've responded to both Russia and China the exact same way by asserting our lawful rights to navigate and fly anywhere the international law allows and if I could just add a useful idiom for China is China's view is in the South China Sea with its neighbors is that what's China's is theirs what's theirs is theirs and what's yours is also theirs but they're willing to share yours and that applies as well to the Arctic Ocean so they would say China would say that what's theirs is theirs in the South China Sea in the East China Sea and China is also asserting a right to share in the Arctic and not just governance but the resources China claims it's part of this ocean fisheries agreement that has a moratorium for 15 years but China is very patient 15 years from now there could be fleets of hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels in the middle of the Arctic Ocean this goes to this idiom what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine also but I'm willing to share yours I think just a quick add on to it when we think about fishing or shipping part of me as well as James just alluded to there's a lot of literature when it's vague on time horizons there's a lot of literature that's out there that looks like it's scientifically based that I would argue is not and I'm guilty of this too in some of my own writings I'm opaque in what I am projecting when this is going to happen and also ask questions what type of shipping traffic is changing in the Canadian Arctic I can say we've seen dramatic increases arriving at communities for resupply or arriving at mining sites we're not seeing dramatic increases in transit shipping going through what the United States considers an international straight so again wonderful opportunities for you as critical thinkers to go in and ask the questions of do I need more information to assess when we should be anticipating this changing and how much lead time would the United States need if it required infrastructure development on the north slope of Alaska developing capacity at the community level to be able to have locally based capabilities to respond to some of this it's the lead times I think we sometimes believe our own hype as Arctic experts thinking that this shipping traffic is imminent and I always say read Billy Mitchell in the 1920s and read Bill Homer Stephenson in the 1920s talking about the Arctic as a new Mediterranean that was opening up to the world 100 years ago and I don't think it's going to be 100 years before we see some pretty dramatic changes I'm just not sure if we're going to see them in the next 5 years as much as Putin and the Kremlin would love to see that northern sea would be picked up and be a major artery which of course the Soviet Union and the Russians have been trying to build for a century I'm still skeptical about how quickly this is going to happen and whether it's still going to take the form that we might be anticipating looking through a 2021 lens we cannot bring up Billy Mitchell without the actual most important quote Alaska is the most strategic place in the world different class though thank you gentlemen keep asking those tough questions good evening gentlemen today Jack Brennan so Dr. Kraskal was talking about the China and how we should embrace its genuine interest in the Arctic and in your talk earlier today you were also discussing how they've been disregarding the United Nations Conventional Odyssey do you think it would be possible and if so do you think it would be wise to use our position in the Arctic Council as leverage against China to help fix some of those problems in the Pacific not specifically I don't know if I would do that I can't think right now of a scenario but your idea I do endorse which is during the Cold if I could do an analogy very quickly during the Cold War with the Soviet Union the United States and the West linked issues that were unrelated to Soviet misconduct for example we linked the liberal emigration of Soviet Jews into the West would negotiate on nuclear arms control totally different issues but this is sort of what you're suggesting and I do support rather than just reacting to the latest Chinese misstep in the South China Sea but linking Chinese and Russian misconduct to other areas of the relationship it could be trade it could be student visas it could be some other element of the relationship and it might be opposition to observer status in the Arctic Council although that ship is already sailed but it could be opposing things more vocally China's role for example in the World Health Organization which I don't think anybody now truly appreciates like we might have two or three years ago so I think that there's linkages that could be made and we should think creatively about how to impose costs in other areas other than simply doing what we still will continue to do the prior question which is freedom of navigation and overflight operations and exercises we'll still do those but those are necessary but they're not sufficient so good idea on the linkage it's exactly what I'm thinking I think you just signed up for your next article the term paper whatever class next I'm Cadet Coppolino and I have a question regarding Russia's expansion of their northern fleet and several men's as well as some of their northern Arctic air bases in regards to the US's like military intervention in the Arctic should the US be concerned and if so how will we counter that military expansion I think it's a great question I would actually ask our moderator if he wants to comment on it after I make a few quick comments I think it's definitely a source of concern I think it's making sure we're situating the concern at the right level I think a lot of the lion share of those investments are big D deterrence global deterrence as Professor Buffard shared in his presentation this morning it's situating it in that national defense envelope we must be monitoring what's going on and then not only preparing as when identifying any threat with what capabilities are there but always being nimble in reading and questioning our assumptions about intentions Russia will continue to project that this is legitimate functions as a sovereign state to deter adversaries and to defend their sovereign territory defensive messaging we all know dual use capabilities like we're seeing being developed in terms of port facilities airfields now extending out along the Siberian coast in places that we haven't seen them for a long time or haven't seen them before are all things that could also be turned offensively and within Russian doctrine and Troil de Ferre to you offense and defense are not categories the way we think about them in the west we need to be attuned to this and constantly re-appraising what this means but again not necessarily thinking that investments in the northern fleet means that we're anticipating Russian aggression in the Arctic Ocean I'm looking to the North Atlantic I'm looking to the North Atlantic and reimagining what can we borrow from our thinking during the Cold War about the Greenland Iceland UK Norway gap and what parts of that are still applicable and appropriate in the 2020s and will be appropriate as we might imagine the 2030s and 2040s but what things do we need to rethink and the creativity that we need as a whole of society effort as a broad defense team that includes academics like all of you we need fresh thinking about this to make sure we don't return to the conventional thinking that was established before just because it's easy to refresh it off blow the dust off the focus plant we need to get ahead of our adversaries we need to get ahead of their thinking we need to get inside of the decision making loops and we need to make sure that we can do what we've always done best situate it at the right level and make sure we're not baited into engaging with them in terrain of their choosing excellent thank you we're going to have to ask our good job we have a couple more minutes so let's get through some questions a little bit more rapidly and then we'll do a hard stop here that we'll be glad to sit around and continue to talk after we have to stop for a moment my name's Cadet Sigertson so my question is what do you think is the most important language to learn today and why can I say Chinese English? I think you should learn good chin I think English is the global language so we already have an advantage but you can perfect you can perfect your craft as I mentioned and I think I'm just going to turn the question around and say what we need is people are interested in not only perfecting their English but also learning other languages that's valuable and I think sometimes because English is the lingua franca that's such a weird turn of phrase but because it is the global language in so many ways we sometimes can get apathetic with the need to go through that exercise I think it's good for our brains to be thinking and imagining thinking in other languages you can speak to that directly but it's even the approach of great, encourage people to learn another language it may be Russian, it may be Chinese it may be Italian it may be a broader structure of relationships you'll find a place to be able to exercise it and that will be value added to your country and to our allied efforts and I would say this and I wasn't joking when I said learning good chin the reason why I say that is because it's a polysynthetic language Chinese in English are actually very simple languages they're called analytic languages so you have free morphym basically you can construct sentences out of these individual words a polysynthetic language has 20 places with different combinations eventually that you can make into an infinite amount of words so it's significantly harder than Chinese, Arabic, Russian or any of those other languages so learn a polysynthetic language if you really want to challenge yourself last question ma'am another quick bite at the apple I know where I would also suggest any other language obviously is useful but I would suggest that if you're interested the reason I said English is because everybody in the world speaks English there is one important country that really has a dearth of English speaking ability and that's Japan our most critical ally and it's very difficult to engage with Japanese officials and scholars because they have such limited English ability they're just not speaking English like they are in China and even Vietnam they're one to consider would be Japanese last question quickly good evening gentlemen cadet JC Harlow so you talk a lot about or improving our English and getting better with writing I know with the extent of my major exercise science I don't write very much but I do have an enjoyment with journaling but that's really all I do do you have any tips on how to get better with writing and things to write about especially considering like a lot of us maybe aren't geared towards English majors or swap majors or anything like that thanks it's a wonderful question and I think the fact that you're describing journaling is that's it doesn't matter what you're writing get into a habit of writing every day none of us is a natural born writer some of us may be more naturally inclined to writing with some flair and artistry it's work it's a craft that you have to hone it's writing it's learning to revise that dreaded editing when we finish pull out all nighter and get the paper done and we don't want to look at it again if you can find that last hour of energy to do the read through and the edit that's all part of writing find time to do it the topic doesn't matter as much as people think it's the practice and the routine and getting your brain trained to putting what used to be pen to paper take notes because I like that exercise tapping away on the keyboard find a way to do it and you're doing it in your reports when you're doing other lab reports and other things use those as opportunities and just seize them whenever you can so that concludes this part of it we have to end at this point please stand by for your questions I hope to continue here in a minute but ladies and gentlemen please round of applause for this awesome panel thank you for your questions I think the event has concluded we'd like to still talk to you we have some time thank you for your time it's been a very very long day we're around tomorrow also please come talk to us we love it thank you


Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Residoxy. My name is David and this is a card game. All right, so all this week we are gonna look at card games. That's right, card games. Now, you'd say, okay, why are we doing card games? David usually only does playing cards and magic reviews. That's true, but if you think about it, playing cards has the word playing in it. Like, there is this assumption that they could also be used for playing games. We talk about poker, right, and just playing card games, gonna play Solitaire or something like that. Even tarot cards originally could have been used to play games with, and so it seems only natural, that I would also be interested in card games, and I am. I'm also interested in card games, and I do collect card games, good card games, and I thought, you know what, let's take some time to go through some of my very favorite card games, all right? Let's go. Hey, today we're gonna look at Exploding Kittens. If you don't know, if you've lived under a rock, or maybe you've lived under a kitten, this was the number one most backed Kickstarter ever, okay, ever. So that means, yes, it was successfully funded. It is also the number one most funded game in Kickstarter history. This game is so popular. I've seen this for sale at Target, okay? I've seen the Not Safe for Work edition sold at Target, so, yeah. It was created by Alan Lee and Matthew Inman, and if you don't know who Matthew Inman is, he's the artist for the oatmeal, and Shane Small. The ages for this, it's a seven and up player game. It's about 20 bucks on Amazon, and it's a family-friendly party game for two to five players, up to nine players, when you combine it with another deck. Gameplay, it's gonna take you about two minutes or so to learn, and about 15 minutes or so to play a game. What comes in the box? So you get the box, what comes inside? It's an all-card game-based game, okay? So it's all cards. There's no dice, there's no counters, there's no mat, there's no anything like that. It's just cards. It's 56 cards. You'll get that, and you'll get the instructions. All right, so how do you play? How do you play Exploding Kittens? You always have to have one less Exploding Kittens in the stack than you do players. So if you have five players, then you have four Exploding Kittens in your deck. If you have three players, then you have two Exploding Kittens in your deck. The object of the game is, don't draw an Exploding Kittens card.  Unless you have a Diffuse card, if you have a Diffuse card, you can diffuse your Exploding Kittens and then lay it as a trap for somebody else, but odds are the next time it comes around, the second time it comes around, you will be blowed up. Unless you are able to steal a Diffuse card from another player, that's also a possibility. So at the beginning of the game, you just make sure you have one less Exploding Kitten in the pile. Every person, every player gets four cards drawn from the draw pile and they get one Diffuse card. You get one ready to go.   You draw a card and hopefully it's not an Exploding Kitten, otherwise, and every card has, you know, different instructions. Some cards allow you to skip your turn. Other cards allow you to go through the draw pile and look inside of it. Other cards allow you to stop or halt another player's actions, okay? And other cards, you can group together in pairs and then you can use those pairs to steal cards from another player. So those are called a cool two. But like I said, don't draw the Exploding Kitten card or you will be destroyed. As far as other games, it's similar to, I would say this game is more like what you'd get if Russian roulette and Uno had a baby. So if you can just picture what that's like. All right, so is it fun? Is it fun? That's the bottom line, right? I'm going to get this. Is it fun? Because 20 bucks, it's 20 bucks for a card game, really, you know, and you wouldn't pay $20 for Uno. So it has to have something more than that, okay? It has great graphics. The graphics on this are so funny. The cards are fun to look at. It's fun just to even go through the cards and just familiarize yourself with them and what they do even before you start. You and your friends can have a laugh just even going through the cards. And you do kind of have that laugh going through it during gameplay. It's fun, funny slash to play. So there is that. I think it's best to play with four people. I've really only played it with four people. I haven't done a two player game yet, but having played the four player, I kind of like the speed of that. There is the weirdness of as players drop out, they've got nothing to do. So literally, you know, the first person to go out, he might walk off into the living room and hang out. Like, there's not a lot of reason for that player to stay and hang out and watch the game unless you guys are having a ton of fun. But that's possible. So your players do drop out during the game.  And there's not a lot of strategy to it either. You're pretty much just playing the cards you're drawn.  So there's not a ton of strategy to it, but there's some.  Like, I think a person who is deep into strategy, a smart player, could find ways to make this more strategic. But it's like I said, it's a simple game to learn, simple game to play. My only complaint about this is the card quality itself. So having, you know, I review cards, this is what I do. The game quality of the cards themselves are a little cheap. So if you do get this game, I would suggest probably putting it into card protectors. Okay, just because you know, the $20 price tag, go and take care of your game obviously. Expansion packs. So there are other things out there that could help make this game even more fun if that was possible at all. There's two right now. So there's the NSFW version, the non-safer work edition. And so like I said, you can get that one at Target. You can get it on Amazon. Also, it's a completely separate game. So there's a completely separate game out there that has the same exact rules, the same exact gameplay. However, the cards are a little bit more risque. But you could add some of those cards into your current pack to add more players to the game. You could. But there's also an imploding kitten's expansion pack out there. It's really big. If you look at, I was going to get on an Amazon and the Amazon doesn't even tell you how big the box is. When you look at it, you just think, well, it's probably an expansion pack like a blister pack, maybe this. No, it's a huge box because inside of it is the cone of shame. So you can add the cone of shame element to your game. And it literally is a cone that you put on someone's neck. And so the person to wear the cone of shame is the first person who says whose turn is it again. That person then has to wear the cone of shame. And the imploding kitten's expansion pack adds a couple of new cards that aren't originally in the game. So there's some new strategies. And it also adds in the imploding kitten, which is a card that's been sort of face up into the deck. And when you get it, you can't diffuse it. It implodes and your universe completely ends. All right. So that's my review of exploding kittens from Ellen Lee, Matthew Inman and Shane Small. Like I said, you can get this game for about 20 bucks on Amazon. You can go find it at Target. I think it's a fun game. My family enjoys it. We like playing it with friends when they come over for parties and whatnot. So definitely want to head on and check that one out. Thanks. Bye. Hey, everybody. Thanks for watching my video as a special treat for you because this is game themed. You get bonus content. Yep. Bonus content for watching this all the way to the end. So good on you. If you're new to my channel, just know that typically I review playing cards and magic tricks.  I give away a deck of playing cards every single month, sometimes two, sometimes three. So make sure you subscribe, hit that like button, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.


Alrighty then, what's going on guys? How are we? Welcome back to another video. Today's video, we're not going to be looking at any players, we're not going to be looking at any teams, we're not even going to be looking at any games in particular. We're actually going to be looking at the most hilarious moments of the 2019 NFL season. This absolute legend, Bud Lee Wiser has, what is that logo? I thought it was the Rugby World Cup logo for a second there but it's not. This guy has put together an absolute viral video, a viral sensation, it's only been up just over a week and it's got three and a half million views.  So first of all I will, well I'll subscribe, why not? I won't press the notification bell because we don't want that. But I would recommend to you guys, if you want to hit my notification bell please do. So we're going to like the video, no actually we'll refrain from that. We'll wait till the end but I'm sure it's going to be good. Although it is only one season. So without further ado guys, NFL's most hilarious moments of the 2019 season, let's get into it. Yeah what happened? Correctly you see very often Chuck Clark, the defensive player was set up behind the quarterback. What? I didn't see that. Oh there he is.  So basically they just want to call it as a penalty on purpose. Correctly you see very often Chuck Clark, the defensive player was set up behind the quarterback. I don't think I've ever seen that. That is not legal Dan. Well I haven't been snapped yet. I don't think I've ever seen this before. I mean the Ravens are not ready so it turns out to be the play that had to happen for Chuck Clark, he knew it. It ends up being a one yard penalty so not a lot of damage. Really a smart play when you break it down as you just did. So he saw his team as being not ready. Who told him they weren't ready? Could he just tell that? And then he's gone and stood behind the quarterback to make sure that the play can't happen. What's going to happen? What are they playing it? They're still going to have a first and goal aren't they? Or is it because they want their defense? Maybe they've been driven down the field and their defense is really tired. They want to give them some more time to rest. What are they going to do next? He just stood there didn't he? I've never seen that before. He said blue 20. Blue 20. Does that mean on the second hut? He's the only innocent party right? You're clean having a little fun out there. Everybody. Now I'm not going to say anything. Look at 77 he just swiped past him. Didn't even move. Was the center who was wrong? He literally did not move. Like he didn't even flinch from the other guys going. He's the one that got herself away from him at the 29. That's hilarious. It looked like it was... Hey I've got Tredavius White's jumper. Jersey. Those are the photographs. Yeah good call man, good call. No, no, no, no. That's hilarious. What a moment in NFL history.  How did he get in there? Don't tell me someone brought a cat into the stadium.  Look at him. Where's he going to go? Security's coming. Oh my god. He's got great agility doesn't he? Look at that change of direction. He's stopping on a dime. Bang off the right. Let's call it. Straight through, sees daylight and he's gone. Why have we got this thing down the bottom? Oh we've had some funny moments haven't we? I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised. And we're only three and a half minutes through this video. Oh my gosh. Man that's a double team if I've ever seen one. With time. Right in the hands of Lawson. Well I don't know if that's hilarious. Probably hilarious for the KC fans. Terrible pass. You know oblong just goes whatever that means. Beauty boomer. What's happening here? Bro that kicker had the best opportunity I've seen to lay the smack down on that returner.  Come on man. Oh my god I would have absolutely lined him up and shoulder charged him into the grandstand I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Mitch Wisnowski. Just look at that guy. It's a block in the back against the box.  Okay. Jackson. Okay I can hear the whistle.   You'll see it right there. Oh yeah we saw this. I've seen this. He pulled him over the line. Look at that. He grabs and pulls him. And then I looked up. Sorry. I've actually seen that because I have reacted to Lamar Jackson recently. But I pulled up that guy's stats. The one that pulled him over the line was 350 pounds. No wonder. That's how he got that leverage to grab him, literally grab him, lift him up off the ground and pull him across the line for a touchdown. And I said that reminds me of a maul in rugby. Yes it does. What do we got here? Browns versus the 49ers. It's a sea of red. And you know, actually come to think of it guys. I have seen crowds like this before in rugby and in soccer. I've actually been to an international match between New Zealand and Bahrain. Back in like 2008 in New Zealand. Sold out crowd. Absolutely amazing. But what I've found is that the crowd is almost always split. Not down the middle but maybe a 70-30 split. Maybe 80-20 at the least. But what these crowds strike me as being a true, true, true home crowd. Literally. I mean, it's a sea of red. It's a sea of blue. It's a sea of white. Whatever your home team colours are that's what you see in the stands. And that's the thing that really hits me the most. So all these times that I say oh the crowd, oh the crowd. It's like I have seen that before but I haven't seen it. I haven't seen such a home crowd as that. I mean, look at it. It's amazing. It didn't matter.  Is that the Cowboys just giving away a penalty? The official hasn't even gotten out of the way yet. What's going on there? By the way guys, just whilst we've got the bad man on screen I will show you something that none of you would have seen yet but it is the cleanest thing I could ever have put on the wall. And it is that beautiful thing right there. So that is literally my backdrop in my apartment. It makes me really happy. Happy to be here. Yeah. Yeah, backing up his teammate. Oh, Clinton Dix, he ain't going to fall for that. You telegraph that way too early, bruh. Yeah, usually the defender is just going flying for him but not that time. He's a decent defender. And it wasn't Ha Ha Clinton Dix, it was actually 20. Beautiful little pop pass as we call it in rugby. But the big man can't take it in, his butter fingers. Oh, what? He did catch it? Oh, he did catch it. So I guess the hilarious moment is the post-touchdown celebration. Time for another drink, I think. On a third down pressure coming, they've got to set up the screen. It's a low throw, I catch by Elliot. By Elliot? And he's in. Dion, can you do that? I've seen that, I've seen that. I've seen it made into a gif. I have. We're coming in here for some of the people in Dallas and I think you're going to see.  It's high and inside. And he goes Odell Beckham. High and inside, that's not what you want. You want it on the outside at the chest. Odell Beckham. Minus the watch. Odell Beckham Jr. Are you telling me Odell Beckham Jr. what a watch in a game? No. No, no, no, no, no.  You're kidding. Okay, mate. I'm going to lower my voice. I cannot believe that, that is hilarious. Jeez. I mean, it's a weapon. Is this for the most passing touchdowns in history? He got to celebrate it twice. What a legend. 34-0. Yeah, that's terrible. What? What did he say? Your daddy want to make that call? Your daddy wouldn't make that call? Oh, now you want to make that call? Okay. Surely that's like fine-able. What have we got here? An on-side kick. Hey, turkey leg. What's happened? What did he say? Your daddy want to make that call? Your daddy wouldn't make that call? He's also unbeaten. Top-heavy teams there in the NFL. Saints. Come here, you. Offense. This family has also declined. They still fourth down. We got to play this game. Right, so the Patriots took a... Look at them, look at them. Look at them, look at them. They can't even hold it back. So they took an intentional delay to the game. The Jets declined it. John Perry? Yeah, the next one I can guarantee they're going to be talking about 15 yards. That is crazy. Oh, Bill Gollichick. He's trying to hide that smile behind the mic. Oh. So they finally did punt it. Okay, guys, that was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed. I'm going to have to get some lighting here because you can't see my face. And that's not good. Actually, let's try and set that up now. All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed that one. What have we got next? We've got eight times when NBA players actually fight fans. After that, we've got NHL fan interactions. And after that, we've got a whole selection of NFL videos. I'm trying to diversify my content a little bit into other sports. I love MMA. I love boxing. I love rugby. And I love football. The other sports I don't love. So this channel is all about having fun. It's all about me interacting with you guys. You guys are my friends.  A lot of people couldn't do this, but I feel like my subscriber base really are my friends. I feel like we're really, I guess, on the same page here. We've got all sorts of ages, male or female. All sorts of countries. But one thing remains the same, or at least it has done the last 18 months on my channel, and that is the love of sport. And I'll never lose that. If you have liked this video, hit the like button. If you want to subscribe, please do. And I'll see you in the next one. Peace out.