President Trump's Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Daniel Coats became the highest-ranking guest thus far to the Defense Writers Group at a breakfast meeting April 4th. He responded to questions on the U.S. involvement in Syria, the response to the apparent Russian nerve gas attack in Britain, and the arms race in space, among other topics.
Coats gave reporters a heads-up that Mr Trump had made decisions about US military involvement in Syria and about further sanctions following the nerve gas attack in Salisbury, England. Officials soon announced that despite Trump's desire to exit from Syria, US forces would remain for now, and that a group of wealthy oligarchs close to President Putin will be prevented from visiting the U.S. or investing here.
Coats said the Administration is taking steps to prevent Russian interference in the upcoming midterm elections.
"I think we are becoming more and more aware of the potential for Russia to continue to engage in any number of ways relative to our elections and a lot of steps are being taken," he added.
Examples of the coverage:
CNN: US spy chief says more will 'be done' to counter Russian election interference
At a well attended March 29th meeting with journalists hosted by the Defense Writers Group, Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein covered a wide range of topics, from his concerns about keeping down the cost of the F-35 aircraft, to communications with the Russian military in Syria, to new gear to better fit female pilots.
“Our initial target is to get them down to the equivalent or very close to what we’re currently spending to sustain fourth-generation fighters,” he said
The top Air Force general downplayed speculation that the F-35 aircraft purchase program could be reduced in number due to operating costs, telling reporters that he continues to be committed to the Air Force’s entire 1,763-unit buy.
Examples of the coverage:
Air Force Times: From boots to flight suits, the Air Force is working to improve gear for female pilots
When radios started making their way into American living rooms, the government regulated content broadcasted over the airwaves. Those same rules applied when television ushered in a new era of programming. It’s now time for social media to meet similar standards, said James Clapper, former director of national intelligence.
The intelligence community concluded that Russia used social media during the 2016 presidential election to sow discord and inflame political tensions. It was the most aggressive assault on the United States political system to date, Mr. Clapper said at George Washington University on Monday.
“Given the impact that social media has, I just don’t see how we can continue to allow it to be unregulated,” Mr. Clapper said.
Mr. Clapper gave an address and participated in a Q & A session at Jack Morton Auditorium as part of the Contentious Narratives conference, co-hosted this week by GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs, GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the Harvard University Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. The conference examined the effects of disinformation on peace building and on efforts to document human rights abuse and war crimes. The Q & A was moderated by David Ensor, director of GW's Project for Media and National Security and former director of Voice of America.
President Barack Obama asked the intelligence community to put together an assessment of Russia’s interference in the presidential election in December 2016 to hand off to then-President-elect Donald Trump. The report found there was no evidence that foreign actors tampered with voter tallies. The report could not say what impact Russian social media efforts had on the election outcome, Mr. Clapper said.
“To me, now as a private citizen, it stretches credulity and logic to suggest it had no impact,” he said. “It had to have an impact on some voter decisions.”
Mr. Clapper, who resigned at the end of the Obama administration, believes the Russians are still mounting an aggressive campaign against the United States through social media. The country is not prepared to handle it under Mr. Trump’s leadership, he said.
“I continue to be concerned, very concerned, as a citizen, by the president’s almost aggressive indifference to the threat posed by Russia,” he said.
The United States should regulate social media the way the country regulates cigarettes, which come with warnings about the health impact of smoking on the package. Social media posts from potentially hostile actors shouldn’t be censored, but the audience should know where they come from. The United States should work to secure voting apparatuses and use backup paper ballots to guard against Russian meddling in future elections, Mr. Clapper said.
It was a positive sign to see Mr. Trump standing with European allies and expelling Russian diplomats after a former Russian spy living in England was poisoned with nerve agent, Mr. Clapper said. Britain has blamed Russia for the attack and several allies have taken action against Russia in response.
Mr. Clapper is also hopeful about a possible summit between the United States and North Korea. Having exhausted other options for dealing with the isolated country, talking to them directly about pursuing peace is worth a shot.
After a long career in the military and intelligence, Mr. Clapper said it is instinctive for him to be loyal, reverential and respectful to the commander in chief. This has become difficult for him under Mr. Trump.
UK Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Mr Stephen Lovegrove (left) & UK Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen. Sir Gordon Messenger (right)
Noting that 22 nations announced the expulsion of over 100 Russian diplomats said to be intelligence operatives, senior British officials praised the response of allies including the United States to the first use of military-grade chemical weapons in Europe since World War Two.
Stephen Lovegrove, Britain's top civil servant in the Ministry of Defence called the attempted poisoning in Salisbury, England of British citizen Sergei Skripal and his daughter using a Russian-made chemical weapon "a grotesque and outrageous continuation of the type of behavior Russia has been conducting" for some years. "It could have happened anywhere in the world", he said. Skripal was a spy for Britain who was traded for Russian spies in the United Kingdom. In such cases, longtime international agreements protect against retaliation, but British Prime Minister Theresa May has said there is little or no doubt Moscow was behind the attack.
The breadth of the international response, Lovegrove said--which included President Trump's decision to expel 60 Russians with diplomatic status in the U.S.--"must have given President Putin pause for thought".
His comments came at a breakfast discussion with the Defense Writers Group, a part of the George Washington University Project for Media and National Security, at GW's School of Media and Public Affairs. Through on-the-record face-to-face meetings between policymakers and journalists, the Project seeks to foster greater public understanding of important defense and national security issues.
General Sir Gordon Messenger, the Vice Chief of Britain's Defence Staff told reporters that despite the misbehavior of Russia, the U.K. will keep military to military channels of communication open. British forces are engaged in the Syria conflict in close proximity to Russians, 800 British soldiers are based near Russia on the territory of NATO ally Estonia, and British intelligence aircraft surveil airspace near the Russian border and over the Baltic Sea. "We don't want any misunderstandings", Messenger said.
That said, violations of international law such as the chemical poisoning attempt, and cyber attacks on voting in the U.K., the U.S. need to be responded to strongly enough, said Messenger, so that "the risks for the adversary outweigh the potential benefits". Britain is "taking a new look at deterrence" in light of the Russian apparent use of a chemical weapon on British soil, including the potential for additional moves against Moscow in the areas of diplomacy, intelligence and law enforcement.
The two British officials were in Washington for meetings at the Pentagon with their American counterparts. Discussions include U.S.-U.K. collaboration on a new generation of submarines--nuclear-armed deterrent craft as well as hunter-killer submarines. Britain will spend 25% of its defense budget over the next ten years on the new submarines and associated nuclear weaponry, Lovegrove said. He praised "the deep level of cooperation between our two nations", which he said has "never been closer". Britain also counts on the U.S. F-35 fighter to be its next main fighter aircraft. The U.K. is contributing technology for its development.
What about Brexit? Might the U.K.'s decision by referendum to withdraw from the European Union lead it to purchase more American equipment and weapons instead of European ones? Not necessarily. Lovegrove stressed that despite Brexit, London wants to maintain of military collaboration with Europe. "We need to stay very close to the European defense architecture", he said. Brexit, he said, does not mean that the British Isles will be "towed into the middle of the Atlantic".
David Ensor Director of the Project for Media and National Security and Walter R. Roberts Fellow
Gen. Selva Discussed North Korea, ISIS and the National Defense Strategy with Reporters on the Morning of the State of the Union
It is not every day that a group of journalists can participate in an hour-long conversation with the nation’s second highest-ranking military officer.
On Jan. 30, over 30 reporters from the Defense Writers Group’s member organizations sat down with Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The conversation resulted in over twenty articles published by media ranging from The Washington Post, The New York Times and Reuters to specialized trade publications including Stars and Stripes, Defense News and Military.com. Foreign outlets, including Britain’s Daily Telegraph and Russia’s Tass newswire, also joined the conversation.
The Defense Writers Group is part of the George Washington University’s Project for Media and National Security, housed at the School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA). Selva was the highest-ranking military official to speak to the group in over five years.
Selva told reporters that the Pentagon is in the opening stages of “redesigning the force” to be able to combat Russia and China in an era when great power competition is returning as a top priority after a focus on combatting global terrorism.
The new National Defense Strategy will address which capabilities will be needed to take on either fight. “There are two unique competitions that we have to deal with,” Selva said, requiring different military forces and weapons. Then, there is terrorism, and the lesser, but still serious, challenges of North Korea and Iran.
The Pentagon’s task now, Selva said, is to devise a strategy within the budget they are given that will cover all these risks.
Given budgetary limits, “We can either appropriate the funds to get those tasks done, or we can articulate the risk,” Selva said.
On North Korea, Selva told reporters that the U.S. would likely only have a warning time of a “dozen minutes or so” if Pyongyang launched a missile in its direction.
He said the North Koreans have cut the warning time down from as much as an hour by deploying new mobile launch trucks. However, Selva said North Korean leader Kim John Un is still unable to reliably strike targets in the U.S. with an intercontinental missile since the necessary technology has not been fully tested.
The lead story from the breakfast meeting for The Washington Times and The Daily Telegraph (UK) was the likelihood that ISIS will continue to inspire home-grown terrorists for years after it is defeated on the battlefield.
A new headache for the U.S. and its allies is what to do with hundreds of foreign fighters, ISIS detainees and their families now that the terror group has been driven from most of the territory it held.
One key issue Selva raised that did not get attention from the press is how to diminish the risk that a new international terrorist will emerge in a few years.
“My concern is in five or 10 years we’ll have ISIS 2.0 or al-Qaida 3.0 and the process will start again somewhere else in the world,” Selva said.
“The question is, does every partner nation in the coalition have a similar effort to try to wring out of the internet and the education system and our employment practices — the kinds of things that were the breeding ground for foreign fighters in the first place?”
“A kid from London doesn’t just get up in the morning and say ‘You know what? I think I’ll go to Syria and kill people for a few years.’ Something happens that causes that person to be predisposed to that activity.”
Dealing with this massive issue is not just the job of soldiers. Selva was blunt, “I kill people and break things. I don’t build schools and teach children the right way to treat one another. But somebody in government needs to be paying attention to that part.”
It is a task for State Department diplomats, public diplomacy officers, sociologists and psychiatrists — not for the Pentagon, he said.
By David Ensor Director of the Project for Media and National Security and Walter R. Roberts Fellow
Lieutenant General Charles Luckey, Chief of Army Reserve and Commanding General U.S. Army Reserve Command, met journalists and students as the guest of SMPA’s Defense Writers Group.
Back in 1908, when the Army Reserves were formed, doctors were the first recruits.
Medicine remains a key expertise, but Lieutenant General Charles Luckey, Chief of Army Reserve and Commanding General U.S. Army Reserve Command, said he now looks for a wide range of skills and experience in recruits, from rail and pipeline shipment of petroleum, to digital engineering and quantum computing.
Speaking at a Defense Writers Group (DWG) breakfast conversation event on Jan. 24, Lieutenant General Luckey took questions from journalists about the priorities and future of the Army Reserves. The DWG breakfast series is run by the Project for Media and National Security at GW's School of Media and Public Affairs.
When asked about Army fitness standards and the obesity problem in this country, Lieutenant General Luckey estimated that as many as 70 percent of young Americans 18 – 23 may not be eligible to enlist. This led to questions as to whether the Army should relax its physical fitness standards to recruit more members with medical or computing skills.
Luckey says relaxing "grooming standards" for certain skill groups is "on the table" but when it comes to keeping in shape, "I don't want to tinker around with it." Soldiers, he said, need to be "physically and mentally tough."
Whatever their specialty, reserve soldiers can find themselves deployed in war zones under attack and "you've got to be ready, if necessary to kill the enemy in combat."
Major Emily Pengelly, a master’s candidate in GW’s Anatomical and Translational Sciences program and a major in the U.S. Army Reserves was invited to attend the DWG event. Major Pengelly served in the Army from as a physician’s assistant from 2003 – 2015, including a tour in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Upon graduation in May, she is considering attending medical school or working at a U.S. embassy. General Luckey urged her to become a doctor and said the Army would be happy to help pay for medical school.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman William “Mac” Thornberry (center) with Project for Media and National Security Director David Ensor (left) and SMPA Director Frank Sesno
House Armed Services Committee Chairman William “Mac” Thornberry (R-Tex.) took questions from an overflow crowd of journalists on Jan. 16, as a guest of the Defense Writers Group, a 39-year-old Washington institution now facilitated by the George Washington University's Project for Media and National Security at the School for Media and Public Affairs.
The breakfast session produced news articles from more than a dozen news outlets, including Time, The Hill, the Washington Examiner and the Daily Telegraph on issues ranging from the defense budget and military readiness, to the Air Force Space Command, Hawaii's false alarm and the threat of a nuclear attack by North Korea.
Thornberry was passionate on the issue of funding for defense as Congress faces a deadline to avert a government shutdown.
“Personally, I would do just about anything to fix this problem, including vote for things that I might not support otherwise,” he said. “But I am increasingly disturbed that support for our military is being tied to some other issue, some other agenda.”
The chairman also decried the tendency of Congress to pass continuing resolutions keeping the government open but failing to pass official budgets, a practice of many years now, which makes it difficult for military planners to plan for the future or to innovate.
In November, the Defense Writers Group heard from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, and Army Chief of Staff General Mark A. Milley.
In September, in the wake of the hurricanes that damaged Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, the Defense Writers Group heard from Air Force General Joseph Lengyel, commander of the U.S. National Guard, on the rescue and recovery work.
GW's Project for Media and National Security works to deepen quality journalism on national security by bringing senior officials and reporters together face-to-face in a variety of settings. The project is funded in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
