Project Category: 2024

Defense Writers Group

16 July 2024

(Note on the Defense Innovation Board’s mission and mandate: The Defense Innovation Board provides independent advice to the Department of Defense, and recommendations to address challenges and accelerate innovation adoption into the culture, technologies, organizational structures, processes, and functions of the DoD. Its members do not speak for the Department of Defense.)

Moderator:  Greetings everyone, and welcome to a very special Defense Writers Group with Admiral Mike Mullen, retired CNO, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  Many of us have known him or worked with him.  Also, Charles Phillips.  They are members of the Defense Innovation Board.  They presented earlier today and this is their first meeting with the press to talk about their work. 

While normally as a reporter’s forum we go straight to questions, because the reports just came out today, I will ask each of you to take just two or three minutes if you could and share sort of your top line thoughts from the two reports that you chaired. ADM Mullen:  Our study, and it’s probably been four or five months, and a half dozen of us who are on the board on this study, to look at the incentive structure to decide the DoD, with respect to being able to deliver tech.

Project for Media and National Security George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs

16 July 2024

Mr. Schauerte:  Welcome everyone.  Thank you for coming this evening.  My name is Mark Schauerte.  I’m the Director of Career Development at the University of Chicago, Institute of Politics.  We’re excited to have you here this evening.  I think it’s going to be a great discussion about careers, policy.  Mr. Kirby’s had quite the career in communications.  I think everyone is interested in communications, national security, foreign policy.  This is a really wonderful opportunity to get a chance to engage.

We’re going to lead off with Thom Shanker who’s going to do a moderated discussion and then turn it over for questions from the students.  Thank you again for coming.

Moderator:  Thank you, Mark.

Welcome GW students, University of Chicago, Institute of Politics.  It’s great to be here today.

I direct a program called the Project for Media and National Security at George Washington University.  Most of my work is bringing senior officials like, I call him Admiral, he’s Mr. Kirby now, to meet with correspondents.  But in talking to Mark and Jennifer Steinhauer, we wanted to do something specifically for students because you're here this summer, and I think John will be a perfect person.

Stephen E. Flynn, Chair, WMD Nuclear Terrorism Committee, Madelyn R. Creedon, Vice Chair

Michael Janicke, Sr. Staff Director, Jessica Stern, Member

Rodney Wilson, Member, Brendan Melley, Member

Defense Writers Group

18 June 2024

Moderator:  Welcome everyone to a really special Defense Writers Group.  We’re here to roll out the report of the committee on assessing and improving strategies for preventing, countering and responding to weapons of mass destruction, in particular, nuclear threats. 

It is great to have all of you here.  Our panelists, an absolute blue chip group to brief us today.  Stephen Flynn is the Chairman of the Nuclear Terrorism Commission; Madelyn Creedon is the Vice Chair;  Michael Janicke is the Senior Staff Director; and Jessica Stern is a member.  Thank you all for being here.

The ground rules, as always, this is on the record.  You may record for accuracy of quotes, but there’s no broadcast of audio or video. 

We’ll have the Chair and the Vice Chair give us some opening comments just to brief us on this detailed report, and then we’ll go to the group for questions.  You can just raise your hand in the Zoom mode and I’ll call on you.

With that, I’d like to turn the floor over to Stephen and Madelyn to give us their thoughts on the important findings of this very important report.

Chair Flynn:  Thank you so much, Thom. 

Defense Writers Group

3 June 2024

Moderator:  I want to welcome everyone to really a most unusual Defense Writers Group.  One, we’re not at our usual location at the Fairmont.  Two, we do not have sitting public officials with us, which is our bread and butter, but I’m approached all the time by people who are releasing reports.  Please host a Defense Writers Group on this.  Frankly, all of them are good.  Some of them are well, full stop, back in the safe.  But I really thought this was important enough to try to convene the session even with a somewhat smaller group be because of the value of what you all have done.  So thank you for allowing us to do this.  Thank you for hosting it. 

Ground rules, as always, this is on the record, but there’s no rebroadcast of audio or video because that’s just who we are as writers.

I have a whole sheet of questions, but I’ll ask the first one, then we can go around in sort of roundtable form.

In your report you describe this axis of disrupters -- China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. They’re joined together in some ways formal and in some ways informal because they don’t really need to plan.  They don’t need a Yalta Summit or a meeting.

I’m personally concerned that when we look back on this period -- invasion of Ukraine, what’s happening in Gaza, China moving on Taiwan, North Korea and Iran.  Just World War III has started and we don’t even know it yet because often it is something in retrospect.

So when you think about your report, what you advise as a grand strategy, what does the US government need to halt this coming together of this axis of authoritarianism?  What should we do to preserve global stability and the values that are important to us?

Mr. Bajraktari:  This meet and greet -- but really I lead SCSP.  Mac Thornberry is a member of the board of the SCSP.  Thank you for coming.  Thanks, Thom, for bringing this group together.  I know some of you, I had a chance to meet Ken twice in Tokyo before, so thank you for coming to our new office space, and hopefully we can host you much more frequently here.

Defense Writers Group

3 June 2024

Moderator:  Good morning everyone, and welcome to this very special Defense Writers Group with Ambassador Julianne Smith, the U.S. Perm Rep to NATO.  Just because of my family background in Central and Eastern Europe, I was born with the NATO gene.  So I actually think you have the best job in government.  While I don’t do audiovisuals, I am wearing my tie with Baltic architecture.

Ambassador Smith:  Well done.

Moderator:  The ground rules, as always, we’re on the record.  Please record for accuracy of quotes, but there’s no rebroadcast of audio or video.  I’ll ask the first question.  Seven of you emailed in advance to get on the list.  We’ll do those and then as much time as is left for all of the others.

Madame Ambassador, every NATO summit that we’ve all covered for decades is the most important coming out of most dangerous --

Ambassador Smith:  Transformative.

Moderator:  Transformative, right.  I think that’s actually true this year.  So help us understand in the run-up to the summit what to you does success look like?  And what are your biggest worries?

Ambassador Smith:  Thanks so much for hosting this today.  I like to always joke with you that we both have the NATO gene.  Maybe Midwestern roots.  I don’t know.

The summit.  What would a successful summit look like?  I think I’d have maybe 3.5 answers for you on that.

Defense Writers Group

14 May 2024

Moderator:  Welcome to what I think is a very important Defense Writers Group -- Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Strategy and National Defense.  There are so many important issues out there, but I think we’d all agree that there are none more important in this very dynamic period than trying to get this right, and I can’t imagine three better speakers to guide us through these topics and answer our questions today.  Each has had a long and distinguished career, holding a variety of prestigious positions in the national security world, but they’re here today in particular because of what they’re doing now.

Ambassador Eric Edelman serves as the Vice Chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, expected to release its report to Congress later this year.

General C. Robert Kehler, retired.  Served as Commander, US Strategic Command, clearly one of the crown jewels of our nation’s security.

And Franklin C. Miller served on the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here today...

Defense Writers Group

13 May 2024

Moderator:  I want to welcome everyone to a wonderful discussion today.  We are honored to have The Honorable Bill Blair, Defense Minister of Canada.  And we’re also fortunate to have Ambassador Kirsten Hillman with us as well, Canada’s Ambassador to the United States.

The ground rules are the same as always.  We’re on the record.  You can record for accuracy of quotes but there’s no rebroadcast of audio or video. 

I will invite the Minister to make some opening comments.  Four or five of you emailed in advance to be on the questions list.  We’ll have time to go around the table for the full hour that we have here.

Once again, Mr. Minister, we’re honored to have you.  The floor is yours, sir.

Minister Blair:  First of all, thank you all for joining us here today.  And thanks, Thom, for making this possible.  It’s a great opportunity for me to meet with the Defense Writers Group.  I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak to you all and to speak to your readership and listenership about some of the global issues that all of our nations are experiencing.

Defense Writers Group

9 April 2024

Moderator:  It’s great to have you here.

Normally I ask the first question.  Because their Center for AI Security Research is so new, I’d like for them to kind of sketch a little bit about what it is and what they’re doing, and then three people emailed in advance to get on the questioner’s list.  We have an hour.  There will be time for everybody so no need to throw shoes or anything.

So gentlemen, tell us about what the heck you’re doing.

Mr. Begoli:  Thank you.  My name is Edmon Begoli, and I’m a founding director of the Center for AI Security Research.

We really started forming the Center the beginning of last year.  The whole motion was triggered by multiple motivators.  One was, from my point of view, very personal as being a researcher in this field, and really I got myself attracted to AI in 1989 when I was in high school and studied logic and psychology and math....

Defense Writers Group

5 April 2024

Moderator:  Good morning everybody, and welcome to this Defense Writers Group with Dr. John F. Plumb, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy.  This is Dr. Plumb’s first time with us, so I promised everybody would behave except for me.

The ground rules are as always, this is on the record.  You can record it for accuracy of quotes but there’s no rebroadcast of audio or visual.

A few of you emailed me in advance for questions.  We’ll get to those, then we’ll go around the table for the hour, saving a few minutes at the end for Dr. Plumb.  So sir, thank you for joining us today.  It’s an honor to have you here at this important time.

ASD Plumb:  Thank you, Thom.

Moderator:  The department just released its first-ever Commercial Space Integration Strategy.  That was the day before yesterday.  So talk a little bit about what drove the decision to do that, and if you would give us your two or three major goals to come out of that, what would they be?

ASD Plumb:  First of all, thanks.  It’s great to be here.  I appreciate this opportunity...

Defense Writers Group

4 April 2024

Moderator:  Greetings, and welcome to a very special Defense Writers Group with Roger D. Carstens, the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. 

Some of you are here for the first time.  Our ground rules are as always, this is on the record.  You can record for accuracy of quotes but there’s no rebroadcast of audio or video.

I’ll ask the first question.  Three of you have emailed me already to get on the list, but we have lots of time to go around the table.

First, I do want to call on my special co-host today, Paul Beckett of the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Beckett:  Thank you, Thom.  Thank you, Roger.  We appreciate you being here.  Thanks to all of you for coming.

The Journal, obviously this is an area, hostage-taking of foreign governments has been very much a focus of ours in the last year, since our colleague Evan Gershkovich was unlawfully detained in Russia...