Podcasts about National Security Council

Fiona Hill is the Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. She was the senior director for European and Russian Affairs for the National Security Council from 2017-2019. From 2006-2009, she was an intelligence officer for at the National Intelligence Council. In 2020, In November 2019, Dr. Hill testified at impeachment hearings being held by the House Intelligence Committee as it investigated allegations of abuse of office by President Trump. Dr. Hill told the committee that President Trump and his aides were thwarting U.S. foreign policy in an effort to help President Trump.During this podcast, Dr. Hill takes us inside the tense process and recounts her testimony and reveals how she believes the Trump team's actions played into Russia's hands. She also discusses her new book "There's Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century," which tells the story of how an immigrant from the UK who grew up in a working class coal mining community, ended up testifying before a congressional committee considering impeachment of the President of the United States.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this week's episode of the Iron Butterfly, we are joined by Colonel Molly Solsbury, Chief Data Officer for Army intelligence within the 18th Airborne Corps. Molly has over two decades of service in active duty roles, ranging from intelligence and policy, to research and development. She shares her story with us from her experiences at the National Security Council and her Fellowship at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, with many in between. Molly has spent time in a variety of special operations Units throughout Central and South Asia, the Middle East, as well as North and West Africa. Join us this week to listen to Molly's incredible story on the Iron Butterfly. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Representative Bi-khim Hsiao leads the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in Washington, DC, serving as Taiwan's top representative in the United States since July 2020. Before entering her current role, Representative Hsiao was Senior Adviser to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen at the National Security Council of Taiwan, and previously served four terms in the Taiwan Legislature, where she was ranking member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. On this episode, Rexon and Representative Hsiao discussed engagement between Washington and Taipei, Taiwan's pandemic response, regional security issues, Taiwan's engagement with Japan, and more.

In the third and final episode of our series on Putin's Russia, we feature an interview with Fiona Hill. Long before she testified in the first Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, her life experiences opened her eyes to the conditions which give rise to populist leaders. Coming of age in a coal-mining town during Thatcher-era austerity, Hill observed how a lack of opportunity in working class communities can manifest at the ballot box, with serious consequences for democracy. As the lead Russia expert in Trump's White House, she watched Vladimir Putin manipulate Trump's weaknesses and observed in the former president “autocrat envy.” “He was always talking about people like Putin being strong and powerful and making it very clear that's how he saw himself.”   In an interview with Ray Suarez, she spoke about her new memoir, There's Nothing For You Here, the impact of economic despair on politics, and what needs to change to save democracy.    Guests: Fiona Hill, former Russia advisor in the National Security Council and senior fellow at The Brookings Institution   Hosts: Ray Suarez, co-host, WorldAffairs   If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.

Oliver North is a combat decorated U.S. Marine, #1 best-selling author, founder of a small business and holder of three U.S. patents. For seventeen years he was a syndicated columnist and host of “War Stories” on FOX News Channel. In May 2018, he retired from FOX News to serve as the 66th president of the National Rifle Association of America.   North was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1943, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968 and served twenty-two years as a U.S. Marine. His awards for service in combat include the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for valor, and two Purple Hearts for wounds in action. From 1983-86 he served as Counter-Terrorism Coordinator on the National Security Council staff. He helped plan the rescue of U.S. students on Grenada, the liberation of American hostages, the capture of the Achille Lauro hijackers and the raids on Muammar Gadhafi's terror bases; after which he was targeted for assassination by Abu Nidal's Islamic Jihad. President Ronald Reagan described him as “an American hero.” North has authored seventeen best-selling books and is co-founder of Freedom Alliance, an organization serving wounded U.S. military personnel and their families. He is widely acclaimed for award-winning FOX News coverage of more than sixty U.S. units in combat and his Freedom Alliance “Hero College Scholarships” for children of service members killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty. In 2020, North and a close friend founded Fidelis Publishing, a company dedicated to publishing books under the guidance of the Bible shining the light of truth in these dark times. Yet, he says his greatest achievement is being, “the God-fearing husband of one, father of four, and grandfather of eighteen.” LtCol North and his wife Betsy live in Virginia. In November 2018, they celebrated their 50th anniversary. 

Jason Bordoff, cofounding dean, Columbia Climate School, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy, and professor of professional practice in international and public affairs at Columbia University, leads a conversation on energy policy and efforts to combat climate change.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to today's session of the CFR Fall 2021 Academic Webinar Series. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record. And the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have with us today Jason Bordoff to talk about energy policy and efforts to combat climate change. Jason Bordoff is cofounding dean of the Columbia Climate School, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy, and professor of professional practice in international and public affairs at Columbia University. He previously served as special assistant to President Obama and senior director for energy and climate change on the National Security Council, and he has held senior policy positions on the White House's National Economic Council and Council on Environmental Quality. He is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and is often on TV and radio. So, we're really happy to have him with us today. So, Jason, thank you very much. We are just coming off the COP26 conference that took place in Glasgow that started on October 31, I believe, and concluded last Friday, November 12. Could you talk about what came out of the conference at a high level, if you think that the agreements that were reached went far enough or didn't go far enough, and what your policy recommendations are to really advance and fight the countdown that we have to the Earth warming? BORDOFF: Yeah. Thanks. Well, first, thanks to you, Irina, and thanks to CFR for the invitation to be with you all today. Really delighted to have the chance to talk about these important issues. I was there for much of the two-week period in Glasgow representing the Energy Center and the Climate School here at Columbia. I think it's kind of a glass half-full/glass half-empty outlook coming out of Glasgow. So I think the Glasgow conference was notable in several respects. We'll look back on it, I think, and some of the things we will remember are—some of the things we'll remember—(dog barking)—sorry—are the role of the private sector and private finance, I think, was much more prominent in Glasgow this year. I think there were commitments around some important things like methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, was much higher on the priority list in this U.N. climate meeting than in prior ones. You had pledges on deforestation and other things that are important. And then the final agreement did have some important elements to it, particularly around Article 6, how you design carbon markets around the world. But the glass half-empty outlook is still we are nowhere close to being on track for the kind of targets that countries and companies are committing to: net zero by 2050 or 1.5 degrees of warming. I think there were—there should be hope and optimism coming out of COP. The role of the youth—at Columbia, we were honored to organize a private roundtable for President Obama with youth climate activists. It's hard to spend time with young people in COP or on campus here at Columbia or anywhere else and not be inspired by how passionately they take these issues. So the activism you saw in the streets, the sense of urgency among everyone—activists, civil society, governments, the private sector—felt different, I think, at this COP than other COPs that I have attended or probably the ones I haven't attended. But there was also for some I saw kind of we're coming out of this and we're on track for below two degrees. Or, you know, Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, tweeted that when you add up all the pledges we're on track for 1.8 degrees Celsius warming. He's talking about all of the pledges meaning every country who's promised to be net zero by 2050, 2060, 2070, and at least from my standpoint there's a good reason to take those with a grain of salt. They're not often backed up by concrete plans or ideas about how you would get anywhere close to achieving those goals. So it's good that we have elevated ambition, which is kind of one of the core outcomes of the COP in Glasgow. But it is also the case that when you elevate ambition and the reality doesn't change as fast or maybe faster than the ambition is changing, what you have is a growing gap between ambition and reality. And I think that's where we are today. Oil use is rising each and every year. Gas use is rising. Coal use is going up this year. I don't know if it's going to keep going up, but at a minimum it's going to plateau. It's not falling off a cliff. So the reality of the energy world today—which is 75 percent of emissions are energy—is not anything close to net zero by 2050. It is the case that progress is possible. So if you go back to before the Paris agreement, we were on track for something like maybe 3.7 degrees Celsius of warming. If you look at a current outlook, it's maybe 2.7, 2.8 (degrees), so just below three degrees. So progress is possible. That's good. If you look at the nationally determined contribution pledges—so the commitments countries made that are more near term, more accountability for them; the commitments they made to reduce emissions by 2030, their NDCs—we would be on track for about 2.4 degrees Celsius warming, assuming all those pledges are fulfilled. But history would suggest a reason to be a little skeptical about that. The U.S. has a pledge to get to a 50 to 52 percent reduction in emissions by 2030, and look at how things are working or not working in Washington and make your own judgment about how likely it is that we'll put in place the set of policies that would be required to get to that ambitious level of decarbonization by 2030. And I think the same healthy dose of skepticism is warranted when you look elsewhere in the world. But even if we achieve all of those, we're still falling short of below two degrees, nevertheless 1.5 (degrees). And so, again, I think the outcome from COP for me was optimism that progress is possible—we have made a lot of progress in the last ten years—but acute concern that we're nowhere close to being on track to take targets like 1.5 degrees Celsius or net zero by 2050 seriously. And we just need to be honest as a climate and energy community—and I live in both of those worlds; there's a lot of overlap between them, obviously—about how hard it is to achieve the goals we are talking about. Renewables have grown incredibly quickly. Optimistic headlines every day about what is happening in solar and wind. Costs have come down more than 90 percent. Battery costs have come down more than 90 percent in the last decade. But solar and wind create electricity, and electricity is 20 percent of global final energy consumption. The outlook for electric vehicles is much more promising today. Lots of companies like Ford and others are committing to be all-electric by a certain date ten or twenty years from now. Cars are 20 percent of global oil demand. About half of the emission reductions—cumulative emission reductions between now and 2050 will need to come from technologies that are not yet available at commercial scale and sectors of the economy that are really hard to decarbonize like steel and cement and ships and airplanes. We're not—we don't have all the tools we need to do those yet. And then, in Glasgow, the focus of a lot of what we did at Columbia was on—we did a lot of different things, but one of the key areas of focus was the challenge of thinking about decarbonization in emerging and developing economies. I don't think we talk about that enough. The issue of historical responsibility of loss and damage was more on the agenda this year, and I think you'll hear even more about it in the year ahead. The next COP is in Africa. There was growing tension between rich and poor countries at this COP. I think a starting point was what we see in the pandemic alone and how inequitable around the world the impacts of the pandemic are. Many people couldn't even travel to Glasgow from the Global South because they couldn't get vaccinated. We need, between now and 2050, estimates are—a ballpark—$100 trillion of additional investment in clean energy if we're going to get on track for 1.5 (degrees)/net zero by 2050. So the question that should obsess all of us who work in this space: Where will that money come from? Most of it's going to be private sector, not public. Most of it is going to be in developing and emerging economies. That is where the growth in energy is going to come from. Eight hundred million people have no access to energy at all. Nevertheless, if you model what energy access means, it's often defined as, you have enough to turn on lights or charge your cellphone. But when you talk about even a fraction of the standard of living we take for granted—driving a car, having a refrigerator, having an air conditioner—the numbers are massive. They're just huge, and the population of Africa's going to double to 2.2 billion by the year 2050. So these are really big numbers and we need to recognize how hard this is. But we should also recognize that it is possible. We have a lot of the tools we need. We need innovation in technology and we need stronger policy, whether that's a carbon price or standards for different sectors. And then, of course, we need private-sector actors to step up as well, and all of us. And we have these great commitments to achieve these goals with a lot of capital being put to work, and now we need to hold people accountable to make sure that they do that. So, again, I look back on the last two weeks or before, two weeks of COP, the gap between ambition and reality got bigger. Not necessarily a bad thing—ambition is a good thing—but now it's time to turn the ambition into action. We need governments to follow through on their pledges. Good news is we have a wide menu of options for reducing emissions. The bad news is there's not a lot of time at our current rate of emissions. And emissions are still going up each and every year. They're not even falling yet. Remember, what matters is the cumulative total, not the annual flow. At our current rate of emissions, the budget—carbon budget for staying below 1.5 (degrees) is used up in, around a decade or so, so there's not much time to get to work. But I'm really excited about what we're building with the first climate school in the country here at Columbia. When it comes to pushing—turning ambition into action, that requires research, it requires education, and it requires engaging with partners in civil society and the public sector and the private sector to help turn that research into action. And the people we're working with here every day on campus are the ones who are going to be the leaders that are going to hopefully do a better job—(laughs)—than we've done over the last few decades. So whatever you're doing at your educational institution—be it teaching or research or learning—we all have a role to play in the implementation of responsible, forward-thinking energy policy. I'm really excited to have the chance to talk with you all today. Look forward to your questions and to the conversation. Thank you again. FASKIANOS: Jason, that's fantastic. Thank you very much for that informative and sobering view. So let's turn to all of you now for your questions. So I'm going to go first to—I have one raised hand from Stephen Kass. Q: OK. Thank you. Jason, thank you for the very useful and concise summary. What specific kinds of energy programs do you think developing countries should now be pursuing? Should they be giving up coal entirely? Should they be importing natural gas? Should they be investing in renewables or nuclear? What recipe would you advise developing countries to pursue for their own energy needs? BORDOFF: It's going to need to be a lot of different things, so there's no single answer to that, of course. And by the way, I'll just say it would be super helpful if people don't mind just introducing yourself when you ask a question. That would be helpful to me, at least. I appreciate it. I think they need to do a lot of different things. I think I would start with low-hanging fruit, and renewable electricity is not the entire answer. The sun and wind are intermittent. Electricity can't do certain things yet, like power ships and airplanes. But the low cost of solar and wind, I think, does mean it's a good place to start, and then we need to think about those other sectors as well. I think a key thing there comes back to finance, and that's why we're spending so much time on it with our research agenda here. Access to financing and cost of capital are really important. Clean energy tends to be more capital-intensive and then, like solar and wind, more CAPEX, less OPEX over time. But attaining financing in poor countries is really difficult and expensive. Lack of experience with renewable energy, local banks are often reluctant to lend to those kinds of projects. And then foreign investors, where most of that capital is going to come from, view projects often in emerging markets and developing economies particularly as more risky. Local utilities may not be creditworthy. There's currency inflation risk in many developing countries, people worry about recouping their upfront investment if bills are paid in local currency. There's political risk, maybe corruption, inconsistently enforced regulations. And it can be harder to build clean energy infrastructure if you don't have other kinds of infrastructure, like ports, and roads, and bridges and a good electrical grid. So I would start there. And I think there's a role for those countries to scale up their clean energy sectors, but also for policymakers and multilateral development banks and governments elsewhere—there was a lot of focus in Glasgow on whether the developed countries would make good on their promise made in Copenhagen to send $100 billion a year in climate finance to developing countries. And they fell short of that. But even that is kind of a rounding error, compared to the one to two trillion (dollars) a year that the International Energy Agency estimates is needed. So there are many other things besides just writing a check that government, like in the U.S. or elsewhere, can do. The Development Finance Corporation, for example, can lend to banks in local and affordable rates, finance projects in local currency, expand the availability of loan guarantees. I've written before about how I think even what often gets called industrial policy, let's think about some sectors—in the same way China did with solar or batteries fifteen years ago. Are there sectors where governments might help to grow domestic industries and, by doing that, scale—bring down the cost of technologies that are expensive now, the premium for low-carbon or zero-carbon cement or steel. It's just—it's not reasonable to ask a developing country to build new cities, and new highways, and all the new construction they're going to do with zero-carbon steel and cement because it's just way too expensive. So how do you bring those costs down? If we think about investments, we can make through U.S. infrastructure or other spending to do that, that not only may help to grow some domestic industries and jobs here, that can be its own form of global leadership if we're driving those costs of those technologies down to make it cheaper for others to pick up. So I think that's one of the places I'd start. But there are a lot of other things we need to do too. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question—and let me just go back. Stephen Kass is an adjunct professor at NYU. So the next question is a written question from Wei Liang, who is an assistant professor of international policy studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. And the question is: I wonder if you could briefly address the Green Climate Fund and individual countries' pledge on that. BORDOFF: Yeah, I mean, it touches a little bit on what I said a moment ago about the need for developed countries to provide climate finance to developing countries. And so I think that's—it's important that we take those obligations seriously, and that we, in advanced economies, step up and make those funds available. And but, again, we're talking—the amount we're still talking about is so small compared to the amounts that are needed to deal both with the impacts of climate change, and then also to curb climate change, to mitigate climate change. Because we know that developing countries are in the parts of the world that will often be most adversely impacted by climate impacts—droughts, and heat waves, and storms, and food security issues—from a standpoint of equity are the parts of the world that have done the least to cause this problem, responsible for very few emissions. If you look cumulatively at emissions since the start of the industrial age, about half—nearly half have come from the U.S. and EU combined. Two percent from the entire continent of Africa. So they are using very little energy today, haven't therefore contributed to the problems, and have the fewest resources, of course, to cope with the impacts, and also to develop in a cleaner way. Sometimes it's cheaper to develop in a cleaner way. Renewables are often today competitive with coal, even without subsidy. But there are many areas where that's not the case, and there is a cost. And we need to help make sure that, you know, we're thinking about what a just transition looks like. And that means many different things for different communities, whether you're a coal worker or an agricultural worker in California that may, you know, be working outside in worse and worse heat. But it also means thinking about the parts of the world that need assistance to make this transition. So I think we need to be taking that much more seriously. FASKIANOS: Next question is a raised hand from Tara Weil, who is an undergraduate student at Pomona College. Q: Hi. So, given that developed nations are the largest contributors to carbon emissions, as you've said, how can larger powers be convinced as to the importance of addressing global inequality with regards to climate change? And thank you so much, also, for giving this talk. BORDOFF: Yeah. Thank you for being here. I don't have a great answer to your question. I mean, the politics of foreign aid in general are not great, as we often hear in events at CFR. So I do think one—we need to continue to encourage, through political advocacy, civil society, and other ways, governments in advanced economies to think about all the tools they have at their disposal. I think the ones that are going to be—I'm reluctant to try to speak as a political commenter rather than a climate and energy commenter on what's going to work politically. But part of that is demonstrating what—it's not just generosity. It is also in one's self-interest to do these things. And just look at the pandemic, right? What would it look like for the U.S. to show greater leadership, or any country to show even greater leadership and help cope with the pandemic all around the world in parts of the world that are struggling to vaccinate their people? That is not only an act of generosity, but it is clearly one of self-interest too, because it's a pretty globalized economy and you're not going to be able to get a pandemic under control at home if it's not under control abroad. Of course, the same is true of the impacts of climate change. It doesn't matter where a ton of CO2 comes from. And we can decarbonize our own economy, but the U.S. is only 15 percent of annual emissions globally. So it's not going to make a huge difference unless everyone else does that as well. There is also the potential, I think, to—and we see this increasingly when you look at the discussion of the Biden infrastructure bill, how they talk about the U.S.-China relationship, which of course are the two most important countries from the standpoint of climate change. It is one of cooperation. That was one of the success stories in Glasgow, was a commitment to cooperate more. We'll see if we can actually do it, because it's a pretty difficult and tense U.S.-China relationship right now. So the question is, can you separate climate from all those other problems on human rights, and intellectual property, and everything else and then cooperate on climate? It's been hard, but there's a renewed commitment to try to do that. But also, a recognition that action in the clean energy space is not only about cooperation but it's also about economic competition. And you have seen more and more focus on both the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle on thinking about the security of supply chains, and critical minerals, and the inputs in lithium and rare earth elements that go into many aspects of clean energy. To my point before about aspects of industrial policy that might help grow your own domestic economy, I think there are ways in which countries can take measures that help—that help their own economies and help workers and help create jobs, and that in the process are helping to drive forward more quickly the clean energy technologies we need, and bring down the cost of those technologies to make them more accessible and available in some of the less-developed countries. So I think trying to frame it less as do we keep funds at home, do we write a check abroad? But there are actually many steps you could do to create economic opportunities and are win-win. Without being pollyannish about it, I think there is some truth to some of those. And I think we can focus on those politically as well. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take an international question from Luciana Alexandra Ghica, who is an associate professor for international cooperation at the University of Bucharest. What type of topics do you think we should address immediately in university programs that provide training in climate, development, global policies, or international public affairs, so that a new generation of leaders really pushes forward the agenda on climate change? BORDOFF: Yeah. Well, I'll say a quick word about what we're doing at Columbia, and maybe it's relevant to that question, because Columbia has made this historic commitment to build a climate school. There are many initiatives, and centers, and institutes. There was not only a handful of schools—law school, business school, medical school, engineering school. And it is the largest commitment a university can make to any particular topic, is something on the scale of a school with degree-granting authority and tenure-granting authority, and all the things that come with a school. And it's just the scale at a place like Columbia, and many other places, is just enormous. That's what we're doing on climate. We have created a climate school. And I'm honored President Bollinger asked me to help lead it. And we're going to build a faculty. We have our first inaugural class of masters' students, about ninety students that are going through the program right now, and we have a building in Manhattan for the climate school, and on and on. The idea—but the question is, what is climate, right? Because academia has been historically organized into traditional academic disciplines. So you have people who you hire through a tenured search, and they go to the engineering faculty and build their lab there. And there's law professors, and their business school professors, and on and on and on, social work. But for climate, you need all of those, right? They all kind of need to come together. And, like, interdisciplinary doesn't even sort of do justice to what it means to think about approaching this systemic—it's a systemic challenge. The system has to change. And so whatever solution you're talking about—if you want to get hydrogen to scale in the world, let's—you know, for certain sectors of the economy that may be hard to do with renewable energy, or in terms of renewable energy and, say, green hydrogen. You need engineering breakthroughs to bring down the cost of electrolyzers, or you need new business models, or you need financial institution frameworks that figure out how you're going to put the capital into these things. You need the policy incentives. How are you going to—you need permitting and regulation. How do we permit hydrogen infrastructure? It's barely been done before. There are concerns in the environmental justice community about some aspects of technologies like that or carbon capture that need to be taken seriously and addressed. There are geopolitical implications, potentially, to starting to build a global trade in ammonia or hydrogen, and what security concerns—energy security concerns might accompany those, the way we thought about oil or gas from Russia into Europe. I have an article coming out in the next issue of Foreign Affairs about the geopolitics of the energy transition. So we need disciplines that come together and look at a problem like that in all of those multifaceted dimensions, so we can figure out how to get from a lab to scale out in the world. And so when we think about the areas of concentration here, climate finance, climate justice, climate in society, climate in international security—I mean, a range of things that I think are really important to help people understand. And that's going to be a major focus of what we do at the climate school here. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Let's go next to Sean Grossnickle, who has raised his hand. A graduate student at Fordham University. Q: Speak now? Hi, this is not Sean but Henry Schwalbenberg, also at Fordham, where I teach in our international political economy and development program. I went to a conference about a month ago in Rome. And there was a physicist from CERN. And he was a big advocate of something I'd never heard of, and this is this thorium for nuclear reactors. And he was going through all the pros, but I wanted a more balanced perspective on it. And I'm hoping that you might give me a little pros and cons of this thorium nuclear reactor technique. BORDOFF: Yeah. I will be honest and say that nuclear is not my area of focus. We have a pretty strong team here that works in nuclear, and I think is optimistic about the breakthroughs we're going to see in several potential areas of nuclear—advanced nuclear technology, that being one of them, or small modular reactors, and others. At a high level, I will say I do think if you're serious about the math of decarbonization and getting to net zero by 2050, it's hard to do without zero-carbon nuclear power. It's firm, baseload power. It runs all the time. Obviously, there are challenges with intermittency of solar and wind, although they can be addressed to some extent with energy story. Most of the analyses that are done show not necessarily in the U.S. but in other parts of the world significant growth in nuclear power. The International Energy Agency just modeled what it looks like to get to net zero by 2050, and this pathway that got a lot of attention for saying things like we would not be investing in new oil and gas supply. The world has to change a lot pretty quickly. And they have about a hundred new nuclear plants being built by 2030, so that's a pretty big number. So we're going to need all tools—(laughs)—that we have at our disposal. And unfortunately, I worry we may still fall short. So I think at a high level we need to think really hard about how to improve nuclear technology. The people who know that really well I think are optimistic about our ability to do that. And I will follow up on thorium in particular with my colleagues at Columbia, and happy to follow up with you offline about it. FASKIANOS: Great. I'm going to take a written question from Stephen Bird, who's an associate professor of political science at Clarkson University. He thanks you, and he wanted you to talk a little bit more about political will. The overall dollar amounts are clear. Much cheaper to address climate change than to ignore it. That said, countries are, clearly, lagging. Is it a case of countries just don't want to take action now because of issues of fairness or because of lack of domestic political support, i.e., citizens aren't convinced that they should pay costs now with payoffs that come later, and what might we do to improve that issue in terms of persuading or arguing for more political will? BORDOFF: Yeah. It's a question for, you know, a political scientist as much as an energy or climate expert, and I wish I had a better answer to it. I think it is—climate is one of the trickiest problems for so many reasons but one of those is there is no acute event now that you sort of respond to, hopefully, and pull everyone together. It's a set of things that, you know, of course, there would have been storms and droughts before but we know they're intensified and made worse. It's hard to rally public support. We often respond to a crisis kind of proverbial, you know, frog in the boiling water kind of thing. So that makes it hard. There are huge issues—we talked about a just transition a few minutes ago—there are huge issues with intergenerational equity when we talk about climate. There are, clearly, climate impacts and damages today but some of the worst will be in the future, including for people who may not be born yet, and we don't do a great job in our political environment about thinking about those and valuing them today and how you do that, and from an economic standpoint, of course, there are questions about discount rates you apply and everything else. I think, politically, one of the things that has mobilized stronger climate—support for climate action, so it is encouraging that if you look at polling on climate change, the level of urgency that the public in many countries, including the U.S., broadly, ascribe to acting on climate has gone up a lot. It's higher today than it was, you know, a decade or so ago. That's a result of people seeing the impacts and also advocacy campaigns and political campaigns. It is often tied to—it's like a win-win. Like, President Biden says when he thinks of climate he thinks of jobs, and so we're going to deal with climate and we're going to grow the economy faster and we're going to create jobs, and there is truth to that. It is also the case that there are costs. The cost of inaction are higher, but there are costs associated with the transition itself. So if you survey the American public, I think, climate, according to the latest YouGov/Economist poll I saw, you know, it was number two on the list of things they cared the most about. That's much higher than in the past. And then if you ask the American public are they willing to pay $0.25 a gallon more at the pump to act on climate, 75 percent say no. And you look at the challenges the Biden administration is having right now sort of thinking about a really strong set of measures to put in place to move the ball forward on climate, but acute concern today about where oil prices are and inflation and natural gas prices as we head into the winter. If the weather is cold then it's going to be really expensive for people to heat their homes in parts—some parts of the country like New England, maybe. So that's a reality, and I think we need to—it was interesting, in the roundtable we did with President Obama with climate activists, that was a message he had for them. You know, be impatient, be angry, keep the pressure on, but also be pragmatic. And by that he means, like, you know, try to see the world through the eyes of others and people who are worried about the cost of filling up at the pump, the cost of paying their heating bills. They're not—some of them may not be where you are yet. They may not have the same sense of urgency with acting on climate that many of us on this Zoom do and need to take those concerns seriously. So I think that's a real challenge, and it can be addressed with good policy, to some extent, right, if you think about the revenue raised from a carbon tax and how it could be redistributed in a way that reduce the regressive impacts. I've written about how, at a high level—I'll say one last point—if we get on track for an energy transition, which we're not on yet, right. (Laughs.) Oil and gas use are going up each and every year. But imagine we started to get on track where those were falling year after year. It's still going to take decades, and that process of transition is going to be really messy. It's going to be really volatile. We're going to have fits and starts in policy from Obama to Trump to Biden. We're going to make estimate—we're going to make bets on technologies and maybe get those technologies wrong or misunderstand the cost curves, the potential to shut down investment in certain forms of energy before the rest are ready to pick up the slack. If it's messy and volatile and bumpy, that's not only harmful economically and geopolitically, it will undermine public support for stronger climate action. So you see, like, in Washington they're selling off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because we're moving to a world beyond oil and also we have all this domestic oil now with shale. We need more, not fewer, tools to mitigate volatility for the next several decades if we're serious about making this transition, and I think the same is true for thinking about sort of buffers you could build into geopolitics, foreign policy, and national security, because there will be—in a post-oil and gas world, you know, you may say, well, we're not going to worry as much about the Middle East or about, you know, Russia's leverage in Europe. But there will be new risks created and we can talk about what some of those might be, and we need new tools of foreign policy to mitigate those potential foreign policy risks. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question. Raised hand from Chloe Demrovsky, adjunct instructor at NYU. Q: Hey, can you hear me? BORDOFF: Yes. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: Hi. Chloe Demrovsky, adjunct at NYU and president and CEO of Disaster Recovery Institute International. Thanks for being with us, Jason. So my question is about the feasibility and your thoughts on artificially altered clouds or solar geoengineering. What are the ethical and geopolitical implications of, perhaps, using this to buy a little time for our energy transition? Thanks. BORDOFF: Yeah. A super interesting question, and I will say, again, I'm sort of—think of myself as an energy expert. So that is where I spend more time than thinking about tools like solar geoengineering. I guess, it seems there's, obviously, huge risks associated with something like that and we need to understand them. We need to do research. We need to figure out what those risks may be. There are global governance concerns. It's actually pretty cheap to do solar geoengineering. So what happens when some country or some billionaire decides they want to start spraying stuff into the atmosphere to cool the planet? And for those who don't know that, you know, solar—I mean, you think of after a volcano the planet cools a little bit because of all the particulates up in the atmosphere. When you model in an energy system model how much phasing out coal will reduce warming, you, obviously, have much less carbon dioxide emissions but that's offset slightly—not completely, of course—it's offset a little bit by the fact that you have less local air pollution, which is a good thing from air pollution. But air pollution has a slightly cooling effect, because you have these little particles floating around that reflect sunlight. So the idea is can we create that artificially and cool the planet, and you can imagine lots of reasons why that could go wrong when you're trying to figure out what—how much to put in there, what unintended consequences could be. You still have other impacts of carbon dioxide like ocean acidification. Maybe you go too far in one direction, that's like you're setting the thermostat. That's why one of the companies doing carbon removal is called Global Thermostat. You're kind of figuring out what temperature it should be. But I will say so it's an area that needs research and I think, given how far we are away from achieving goals like 1.5 and net-zero 2050, I guess what I would say is in the same way that when I worked in the Obama administration it was—I wouldn't say controversial, but there were some people who didn't want to talk about adaptation because it was kind of a more—there was a moral hazard problem there. It was, you know, less pressure to mitigate and reduce emissions if we thought adaptation was a solution. People worry about that from the standpoint of solar geoengineering. But the likelihood—I hope I'm wrong, but the likelihood that we roll the clock forward, you know, later this decade and we realize we've made progress but we're still pretty far short, and the impacts of climate change in the same way the IPCC 1.5 report said, you know what, 1.5 is going to be pretty bad, too, and that's even worse than we thought, the more we learn about climate the more reason there is to be concerned, not less concerned. It seems very plausible to me that we will kind of come to a growing consensus that we have to think about whether this technology can, as you said, buy us time. This is not something you do permanently. You need to get to net zero to stop global warming. But if you want to reduce the impacts of warming on the rate of Arctic sea ice melt and all the rest, can you buy time, extend the runway, by doing this for some number of decades. And I think—I don't have a strong view on the right answer to that. But I think it's something we, certainly, need to be thinking about researching and understanding what the consequences would be because we're going to have to figure out how to take more abrupt actions to close that gap between ambition and reality unless the reality starts to change much more quickly than is the case right now. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I saw a raised hand from Maya but she lowered it. So if you want to raise your hand again, please do so. And in the meantime, I'm going to take a written question from Jennifer Sklarew, who's an assistant professor of energy and sustainability at George Mason University. Was CCS/CCUS, which carbon capture and storage/carbon capture utilization and storage, to write out those acronyms, promoted as a climate change solution in Glasgow and was there a pushback against this technology option as both a climate change solution and a support mechanism for continued fossil fuel use? BORDOFF: There was some pushback but, I think, actually, more in the other direction. So I think there has been a growing recognition from many in the climate world that carbon capture technology, carbon removal technology, need to be part of the solution. I think there's almost no climate model at this point that shows how you would get to 1.5 degrees or net zero—1.5 degrees without huge amounts of negative emissions—carbon removal. Some of that can be nature based, but a lot of it will be—some of it will be technology based as well and focusing on what we care about, which is the emissions, is the most important thing. So and this is not, I don't think, the primary thing you're going to do. You want to do the things that are easiest and cheapest and present the fewest risks. So putting a lot of renewables into the grid, getting electrification into the vehicle fleet—there's a lot of things that you would do before that. But if you think about some of the sectors in the economy we talked about before that are hard to decarbonize like steel and cement, it may well be the case that carbon capture is part of the technology there. There was a big announcement yesterday from the NET Power Allam Cycle gas plant in Texas that they had finally come online with delivering net-zero power to the grid. It was sort of a milestone in that technology. So we need to advance this technology and figure out how we're going to—how we're going to get where we need to be. We need to hold that kind of technology accountable to make sure that it's actually meeting the standards we're talking about so that it actually is very low, if not zero, carbon. But if you look at, you know, most of the scenarios I'm aware of, whether it's—Princeton did the study “Net-Zero America,” how we get to net zero by 2050 in the U.S. The International Energy Agency, as I said, did it for net zero globally. There is a meaningful role for carbon capture, to some extent, in the power sector in these heavy industry sectors like steel and cement, and then making, say, hydrogen some of that will be blue hydrogen. Most of it, eventually, will be green, but there may be some role for blue hydrogen, which is—which is gas with carbon capture. So I think, if anything, there's been a growing understanding that we need all tools on deck right away and, again, I fear even with all the tools we may still fall short. FASKIANOS: Great. There's a written question from Laila Bichara, who's at SUNY Farmingdale, international business. There was a New York Times article, “Business Schools Respond to a Flood of Interest in ESG,” talking about the issue of the scarcity of skills in recent graduates to help with social impact, sustainable investments, climate finance, and social entrepreneurship. And she wanted to know if there are resources that you could point the group to in terms of foundation courses or certification that would provide all students with a basic foundation. BORDOFF: Yeah. That's a really good question and it's a growing area of focus and I think universities should be doing more in. The Tamer Center of Columbia Business School does a lot of work in ESG. We hosted a really interesting roundtable at the Center on Global Energy Policy yesterday on ESG and actually been doing a lot of work thinking about that in the context of state-owned enterprises and national oil companies, which we don't talk about enough. But they're a really, really big part of the problem we're talking about. We tend to focus more on these very well-known private sector companies or financial institutions in places like New York. So there—Bloomberg Philanthropies has done a huge amount in this space. I think there's some really good educational programs with some universities and business schools that have done a lot in the ESG space. But I think it's a need, to be frank. I mean, the fact that you're asking the question and I'm pointing to a few examples, but not a huge number, and it is something that universities need to educate themselves about but then is an opportunity for us to educate others. Maybe a revenue one, too, with executive education or something. But there's a lot of companies and financial institutions that want to understand this better. I worry that while there's a huge growing focus on climate, which is a good thing, in the financial community, the phrase ESG kind of means so many different things right now. It's this alphabet soup of regulations and standards and disclosure requirements, and some may make a difference and some may not and it's hard to figure out which ones matter, and for people who want to do the responsible thing what does that really mean. That's an area where research is needed. I mean, that's a role for what we do every day to think about if the SEC is going to regulate what makes a difference and what doesn't, if you're going to create green bonds. If you're going to call everything green in the finance community, what's real and what's not? What moves the needle? What doesn't? What are the returns for greener portfolios? How is that affecting the cost of capital for clean energy versus dirty energy? You know, on and on. I think those are important research questions for us to take on and then it's our job to help educate others as well. FASKIANOS: Great. So the next question I'm going to take from—oh, OK. Good. Maya Copeland (sp) has written her question. She's a political science major at Delaware State University. Do you believe developed nations like the U.S. have done a lot in reference to climate change or mostly talk? If you believe nations like the U.S. have dropped the ball in this aspect, what do you think it would take to get those powerhouses serious about environmental change? BORDOFF: I think advanced economies have done—many have done a lot. I mean, the European Union has taken climate seriously and has reduced emissions and has pretty strong measures in place with a carbon market, for example, with a pretty high carbon price right now. The politics of this issue are not quite as favorable in the U.S., but the U.S. has seen emissions decline more than most over the last decade and a half, in part because of policy measures that have, you know, advanced renewable energy and brought the cost of that down as well as cheaper natural gas displacing coal for a while. But at a broader level, you know, have we done enough? The answer is no one's done enough—(laughs)—which is why emissions are still going up every single year. So that—so the answer is no, we haven't done enough. Almost no country has done enough at home to be on a trajectory for net zero 2050. You saw the announcements from countries like India saying, we'll get to net zero by 2070, and, you know, people said, oh, well, that's terrible. They're not saying 2050. And implicit in that is sort of saying, well, if you want to get global to net zero by 2050 we're not all going to move at the same speed, right. Some countries have advanced with the benefit of hydrocarbons since the Industrial Age and some haven't. So, presumably, the pathways are going to look different, right. And, you know, that's not always how countries in the advanced—in the developing—in the developed world talk about it. The commitment from the Biden administration is net zero by 2050. So I would say there's been—there are some models to point to of countries that have taken this issue seriously but we're not doing enough and partly because the political will is not there and partly—I come back to what I said before—this problem is harder than people realize. So you say which countries are doing enough, like, point to some models, right, and somebody might point to Norway, which, you know, the share of new vehicles sold that are electric in Norway went from zero to, I think, it's 70 percent now. I mean, that's amazing. Seventy percent of new car sales are electric. And if you go back to the start of that trajectory, about a decade or decade and a half, oil demand is unchanged in Norway. So we can talk about why that is and it's because a lot—as I said earlier, a lot of oil is used for things other than cars, and it's increased for trucks and planes and petrochemicals. It takes time for the vehicle fleet to turn over. So when you start selling a bunch of electric cars, you know, average car is on the road for fifteen years so it takes a while before that—the vehicle stock turns over. So I saw that kind of mapped out on a chart recently, just two lines—one is electric vehicle sales going straight up and then the other is oil demand in a flat line. It's a reminder of how unforgiving the math of decarbonization is. The math of climate is really unforgiving, like, you know, the kind of harmful impacts we're going to see with even 1.5 degrees warming. But the math of energy and decarbonization is really unforgiving, too. It's—and we just need to be honest with ourselves about what it takes to get where we need to go. Because I think it's good to have optimism and ambition, but I worry there should be optimism but not happy talk. We should recognize that there's a lot of work to do and let's get to work doing it. FASKIANOS: Great. So there are several questions in the chat about China. I'm going to start off with Andrew Campbell, who's a student at George Mason University. Is LNG—liquefied natural gas—a bridge toward renewable energy still being considered? If not, how are India and China's expected growth and increase in coal use going to be addressed? And then there are a couple of other comments or questions about China. You know, what's your take on China as the biggest emitter and return somewhat to coal? Can we actually even make stated and adequate new goals? And, you know, given the relationship between U.S. and China, which is contentious, you know, what is the cooperation going to be between U.S. and China on climate? So there's a lot packed in there, but I know you can address it all. (Laughs.) BORDOFF: Yeah. I think the China question is really hard, as I said earlier, this kind of, like, competition and cooperation and we're going to try to do both, and I think there was a hope early on—Secretary Kerry said it—that climate could be segmented from the broader challenges in the U.S.-China relationship, and I think that has proven harder to do than people had hoped, in part, because, you know, you need both parties to want to do that. I think China has signaled it's not necessarily willing to segment cooperation on climate from lots of other issues. And then these things bleed together where, you know, there's measures being taken in Washington to restrict imports of solar panels from China, that there were concerns that were made with—in ways that have human rights abuses associated with them with forced labor or maybe have unfair trade practices in terms of subsidies. China is—you know, the leadership in China takes climate seriously. This is a country that recognizes, I think, climate change is real and that needs to be addressed. They have a set of national interests that matter a lot, obviously, to them in terms of economic growth, and the pathway to get there is challenging. So it's a country that's growing clean energy incredibly quickly, as we're seeing right now, in part because there's a(n) energy crunch throughout Europe and Asia. They are ramping up the use of coal quite a bit again, but also taking some pretty strong measures to advance clean energy and, over time, hopefully, move in a lower carbon direction for reasons both about concerns over climate but also local air pollution, which is much, much worse in many parts of China than it is here and that's a huge source of concern for the public there. So when it comes to things like coal they need to figure out how to address those air pollution problems. And then for reasons of economic competition, like I mentioned a minute ago. I mean, China dominates the global market for refining and processing of critical minerals for solar panels, and there are economic and national competitiveness and strategic reasons to do that. So all of those things motivate them to move in the direction of clean energy, but they need to be moving faster to phase down hydrocarbon energy for sure. And then you ask a really hard question about—not hard, but one of the most contentious questions is about the role of natural gas in the transition, and we can have a whole separate session about that. I think there is a view of many in the climate community and many in developing countries—in developed countries that there's not space left in the carbon budget for natural gas, and you saw the Biden administration recently declare through the Treasury Department that, except in very rare cases of the poorest of the poor like Sierra Leone or something, they would not finance natural gas projects through the multilateral development banks. The vice president of Nigeria, I think, responded—speaking of CFR—in Foreign Affairs by writing that this was not fair and you need to think about a viable pathway for a country like Nigeria to develop and it just—it doesn't work to get there that fast. There has to be a bridge. The role of gas looks very different in different parts of the world. It looks different in the U.S. than it does in an emerging or a developing economy. It looks different in the power sector, where there are a lot more alternatives like renewables than it does in heavy industry or how we heat our homes. It looks different for, say, in the Global South, where you're talking about people who are still using coal and charcoal and dung for cooking to think about solutions like liquefied petroleum gas. So all of those things are true, but we need to think about gas also with the carbon budget in mind. I mean, the math is just the math. (Laughs.) If you're going to build any gas infrastructure and not have it blow through the carbon budget, it's going to have to be retired before the end of its normal economic life and you need to think about how that might look in different parts of the world. So you need to be fair to people, to allow them to grow, but also recognize that the math of carbon, you know, is what it is. FASKIANOS: Great. I just want to credit those last—the China questions came from Lada Kochtcheeva at North Carolina State University and Joan Kaufman, who's director of Schwarzman Scholars based in China. We are really at the end of our time—we started a couple minutes late—and I just wanted to go back to—there are students on the call who are following with a professor on the webinar who wanted you just to comment on blue hydrogen, whether or not it is contributing or helping to reduce greenhouse gases. BORDOFF: I think the answer is it can. You just need to make sure that it actually does. So the question of—and by blue hydrogen we mean, you know, using gas with carbon capture to create hydrogen. It needs to have very low methane leakage rates. It needs to have very high capture rates, and we know that is technically possible. It doesn't mean it will be done that way. So if people are going to pursue blue hydrogen as part of the solution in the—particularly in the near term, you need to make sure that it's meeting those standards. I think in the long run my guess and, I think, most guesses would be that green hydrogen is going to make more sense. It's going to be cheaper. The cost is going to come down. And so if we have a significant part of the energy sector that is hydrogen and ammonia in, say, 2050, more of that's going to be green than blue. But there can be a role for blue if you make sure it's done the right way. You just have to actually make sure it's done the right way. FASKIANOS: Great. And, Jason, we are out of time, but I wanted to give you one last, you know, one-minute or thirty seconds, whatever you want, just to say some parting words on your work at the center or, you know, to leave the group with what they can do, again. So— BORDOFF: Well, I would just say thanks for the chance to be with you all and for the work that you're doing every day. You know, I think Glasgow was a moment when the world came together to elevate ambition and roll up our sleeves and say this is—this is the decisive decade. Like, we'll know ten years from now—(laughs)—if we got anywhere close to making it or not. And so it's time for everyone to kind of roll up their sleeves and say, what can we do? We're doing that, I think, at Columbia with the creation of this new climate school. We do that every day at the Center on Global Energy Policy. And so just in all of your institutions, you know, what does that mean for you? What does it mean for the institution? What does that mean for your own research and time and how you allocate it? How do we step up and say, what can we do in the biggest and boldest way we can? Because we need—we're creating a climate school because I think the view is—you know, a hundred years ago there were no schools of public health and now it's how would you deal with a pandemic without a school of public health? So I think our view is decades from now we'll look back and wonder how we ever thought it was possible to handle a problem as complex and urgent as climate change without universities devoting their greatest kind of resource to them. And the measure of success for universities has to be research and new knowledge creation. It has to be education. It has to be serving our own communities. For us, it's, you know, the community here in New York, Harlem. But also are we focusing the extraordinary resources and capacity and expertise of these great institutions to solve humanity's greatest problems? That has to be a motivating force, too, for much of—maybe not all of but a lot of what universities do. So I'd just ask all of us to go back and think about how we can do that in our own work every day. and we have to do it through partnerships. I think universities don't work together as well as they need to. But this is only going to work if we work together. FASKIANOS: Great way to end. Thank you very much, Jason Bordoff. We really appreciate it. We'll have to look for your article in Foreign Affairs magazine, which is published by CFR. So, we are excited that you continue to contribute to the magazine. You can follow Jason Bordoff on Twitter at @JasonBordoff. Very easy to remember. Our final academic webinar of the semester will be on Wednesday, December 1, at 1:00 p.m. (ET). Michelle Gavin, who is CFR's Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies, will talk about African politics and security issues. So in the meantime, follow us at @CFR_Academic. Come to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues, and we look forward to continuing the conversation with you. Take care. BORDOFF: Thank you. (END)

In Seattle, President Kennedy speaks out on the Cold War; Congolese soldiers murder 13 U.N. peacekeepers; the National Security Council approves the President's Vietnam policy; a young girl is rescued after drifting in the Atlantic for 82 hours; singer Ray Charles is arrested; gangster Joseph Gallo is found guilty; Speaker Sam Rayburn is dead. Newscaster: Joe Rubenstein. Please rate and review this podcast — and thanks for your support!

This week, A'ndre and Ryan speak with Farah Pandith, the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the State Department, on countering violent extremism. Farah, who has served under three U.S. Presidents, discusses her engagement with Muslim communities around the world during her time at both the National Security Council and the State Department. She emphasizes the importance of soft power in thwarting the incubation of ideological extremism and terrorism, and identifies her approach with Muslim communities in Western Europe during the early-to-mid 2000s in the aftermath of the Danish Cartoon Scandal. Farah outlines why questions around "identity" were so important in understanding how Muslims were perceiving themselves in their countries, and is candid about how she saw and currently sees the U.S. Government's outreach to the global Muslim community since 9/11. Lastly, Farah offers her honest thoughts on how she sees diversity in U.S. national security circles, reflecting on issues she faced throughout her career, and stating that the U.S. has a long way to go.Farah is the author of How We Win: How Cutting-Edge Entrepreneurs, Political Visionaries, Enlightened Business Leaders, and Social Media Mavens Can Defeat the Extremist Threat.

On this episode, a discussion with experts Fiona Hill and Angela Stent on Russia's re-emergence as a great power after the Cold War ended, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, and also more broadly on how economic change, deindustrialization, and other forces open doors for populist leaders to rise in places like Russia, and the United States and the United Kingdom as well, as we've seen in recent years. Stent is a nonresident senior fellow with the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings and senior adviser to the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and professor emerita of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. She is the author, most recently, of “Putin's World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest.” Fiona Hill, the Robert Bosch Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe, served from 2017 to 2019 as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council. Her most recent book is “There Is Nothing for You Here; Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century.” Hill and Stent also talk about how their careers in Soviet and Russian studies got started, the rise of Putin's Russia, how social and economic decay can lead to the rise of populist leaders, and how to revive opportunity in America. Show notes and transcript:   Follow Brookings podcasts on Apple or Google podcasts, or on Spotify. Send feedback email to , and follow us and tweet us at  on Twitter. The Brookings Cafeteria is part of the .

How does a miner's daughter from Bishop Auckland in County Durham end up in the White House? Whilst her community was small, a combination of luck, opportunity and sharp intellect led Fiona Hill to Russia, opening her eyes to our shared human experience and deepening her geopolitical understanding. Hill's diplomatic qualities helped her work under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Then in the first quarter of 2017 Hill was appointed by President Trump to his National Security Council. Two years later she would testify in the impeachment inquiry against him. Her book, There Is Nothing for You Here is out now.

Tonight's guests are Jeffrey Schweers, capital bureau reporter for the USA Today Florida Network; and Javed Ali, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

Fiona Hill is director of the Center on the United States and Europe, and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Growing up in England's coal-mining country, Fiona Hill knew that she was in a forgotten place. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father told her to get out—to go to London, or Europe, or America. “There is nothing for you here, pet,” he said. Hill managed to go further than her father ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served on the National Security Council. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the US, she saw grim reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink—and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from systemic collapse. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and explains that only by expanding opportunity can we save our democracy. Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59246374-there-is-nothing-for-you-here Connect with Audiobook Reviews in 5: · Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audiobook_reviews_podcast/ · Twitter: @janna_ca · Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AudiobookReviewsInFiveMinutes · Anchor: https://anchor.fm/audiobookreviews · Audiobook Reviews in Five Minutes website: https://podcast.jannastam.com/ · Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/jannastam Audio production by Graham Stephenson Episode music: Caprese by Blue Dot Sessions Rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Anchor, Breaker, Google, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, and Spotify

Fiona Hill was the top Russia advisor in the Trump administration, serving as Senior Director European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council from 2017-2019. The daughter of a coal miner and midwife, she grew up in Bishop Auckland in the 60s, moving to the U.S. to escape the class and accent discrimination she faced in the UK. She served as a policy expert on Russia under three presidents but was catapulted to fame for her testimony at the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump. She has written about her experiences in a new memoir, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity In The 21st Century. Hollyoaks star Sarah Jayne Dunn is defending the OnlyFans pictures that led to her exit from the long-running soap. Sarah - who has played the character of Mandy Richardson on the show since 1996 - was reportedly axed after refusing to delete her OnlyFans social media account. The platform is often used as a means for people to sell pornographic photo and video content to paying subscribers. Sarah joins Emma. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence has published new guidelines on the induction of labour for pregnant women with what has been called a u-turn on their original proposals in the summer. Elizabeth Duff, senior policy advisor at the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) and Asma Khalil, Consultant Obstetrician at St George's Hospital in London and spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists explain what these changes mean. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

How should the U.S. government respond to recent calls for greater European strategic autonomy in security and defense? Hans Binnendijk and Ambassador Alexander Vershbow join Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend to discuss the path towards a transatlantic agreement on strategic autonomy. Hans Binnendijk is a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He formerly served as Senior Director for Defense Policy at the National Security Council and as Director of the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies. Alexander Vershbow is a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. His previous positions include NATO Deputy Secretary General, United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia.

Only twice in history have two women who served as CIA officers been elected to Congress. The first time was 2018, and the second was 2020—both of them featuring Abigail Spanberger and Elissa Slotkin. David Priess hosted an event for the Michael V. Hayden Center at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government, speaking with both of them about their careers, both in the intelligence community and in Congress. Abigail Spanberger represents Virginia's 7th congressional district and was a CIA operations officer from 2006 to 2014. Elissa Slotkin represents Michigan's 8th congressional district. She served as a CIA analyst, as well as a National Security Council staffer and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. They talked about joining CIA, their experiences there, leaving the intel world, how their CIA experiences help them as legislators, and a few pressing national security issues.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fiona Hill was a member of Donald Trump's National Security Council. She was a key figure who coordinated policy toward Vladimir Putin's Russia. She had a bird's eye view of the strange dynamic that played out throughout the Trump years. The repeated and seemingly inexplicable sympathy that the US President had for the authoritarian Russian leader culminated in a disastrous press conference in Helsinki. This of course is where Trump sided with Putin as opposed to his own US agencies in regards to the Russian interference in the 2016 election. Hill contemplated faking a seizure and throwing herself into a row of people right behind her in order to stop the press conference dead in its tracks. This is one scene from Hill's new book - There is Nothing For You Here. She joins to discuss. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Trump Presidency challenged many public officials to make a choice: obey directives from the White House against their better judgment, or take a stand and face the wrath of the pro-Trump movement. Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser at the White House, took a stand. She was a key witness in Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, and has since had time to reflect on what his presidency meant for America and its geopolitical standing. (Photo: Fiona Hill, the National Security Council's former senior director for Europe and Russia. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“People should not underestimate Donald Trump's abilities as a retail politician", says my guest today, fellow Brit-American Fiona Hill. "He knows how to connect with people, he knows how to get people riled up, he knows how to pit people against each other so that they can't push back against what he's doing”. Fiona is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. In November 2019, she testified in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. In very personal terms, we discuss the class system and social mobility in the UK, and her childhood in the North East of England, which lost its economic heart as coal mining collapsed; as well as her experience in the Soviet Union and Russia, American academia, and the White House. Fiona compares and contrasts the authoritarian style of Trump and Putin (with some discussion of Erdogan too); the need for more aggressive social and economic policy for places devastated by the shift away from industry; and the real and present danger posed to so many nations by political populism. We conclude, as her book does, with a discussion of what we can do as individuals and our own communities to build a stronger infrastructure of opportunity.  Fiona Hill Fiona Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. She is a foreign policy expert on Russian and European affairs, and has served under three presidents: Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush. Hill is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held numerous positions directing research at Harvard University, where she obtained her PhD in History.  More Hill Hill's book, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century, is an exceptionally honest tale of dwindling opportunity in the UK and the US.  You can read more of her work at Brookings, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Politico Her testimony at Trump's first impeachment trial is also worth watching (starting at 3:08:43)    Also Mentioned  I mentioned Joseph Fishkin's book, Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity, which if you haven't read by now, you really should!  Fiona mentioned The Fifth Risk, written by Michael Lewis and Angrynomics co-authored by Mark Blythe.  I quoted G.A. Cohen, “social justice isn't just found in structures and institutions, it's found in the thick of everyday life,” in his book If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? Fiona also mentioned the group Wider Circle and Dress for Success The Dialogues Team  Creator: Richard Reeves Research: Ashleigh Maciolek Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)  

Last week, the Department of Defense, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security and National Security Council each released their own reports addressing the issue of climate change as a national security threat. To unpack what's in the reports and what it all means, Natalie Orpett sat down on Lawfare Live with Mark Nevitt, associate professor of law at Syracuse University College of Law, and Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security and director of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Part 2 of a two-part series. Ryan McCannell moderates an interagency panel discussion about Civil Affairs in the U.S. National Security Strategy. Speakers include Andrea Freeman of the National Security Council, Jason Ladnier of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Conflict & Stabilization Operations, Ciara Knudsen of the USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation, and Pat Antonietti of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability & Humanitarian Affairs. The discussion was recorded during the 2021 Civil Affairs Roundtable. Edited and produced by John McElligott. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

Andrew Mueller sits down with Fiona Hill, former White House aide and senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, to discuss her memoir, working for the White House and how she prepared for her testimony at the impeachment hearing of Donald Trump. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Moment In HistoryColin Luther PowellFormer Us Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs of StaffMilitary Leader/U.S. GeneralA reading from the book: BH365: An Inclusive Account of American HistoryU.S. General and Statesman“All work is honorable. Always do your best because someone is watching.” (Colin Powell)Colin Luther Powell born April 5, 1937, New York, New York. U.S. general and statesman. He was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93) and secretary of state (2001–05), the first African American to hold either position. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell grew up in the Harlem and South Bronx sections of New York City and attended the City College of New York (B.S., 1958), serving in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). He entered the army upon graduation, served in Vietnam in 1962–63 and 1968–69, and then studied at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In 1972 he took his first political position, as a White House fellow, and soon became an assistant to Frank Carlucci, then deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He held various posts over the next few years, in the Pentagon and elsewhere, and in 1983 became senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. In 1987 he joined the staff of the National Security Council as deputy to Carlucci, then assistant to the president for national security affairs. Late in 1987 Pres. Ronald Reagan appointed Powell to succeed Carlucci. Early in 1989 Powell took over the Army Forces Command.In April 1989 Powell became a four-star general, and in August Pres. George Bush nominated him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As chairman, he played a leading role in planning the invasion of Panama (1989) and the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations of the Persian Gulf crisis and war (August 1990–March 1991; see Persian Gulf War). In 2001 he was appointed secretary of state by Pres. George W. Bush.To find out more about African American history visit www.bh365.org and the get the the book today.Visit us at the link below to order the BH365 book:https://www.blackhistory365education.com/joannescaifeFollow Us weekly, every Friday at www.BHM365.com Email us at info@bhm365.comEpisodes Edited by: Juels N. Evans, Tech Engineer EditorResources: WK, www.biography.com, britannica.comPodcast music: Soundstrips.com, Title-Bitz*This is apart of BH365 Education posted for the public

In a classic riches-to-rags story, the wealthy and generous Timon goes from commissioning artwork and giving interest free loans to subsisting on roots and railing against humanity in Shakespeare's bleak comedy. The atmosphere is lightened somewhat by how he seeks revenge on his faithless creditors and his city as a whole through practical jokes, the machinations of a dishonored general, and a cadre of women working in the world's oldest profession. Will and James discuss just how sorry we should actually feel for Timon, how to deal with bosses that don't want to hear bad news, and what the Bard can teach us about the National Security Council. // Credits // Intro Music: Jon Sayles, "The Witches' Dance" (composed by anonymous); Outro Music: Jon Sayles, “Saltarello” (composed by anonymous); Illustrative Excerpts: Al Jolson, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” NBC (1932); "Timon of Athens," dir. Robert B. Loper, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (1955); Nia Gwynne, "Timon of Athens," dir. Simon Godwin, Royal Shakespeare Company (2018)

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Episode 550 General Keith Kellogg is a First Class Father and former National Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence. He is a Retired Army Lieutenant General who has dedicated his life to national service, with tours of duty in Vietnam, Panama, and Iraq, as well as commanding the 82d Airborne Division. Some of his awards and decorations include the Silver Star and Bronze Star for Valor. General Kellogg advised Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign and worked as chief of staff to the National Security Council. He is the author of a new book, “War by Other Means: A General in the Trump White House”. In this Episode, General Kellogg shares his Fatherhood journey which includes three children. He discusses his 41 year marriage to the love of his life. He describes his time in the White House and gives his response to others within the administration who have written salacious books about the President. He talks about his new book, War by Other Means: A General in the Trump White House. He offers some great advice for new or about to be Dads and more! War by Other Means: A General in the Trump White House - https://www.amazon.com/War-Other-Means-General-Trump/dp/1684512468 Subscribe to First Class Fatherhood and watch on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCD6cjYptutjJWYlM0Kk6cQ?sub_confirmation=1 SPONSORS: SeatGeek - https://seatgeek.com Promo Code: FirstClass Save: $20 off tickets MY PILLOW - https://www.mypillow.com Promo Code: Fatherhood Save Up To 66% Off 1-800-875-0219 More Ways To Listen - https://linktr.ee/alec_lace First Class Fatherhood Merch - https://shop.spreadshirt.com/first-class-fatherhood-/we+are+not+babysitters-A5d09ea872051763ad613ec8e?productType=812&sellable=3017x1aBoNI8jJe83pw5-812-7&appearance=1 Follow me on instagram - https://instagram.com/alec_lace?igshid=ebfecg0yvbap For information about becoming a Sponsor of First Class Fatherhood please hit me with an email: FirstClassFatherhood@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/alec-lace/support

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: Republicans – the ultimate mixologists - have put together yet another deadly cocktail using a combination of court decisions and legislative chicanery to put the right to vote for millions of Americans at great risk. Garnish with a toxic filibuster and the world of Democracy is heading for a screeching halt… What do the departments of Homeland Security and Defense, the National Security Council and director of National Intelligence have in common? Usually not much, but they've banded together in the issue of climate change – Joe Biden, are you listening? I love a good oxymoron – will you be joining “Truth Social?” That's Trump's new platform to showcase his long list of failures and band of Merry Men. If you decide to ‘follow,' don't forget to check the T&Cs…

If the United Nations Human Rights Council were a figment of George Orwell's imagination, you'd probably say: “Okay, very entertaining but, even accounting for dramatic license, this is a bit over the top.” The UNHRC is a club for many of the world's worst and most chronic violators of human rights (read FDD's assessment here). Among the privileges of membership: virtual immunity to criticism. The U.S., by contrast, is fair game for criticism. And Israel has long been the council's whipping boy. President Trump and his ambassador the UN, Nikki Haley, withdrew from the UNHRC three years ago. President Biden has reversed that policy. The U.S. has just won election to that body again – with the Biden administration promising that re-engagement will lead to reform. Joining host Cliff May to discuss the UN and human rights are Rich Goldberg, senior advisor to FDD, who has held senior positions in the House, Senate, and National Security Council; Orde Kittrie,  a senior fellow at FDD and a tenured professor of law at Arizona State University;  and Morgan Viña, who served as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, and is now Vice President for Government Affairs at JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

The Biden administration released several reports Thursday about climate change and national security, laying out in stark terms the ways in which the warming world is beginning to significantly challenge stability worldwide. The documents, issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Defense as well as the National Security Council and director of national intelligence, mark the first time that the nation's security agencies collectively communicated the climate risks they face. The reports include warnings from the intelligence community about how climate change can work on numerous levels to sap the strength of a nation. For example, countries like Iraq and Algeria could be hit by lost revenue from fossil fuels, even as their region faces worsening heat and drought. The Pentagon warned that food shortages could lead to unrest, along with fights between countries over water. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Photo: Selim the Grim, Ottoman conqueror of the Middle East CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor CBS Audio Network @Batchelorshow Confrontation in the region much more likely.  Eran Lerman @EranLerman, and Malcolm Hoenlein @Conf_of_pres @mhoenlein1 Dr. Eran Lerman @EranLerman  is the Vice President of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. Previously, Dr. Lerman was deputy director for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He held senior posts in IDF Military Intelligence for over 20 years. Dr. Lerman recently launched the new magazine Jerusalem Strategic Tribune - www.jstribune.com https://jiss.org.il/en/lerman-irans-intimidation-of-azerbaijan-must-be-answered/ https://www.arabnews.com/node/1951211/business-economy https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/france-and-greece-hedge-their-bets-with-a-new-defence-pact

Before Fiona Hill became a celebrated foreign policy expert and key witness in the 2019 impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump, she was a coal-miner's daughter from northern England in a town where the last of the coal mines had closed. Her father urged her to get out, saying “There is nothing for you here, pet.” Hill went on to study in Moscow and at Harvard and served under three United States presidents. But in both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. Her new book, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, draws on her own journey out of poverty and her unique perspective as a policymaker to warn that America is on the brink of socioeconomic collapse and an authoritarian swing that could rival modern Russia. In her powerful and deeply personal account, Hill reveals why expanding opportunity for desperate and forgotten Americans is the only long-term hope for our democracy. Join us as she reflects on her own experience and expertise to analyze the future of American democracy. NOTES This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. SPEAKERS Fiona Hill Former Senior Director for Europe and Russia, National Security Council; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Author, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century In Conversation with Ellen Nakashima National Security Reporter, The Washington Post In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 12th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before Fiona Hill became a celebrated foreign policy expert and key witness in the 2019 impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump, she was a coal-miner's daughter from northern England in a town where the last of the coal mines had closed. Her father urged her to get out, saying “There is nothing for you here, pet.” Hill went on to study in Moscow and at Harvard and served under three United States presidents. But in both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. Her new book, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, draws on her own journey out of poverty and her unique perspective as a policymaker to warn that America is on the brink of socioeconomic collapse and an authoritarian swing that could rival modern Russia. In her powerful and deeply personal account, Hill reveals why expanding opportunity for desperate and forgotten Americans is the only long-term hope for our democracy. Join us as she reflects on her own experience and expertise to analyze the future of American democracy. NOTES This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. SPEAKERS Fiona Hill Former Senior Director for Europe and Russia, National Security Council; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Author, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century In Conversation with Ellen Nakashima National Security Reporter, The Washington Post In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 12th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Harnisch was the Deputy Coordinator for Countering Violent Extremism at the State Department during the Trump Administration. Among other various national security roles, he also was the Director for Transnational Threats and the Director for Afghanistan at the National Security Council. Chris also is a part of the Army reserves. He served for 14 months in Kabul, Afghanistan, and worked for an intelligence task force that focused on corruption, organized crime, and insurgency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there now a dual system of justice? Many think so. For example, a former senior FBI official lied repeatedly to his bosses, but now is exonerated. But a former head of the National Security Council did not lie to the FBI and his life was destroyed. Where is the justice in that? CrossTalking, with Lionel, Sabrina Salvati, and David Gornoski.

Retired Army Lt. General Keith Kellogg, former National Security Council chief of staff under President Trump and National Security adviser to Vice President Pence, discusses his new book, War By Other Means: A General in the Trump White House. Giving an insiders look at the daily dealings he had with President Trump from the early days of his first presidential campaign through his presidency. One noteworthy anecdotes from his book, is the decisive decision by President Trump to target Iranian General, Soleimani, after an attack on an US Embassy saying that these ‘were the reasons' he wrote the book, to shed a different light on President Trump than what the media portrayed.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In May, Hamas leaders in Gaza — a territory from which Israelis withdrew in 2005 — launched more than 4,000 missiles at Israel, sparking an eleven-day conflict that would have been bloodier — on both sides — had the Israelis not been in possession of the Iron Dome, a marvel of engineering that intercepts and destroys short-range missiles before they can reach their intended victims. In other words, it is not a sword but a shield. Last month, far-left House Democrats blocked a bill to keep the federal government operating until it was stripped of funds to help Israelis replenish interceptors for the Iron Dome. A few days later, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer brought Iron Dome up as a stand-alone bill. There were 420 votes in favor and nine opposed. To discuss these and related issues, Foreign Podicy host Cliff May is joined by Jacob Nagel, who has served in the Israeli Defense Forces, the Israeli Defense Ministry, and the Prime Minister's Office including as the head of Israel's National Security Council and acting National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He headed the “Nagel Committee,” which was responsible for Israel's decision to develop Iron Dome. He also led the negotiations and signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for U.S. military aid to Israel from 2018 to 2027. He's currently a visiting professor at the Technion Aerospace Engineering Faculty and a senior fellow at FDD. Also joining the conversation: Enia Krivine, Senior Director of FDD's Israel Program as well as FDD's National Security Network; and Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power. Before joining FDD, Enia's work focused on strengthening U.S.-Israel relations including at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); the Israel Allies Foundation; and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she served as a Middle East fellow. Brad has served as a national security advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. Prior to that, he was an active-duty U.S. Army officer, Black Hawk pilot, and assistant professor at West Point.

In this episode, Anthony is joined by Dr. Fiona Hill, former Deputy Assistant Director to President Trump, and Senior Director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. They discuss her new book ‘There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century,' and she takes us back to her brave testimony during President Trump's first impeachment hearing. Next, Max Chafkin, author and features editor at Bloomberg Businessweek joins Anthony to discuss his book, ‘The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power,' which argues that Thiel may be the most powerful person in Silicon Valley—and perhaps the world.Finally, Lord Parry Mitchell, tech entrepreneur, member of Britain's House of Lords and former advisor on digital policy for Prime Minister Tony Blair, gives Anthony his take on the current UK Labour party — and what it would take to oppose Prime Minister Johnson in the 2024 general election. Follow our guests on Twitter:https://twitter.com/chafkin https://twitter.com/lordparry Follow us:https://twitter.com/moochfm  https://twitter.com/scaramucci  Sign up for our newsletter at:www.mooch.fm Created & produced by Podcast Partners:www.podcastpartners.com 

In her new book "There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century," Fiona Hill reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.Fiona Hill is the Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. From 2017 to 2019, she served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council.

Part 1 of a two-part series. Ryan McCannell moderates an interagency panel discussion about Civil Affairs in the U.S. National Security Strategy. Opening remarks from retired Colonel Chris Holshek. Speakers include Andrea Freeman of the National Security Council, Jason Ladnier of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Conflict & Stabilization Operations, Ciara Knudsen of the USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation, and Pat Antonietti of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability & Humanitarian Affairs. The discussion was recorded during the 2021 Civil Affairs Roundtable. Edited and produced by John McElligott. Sponsored by Tesla Government and LC38 Brand.

In this episode of “Keen On”, Andrew is joined by Fiona Hill, the author of “There is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century”, to reveal how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia. Fiona Hill is the Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She recently served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. From 2006 to 2009, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council. Visit our website: https://lithub.com/story-type/keen-on/ Email Andrew: a.keen@me.com Watch the show live on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajkeen Watch the show live on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankeen/ Watch the show live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lithub Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiteraryHub/videos Subscribe to Andrew's newsletter: https://andrew2ec.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Roger is joined by Michael Allen, the Managing Director of Beacon Global Strategies. He previously served as Majority Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as well as on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. Roger and Michael discuss his career in national security, the role of the […]

Brookings senior fellow Fiona Hill, a leading expert on Russia and Vladimir Putin and former senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council, joins David Dollar to discuss her new book, “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century” (Mariner Books). In her memoir, Hill describes growing up in a rapidly de-industrializing and decaying area in northeast England in the 1970s and ‘80s, how she came to study Soviet and Russian affairs in college, and how rapid economic transformations have led to the rise of populist leaders in Russia and recently in the United States. Hill tells Dollar that we need collective will that transcends politics to deal with current and emerging challenges in the U.S. and abroad. Dollar & Sense is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Send feedback to bcp@brookings.edu, and follow us on Twitter at @policypodcasts.

In conversation with Trudy Rubin, Worldview columnist, The Philadelphia Inquirer Known for her testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives during Donald Trump's 2019 impeachment hearings, Fiona Hill has more than 30 years of experience in foreign policy. The Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, she is a former National Security Council official and a former officer at the National Intelligence Council. Hill is the coauthor of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin and The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, and she has written extensively on strategic issues related to Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In There Is Nothing for You Here, she traces her path as the daughter of a coal miner in northern England to her service to three U.S. Presidents. Hill examines the desperation impacting American politics and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy. Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books (recorded 10/7/2021)

Fiona Hill became known worldwide when she testified during former President Donald Trump's first indictment. Until recently, what she went through to become a globally recognized expert on Russia and survive in sometimes hostile circles dominated by men, was not well known at all -until her book came along.

Our distinguished panelists will give an overview of the present situation in Afghanistan following U.S. withdrawal and how quickly the Taliban took power. They will also explore how we might help our Afghan allies and others fleeing to the United States. Humaira Ghilzai, who instituted the Sister City relationship between Hayward, CA and Ghazni, Afghanistan, is a dedicated woman's advocate and Afghan cultural advisor. She will talk about how we might help Afghan women threatened with the loss of rights and freedoms. Ami Dodson is a JFCS East Bay volunteer services manager who has been helping to to resettle Afghan refugees in the SF Bay Area. JCSF works with HIAS, a global Jewish nonprofit, which protects and assists refugees of all faiths and ethnicities. Steve Miska was a White House director for Iraq on the National Security Council, and during combat tours, he led a team that created an underground railroad from Baghdad to the United States for military interpreters. MLF ORGANIZER Celia Menczel NOTES MLF: Middle East SPEAKERS Ami Dodson JFCS East Bay (Jewish Family and Community Services) Humaira Ghilzai Co-founder, Afghan Friends Network Steve Miska Colonel (ret.), U.S. Army; Author, Baghdad Underground Railroad Atta Arghandiwal Former Refugee; Humanitarian; Author, Lost Decency: The Untold Afghan Story—Moderator In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on September 20th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we hear the Combat Story of Mike Hayes, a retired Navy SEAL Team and Special Operations Task Force Commander who fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Bosnia over a 20 year career. His time in uniform brought to key points in U.S. military and diplomatic history, including intersections with Operation Red Wings, the Mersk Somali pirate kidnapping, and an international treaty negotiation with Russia. While in the Navy, Mike was one of the very few selected as a White House fellow, where he served under both Republican and Democrat administrations and as the Director for Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council. Since leaving the military, Mike has gone on to senior roles at Bridgewater Associates, Cognizant, and VM Ware. He's written a fantastic book, Never Enough, that we'll discuss during this interview and for which all proceeds go to Gold Star families. Mike is a model leader and giver and I hope you enjoy his Combat Story as much as I did. Find Mike Online Instagram @thisis.mikehayes https://www.instagram.com/thisis.mikehayes/ Twitter @thisismikehayes https://twitter.com/thisismikehayes LinkedIN Mike Hayes https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-hayes-733688/ Book Never Enough https://tinyurl.com/ybv89rdh Find Ryan Online Instagram @combat_stories https://www.instagram.com/combat_stories/ More about Ryan www.combatstory.com/aboutus Intro Song: Sport Rock from Audio Jungle Show Notes 0:00 - Intro 1:10 - Bio on Mike Hayes 2:10 - Interview begins 2:53 - Gold Star Families 4:35 - Guam and Science Fairs 9:00 - Others Before Self 16:22 - Telling a General ‘No' 22:50 - What to do when you're kidnapped 33:58 - Operation Red Wings 38:02 - When to pull the trigger and when to hold 46:55 - Holding people accountable 55:08 - The White House Fellow Program 1:00:20 - Working at Bridgewater Associates for Ray Dalio 1:07:50 - Building egalitarian teams in business 1:15:00 - What did you carry with you into combat? 1:16:45 - Would you do it all again? 1:20:10 - Comments from listeners (THANK YOU!)

Dr. Michael J. Green is senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and director of Asian Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Previously, Dr. Green served on the National Security Council staff from 2001 through 2005, first as director for Asian affairs, and then as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia. Today we are lucky to work with Mike at The Asia Group, where he is a senior advisor. In this episode, Mike and Rexon delved into Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's resignation, the race for leadership of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the AUKUS security pact, and the first in-person Quad Leaders Summit. You can find a full video of this episode at www.youtube.com/wSvkY8tzvEq21kNOjYILXQ

A new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa contains reporting about several controversial actions by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in late 2000 and early 2021, regarding conversations with his Chinese counterparts, his discussion with senior military officers about following standard nuclear procedures (if need be), and reaching out to others like the CIA and NSA directors to remind them to watch everything closely. Were each of these reported actions proper for a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and why? And what about all of this coming out in books? To talk through it all, David Priess sat down with an A-team on civil-military relations. Peter Feaver is a civil-military relations expert at Duke University and director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. He served in National Security Council staff positions in both the Bill Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations. Kori Schake is the director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute who has worked in the Joint Staff J5, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in the National Security Council's staff, as well as the State Department's policy planning staff during Bush 43's administration. She has also researched and written extensively on civil-military relations. And Alex Vindman is Lawfare's Pritzker Military Fellow and a visiting fellow at Perry World House. His government experience includes multiple U.S. Army assignments, time inside the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in the National Security Council staff.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

BILL WALTON, Chairman, Resolute Protector Foundation, Host, The Bill Walton Show, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth, Poverty and Morality, @billwaltonshow Bill Walton talks about Evergrande's troubling future: China is not going to let a Lehman Brothers happen within their borders Walton: The Chinese Communist Party is racing against the demographic clock Hong Kong as "another Chinese city" as the region undergoes its first “Patriot Elections” How is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission responding to extensive Chinese influence within American capital markets? VICTORIA COATES, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Security Policy's Middle East and North Africa Department,  President, USAGM's Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc., former Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs, National Security Council, Author, "David's Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art," @VictoriaCoates Victoria Coates: Iran has signaled that they will only enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action again so long as the U.S. relaxes all its sanctions against the Islamic Republic Coates: “You can't have a good faith negation with a partner that doesn't have a good faith word to give” Coates: This would be quite the moment to play hardball and pressure the Iranian regime into abandoning its nuclear program Europe's coming energy shortage is affecting the continent's lofty climate change goals Victoria: Don't put your energy security for an entire continent in the hand of Vladimir Putin The Biden administration blames “price gougers” for the rising gas prices, refusing to acknowledge America's apparent lack of energy independence since President Trump left office  SAM FADDIS, Former Clandestine Operations Officer, CIA, former Congressional Candidate, Editor, ANDMagazine.com, Author, “Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA,” @RealSamFaddis How close is Iran to "getting the bomb?" Sam Faddis: “The Biden administration is in the process of surrendering to all these enemies of the United States, not confronting them” Faddis conveys that the Biden administration has not backed away from potentially giving conditional aid to the Taliban Faddis: We just transported the Taliban into the 21st century in terms of communications Faddis: Stanford, like many of America's preeminent educational institutions, has taken vast quantities of money from the Chinese Communist Party 

On August 29, as American troops were accelerating their pullout from Afghanistan, the U.S. military ordered its last drone strike in the 20 year war. The missile destroyed a parked car that military officials said was operated by an Islamic State sympathizer, and contained explosives for a suicide attack on the Kabul airport, where American forces and civilians had gathered for evacuation. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told a news conference, “We think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.” Last week, separate investigations from The New York Times and The Washington Post questioned those assertions, reporting that the driver was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime engineer for the California-based aid group Nutrition and Education International. The supposed explosives, said the Times, were canisters of water Ahmadi was bringing home to his family because Taliban's takeover of the city had cut off his neighborhood's water. The Times also reported that 10 members of the Ahmadi family were killed in the Hellfire missile attack, including seven children. General Milley told reporters, “We went through the same level of rigor that we've done for years. Yes, there are others killed. Who they are, we don't know. We'll try to sort through all that.” The British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has counted that the US military conducted more than 13,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan over the years, with at least 4,126 people killed, including at least 300 civilians and 66 children. Drone policies changed over the years under during different presidencies. As did the way the US counted civilian deaths by drone strikes. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has a dramatically higher count for civilians killed in Afghanistan by drones: more than 2,000, with more 785 of them children. If accurate, that would mean that about 40 percent of civilians killed by drones in Afghanistan were children. It appears that drone warfare will continue to play a major role in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, President Biden promised Islamic State—or ISIS-K, “We are not done with you yet. … We will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth, and you will pay the ultimate price.” But without troops in the country, that hunting will almost certainly be done mostly through unmanned aircraft. Back in 2011, CT ran a story asking “Is it wrong to kill by remote control?” This week, we want to revisit that question. Our guest this week is Paul D. Miller, is professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He earlier served in the US army, the CIA, and on the National Security Council staff as director for Afghanistan and Pakistan. These days, in addition to his post at Georgetown, he is a research fellow with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is author of Just War and Ordered Liberty, published earlier this year from Cambridge University Press. Among that book's chapters is one one on the ethics of drone warfare. Quick to Listen listeners may also remember Dr. Miller from our January episode on Christian Nationalism. What is Quick to Listen? Read more Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow this week's hosts on Twitter: Ted Olsen and Andy Olsen Follow our guest Paul D. Miller Music by Sweeps. Quick to Listen was produced this week by Ted Olsen and Matt Linder The transcript is edited by Faith Ndlovu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Photo: This resembles the 17 IC-related agencies within the executive branch of the United States Government (USG). The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) consists of 16 agencies and organizations under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that all collaborate with the U.S. Justice Department.. CBS Eyes on the World with John Batchelor CBS Audio Network @Batchelorshow #AfterAfghanistan: Memories of 9-11-01 at the National Security Council. The profound improvement of American intelligence-gathering. David Shedd, Former Acting Director DIA. Heritage Foundation. GLXXG https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/09/08/yes-were-safer-from-terrorism-because-of-intelligence-reforms-after-9-11-however/