Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of D-Day | Fireside Chat with Dr. Condoleezza Rice on Democracy

Fred Ryan quotes President Reagan on security and democracy, then introduces Dr. Condoleezza Rice welcome to the finale of our two days together uh before we start I just wanted to to mention one thing and that is uh getting a group together of this size and as unruly as this group is uh takes a lot of work and I our foundation team and Institute team has been working for months to put this together and please join me if you would in expressing our appreciation for the direct work that they've done well as we begin the finale of our program today I would like to quote from President Reagan's D-Day remarks he said quote we are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago the same loyalties traditions and beliefs we're Bound by reality the strength of America's allies is vital to the United States and the American Security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe democracies we were with you then we are with you now your hopes are our hopes and your destiny is our destiny well that message from President Reagan should ring true now just as it did 40 years ago our security and strength of our democracy is tied to the strength and security of our Democratic allies in Europe and around the world our freedoms are inextricably linked president pres Reagan understood that the question today is whether those who wish to lead our country into the future understand that a diplomat and Scholar who early in her career became an expert on the Soviet Union Dr condalisa Rice our 66th Secretary of State understands well that democracy can never be taken for granted as she so thoughtfully stated here at the Reagan Library a little over a year ago standing with our allies is quote not only a matter of Justice it's a matter of protecting our interests great power rivalry has reemerged with a Vengeance great power rivalry was the defining foreign policy challenge of the Reagan Era and it will likely be the defining issue of this generation as well so what can we learn from President Reagan's example what can we learn from the lessons of World War II and D-Day how do we protect our democracy and prevent global war we're honored to have the opportunity to ask these questions and more of secretary rice there there are many ways to describe her she's the head of Stanford's Hoover institution she's a professor at Stanford Business School the author of numerous books a respected voice on geopolitics a former National Security adviser to the president a class ically trained pianist An Elegant Ice skater a superb golfer part owner of the Denver Broncos but most of all we like to refer her and welcome her as Trustee of the Reagan presidential Foundation please join me in welcoming secretary condalisa rice Dr. Rice takes the stage, what's on your mind regarding the 80th anniversary of D-Day welcome thank you here over here welcome back Dr Rice it's great to have you here thank you very much and of course uh Fred it's coni please okay thank you um well we've had two days of of great discussions about President Reagan and today the focus has been on the 80th anniversary of dday and I thought maybe we could start off just by asking you here we are on the 80th anniversary of that momentous occasion and what thoughts come to your mind well I was at the 60th anniversary of D-Day uh at Normandy um with President George W bush and uh there were a couple of things that were so extraordinary about it I'm just so glad that uh we do these celebrations of it every 10 years or so uh the first was this the extraordinary sacrifice that uh these young people uh from the Farms of the United States from the cities of the United States uh young people who wouldn't have been able to do a long dissertation on global politics but they understood that this was an important place to sacrifice uh in order to secure freedom and it's very touching because they're in Normandy there are so many commemorations of that sacrifice and I think it shows us what can happen when uh Democratic allies bind together against what must have seemed at the time insurmountable odds and we just need to be constantly reminded you know the reason that you do uh anniversaries or you do these commemorations is first of all to uh memorialize and to appreciate those who sacrificed but also to take inspiration from them for your part to be played and so um I remember that extremely well um Normandy is uh to my mind quite a quite a sacred place for democracy right well Do you think today that we have the national will to respond to war like enlisters did in WWII? when you you talk about sacrifice back during the war people enlisted and went to serve at unprecedented numbers and it was contributed caused our our Victory do you think today that we have the national will to resp respond in the same way that this generation did at that time um I may be um someone who is more optimistic about the answer to that question than much of what you'll hear these days uh first of all let's remember that after September 11th 200 2001 uh men and women responded they went into the Armed Forces uh they became officers in the armed forces it's another kind of greatest generation was born and so uh when called Americans respond the other uh point that I'll make is that I'm quite aware that uh there are all of these polls about Americans not wanting to be involved in the world and you can understand we've endured uh 80 years uh or more of uh carrying the burdens in many ways of the world carrying the burdens of democracy and I I sometimes hear it well haven't we done enough didn't we defeat the Soviet Union uh didn't we defeat Al kaida didn't we unify Germany can we liberated Eastern Europe can't somebody else do it right but then Americans carry another almost contradictory view in their heads and that is well I can't watch a small country being extinguished by its larger neighbor I can't watch the horrors of bua I can't watch Syrian babies choking on nerve gas I I can't watch people being beheaded on television and so so if no one else will do it then we'll have to do it and I think that that DNA is still very much alive in Americans and all that I would ask of those who would seek to be our leaders is that you appeal to that sense that America's interests and America's values can only be sustained and protected by sustaining and protecting the values of others and that we cannot uh we cannot consider ourselves Fortress America uh Fred whenever I'm asked this question I ask uh Americans just to remember three dates remember that a War began in Europe in 1914 we thought we could sit it out and by 1917 it was clear that we couldn't and we had to enter at greater costs than had we done so in 194 and then in 1938 1939 a war broke out in Europe and by 1941 we had to be dragged in and again at higher costs than had we acted earlier and then in 2001 we thought the war was out there and the war was actually in New York and Washington DC and the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania and so every time we have uh refused to recognize that we are the only Power capable of Defending democ democracy in the way that only we can do it uh we've paid a price and the world has paid a price and so I just ask us to keep remembering that uh Fortress America simply doesn't work right um What kind of America is the next president inheriting? some of the conversations we've had today have talked a little bit about the world that President Reagan inherited when he became office in office January 20th 1981 the Soviet Union was on the March Cold War was raging now a new president will take office be sworn in on the of January next year could you compare the world that that President will will inherit compared to the world Ronald Reagan had well it is a different world um I'll come back to the fact that I think that the uh demands of this world are not unlike the demands of the world that Ronald Reagan uh walked into that Oval Office in uh January of 1981 but what's different well first of all great power rivalry of a kind that we've not seen since the end of World War II has reemerged and while the Soviet Union was uh quite an adversary and as as uh as President Reagan often said a sad experiment uh that had been uh hoisted on uh on these people this terrible experiment of Communism uh the Soviet Union was a military giant but it was a technological and economic MH and it wasn't very integrated into the International System at no time was more than 1% of Soviet G DP accounted for in international trade now this time around we see the emergence of great Powers with territorial claims Vladimir Putin in Russia his claims against Ukraine really being claims that the Russian Empire cannot exist if there's an independent Ukraine but that brings him into very close contact with our article 5 NATO obligations in places like Poland and in Romania and the like and so uh it's a different kind of great power conflict in Europe in the Endo Pacific it's a different kind of great power conflict because China is a country of 1.4 billion people that we integrated it into the international economy and so unlike the Soviet Union we are interwoven in the international economy with China look at the number of American businesses that are in China look at the the degree to which we learned at the time of Co our entire pharmacological supply chain was in China and so yet we have this adversary in China that is a military technological and economic uh competitor of a Kind we've not seen before and then finally we have Regional powers like Iran also with territorial claims that are very close to our and of course the Chinese territorial claims to restore China Taiwan uh the Philippines we're seeing and so again very direct territorial conflict we haven't seen that for a while a second thing is there's a technological Revolution underway uh and uh it's a technological arms race and we'd better win it because whatever you think the dangers uh or the issues are or maybe the opportunities are with AI or with synthetic biology or opportunities in space democracies will debate it we will have investigative reporting we will have Congressional hearings uh if something goes wrong people will be there to disc not an authoritarian regime and so the safeguards in a democratic regime are absolutely necessary in this technological period and then finally um I would say that even if the the uh challenge is different let me just say one other thing about that these these three that I've mentioned the Russians the Chinese the Iranians it's not like they get together every Monday morning and say what are we going to do today to destroy American power in the in the world okay but they all want to expel the United States from International Leadership and that they have in common and so everything that they do is really aimed at doing exactly that even if it's not a coordinated effort among them so that's another challenge but what did we learn from the cold war from Ronald Reagan's extraord ordinary leadership during the Cold War well we learned several things the first was peace does come through strength and here I worry you've had some discussions of this that our defense industrial base uh is not what it should be that we can't build ships in the way that we need to that we're having trouble now meeting our uh the the military having trouble meeting its Recruitment and Retention targets and so are we prepared and what Ronald Reagan did after a period in which the American Military had really been in Decline he came in and he built it up he strengthened it he said we cannot have peace through strength unless the American Military is strong we've got to do that again do we have the will well I worry when all we're doing is continuing resolutions in Congress that are basically eating the seed corn of our military so we've got to get that right secondly we've got to realize as Ronald Reagan did that values matter yes it matters that we have allies who share our values it matters that ukrainians are fighting and dying for the values that we stand for too it matters that in places uh across the world people are still trying to get to the United States of America because they want freedom and so uh for all of those reasons we have to reaffirm the importance of values and then finally Ronald Reagan in some ways was the culmination and George HW Bush as well of 40 Years of having had an idea that turns out to have been right George Kennan said we have to deny the Soviet Union the course of the easy course of external expansion until it has to turn to deal with its own internal contradictions and that's exact exactly what happened it had to turn to deal with its own internal contradictions and it collapsed China has Massive Internal contradictions Russia has Massive Internal contradictions Iran is an internal contradiction and so denying them the external course of expansion is very much our job now because eventually these autocracies How would you say we're doing in the technological race? will not last um just to come back on the one of the points you made on we must win the technological race how would you say we're doing at this point I would say we are we're doing okay uh we're doing okay because there's nobody more Innovative and creative than the American uh people the American economy to be fair I live in Silicon Valley you know and technolog is always good in Silicon Valley um I'm hoping this time around uh that we're not just good at the knowledge part but we're good at the wisdom part because these are incredibly transformative Technologies everybody talks about AI right now you know in Washington they've learned to spell AI uh but people don't actually really know what it is and what it can do but uh one of the things we're doing at the Hoover institution is we're doing something called the the Stanford emerging technology review and we're working with the scientist uh the computer scientists the bioengineers about all of the major emerging Technologies and if you think AI is scary look at synthetic biology when we had the first uh first seminar on this uh Drew Indy who is a bioengineer said the cell is the basic unit of life and soon we will be able to engineer the cell now that got everybody's attention so why do I say we have to win this race well just do a little thought experiment what if the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany had won the race for the atomic bomb we might have lived in a very different world we cannot allow China to win this race now we have two ways of doing it one is we can continue to try to stop them from uh succeeding and and uh people say well unilateral sanctions don't matter well sometimes they do and actually the fact that they can't get the Nvidia chip uh because of sanctions has meant that uh they can't do generative AI right so that there's that But ultimately they're are smart people they've stolen a lot of Technology they've got a lot of people who've studied here and gone back and So eventually they're going to be able to do these things so we have to keep running faster and here I want to go to a very Reagan like idea do not let the United States government get in the way of innovation right because they will not do it well um I I don't mean that we may not need regulation we may not need rules that the private sector with these Technologies and of course this time around this all exists in the private sector uh needs to be responsible but the problem with government regulation is Regulators will regulate even if they don't understand what they're regulating and this time around we have to be very careful not to uh to cut off our own Innovation because then the Chinese just keep going the other problem we have I you know I I love our European allies but um all the regulations being done in Europe where none of the Innovation is taking place and so we need to work with for instance the UK where a lot of the Innovation is taking place to think about what's sensible and with a light hand because uh too heavy of a hand of government and and we're going to we're going to going to cut off our own uh Innovation you um Shouldn't foreign policy be bipartisan? you mentioned Congress a moment ago and I know there's the saying politics ends at the waterers Edge yet when there were efforts to SEC secure aid for Ukraine Israel Taiwan it became delayed it was delayed many months he became very partisan and at one point there was criticism leveled that the Republicans can only pass this with Democratic support well when it comes to foreign policy shouldn't it be bipartisan it should absolutely be by partisan and uh you know Madison once said that politics is constant contestation right uh he didn't say it was Warfare all right and so uh very often you would find Ronald Reagan um crossing the aisle you know the famous tip O'Neal friendship and so forth uh and in foreign and defense policy uh when you think about some of the the leaders in the Senate particularly they were on both sides of the owl so was John McCain and it was saying nun and it was Joe Biden and it was John Warner and and together they were able to steer a course uh where we could do the things that we need to do in a steady way all all that people really want from the United States is uh steadiness um you know I've I've often said you've heard me say this the only thing that our allies hate more than unilateral American leadership is no American leadership they do understand that without American leadership this will be an unfriendly world but if we're constantly kind of zigging and zagging it's very difficult for them to have confidence in us I'm glad we finally got the package um I give a lot of credit to Mike Johnson for uh managing to to do that um he also um faced down those who would have taken him out uh because he did do what was right for the country we need to have more of that uh particularly when it comes to foreign policy Are we doing enough to maintain our alliances? yes speaking of um dealing with our allies George Schultz had a great line that um maintaining alliances requires good gardening yes do you think we're doing enough good gardening now we need to Garden more all right Gardens will Gardens will they I think George George's metaphor was we needs will grow up if you don't garden and so uh we need to do more and we need to do more not just in Europe and in Asia I actually think we're doing a reasonable job uh both in the Trump Administration and now in the Biden administration of uh working with our uh allies in the uh indopacific partly because they see the rise of China and so we've never been closer to Japan we've never been closer to uh the Philippines we've never been closer to South Korea we have countries like Vietnam trying to get American bases uh but it's a daily kind of thing and uh if Mr Putin thought that he was going to weaken uh Europe and NATO uh surprise who would have ever thought that we now have an Arctic flank thanks to Sweden and Finland so are those alliances are are good I think we need to do more with um allies in other places uh Latin America is our neighborhood and uh it sometimes gets ignored uh because it doesn't make trouble uh Mexico uh has just had a presidential election none of us knows what that prends but these are relationships that I think you really do have to garden and garden frequently we have uh friends in in Africa there are fewer presidents for life in Africa we need to work on those relationships and so and then come to the Middle East we really need to Garden in the Middle East uh because our uh the the my one of my great um disagreements currently with this Administration is I don't know why we keep looking for moderates in Iran uh they aren't there and uh the more the more that we look for moderates in Iran the more we push bad buttons with our Gulf Arab allies in places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia and uh and not to mention Israel and so um I think there the gardening is to uh to be clear that we understand that our interest and their interest are being bridged by Iran and that we're going to do everything we can to put pressure on that regime and uh putting pressure on them doesn't mean uh unfreezing $6 billion doll for instance that would not be putting pressure right How much do you think President Reagan's personality played in the success of American foreign policy? right um yesterday we had a lot of conversations about the 20th anniversary of President Reagan's passing and of course you were at the the National Cathedral for the state funeral and also there were some of his allies on the world stage Margaret Thatcher and her daughter Carol is here and Brian and Son Ben are here and and yasahiro nakason and a number who were his allies but also someone who was his adversary was there Mel gorbachov and they had genuinely grown to respect each other and like each other and I wonder just looking back how much you feel president Reagan's personality and character played in his success in leading our foreign policy oh there there's no doubt in my mind that um that Reagan's uh character um his Bedrock belief in uh our values his understanding of the essence of America that's something I think we often don't value enough uh when when I listen to president president presidential debate sometimes it's and on day one I will no on day one you won't because uh you know turning the ship of State around is not so easy so what I want to hear is do you have an do you know the essence of who we are and uh Ronald Reagan understood the essence of who we are and he could then translate that into a reason for American influence American power um he was also just very Resolute and tough and you have to be you know the stories about um the famous uh intermediate range nuclear forces uh agreement when um the Soviet Union had tried um under repeated leaders to um to basically get us not to deploy uh Persian to uh in response to their uh missile deployments and they really helped to stir up um a lot of trouble protests a million people in the streets of Europe uh women chaining themselves to the fences of American military bases we tend to forget how really terrible it was between sort of 1979 and 1981 82 and um I'm told by was told by George Schultz that at one point somebody said to um Reagan who had said that the zero option meaning will'll only remove if you remove and somebody said to Reagan well would you be willing to take uh you know some percentage and Reagan said what about zero do you not understand and what about zero does does uh do the Soviets not understand right and so that kind of resoluteness but then the willingness to be open to new information information and New Opportunities and so I will never forget the pictures of Reagan's visits to Moscow but they had come after he had properly diagnosed what the Soviet Union was and why it was failing um I think he you know that I I remember I was a young faculty member and you know I was a academic and uh hearing an American president talk about an evil empire um I thought whoa that's a little heavy-handed for an American president but he was right and he called it what it was and then when gorbachov comes along and wants to try to change that he was open and he respected that so it was a a rare combination of toughness on the one hand and openness to change on the other um you mentioned in talking about the key dates uh 911 and you were our Do you sense that if something like 9/11 happened today, there would be unity like there was in 2001? national security advisor when 911 took place and at that moment unlike we'd seen for many years there was this great sense of national unity and pride and I think many of us remember the scene of members of Congress holding hands in front of the capital singing God Bless America do you sense if there was something like that today that we would have a similar reaction or do you think the nation is is too divided well I would like to think that you would get the reaction but if I look at the way we reacted to the pandemic right uh it was not with Grace it was not with a but therefore the grace of God go eye uh there was a lot of finger pointing and judgment and uh things that I think are not becoming of uh American citizenry and and I've asked myself why was that the case not in every case I mean there were people who helped and people who who tried to to help but if you if you think about you know well if you don't wear a mask or if you do wear a mask or if you don't close your schools or if you do close your schools we were almost at war with one another at the worst possible time uh but I have faith in in us as a people and and I think that that patriotic Gene is still there um that respect for for our fellow citizens uh you know we have something quite remarkable in the United States and dville talked about it in 1835 when he came here to see who these Americans were and he talked about these um voluntary associations that they get themselves into just to do good now that was really rare in 1835 it was still rare in 1935 and in 2024 it's still pretty rare around the world uh and so the idea that citizens helping citizens individual citizens helping other citizens is the highest form of democracy not what the government necessarily does but what we do for each other I still think that spirit is there and you see it in uh Boys and Girls Clubs and American Red Cross and rotary clubs and so maybe that's where it resides um there's a lot that tries to tear us part um we get our information in little silos um I tell my students all the time uh if you find yourself constantly in the company of people who say Amen to everything you say find other company because just because you think it is so doesn't make it so right and so as a people we've become less open to debating ideas and more likely to just yell at one another but I still think that Spirit shows itself um on an almost daily basis as Citizens try to help each other great now I have to be very diplomatic in asking this question okay um it occurs to me that you are now exactly the same age that Ronald Reagan was when he was elected president of the United States that's scary now I don't want to get in trouble with you bondy and asking the wrong question but is there another job either inside or outside of government that you might be interested in having H thank you [Music] um Doug won't be writing about me all right so um I um I have I learned a long time ago it is not in my DNA to run for office and um you know we say well the the wrong people are running for office no actually God love anybody who wants to run for office because what we put them through and what we say about them and the way we treat them as if somehow they're just there for self-aggrandisement it's a wonder anybody wants to run for office I also think that um one day they're going to open up people who run for office and they're going to find they have some extra chromosome or something because they are different they gain kind of an energy from being out there I would go out with the George W bush and we'd have five events in a day and by the time we'd finish the fifth one he's raring to go to the sixth and I just want to go back to the hotel you know I'm just green and so they do have something special I also love policy not politics and um I I really do believe that my uh calling now is with this next Generation I just uh before I came here we had we have a Hoover Fellowship for undergrad at Stanford and I just came from their final presentations and they were on everything from the rise of putinism and understanding putinism to uh a wonderful presentation on how to think about what is a good American citizen to presentations on Taiwan but they were doing what I hope our we can get our students to do which is to uh really try to understand an issue I I say to my students very often you know I I they are by the way the most public-minded kids I've taught PR I've taught for 40 years they hired me when I was 12 no I've taught for for 40 years they're the most public-minded but they're in a hurry and you have to say to them all right before you try to solve that problem how about we try to understand that problem you have to say to them just because you Googled it doesn't mean you've researched it right and you have to say to them my my favorite line I want to be a leader well let's slow down that's actually not a job description so if we can get them and and universities are at fault here if we are able to get them to the place that we're not telling them what to think we're teaching them how to think we're teaching them how to think deeply we're teaching them that history is complex history we we're teaching history these days they're oppressors and oppressed colonizers and colonized and so if you happen to get caught in the oppressed category then everything on the oppressor category must must be bad and the oppressed must be good and so if we can walk away from some of the the harm that we're doing to them I think they're going to be quite something and I think that's really my calling these days we as they say we we hope you'll keep your options Are there world leaders that you've met who were more formidable than others, and ones you still engage with? open um when you were Secretary of State you were America's top Diplomat you traveled the world you forg close relationships with a number of world leaders are there some that stood out to you as more formidable and ones and ones that maybe you continue to engage with yes um well I I continue to engage with Tony Blair um you know we we often said uh if I often said if the Brits aren't with you you're really by yourself there really is something called a special relationship there and um so I continue to um engage with uh with the Brits um I was just with uh Rishi sonak not too long ago he is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business so uh has some good Stanford ties um probably the most formidable leader um I have uh that I met was Nelson Mandela and it was because there was something extraordinary about somebody who spent 27 years in jail and came out not saying okay now that blacks can oppress whites that's what we're going to do but said we're going to build a multiethnic South Africa where everybody can be a part that takes vision and that takes the willingness to forgive that is just extraordinary and uh you you mentioned that I'm a a golfer and um Ernie Ells the Great South African golfer uh said once a white South African golfer probably of African's uh background and he said when Mandela died I felt as if my own father had died and I thought what a statement about this man and what he metant now sadly South Africa's gone off the rails but I I have to say he was somebody that I was very impressed with and then um President Bush liked um and I agreed with him people who were struggling but were trying their very best and uh a leader who doesn't get enough credit is Ellen Johnson surle who was the president of Liberia after 25 years of Civil War and she was kind of like a school M you know she was just sort of going to take her country by the ear if necessary and pull it uh along but um I will never forget uh Laura Bush and I went to her uh inauguration she was the first woman elected president in subsaharan Africa so we're all sitting there and all the African leaders are there a few of them de democratically elected a lot of them kind of you know presidents for life and they're all cheering everything she says and then she says um and tomorrow morning all of my ministers and I personally will put our financial statements our personal financial statements on the internet so everybody can see them now there's silence like are you kidding me you're going to do what and she was like that she was really a breath the fresh air in Africa so I was lucky I got to meet a lot of those people and I'll just give you one final one that may surprise you a little bit Ariel Chiron um Ariel Chiron um first of all he was a little tank driver right he was as wide as he was tall uh he was also somebody who oddly spoke English better than he understood it so what do I mean you would say something he would say something to you you would say something and and you realized he just learned a bunch of phrases and so he would sort of just put them together even if it didn't make sense but not too long before he had his stroke in January of 2006 I was at his farm and he was giving me a hard time about being a city girl who didn't know what the Sheep were and he knew every Sheep by name and he said don't you know that thing about Shepherds know their sheep by name and I said yes sir I'm a presbyterian Minister's daughter know that and uh but he he said uh we have to look to the Future future and he said uh in a famous speech Palestinians need to govern themselves and he had the authority as somebody who had built the state of Israel to do it unfortunately he had the stroke Palestinians weren't ready uh they've missed many opportunities to have their state sadly but uh Ariel Chiron was an extraordinary man and I think he doesn't get enough credit for uh what he might have The story of you and President Bush secretly traveling to Iraq? done um you mentioned of course President Bush and I know there's something that a number of us would love to hear you a story you'd love we'd love to hear you tell and that is when you and he did the secret trip to Iran with baseball caps irck I'm sorry Iraq Iraq with the baseball caps and hiding the back car can you tell us how that came together well this was in uh November of 200 3 so Saddam Hussein had only recently been overthrown it was obviously very dangerous but the president wanted to go and have Thanksgiving dinner with the troops and so the Secret Service had planned it that nobody would know uh so we went out to the ranch for Thanksgiving and then on that Wednesday night we got into an unmarked van the president and me we had on baseball caps uh unmarked Secret Service cars and the like and we go the only person who knew who we were going was lore nobody else knew not not even the girls knew and so because we're in an unmarked car with no lights however we get and we hit traffic and President Bush says to me what's that I said sir it's called traffic I know you haven't had it for a while and so we we managed to get to uh the Crawford uh to the uh Waco airport we get to the airport and the guard says I have to see who's in the back of the car Secret Service by this time is going crazy so we just kind of blast through this poor guy and we get on Air Force One but the part of this it's really quite we go to Washington pick up Air Force One the part of it that's really um still gives me chills is that uh because we were flying into what was still a war zone um Mark um who was the the um pilot of uh Air Force 1 had to spiral the plane down thek cork screw it down so that we wouldn't be hit with a a shoulder fired missile of some kind and just before he started this he told us that he was going to turn off all the lights in the plane and can you imagine the kind of eeriness of all the lights are off you can just see those little blue H hallogen lights and I said to um to Andy card and Dan Bartley maybe we should go pray with the president so we did um but it was extraordinary and then we we landed uh we had dinner with the troops we got back on the plane and then it was announced that we had um been in Baghdad after You' taken off after we' taken off and there were four uh journalists with us who knew but of course since their security was also at stake they didn't have any desire to tell anybody either so it worked but president later said yeah we kind of look like a couple going to Walmart for Which teams do you feel best in the NFL draft? well Connie when we have someone with great expertise here we always like to to get your insights and your your perspective on things so I would like to ask you which teams do you feel did best in the NFL draft uh apart from the Denver Broncos the Denver Broncos what do you mean apart from the Denver Broncos well um you know I'm a huge football fan okay so those of you who don't know my father was a football coach when I was born I was supposed to be as All-American linebacker he decided oh well he had a girl he'd just teach her instead um and um so um I I actually think that um I liked what the Houston Texans did uh Deo Ryan is a really great young coach and uh I like what the Texans did in this draft um I like what the Jets did too but I don't know if Aaron Rogers is um you know he's 40 years old that's that's old for a quarterback but I do have to tell you that um I football is my favorite sport but hockey is my second favorite sport to the maronies um and um I'm a San Jose Sharks fan normally but they're so bad that I've adop I've adopted the uh Colorado Avalanche but I'm going to say something in the Ronald Reagan Library that is perhaps a little unamerican I'm pulling for the Edmonton Oilers because the cup has to go back to Canada since 199 three the cup has not been in Canada it should go back to Audience questions, the current state of college football Canada time um well we we have a few minutes for questions uh from our audience um coni if if you're available we've got microphones um and uh looks like Ben Sutton has his hand up over there and feel free I I teach 19y olds nothing I haven't been asked so so I'm going to I'm going to continue on the uh on the football front those of us you know as you know I'm I have been in the college sports world my whole career um there are a lot of us in this space that think that um it would be great to have a a a great policy leader uh as the commissioner of college football it's not an elected position so therefore not that political any thoughts on the current state of college football yeah let me just say that I'm worried about the state of college inter col of Athletics in general um I think we we are in danger of seeing a separation of the student from the athlete um the the proposition really should be that you go to college because you do want to play your sport at the highest level your folks did your kids did you know ours do but there's also this thing called a college degree that you're going to get and oh by the way you know so I did a basketball commission for the NCAA 59% of D1 basketball players thought they were going to the NBA 59% the real number is 1.5% you need a plan B and so these kids need to be encouraged to get a degree I think football is separating from the rest and that's going to be a problem because football is the only sport that makes money and it funds women's tennis and men's golf and swimming and all of those things and not to mention the Olympic sports uh people really don't realize which university kind of the farm team for the US Olympic team and so um I'm worried about it uh we're going to have some rulings coming down soon about uh athletes um let me just put it this way name you know where make a commercial or something I have no problem with that they should be able to do that but I really do hope we can somehow reaffirm that these are students first uh we would be losing something very valuable if we if we did and right now you may want to know I'm actually special representative of the Stanford president for athletics because uh I don't know if you know this but Stanford is uh going to the Atlantic Coast Conference next year along with Cal Berkeley yes our geography is not confused we know we're not on the Atlantic coast uh but the Pack 12 has collapsed and Colorado wasn't on the Pacific coast either and so um we'll we we're going to do that so I've Been Working On Athletics the last uh last year or so Any advice for college students? another question there's over there hi secretary rice um my name is London and I'm an undergrad student at Pepperdine and I'm so glad um that you see a future with us college students is there any advice that you want to give us yes sure well I was uh at Pepperdine not too long ago actually you have a really fine uh school there and a lot of great things going on there um I would say uh first first and foremost um try to find what you really are passionate about uh while you're in college uh what's the specific combination of your skills uh and what you love that is going to sustain you for the rest of your life and sometimes when uh young people go to college they say I know what I want to be and a few do I knew what I wanted to be I wanted to be a great concert pianist uh turned out that that wasn't the exact alignment of skills and and uh interest and so I found something else so give yourself a little bit of time explore uh don't be just so determined to figure out what you want to do figure out what you want to be first and for me it turned out I wanted to be somebody who did things International who was who knew Russia and the like so that's the first the second is don't be afraid to try something hard um our students these days are so worried about the transcript uh that you fail to take things that are hard for you and I think you will find that you can be more fulfilled by doing things that are hard than by just continuing to do things that are easy so if you're really good at math write more if you're really good at writing take more math the third is the point that I made earlier take your time um I think anybody in this room of whatever age would tell you that college goes by in a flesh and uh if you can uh recognize that you're going to have many episodes to your life and you don't have to have a plan for when you're 45 uh you'll be open to different opportunities as they come along and the final point I'd make is try not just to stay with your tribe try to be and introduce yourself to people who are different people who come from different backgrounds who think differently um and try to engage them and the best way to engage people who are different is to resist the temptation to constantly transmit and to actually listen once in a while to what other people are saying and uh those will all be very fulfilling but congratulations peine is a great place you're I'm sure you're going to do very well Carol that yes Carol that yes uh From Carol Thatcher: Do you have a view on how the Liv PGA chaos should be dealt with? secretary more sport I'm afraid as a crack golfer yourself do you have a view on how the live PGA chaos should be sorted ah yes thank you yes it is politics actually yes uh so I have an outcome that I would like I would like these to be back together um I was at the Masters obviously um I want to see DJ play I want to see Brooks kka play um I also want to see Scotty Sheffer play and I want to see Max hom play and um it the game is better when all the best golfers are playing uh together and I don't know what the answer is going to be for how they do it I know there's a lot of water under the bridge I know there's a l there are ill feelings on both sides you took the money you didn't understand oh now you're making a deal with Saudi Arabia I know there's a lot of that but I really think if you know you could get two people in a room and say solve this that it's not Beyond to figure out how to get these two uh groups back together and uh it would also help um in other ways too um I think that there are those who fear that the women's game could start to Splinter and um that would also be a very bad thing so um I don't have a good answer for if I were trying to negotiate it I'm not sure what I would put as the terms but I do think that these two have got to come back together this is not sustainable to have them separated this way we have a question from Ben From Ben Mulroney: How do we deal with China today as opposed to Russia in the 1980's? yes yes thank you uh Madam Secretary for what you said about hockey I was at that game in 1993 when the Canadians last won the cup so it'd be very nice to have it north of the Border again also I got into Pepperdine law school and I took a trip to that campus and realized in about 3 seconds I would fail out of that school because it's so beautiful it is beautiful uh but Madam Secretary uh yesterday we had a panel um where we were given the broad Strokes of Ronald Reagan's policy towards uh the Soviet Union for step one uh call them out for what they are step two isolate them and marginalize them from the um from obtaining um credit and financial institutions around the world step three drive up the price of oil step four celebrate um more or less and um today we had another uh panel where the um an analogy was traced between the um the world that he inherited in 1981 and the world that we face today the biggest uh diss similarity that I see is sort of how interconnected we are to China versus how isolated Russia was so how does that factor into how we should be approaching China in the future yes absolutely and you're right it is that is the major difference uh it's hard to untangle and I don't think we will be able to completely untangle it um I think that we on we are decoupling on technology we are um we woke up one day and said oh and by the way one of the dumbest speeches any leader possibly could have given was xiin Ping's we will surpass surpass the United States in Ai and Quantum Computing by 19 by uh 2030 what did he think was going to happen we looked around and said wait a minute you mean that our supply chain for chips is in a place called Taiwan isn't that vulnerable we looked around and said what do you mean that rare earth minerals are all controlled by China and so slowly but surely and and oh by the way the Civil military Fusion so you're going to take the technology that we helped to fund through our venture capitalist and you're going to hand it to the pla so that they can expel us from the Indo Pacific uh we're off that train so we have decoupled but there going to be other areas in which we will continue to have commercial relations and I think it's not a bad thing um one of the ones that's kind of interesting is that Chinese are really very into American entertainment the CH all those only children right and so um when uh you may remember when the um Houston Rockets general manager said something about uh Hong Kong and the Chinese threatened to kick the NBA out and I called I talked to Adam Sila I said they're not going to kick you out because those young princelings are not going to watch the Chinese national team play the kazak national team right they want to see LeBron and they want to see Steph and so there are some places I would stay open to Chinese students because uh I do believe that we have an effect on people who come here and get to know us but on some places we're going to have to recognize the peace through strength Doctrine and that means uh that we have to be absolutely clear that we are in a position to defend uh help def Taiwan defend itself if necessary uh that we are going to continue to do freedom of navigation exercises that we are worrying about uh bumping up against the Chinese in various places and so we're going to support the Philippines and support Vietnam we're going to continue the quad with India and Japan and Australia uh we're going to leverage the fact that we have the strongest allies so we can do both um we can uh continue to do the things with China that make sense that the integration has brought about but we're going to have to toughen our stance on uh resisting uh their efforts to uh to build an alternative system to the US system and I think uh Reagan would have been very good at doing that because he knew how to simultaneously treat the Soviet Union as the evil empire that it was and as I said be open to possibilities for cooperation when What is the thing that people aren't focusing enough on? necessary we have a question back there yes obvious elction coming missing from the conversation what is the thing that you think that just nobody's talking about that's going over everybody's head that we need to uh focus on yeah uh I I think what's missing from the conversation is policy you know um I it's it's really kind of unfortunate um and uh you know everybody's got their slogans and uh and their appeals to base and all of that but um I as I said you know I've never been one in presidential uh debates or presidential elections for the most detailed policy proposal that you can put forward because it really is true when you finally go up there and you raise your hand and you get uh inauguration is over and you go and sit at the Oval Office desk for the first time and you realize there's really not that much that's going to change immediately um it it's I I've seen that look on president's faces like oh this is what it's like but we ought to have a a really important discussion about a couple of things one is our role in the world and I really want to say to people who want to lead us When Vladimir Putin and giian ping are on their Victory Tour because somehow we didn't support Ukraine and they ended up then defeating NATO because that's how it will be read I want you to stand up and tell the American people you could have stopped that but you couldn't get $61 billion for assistance to Ukraine and that's not going to be a pretty moment Mr President so why don't we talk about how you really view America's role in the world secondly I do understand why in certain parts of our country people are feeling as if globalization left them behind um when I teach at The Graduate School of Business at Stanford I will have a student with the following profile born in Brazil went to college at Oxford first job was in Dubai now is in school at Stanford next job will be in Shanghai moves easily around the world most people never mooved 25 miles from where they were born their possibilities are different their aspirations are different and for the unemployed coal miner in West Virginia with his opioid addicted wife we don't have anything to say to them and so I want to know what you're going to do to make sure that the America that I have benefited from and that I know is available to all Americans if they're willing to work hard for it what what's your idea about how to do that and we might get some very interesting answers because for some on one side it might be all about what the government can do to do that on the other it might be all about what private companies have to do and somewhere in there is a proper role for what the government might do and a proper role for what the private sector might do that may not surprise you I think 90% of it's the private sector but I'd like to hear that debate because people are talking over you know when when you say things like the economy is just fine and people can't afford their groceries they think you've lost your mind and so because I think Ronald re never lost touch with let's call it the common person uh he could speak to both that person who is in my class at Stanford and the person who just wanted to like up I want to have that conversation and then finally I have a kind of personal one that I want to ask so are you for school choice or not right so um and here's here's why I want to ask you that uh we already have a choice system in education if you are of means you will move to a district where the schools are good and the houses are expensive like Palo Alto California if you go across the street from Stanford pelto High has a performance arts center that looks like a smaller version of stanfords if you're really wealthy you will send your kids to private schools so who's stuck in failing neighborhood schools poor kids a lot of them minority kids so how can you say you're for civil rights how how can you say you're for the poor when you're condemning those children to not being able to read by the time they're in third grade they're never going to read so if you want to say that school choice and vouchers and uh charter schools are destroying the public schools fine you write that editorial in the Washington Post but then don't send your kids to Sidwell Friends right so that's the final question I would like to Conversation concludes ask well I I think that's just a perfect note to con this conversation coni thank you very much for spending time with us this thank you and thank you for all being here