During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week, Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) spoke about the need for coordination between the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of State.
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00:00of questioning. Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, this is an opportunity to get the State
00:06Department right, I hope. And I will tell you, I'm going to start with a quote from Clausewitz.
00:14War is a mere continuation of policy by other means. I am convinced that we are,
00:20we call it great power competition. I'm not sure that's what it is. I think we're in
00:24hybrid war now. You may remember just a couple of days ago in Spain, Portugal, and southern part
00:32of France, there was an outage. Siemens Security now says that it was a cyber attack.
00:39It was on the skated equipment and it caused cascading failure across two countries and
00:45part of another. I want to pick up on something that Chairman Emeritus McCall said
00:54because in your written statement, Ambassador Jeffrey, you talked about
01:04the DOD combatant commands need to be aligned with the bureaus.
01:12I am of the opinion, and I'd like your opinion, of the State Department and DOD need to work
01:17together in the national interest of the United States across the world because policy in the
01:23State Department simply is acting in our national interest and eventually to preclude war between
01:30great powers. So I think that this committee ought to inform the NDAA because we ought to have a
01:40coordinated national policy for where we are going as a nation, which would include the backup of hard
01:49power to any soft power that we exercise around the world. China is certainly on the march and
01:56they're making moves toward Taiwan. I just returned from Europe and one of the points we were making to our
02:03European allies is when they build infrastructure such as pipelines, they need to be coordinated with the war plans
02:11that General Cavoli is putting in place in NATO and turning NATO into a legitimate war fighting organization.
02:18So yesterday, I held a hearing in the Europe subcommittee on the cyberspace and digital policy branch of State Department.
02:28So I would ask you, Ambassador, for your thoughts on this and particularly the digital policy here because it is a part of the hybrid war that we are in now.
02:33Thank you, Congressman, and thanks for the Clausewitz quote. It's one of my favorites.
02:40Our flag officers are responsible for the other means. That's their business. Our job is the continuation, that plug-in between policy and what the military is doing in the field, the things they blow up, the territory they hold, territory they seize.
02:58And I found the military is very willing to listen to diplomats in the State Department. But the procedures, be it on the digital account, be it on emerging technologies, be it on new threats, the channels have to be clear cut.
03:23It's very hard to have two battle buddies. And most of our combatant commanders and most of our assistant secretaries are in that situation.
03:31And it undercuts the immediate understanding, the sort of mind meld that you get in the field. For example, when I was in Iraq and later in Syria, I had a three or four star military counterpart in only one.
03:48And those officers only had one. It was me. And it worked very, very well. So I do think that that's important.
03:55In terms of the new threats, again, we bring the civilian side, which is often very important on these emerging military technologies, again, cyber, digital, all of that stuff.
04:09We can bring that to the table, and we can reinforce what the military is doing.
04:14Very good. So for the two ambassadors, where would you put cyberspace and digital policy?
04:20You mean organizationally in the State Department?
04:24Where would you put it?
04:26I think it's really hard, actually. You can have pros and cons for any of the conceivable ideas that I've seen.
04:32There was a movement to put it under P, where I served. I didn't think that was a particularly wise idea, partly because I knew I didn't have the skill set, frankly, as undersecretary to really grapple with the cyber threat.
04:47It was beyond my experience zone. So I think the first thing, not to skip your answer, I'll come back to it, but the first thing is to make sure we actually have people who can handle it.
04:55You know, have the background. We are diplomats, as Jim said, first and foremost, but we also have to have the technical competence to deal with the subject matter at hand.
05:03And I don't believe we've been training people to deal with the cyber threat.
05:07I would put it in the T family, if forced to make a decision, because, again, I think you're more likely to get the kind of people who have the frame of mind to deal with it.
05:18It's global in nature, of course. And so that's that's where I would put it.
05:22And I know time is of the essence, but I would just reinforce, in my experience, the coordination between the Foreign Service and embassies and combatant commanders has been superb.
05:31And it works far better in the field than DOD state relationships do back here.
05:36Not that they're bad, but overseas, I think because we're all on the front lines of whatever we're dealing with, the cooperation and communication is really outstanding.
05:44Very quickly, Ambassador, do you have an idea on CDP organizationally?
05:50Yes, I would agree with David.
05:54It should be one of the global bureaus or offices, probably T.
06:00But the key thing is those are the kind of global things I like because they provide technical expertise.
06:06It's a worldwide problem. It spreads beyond any regional bureau.
06:10And they provide support to us like the counterterrorism people do.
06:16They don't try to do our job for us or take away from us or compete with us.
06:21And that's very important.
06:24Thank you, Reverend.