Yeah.

Uh, on 9/10/2001, I had lunch with someone named L. Paul Bremer, Ambassador Jerry Bremer, who later became, uh, what was called the viceroy in I- in Iraq.

But at the time, he had chaired something called the National Commission on Terrorism.

I was a member of that commission, which was one of three commissions predicting, based on, uh, studies we had made, that there could be a major terror attack on US soil.

And Jerry and I were having lunch near the Capitol, uh, bemoaning the fact that no one was paying attention to us.

So, uh, 12 hour, whatever, 20 hours later, guess what? And I, yes, I had had lunch, I had had breakfast on the Hill, and I was walking to my office on the way to a meeting of the House Intelligence Committee.

I was then co-chair of something called the Task Force on Terrorism with Saxby Chambliss, who was then a member of the House and later became a senator.

Jane.

And what's going through your mind as you're making your way to the Capitol? Are you seeing the same images that Senator Chambliss just described?

Well, I hadn't seen them.

I wasn't in my office watching television.

I was having a breakfast on the Hill, but they were described by my office.

And actually, I was thinking about a couple other things.

Number one, my youngest child, number four out of four, was in high school in Washington at the time.

And my first instinct was to try to reach her.

Congresswoman, explain your thoughts here and why you thought it was important to put pen to paper here.

Congresswoman,

how important was that? Huge.

Huge.

Saxby and I had spent all day trying to get the government reopened.

That was one of the things we worked on together.

And it had some funny stories involved with that.

But when it finally reopened, and I had forgotten we were there for a briefing, we were standing together.

What was your view of history?

Thanks for that compliment.

I think some people in the audience agree with it, yes.

Well, if I could just start with the prior day, because it is relevant.

On 9-10-2001, I was having lunch with somebody many of you know, Jerry Bremer, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, because he had chaired something called the National Commission on Terrorism, on which I served.

And we had predicted a major attack on U.S. soil.

We didn't know where it would come from.

And, you know, we heard our allies were with us at the beginning, but we did as we as we took actions along the way that went off course, you know, we began to lose some of the support that we had internationally.

Yeah.

Uh, on 9/10/2001, I had lunch with someone named L. Paul Bremer, Ambassador Jerry Bremer, who later became, uh, what was called the viceroy in, in Iraq.

But at the time, he had chaired something called the National Commission on Terrorism.

I was a member of that commission, which was one of three commissions predicting, based on, uh, studies we had made, that there could be a major terror attack on US soil.

And Jerry and I were having lunch near the Capitol, uh, bemoaning the fact that no one was paying attention to us.

So, uh, 12 hour, whatever, 20 hours later, guess what? And I...

Yes, I had had lunch.

Jane.

When you hear a post like this or read a post like this from President Trump, does it make you optimistic for a breakthrough?

No, I think we've been hearing things like this over the long period since this war of choice commenced in late February.

And I don't think anything much is new.

I think the to use the metaphor that President Trump uses, Iran has a lot of cards and so does Israel.

And both of them have to be in a place where it's to their advantage to end this or at least slow this down.

It's to our advantage to do that, but I don't really think to theirs at this point.

I also don't think we have any really good military options, because if we now bomb the energy facilities of Iran, which would be the next logical target, they're going to attack the energy facilities of the entire region, and that will probably shut down even more oil and other resources from reaching the world and make the markets even more closed.

Could we look back on these meetings as an important inflection point?

Turning to Iran, from what we know about the talks so far, are you at all hopeful that President Xi can help push Iran to make a deal to end this war?

Definitely he can.

Uh, I...

Trump went to great pains to say he didn't ask him.

I wonder if he was asked sub rosa.

But anyway, uh, he definitely can.

He's the biggest user of Iran's oil, and he has the relationship, and, uh, not only with Iran, but with others in the region.

What do you think it would take for Congress to take any real action on this?

Mm.

Canada is a member of the Five Eyes.

That is a collaborative intelligence relationship among the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

If we don't share intelligence, I certainly worry that, uh, that the US mainland is very vulnerable because we are completely adjacent to Canada, and some of the threats we can think about, let's imagine coming from Russia, China, et cetera, could easily cross the Canadian mainland into the US mainland.

So we need to know what's happening.

We have the Northern Command, which is structured to think about the two countries as contiguous.

Uh, not one country, but contiguous in land space.

Why should Canadians trust the United States and go ahead with that deal?

One, amazing how much of this just puts us back in the position of where we were when Witkoff and Kushner were negotiating this the first time around, except now we have to talk about reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Yeah, getting back to the status quo ante is going to take a lot of work.

But there's another missing party at the table.

Thought I'd mention it.

I used to work there.

It's called the United States Congress, which under the Constitution is supposed to declare war.

And we may end up sometime somewhere soon with boots on the ground, at least according to the president's rhetoric.

What do people in positions that you know well—we talked a little bit about before—how do they navigate this? But how do the American people consume this? And I think the polling has shown that they're not consuming it well.

What's your take?

Well, first, welcome to my hometown, Jake.

Um, happy to have you in LA, wish I were there.

Um, but my take is Trump is not negotiating with Iran, he's negotiating with the markets, and I think a lot of this, uh, what amounts to noise, because it changes all the time, is about is the market going up, is the market going down.

Uh, maybe there's some early whispers to a few folks who could, uh, invest in the markets.

Um, but I think that's what it is, and I don't think he ever anticipated that after a couple of days it would become this.

And, uh, let me make one other point.

Uh, what's your take on that?

They survive launch, but then when they're in orbit, it's kind of, you know, they're in a vacuum.

And in addition to that, some of them can be targeted by others of them, and that's a huge worry.

The weaponization of space by a variety of countries without adequate rules is extremely scary.

There are now threats to put nuclear weapons in space.

Hopefully, that won't happen.

But even without that, there have been anti-satellite tests by China and Russia which show that they have the capacity to shoot down satellites in space.

I mean, obviously, if they don't like the United States, you can pick what they'll shoot down, and how do we protect against that? And if you have space debris, some call it space junk, floating around at very high speeds, it takes a very tiny little fragment to damage a satellite.

(laughs)

Jane?

Yeah, if I could just add to that, uh, it's a boffo performance, uh, by a, an A+ performer, our president, uh, but leading to what? Um, so far, Putin is winning.

The media in Russia is going crazy.

Uh, this is a huge, uh, opportunity for him after, uh, invading, uh, a sovereign country despite all his promises since 1994.

Let's keep that in mind.

It's not just this president who's been played by Putin.

It's five presidents who've been played by Putin.

Defense secretary, yeah.

From your perspective, how has the role of space as a national priority for the United States evolved over the past decade?

Well, thank you for including me in the broadcast, and I'm looking at three people who are far more expert than I, but I did pay my dues.

I did represent what I used to call the Aerospace Center of the Universe for 17 years and counting in the United States Congress.

And let me just back up three decades, because that's when I was elected, in the '90s, and when I was elected in 1992, uh, the Cold War had just ended.And, uh, the view of the United States, starting with the George H.W. Bush Administration was, "We won, they lost.

Everyone wants to be us.

We can now downsize our procurement budgets for defense and space," et cetera, and we did.

And so when I won my election to Congress, the area was a ghost town.

Congresswoman, if you were advising the US political administrators, what's one space security priority that you would put on top of the list these days?