Could I ask you to start setting the stage a little bit from your perspective as someone who was on the Hill and very influential afterwards in learning from this?

Well, let me also thank the Gates Foundation and Steve for, for doing this.

Uh, what I've learned in the United States Senate is, or Congress, is memories are very short.

And, uh, to recognize something that happened 25 years ago is challenging for people with our color hair, uh, to remember all the aspects of it.

But I think the thing that stood out the most was what, what we weren't prepared for.

And, um, that's not to say that we, we responded quickly and, and, and from an investigative standpoint.

Um, it was, it, it was really a, a medical response to a crisis.

Sir, you had mentioned attribution, and given that we're talking about deliberate attacks, can you say a couple more words about that? Because it would be a mistake, I think, for anyone to assume that because we're not perfect, somehow that means that we're an attractive target.

And given that we're talking about deliberate attacks, can you say a couple more words about that? Because it would be a mistake, I think, for anyone to assume that because we're not perfect, somehow that means that we're an attractive target.

Well, I don't get too deep into it because then I have to put my Intelligence Committee hat back on, and I tend not to go there.

The reality is that the first is the medical response, but the second has to be who did this.

And who could be a naturally occurring or it could be intentional.

But that's absolutely crucial from a standpoint of what the next steps after that are.

And I think as we talk about AI engineered, AI directed, we begin to lose the fingerprints that have at least historically been there to suggest, well, we need to look at this region of the world or we need to look at this particular group.

And we really are going to be in a situation where we'll have an architecture that addresses the most important thing, which is response, but Everything that we tried to build up to this point happens in that total architecture.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

Is that a strategy that, that can help?

Well, it can help, and I think even the secretary recognizes the fact that, uh, we've got to have more product on the shelf than 13 products that have been approved.

So there's just as much responsibility on the CTP to begin to approve some of the applications that have been in for as long as five years, and understand that under the statute, FDA is required to address these applications within 180 days.

So five years is way past the length of time that statutorily they were supposed to look at it.

So there is a responsibility on the part of FDA to actually begin to do their job at CTP and to provide the adult consumers more choices that are approved on the retail shelf, and that's hopefully an effort that, uh, FDA is working, uh, with the industry to try to accomplish.

What would you say to people who think, you know, the jury is still out on that?

Well, I would say that, um, by every scientific account, uh, products that don't combust tobacco are less harmful, and clearly there may be different or varying degrees of, of assessment of vape product.

One of the largest growing areas, uh, right now is pouches, pouches that one puts in their mouth.