On Wednesday, 18 years removed from the horrific events of 9/11, U.S. Marine Corp. Gen. John Kelly (Ret.), who also served as both secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and as White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, delivered a wide ranging keynote address at GSX 2019 in Chicago.
Reflecting on his time at DHS, Kelly discussed the communication barriers that existed between law enforcement and various intelligence agencies before 9/11 and provided examples from his tenure as secretary to demonstrate the remarkable improvements that have been made in the years since. Prior to delving into some of the challenges facing the nation from a domestic perspective, however, Kelly touched on many of the geopolitical threats the U.S. continues to navigate with other countries around the globe.
Foreign-Based Threats
Among the countries that present the greatest threats to the U.S., according to Kelly, include the usual list of suspects, such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Referring to China as a “competitor,” Kelly said that one of the advantages they enjoy against the U.S. and the West, as a whole, is that they are “not a free country.”
“They don’t have a free press. The leadership is not accountable to the citizens of the country and the country is organized in such a way that when we say things like private industry, in that the companies don’t have to do what the federal government says, it’s all part of the same system,” he said. “For example, this whole controversy about Huawei, on one hand the Chinese say they’re not doing things that the U.S. accuses them of in terms of things like stealing intellectual property and that sort of thing. Of course, the president is committed to keeping them out of doing too much in terms of internet upgrades in the Unites States but their argument, of course, is that they are a private company and ‘we don’t work for the government,’ which is simply untrue."
Also, unlike countries like the U.S. where the nation’s strategy is largely predicated on two-year cycles determined by the outcome of elections, Kelly said the Chinese are able to take a much longer range approach, looking at potential trends decades in advance, to determine how they want to approach different things.
“Over the last 50 years, they’re right on schedule,” Kelly said. “They’ve improved remarkably well. They have a very high-tech and sophisticated military and the plan kind of ends in 2040,” he said. “In our country, we don’t have the luxury of a long-term plan. It tends to be every two years, election to election to election and it’s hugely frustrating for people in the intel community, military and I would imagine business as well because you go and you try to make a case to the national leadership, Congress or even in the press and you try and make a case for a long-term program of some type and they say, ‘yeah, well we need to boil that down to what we’re going to do in the next two years.”
And while Kelly says that China doesn’t really see itself engaged in a military clash with the U.S., they are prepared for it. He also urged caution among those who travel to countries like China and Russia to be extremely cautious about the electronics they carry with them and bring home.
“If you bring your regular cellphone there with all of your contacts, passwords and all of the rest of the stuff, you’re crazy,” he said. “You might not think you’re important and they don’t really care but you might be important one day. It doesn’t cost them anything to capture your cellphone, capture your face and maintain it.”
Juxtaposed to China is Russia, according to Kelly, who says that they pose somewhat of a more immediate threat given the current nature of the economy and political climate in the country.
“Russia, in my view, is a little bit more dangerous than China because China is so slow-moving and calculating. They have a plan, they want to execute that plan and they’re very disciplined to how they go about that. The Russians, led by Mr. Putin, are very different,” Kelly explained. “It is a country that is almost in social collapse right now and the economy is not doing very well. Then you have Mr. Putin who wants to reestablish it as the world power it once was when it was the Soviet Union and is willing to take chances to do that.”
Regardless of your political leanings, Kelly also said that it is an indisputable fact that Russia played, and wants to continue to play, a role in the outcome of our elections.”
“The fact is the Russians attempted, which they’re doing now, to influence our elections,” he said. ‘The most precious thing probably we have, as Americans, in addition to our families, is our way of life, our government and they attempted to affect it in 2016.”
Domestic Threats
Kelly, who served for more than 40 years in the military, said one of the scariest things he has ever done in life was to review what’s called the “presidential book” presented to him as chief of staff on a daily basis by various intelligence agencies. “To sit there and have the most professional among the professionals that represented the intelligence community… and they boiled down, for special purposes for about an hour or so, the threats against the country and it is truly scary,” he said.
In fact, during his time as secretary of DHS, Kelly was faced with the prospect of nearly having to eliminate the ability of travelers to bring laptops into the passenger cabins of airliners based on a very real and credible threat of terrorists being able to smuggle explosives past security screeners using the devices.
“I was this close from preventing anyone from bringing a laptop into the passenger compartment and the pushback we got from the airline industry was pretty considerable,” Kelly explained. “I understand their point of view but I said, ‘look, what’s worse for airline business – someone doesn’t get to watch Netflix on their own computer in the passenger compartment or they fall out of the sky over the Atlantic in a big flaming ball?’ and they said, ‘good point.’”
However, unlike the days before 9/11 in which such a threat may have never seen the light of day, today’s standards in information sharing have made it much more difficult for these types of things to be overlooked.
“So much of the lack of sharing between law enforcement, federal law enforcement and others that protect our country that frankly allowed, in some respects, 9/11 to happen are gone,” Kelly told the capacity crowd of attendees. “Those barriers, to a large degree, are gone and the integration and sharing of information is phenomenal.”
And though we may grumble from time to time about some of the inconveniences caused by TSA, Kelly says it is certainly better than the alternative which we all experienced 18 years ago on this day.
“People are on watch 24/7 to protect Americans. Sometimes that turns into a little bit of inconvenience at the airport or in other places as we live our lives but the fact is a little bit of investment and a little bit of inconvenience is not a bad thing,” Kelly concluded.
About the Author:
Joel Griffin is the Editor of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
