Aspen Security Forum

Former Secretary of State @CondoleezzaRice, former Defense Secretaries Robert Gates & Mark Esper, and former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan discuss National Security @AspenSecurity #AspenSecurity – LIVE on C-SPAN2 c-span.org/event/public-a…

“We have to step back a little bit and recognize that Israel’s strategic calculation is very, very different from before Oct. 7, and that’s a big deal for the region,” the former director of the CIA and head of U.S. Central Command said. #AspenSecurity jewishinsider.com/2025/07/david-…

Let me be clear: #Ukraine is not here to ask for charity. We’re looking for real partnership—deeper 🇺🇸🇺🇦 ties between our defense industries, especially in the private sector. This is part of my speech at the @AspenSecurity

In closing the #AspenSecurity Forum, @anjamanuel1 invokes Joe Nye: We come together not just to talk, but to disagree and to check our own assumptions, to listen to one another.

“I worry about our human potential...We are not held together by nationality or religion or ethnicity, we are held together by a creed: It doesn’t matter where you came from, it matters where you are going…If too many Americans are not included in that creed, we won’t play a…

.@jakejsullivan on firings at the State Department: "These are public servants who have given their lives to this country and they are being mistreated." @CondoleezzaRice: I spent my life treating them with respect…The Foreign Service is the best and the brightest. Secretary…

.@CondoleezzaRice: "It's insulting to talk about the real Marco Rubio. He is a competent believer in American power and its exercise." The State Department is "badly in need of reform," she goes on. #AspenSecurity

"One of the accomplishments of the first Trump administration, certainly from the DoD [perspective], was the recognition through our national defense strategy...that the era of counterterrorism was behind us," says @MarkTEsper. "We should start stacking munitions in preparation…

.@MarkTEsper says the U.S. long did not grasp what it means to conduct a long war in an era of great-power competition. He argues we must build the industrial base and that there is still not a sufficient sense of urgency in the Executive Branch and in Congress.

.@jakejsullivan: Trump took a good step in responding to Chinese export controls on rare earths, but we need to do a lot more. On re-shoring industry, Sullivan says the Trump administration is "confronting the same challenges that we did."

Asked by @SCClemons about Americans' view of "forever conflicts," Secretary Gates says, "The conflicts did go on, and there didn't seem to be any resolution."

"Americans have always hated war," Robert Gates says. "We are not an isolationist country, but we are a country that wants to be left alone."

.@condoleezzarice reminds us: "Great powers don’t mind their own business." "How can we recreate in the American people the sense that the United States is better when it is engaged in the world?"

.@CondoleezzaRice: "There was some carnage in large parts of the country" in response to globalization and the post-war economic order. She highlights the threat of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism.

Happening now, @CondoleezzaRice, Robert Gates, @MarkTEsper, and @jakejsullivan join @scclemons at the #AspenSecurity Forum for a conversation on 'The Long View From Aspen.' Watch today’s livestream here: tinyurl.com/4vusa5zc

A dark scenario on AI is not inevitable, said @anjamanuel1. She described two possible scenarios: 1) A 9/11 of AI: Non-state actors abuse the technology in ways that harm us 2) A Chernobyl of AI: The tech itself does something harmful We can prevent this, says Manuel. AI…

"The Trump administration has a very good ambassador [to China], David Perdue," said @RNicholasBurns of his successor. "I spoke to him at great lengths. I supported him. I think he's going to do a really good job. We need that."