A Review: 6th Reagan National Defense Forum

Last weekend I attended the 6th Reagan National Defense Forum (RNDF) at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley CA as part of Global Foundries for which I am a Director on their SSA Board.

The RNDF is an annual event in which key stakeholders come together to address the health of our national defense and to promote policies to strengthen the U.S. military. The theme of this Forum was “Peace Through Strength In An Era Of Competition.”

This was my second time attending, my first time being last year, and I thought that the event was again the best 1 day event I have attended in a while. 

Like last year, the day is comprised of several panels having several well know people as panelist with a professional Moderator from a news organization such as Fox News, etc.  Once again, the Panels were all excellent and worthwhile.

This year the organizers of the conference took prior surveys on several topics, which were used by the Panels. I thought the most interesting one was a survey where the person was asked to rank order seven organizations in which they had the most confidence.

The result was that 70% of the responses thought the Military was highest followed by Police with 50% and last was Congress. It was pointed out that the people taking the survey should or could not be taken as representative of the total US.

But the highlight of the conference in my opinion was an hour long Keynote Address by the Honorable James Mattis, U.S. Secretary of Defense. Secretary Mattis provided insights into the issues facing the US with respect to China, Russia, and North Korea which were clear and concise.

For this panel, the Moderator from Fox News asked questions and brought up Saudi and Jamel Khashoggi. Secretary Mattis said he has read all the intelligence reports and twice stated that there is “No Smoking Gun” most likely responding to statements in the Press.

The Intelligence reports have stated that there is High Confidence that Khashoggi was involved which is nowhere near as strong as saying there IS a Smoking Gun which is a piece of evidence that PROVES someone is responsible for a crime.

In closing, this event was well attended and extremely interesting. I encourage you to attend next year’s event if you can