Press Briefing: Previewing COP28

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This transcript is from a CSIS press briefing hosted on November 17, 2023.
Paige Montfort: Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today’s call previewing the upcoming 28th United Nations climate change conference, COP. As our operator introduced, my name is Paige Montfort. I am the assistant director of communications here at CSIS.
And I am joined today by four fantastic colleagues, all energy and climate experts with CSIS, who are going to weigh in on key themes and context for this year’s COP, as well as their expectations and possible outcomes. I’m going to introduce them in the order in which they will be speaking, and then they will each provide some opening analysis and insights, and then we will open it up to Q&A from those of you who have dialed in. And, of course, afterward we will share out a transcript direct to those of you who RSVPed, and also on CSIS.org.
So, first, we’re going to hear from my colleague, Dr. Joseph Majkut. He is the director of our Energy Security and Climate Change Program. And next we will hear from Dr. David Victor, who is a non-resident senior associate with the program. And he’s also a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California at San Diego. After David, we’ll hear from Dr. Gracelin Baskaran, who is the research director and senior fellow for our Energy Security and Climate Change Program. And finally, last but certainly not least, we will hear remarks from Ben Cahill, who is also a senior fellow for Energy Security and Climate Change Program. So we have a lot of ground to cover, a lot of great experts joining us today. So without further ado, I’ll hand it over to Joseph to get us started.
Joseph Majkut: Thank you very much, Paige. And thank you to all who are assembled, both my colleagues from CSIS as well as reporters and members of the press in the audience.
We’re going to cover a lot of issues today, but I wanted to start at the – sort of the top level, both repairing to my own academic expertise as a as a carbon cycle modeler, but also because I think it’s important, while the politics and underlying issues that we’re going to see a COP deserve a lot of treatment and a lot of nuance, we also need to keep our eye on the ball for what this is all about. Which is trying to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly enough to abate dangerous levels of climate change.
And here, at COP-28, we are going to – we’re going to see an important conversation around the first so-called global stock take, following the Paris Agreement, where countries are going to be evaluating themselves against the goals that they’ve set. And the U.N. published a document in September which will guide those conversations. And it shows what most of us already know, that the gap between what countries have committed to, never mind what they’re going to be actually doing, and what they intend to do in terms of realizing ambitious climate targets, is still quite large.
If you look at the U.N. document, the emissions gap and 2030 between what countries aim to do in their nationally determined contributions and what would achieve a two degree centigrade pathway is 16 gigatons of CO2. That’s already near between a quarter and a third of global emissions presently, never mind, if you wanted to get on a 1.5-degree path. The gap is 24 gigatons of CO2. And gigatons of CO2 is sort of a remote unit. So one way you might think about it, the IRA is widely thought of as the biggest investment in climate technology or the biggest move that the United States has made on climate change. Its emissions impact annually will be about a half a gigaton of CO2 per year, according to multimodal studies. So the gap globally between what we expect to see out of the current NDCs and the climate targets that the world has set for itself is somewhere between 20 and 40 IRAs.
Critically, these gaps have to be also assessed against – like, those gaps are being assessed against countries successfully achieving their goals. And there again, we need to be careful about what we might really realize. The U.S. NDC goal is a 50 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions against the 2006 baseline. The same modeling studies that evaluate the IRA show that we should really expect to see something between a 33 and a 40 percent reduction in 2030. But what this means is while there have been profound improvements over where we could have been over the last 10 years because of the falling costs of renewable energy, because countries are imposing climate policies, we still have a long way to go both in realizing present-day ambition and increasing ambition to meet the climate targets that the world has set for itself.
A lot of the conversation is going to be – a lot of the conversation this year at COP is going to be, is 1.5 still alive? Is it possible? The UAE presidency has made keeping it alive a priority, but the reality is that the – that that is going to be incredibly hard to achieve. And you’re going to see a lot of language around rapidly narrowing windows. But really what we need to see is progress on reducing emissions and establishing policies that are actually going to be achievable. What do we think we need to achieve? The IEA has set reasonable mileposts to keep 1.5 so-called alive – tripling renewable capacity globally by 2030, doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvements, reducing methane from oil and gas production by more than 75 percent. Each of those is a challenging issue for public policy. We’re going to hear about all of them.
But really what we want to be evaluating from the outside is, are governments committing to not just ambition but public policies that are going to realize those ambitions?
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to questions, and I turn it over to my colleague David for his thoughts.
David Victor: Thank you very much, Joseph.
I want to just say three things by way of introductory remarks. First is two things I’m looking forward to seeing and one that should be talked about and won’t be. The thing that I’m looking forward to most seeing or watching most closely is the risk of failure.
These are diplomatic negotiations. There are really two COPs happening in parallel. There’s the diplomatic COP where you have global committees reaching decisions by consensus. That’s hard to do. You have all-night conversations about the placement of commas, the phase out/phase down discussion around fossil fuels – this kind of endless set of controversies.
There is always a risk of failure at these events and when failure happens the legitimacy of the process suffers. In 2009 that happened in Copenhagen and the failure actually opened space for new ideas that helped produce the Paris Agreement. It was a good thing. Right now failure would be a very bad thing.
The area that I’m most concerned about is the developing countries and their understandable frustration with the lack of funding, and, in particular, as more and more of them focus on the fact that they are in for a huge amount of climate change they are very vulnerable. They need help and we have been slow to help them, and we’ve also been, frankly, slow to come up with viable ideas for how to help them and spend money wisely.
So that’s all – that topic always sits in the background but it’s simmering at a higher rate this year. It was simmering pretty highly – pretty aggressively last year and there’s always this risk that a group of countries will get upset enough that they’ll withhold formal agreement and they’ll go home unhappy and the process will diplomatically, at least, fail. So that’s one thing to watch very closely.
I don’t think that’s the most likely outcome but it’s always a risk and I think the risks this year are higher than usual.
The second is I’m watching the oil and gas industry. There’s been a lot of controversy, as everyone knows, about the host country and about their choice of president. I think in that country that was a good choice of president and, frankly, the oil and gas industry is on notice. It needs to do things about climate change. Some companies are doing some things – experiments, if you like – but not enough and not enough companies are doing that.
When you have these two COPs there’s the formal diplomatic COP and then there’s all these other side events, and I’m watching at the side events for what is the oil and gas industry, in particular, what is the Persian Gulf oil and gas industry and ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi national oil company, what are they offering – what are they doing, what’s their plan, what’s their credible response on the climate threat – and there’s going to be a lot of attention to that, and if they don’t have good answers it’s going to be a serious problem.
The third thing and last thing I’ll talk about is what needs to be talked about at these conferences and won’t be this year, and Joseph’s initial remarks really set this up nicely. Is 1.5. (degrees) alive? No. One point five (degrees) has never been alive. That patient has been dead and dead forever.
This year the world is at 1.5 (degrees). This is an El Niño year so a little warmer than usual. But we have a lot of climate change baked in the system. I think we’re at about – we’re on track for about 2 ½ degrees. We’re making progress because 10 years, 15 years ago we’re on track for 5 degrees. Now we’re on a track for 2 ½ (degrees). That’s partly because of climate policy. Good news.
But 1 ½ (degrees) is not a feasible goal anymore. Two (degrees) was never a feasible goal, and so the stock take will have this kind of almost theatrical discussion about how we need to do more and everyone will agree collectively we need to do more because no country individually is responsible for doing more according to that schedule.
We’ve got to find a different way to set targets. We’ve got to find a way to blink about these targets that are not achievable, like 1.5 (degrees). Think of it as how to – how to blink responsibly, if you like. But that’s a conversation that has to happen outside the room because no political leader, no business leader, will come forward at an event like this and be the first to say something like that because the political blowback will just be huge.
And I now pass it on to the next speaker.
Gracelin Baskaran: Thanks, David.
My name is Gracelin. I’m a research director for our energy security program. I’m a mining economist by training and when I head to COP-28 this year I’m looking to see how advanced and emerging markets engage in critical minerals, which is the heart of climate mitigation.
We cannot reach our net-zero ambition without significantly scaling up our security of critical minerals. According to IEA estimates, when looking at the growth in demand for select critical minerals for clean-energy technologies specifically we see a significant demand growth for copper, rare earths, manganese, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and lithium. This is a result of the upcoming mandates of clean energy policies – for example, the ban of new internal combustion vehicle sales in the European Union, U.K., even some U.S. states. It’s also the rise in deployment of wind, solar, and other clean technologies.
But we are facing two key challenges that we’re going to have to address at COP this year.
The first challenge we’re facing is that mining activity is contracting as a result of declining demand. It’s not actually that demand is declining in the long term, but short-term demand as a result of the higher interest rates – so borrowing is expensive – and a sluggish Chinese economy. Some of these factors are driving a surplus in supply. We know lithium prices are down 70 percent from the start of the year, nickel prices by 40 percent. Cobalt prices are – have fallen 50 percent from their peak in 2022. And firms have responded by curtailing their spending and activities, which is going to be a disservice to our clean energy deployment later.
S&P’s Global Market Intelligence releases a Pipeline Activity Index, which is a single score that measures overall activity in the commodities supply pipeline. It takes into account significant drill results, initial resource announcements, significant financing, and positive project development milestones. Between September 2022 and ’23, year-on-year, it has declined by 35 percent, and the Pipeline Activity Index reached its lowest level since May 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
The second challenge, which I think we’re going to see a lot of news and discussion and efforts around the COP, is that the U.S. doesn’t have adequate or even any reserves of some key critical minerals. And that’s going to force us to engage with emerging markets and talking that Africa has 85 percent of the world’s manganese, 70 percent of the world’s platinum group metals, 47 percent of cobalt, a fifth of the world’s graphite. South America has over half the world’s lithium; 40 percent of the world’s copper; and a fifth of graphite, nickel, and rare earth elements.
And graphite is a great example of something the U.S. doesn’t really have. You know, we have less than 1 percent of the world’s graphite. We’re facing Chinese export restrictions. So the U.S. has already been turning to emerging markets. The Development Finance Corporation approved a loan to a graphite project in Mozambique. And then, in turn, Department of Energy issued a loan to graphite processing in Louisiana. We saw that increase in activity – U.N. General Assembly saw significant engagement with high-ranking U.S. government officials and African countries specifically related to critical minerals.
So as the U.S. and our other mineral strategic partnership kind of ally countries are turning to emerging markets, how the U.S. pursues this deal at COP-28 will be key to seeing if we can reach net zero with the ambition that we’ve set out.
Thank you. I’m going to turn it over to my colleague Ben.
Ben Cahill: Thank you, Gracelin.
I want to talk about the Gulf states and how they see their roles in the energy transition and in climate policy.
The first thing to note is that the UAE has worked hard to make itself the voice of the Gulf states on climate policy. They’ve really focused on this for years. And Sultan Al Jaber, the COP-28 president and the CEO of ADNOC, has built a good relationship with John Kerry’s team from the State Department in particular. And so, for the UAE, hosting COP-28 is – they see it as the validation of a 15-to-20-year effort to focus on lower-carbon energy and to become a more diversified energy player.
It’s also, obviously, a big test for the UAE because the vision of the UAE and the Gulf states more broadly doesn’t exactly match up with the rest of the world. The Gulf states are, obviously, major oil and gas exporters. These are countries that have large-scale, low-cost, low-carbon-intensity resources, and so they’re pretty well-positioned to remain oil and gas exporters over the long term no matter how quickly oil demand falls. But I think the COP conference will show that these countries are changing their approach. They see themselves as not just oil and gas producers, but as sources of investment capital and innovation, and they want to be big players in the energy transition. And so, from the UAE perspective in particular, COP-28 is a coming-out party to show those ambitions.
Naturally, not all the Gulf states are following the same trajectory. There’s some degree of competition between them on these issues. There is some daylight between the UAE and Saudi Arabia on climate issues, for example on the issue of phasing out unabated fossil fuels, you know, by midcentury. The Saudis in general seem more cautious about the pace of change. But it’s important to note that for all the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the GCC states aside from Qatar, all of them have economywide net-zero targets. Those targets are 2050 for Oman and the UAE. They’re 2060 for Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. And their national oil companies have net-zero targets as well.
So I think the ambition of the UAE and the gulf states is to show what they’re doing and put their money where their mouth is, and then put this on display at COP. In terms of goals for national oil companies, the gulf states – and I think the oil and gas industry in general – is really focusing on decarbonizing their oil and gas operations by things like using clean energy to power facilities. I think they also will focus on expanding in hydrocarbon-adjacent sectors, like hydrogen, carbon capture and storage. There’s been an announcement of a direct air capture project in the UAE recently.
But in general, the energy transition blueprint varies by country in the Gulf. So it will include the national oil companies, but also other state companies. And if you look at what the gulf states are doing on clean energy investments, it’s really going to involve a constellation of different companies – state companies, sovereign wealth funds, state investment funds. So in the UAE, for example, this includes Mubadala, Masdar, ADQ. In Saudi Arabia, it includes companies like ACWA Power, which is investing in a big green hydrogen project.
So, in short, I think the COP shows that the UAE and others want to be responsible actors in the energy transition. They want to make climate commitments. We’ve seen, you know, a wave of announcements in the last six months by Masdar, which is the renewable energy player in Abu Dhabi, in offshore wind in Egypt, with other announces investments in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan. So I think there’s a real effort to show that the gulf states want to provide a source of climate finance and innovation, and make things happen faster. That’s a theme that will be emphasized at the conference.
And in terms of the specific goals, you know, a lot of the goals for the gulf states map pretty well against the agenda for the oil and gas industry heading into COP. You know, there will be a lot of discussion, of course, about phasing down of unabated fossil fuels, tripling investment in renewable energy, as Joseph mentioned at the outset of this call. But in terms of the specific asks of the oil and gas companies, including the gulf national oil companies, the COP president is focusing on asking companies to sign on to a global decarbonization alliance focused on net-zero goals.
Addressing methane emissions will also be a big priority. There’s an effort to rally oil and gas companies around the world to reach near zero methane emissions by 2030. So I think the goal there will be to put a bunch of these concrete moves on the table and to show that the gulf states are following, you know, other oil and gas producers around the world and making these commitments.
So as Joseph mentioned, there’s a recognition that we’re not meeting our goals. I think what the gulf states wants to do, the UAE and others, is to show that the UAE and the rest of its neighbors can be part of the solution in terms of climate finance, capital, and innovation. And I’ll stop here and turn it back over to our host. Thank you.
Ms. Montfort: Thank you so much, Ben. And thank you to each of my colleagues for your insights so far. I will turn it over to our AT&T operator and we’ll get going on questions.
Operator: Thank you.
(Gives queuing instructions.)
One moment please.
Ms. Montfort: I am going to go first to a pre-submitted question while folks line up in the queue. So to start it off, I will turn this over to anyone on the call who’d like to jump in here, but how does the Israel-Hamas war change things for this COP summit?
Dr. Majkut: Ben, do you have thoughts in that regard?
Mr. Cahill: Sure. To be frank, I don’t think it changes things that much. Naturally, there’ll be some people who are nervous about traveling to the region, worried about threats. Anytime you have a high-profile gathering of people like this there are security issues to consider. And, of course, we’ve seen in the last few years that there have been drone attacks and other security issues, you know, emanating from Yemen and elsewhere in the region.
You know, I don’t see that as a big threat. I think that the UAE security apparatus will be 100 percent laser-focused on security. And I think what we’ve seen in recent weeks is that with the Israel-Hamas conflict, there’s been a real effort in the region to contain this, to prevent it from spreading to Lebanon. Hezbollah has been pretty careful so far about not making threats to scale up its involvement. The Houthis in Yemen haven’t really lashed out or made big security threats as a result. So I think the direct impact is not that big.
You know, more broadly, the – another huge geopolitical risk in the Gulf is not good for business. It’s not good for the image of stability. It does make things more challenging. And it’s a reminder that, you know, historically, this region has presented a lot of economic and political issues that make investors a little bit wary. So, you know, maybe it’s a bit of a dent in the image of the Gulf as, you know, a safe place to come in, invest, and have gatherings like this. But by and large, I think that so many people are invested in going to COP and making it a success and doing what they can to make it a success that the show will go on.
Ms. Montfort: Thank you so much.
Operator: I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Ms. Montfort: We’ll go on to another pre-submitted question here. And so what does the recent U.S.-China Climate Agreement mean for potential COP discussion between the two countries, and does it take away from any possible outcomes? And perhaps, Joseph, if you could start?
Dr. Victor: I can talk about that. This is David.
Ms. Montfort: Or go ahead, David. Yeah, thank you.
Dr. Victor: Yeah, so I don’t think it takes away from any COP outcomes. If anything, it helps. The kind of theory of change built into the Paris Agreement was one in part modeled on a U.S.-China Agreement the year before Paris, which is get the big emitters to lay out pledges for what they’re going to do, and then get them to periodically check up on those pledges. The new agreements kind of refreshes those pledges a little bit. Maybe most importantly, it says, hey, we can talk openly about climate and not be always angry at each other. I think that’s pretty important for the two – for these two gigantic economies that can’t disentangle themselves for reasons of critical materials and key technologies around the energy transition.
So I think all of that is good. It’s kind of a signal that these two countries can find a way to tamp down some of the diplomatic chaos that they’ve generated for each other. So I think overall, it’s good news. It is kind of orthogonal news to the big risk I’m concerned about, which is developing countries getting – the least developed countries getting really, really upset about the lack of adequate funding.
Ms. Montfort: Thanks, David.
Joseph, did you want to jump in there, too?
Dr. Majkut: No, David covered it really well. The only thing I can add is that the agreement does expand the sort of mutual commitment between the U.S. and China to include all greenhouse gas emissions. That increases the focus that we’ll see, I think, on methane this year, both because methane is such a powerful climate forcer – emissions reduction there help rapidly and can help move toward the broader climate goals and are seen broadly as a way of making quick progress. Having China on board, since China is the largest methane emitter globally and kind of emissions come from a variety of sectors, is probably a positive development that we need to see what, you know, that sort of agreement in principle turned into actual emissions abatement, and probably faster than the 2035 goal that that that agreement has in it.
Ms. Montfort: Great, thank you so much. And we’ll just remind everyone how to queue quickly here before I go to our next question.
Operator: (Gives queuing instructions.)
And we do have a question from the line of Zack Colman [Politico]. Your line is open.
Q: We’re going to spend a lot of time at COP debating fossil fuel phasedown. There’s phaseout and abated versus unabated. I want to get a sense from you like what does that all matter in the real world? Like what do those choices and words signal? What real world effects do they have?
Dr. Victor: I’m happy – it’s David. I’m happy to say a word about that. I think they’re largely irrelevant to the real world. These are shiny objects that that people in the diplomatic world get excited about. When they get excited about shiny objects, they don’t focus on other things. and so they create risk of non-agreement, but for the most part, they don’t really matter. And that’s because the phase down versus phase out discussion, although it’s exciting for lots of people who are steeped in this process, it’s – the difference between where we are right now and where we need to be to stop climate warming, which is essentially zero emissions, where we are right now with emissions still rising, although maybe they’re going to peak soon – really a lot of that depends on the Chinese economy, and most of that depends on – none of that hinges on what happens at a conference like this. The – what’s clear is the direction of travel, and we really should be focusing on the direction of travel and that these debates, I think, are largely irrelevant to that.
They do get in the way of some other things that are a little more practical. So Joseph mentioned methane as a good example. We are now in a position where the oil and gas industry could effectively do zero fugitive methane emissions. That’s one of the areas where we should see a lot more action at COP, and a lot more commitments and accountability through things like the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which ADNOC is a member of and the Western oil companies were founders of. It’s an effort by the industry to cut its emissions of methane and other things. And that’s the real work. Those things create new facts on the ground, and they show what’s possible. And then from that follows a worldwide effort to reduce emissions. And I think a lot of the phase out, phase down stuff is just a shiny object.
Mr. Cahill: Yeah, this is Ben –
Dr. Majkut: If I can just add a little color – oh, go ahead, Ben.
Mr. Cahill: I’ll just be quick and then turn it over to you, Joseph.
I just want to expand on the point that David just made about methane because I think it’s quite important. I was at the ADIPEC Conference in Abu Dhabi last month. The theme of that conference was decarbonizing faster together, and it felt like a decarbonization conference, not an oil and gas conference. It was the theme that you heard over and over again at every single panel.
This issue of methane will be critical at this COP. I think one of the issues that will be important to watch is whether or not other countries will step up and make commitments on methane. And here, I think the U.S.-China Agreement was really quite positive. They talked about building methane commitments into future NDCs. They talked about putting together a side event at COP focused on methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases summit, and that’s quite important.
Another thing that the COP presidency is really focused on is trying to get major oil and gas producing states, especially those with national oil companies, to make methane commitments. And in many cases, this is a tough nut to crack, right? We’re not talking about the big Western super majors. These are national oil companies that are owned by governments, are not very transparent. They don’t have shareholder and investor pressure. And in some cases, they need financial support and technical guidance. So this is why I think there will be a focus on helping some of the laggards and putting together solutions for them at this COP.
And more broadly on the issue of, you know, unabated fossil fuels, it will continue this debate about carbon capture and storage, how viable CCS is, whether or not it’s conceivable that we can reach the CCS targets that everyone realizes will be quite important on the net zero pathway.
You know, what we have to pay attention to at the COP and especially beyond is what concrete commitments companies are making to lower their Scope 1 and 2 emissions. And the fact is, the pace of change is not fast enough yet. I think there’s some good examples in the Gulf of how companies have already driven down emissions associated with oil and gas production. But there’s a lot of progress that needs to be built on to help that pathway to, you know, abating fossil fuel use.
And, Joseph, happy to turn it back to you now.
Dr. Majkut: Yeah, I would only briefly add I think is unabated versus phase down, like, a lot of this is, like, sort of code for is CCS, or carbon management, or direct air capture going to play a big part in creating a net-zero economy. And kind of hinging on David’s comments, a much more productive discussion is what are countries willing to do to actually advance CCS projects? What is industry doing to advance CCS projects? How many tons are we going to be capturing by 2030, or 2035, from which sources? And how do we, then, scale those activities into emerging markets and beyond? And I think that’s a much more important piece of the conversation to focus on. And you can – then we can, like, truly evaluate the role of abated fossil fuels in a future net-zero economy.
Good question, Zack, thank you.
Paige, back to you.
Ms. Montfort: Great. Thank you. We’ll remind everyone how to queue before we go to our next question.
Operator: (Gives queuing instructions.)
Ms. Montfort: Thank you. And our next question is that loss and damage was a major topic at COP-27, and will again be this year at COP-28. Recently, tensions have emerged over a potential new fund to help address loss and damage. Do you think we can expect to see progress this time on the issue, especially with UAE as the host? And maybe I’ll first turn it over to David for this, and then Joseph if you want to add on.
Dr. Victor: I think loss and damage is one of these areas where the diplomacy could come unglued very quickly. There’s supposedly a deal in the works that includes this fund, but these funds are often imagined and then they have no money in them. SSo they’re not really funds, they’re a mirage. I think the really big issue here is that donors are spending money on a lot of other things, like the other war in the Middle East – the war in the Middle East, and the war in Ukraine. You got a bunch of economies that feel weak. You got governments that are that are spent out.
And so it’s really, really challenging to raise funds here. And then on top of all that, setting up a fund doesn’t really guarantee political sustainability because you got to have a vision for how to spend the money wisely. And we’re not paying enough attention to that topic. So you put all that together, and I think loss and – the so-called loss and damage discussion is one of those areas where the diplomacy can very quickly come unraveled and be very, very hard to stitch back together.
Dr. Majkut: Not much to add for me, Paige. That was a great answer.
Ms. Montfort: OK.
Dr. Baskaran: If I can tag in on Joseph, I also think we’re going to see a rise in engagement with multilateral development banks. There’s been a lot of pressure even from the U.S. government for the World Bank and the African Development and Asian Development Bank to do better, because that’s an alternate solution to kind of a loss and damage fund as we have it envisioned. So I think we’re going to see a more multistakeholder approach come out of this COP.
Ms. Montfort: Thanks. Great. Thank you so much, Gracelin. And thank you, everyone, for joining today. That was our last question. So we are going to wrap up there. Really appreciate all of my colleagues sharing your insights and analysis.
And for those of you who have follow-up questions or questions over the next couple of weeks, please feel free to reach out to me, Paige Montfort. I’m happy to connect you with any of the four experts on the call today or other experts at the Center. I’ll be sending the transcript out within just a couple of hours here, and it’ll be published to CSIS.org. So have a great rest of your day, everyone, and weekend ahead.
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