James Woolsey Speaks to Purdue Students

Yesterday (November 13) Purdue hosted R.James Woolsey, former CIA director (1993-1995) as a part of 2007-2008 Louis Martin Sears Lecture Series.

Topic of the speech "Energy, Security, and Long War of the 21^st century". The hour long program was followed by questions from audience.

Woolsey focused very much on energy dependency of the US and the risk factors associated with it-grid vulnerability (black out in New York, Canada and other parts caused by failure in Ohio couple of years back), effect on transportation and larger economic structure and climate change.

He discussed in length about Middle Eastern oil, compared to transportation issues and the economy. I guess that is because this is his expertise. Woolsey pointed out Americans paying big bucks to Saudi Arabia for oil and the Saudi's funding fundamentalist Wahhabi religious institutions around the world with that money, rapidly spreading Wahhabism around the world and the issue of Sunni vs Shia in case of Iran's nukes.

On climate change, he didn't go in depth (time constraint?), just glazed on widely discussed facts and popular public (especially the nay sayers) perception of the issue.

He ended with an imaginary dialog between a tree hugger and a hawk who doesn't care about the environment and is only concerned about energy independence. It was interesting, the solution he brought up in dealing with grid dependency, coal energy and also nuclear energy.

Questions asked by the audience were on hydrogen power and family car, electric car, alternative energy and the military and food security (that was me).

Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by Woolsey demeanor, his take on issues and the way he explained hydrogen power. Maybe I was wrong in the way I imagines how a CIA neocon would be like??

The program went on without a hitch, no anti-CIA, anti-war protesters, although I was expecting some action(going by the number of emails I received from those not too happy about Woolsey stand on Iraq, Iran and torture).