Steve Daines in conversation w/ Matt Continetti

More than half a century after Richard Nixon opened the door to China, the question is no longer how to engage China but how to compete with it. Building on Nixon's tradition of conservative realism, this conversation assesses what Washington has gotten right, where it has fallen short, and what it will take to compete with China from a position of strength.

Alex Wong, Walter Russell Mead, Rebeccah Heinrichs & Eli Lake (moderator)

President Nixon's grand strategy was grounded by a premise that America's alliances had to evolve, with partners shouldering more of the burden of their own defense if the postwar order was to survive the strains of a new era. That argument, laid out in the Nixon Doctrine, is being tested again. This session explores whether America's current alliance architecture — from NATO to its Indo-Pacific partnerships — is built for the competition ahead, and what it will take to keep allies capable, committed and aligned with U.S. strategy.

Rep. Riley Moore in conversation w/ Comfortably Smug

This past year, Nixon went viral with a generation that knows him only from the history books. This conversation explores what "Nixonmaxxing" says about where the next generation of the right is headed, and what it means to carry a 37th president's legacy into a media environment he never could have imagined.

Jared Isaacman in conversation w/ Katie Pavlich

President Nixon took the call from the Oval Office as Apollo 11's astronauts stood on the moon, then spent the rest of his presidency deciding what came next for NASA. More than 50 years later, NASA is again being asked what kind of space power America wants to be, this time with China racing toward the moon on its own timeline. This conversation offers an inside look at the strategy behind NASA's next moves including returning to the moon, preparing for Mars and advancing scientific discovery.

Rich Goldberg, Rep. Elise Stefanik, Lisa Daftari (moderator)

No administration shaped the modern Middle East more directly than President Nixon's. He rushed emergency military supplies to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War even as he managed a tense nuclear standoff with Moscow, then oversaw the diplomacy that followed. He supported alliances with the Shah of Iran, alongside Saudi Arabia, as the "twin pillars" meant to secure the Gulf without direct U.S. troops on the ground. And he pushed a broader rethinking of America's alliances, betting that regional partners — not American forces — should carry the front-line burden. Half a century later, with Iran's regime in place of the Shah's and the Abraham Accords redrawing the region's alignments, this session asks whether that Nixonian model — arm allies, deter adversaries, avoid open-ended wars — still holds, and what should replace it if it doesn't.

From Apollo to ARPANET, Nixon-era breakthroughs proved that technological leadership was already a front in the Cold War, long before anyone called it that. This conversation turns to the new race: not just who builds the most capable AI, but who can power it. With data centers straining the electric grid and Beijing racing to close the gap, the discussion covers what it takes to win on both fronts — computing power and electric power.

Sen. Roy Blunt in conversation w/ Jim Byron

Strategy that Survives: Grand strategy doesn't survive on conviction alone — it survives in the institutions built to carry it out, which is why President Nixon paired his foreign policy ambitions with a reorganized National Security Council and a rebuilt executive branch built to outlast any one administration. Sen. Roy Blunt, who spent 12 years in the Senate and 14 in the House — one of only two Americans ever elected to leadership in both chambers — joins Jim Byron, president and CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation, for a closing conversation on what it takes to turn strategy into durable governance, in Nixon's era and in ours.