Jim Byron, President and CEO, Richard Nixon Foundation

The Honorable Monica Crowley, Ambassador and Chief of Protocol of the United States, in conversation with Jim Byron

The Honorable Robert Wilkie

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Council Senior Director for Counterterrorism

Senator Steve Daines in conversation with 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.

Jarrod Agen in conversation with Katie Pavlich

In 1973, President Nixon announced Project Independence — a pledge to make the United States energy self-sufficient within the decade. Five decades later, that goal has been reframed as “energy dominance.” This conversation will highlight the current administration’s strategy for unleashing American energy production, the national security stakes of energy independence, and what it will take to produce enough energy.

Rep. Riley Moore in conversation with 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.

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.

Taylor Budowich in conversation with Ambassador Carla Sands

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.

Senator Roy Blunt in conversation with 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.

Held following the 2026 Grand Strategy Summit, the reception will bring together leaders from government, industry, and agriculture at a defining moment for American agriculture. Building on President Nixon's early recognition of fertilizer's strategic importance, the reception and conversations will explore how American innovation can break dependence on foreign supply chains, secure critical resources, and strengthen American leadership in fertilizer and agricultural input production.

The reception will take place on Thursday, October 1, 2026, from 5:00-7:30 PM at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, 2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC. RSVP using the link below by Tuesday, September 29.