(9.7.2018) “It has been an extraordinary week — and it’s only Wednesday,” said Clark Ervin, the director of the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Program, in welcoming remarks to the several hundred attendees.

Ervin seemed to capture the sentiment of many bewildered guests, who include former Cabinet secretaries and senior leaders of national security agencies, when he said that seven decades of norms and alliances had been “upended” by recent events.