The country’s shale revolution is fueling the men and women in uniform of the U.S. military, said a former Secretary of Defense and CIA director at Hart Energy’s DUG East conference.

“I can tell you as secretary of defense how dependent the security of our country is on your industry,” Leon Panetta said during a June 4 keynote luncheon at the conference.

The Defense Department is the single largest energy user in the nation, Panetta said. In 2012, the department used about 110 million barrels of liquid fuel costing some $16.4 billion. In 2013, the numbers were closer to 112 million barrels at a price of almost $17 billion.

“Your mission in many ways is the mission of this country, which is to try to make the lives of people better and try to give our children better lives for the future—that’s the American dream,” he said.

Panetta said he had the privilege of living that dream himself thanks in large part to the sacrifices and grit of his parents. The son of Italian immigrants, Panetta was born and reared in Monterey, Calif., where he grew up on his family’s walnut orchard helping out with the family business.

“When I got elected to Congress, my Italian father said to me, ‘You know, you’ve been well trained to go to Washington because you’ve been dodging nuts all your life,’” he said.

With more than 50 years of public service under his belt, he thinks the country is now at a turning point.

“I believe deeply that we can have an America in renaissance—a strong America in the 21st century,” he said.

However, he said he’s concerned with the growing dysfunction of Washington’s leadership, which could lead the country away toward a different path. Both political parties seem to have given up on governing, he said.

“We bless ourselves with the hope that everything is going to be fine in this country,” he said. “It very frankly doesn’t mean a thing unless we’re willing to fight for it.”

During his time in Washington, Panetta said he has seen the country operate at its best and its worst. Throughout history, he said, American leadership has been able to rise to the occasion no matter what crisis the country was facing because the fundamental strength of the U.S. doesn’t rest in Washington.

“It rests in the spirit, resilience, common sense, grit and willingness to fight for the American people,” he said.

He said he has seen the necessary values of American leadership before in the men and women in uniform. More notably he saw those values in the team of Navy Seals who participated in the operation to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, which Panetta oversaw as Secretary of Defense.

“They completed that mission and we sent a very clear message to the world that nobody attacks this country and gets away with it,” he said.

Panetta represented California's 16th (now 17th) Congressional District for almost 20 years, before serving as the chief of staff to President Clinton during his first term. He came back to Washington in 2009 to serve as the director of the CIA until 2011. Following that, he served as the 23rd secretary of defense until 2013.