Live from SXSW in Austin, Texas
A discussion on leading innovations, disruptive technologies, and creative collaboration models for strengthening our defense industrial base and supply chain resilience across all domains
Let’s all work together to give our warfighters everything they need to protect us.
From Near Peer threats to A.I. to Joint Domain Collaboration…all things related to leveraging the enormous creative and innovative capabilities of the U.S. in order to ensure our nation’s security will be covered. Leaders will real solutions doing real work will join us to share their insights and recommendations for substantive change.
Hello everyone I’m David Hamilton founder and chairman of the America’s future series I’d like to welcome all of you to our two-day virtual dual use technology summit we’re streaming from our studio here in Austin Community College and beauti hello everyone I’m David Hamilton founder and chairman of the America’s
Future series I’d like to welcome all of you to our two-day virtual dual use technology summit we’re streaming from our studio here in Austin Community College in beautiful downtown Austin Texas for those of you who can’t view all of our content live please visit our YouTube channel for every episode and
Watch them at your convenience the America’s future series is a nonpartisan Think Tank and speaker series founded in 2009 to provide a forum for honest and open discussions on issues impacting us Global competiveness and National Security please visit www.american future series.com come to learn more about us and all of our future events
I’d like to start the summit by thanking our presuming sponsor comtech telecommunications we literally could not do host these events without uh without their support their thought leadership in particular i’ like to thank Ken Peterman compex chairman president CEO for all he does for us and for so many others I’m I’m incredibly
Proud to share that secretary Ellen Lord and other amazing leaders will be honoring Ken for his business leadership thought leadership philanthropy and servant leadership with our Lifetime Achievement Award for business Excellence Friday this Friday evening during our VIP reception uh we will also be honoring ronad Horwitz of elot
Systems America with our five-star award for Extraordinary support of our military I really want to thank Elbert for all they’ve done for our military and their families if you haven’t secured a ticket for this amazing evening of networking socializing and recognizing those who give back please visit our website to register and with
That I’d like to welcome Ken who will provide some opening remarks and as always does give us a great overview of what you can expect for the next day well hello everyone uh as I mentioned I’m going to be here uh speaking with Ken Peterman chairman president CEO of comtech telecommunications and I
Mentioned before that comptech is our presenting sponsor and our huge supporter our huge Patron can’t thank Ken enough for all of his support his thought leadership Etc and as usual Ken is going to tee up the day he’s going to give you guys a little insight of what
To look forward to and in particular maybe what to to focus on because as you know many of these uh programs you people can’t see but you can see them all on our YouTube channel and so with that Ken I want to welcome you and I can’t thank you and enough for your
Support and your and your leadership well thank you David I’ll tell you what it’s great to be here it’s great to be part of American future series again as you know uh myself personally as well as our leadership team and all of our employees at com Tech we really enjoy am America’s future
Series we really appreciate the fact that it’s provocative it’s compelling it’s timely it’s relative and yet it does so without a political agenda of any kind so I think uh uh and it’s exciting right now we’re here in Austin at South by Southwest I don’t know about
Others but for me I just came off of H an event in Luxembourg with respect to government satcom and I just came off of after that the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona so um so we have a lot going on right now in the technology domain
Which is uh which is all really very relevant to our young men and women uniform and and making sure that they have access to the very latest greatest technology in a trusted context so they can execute their mission so they can keep us all safe and they can come home
Safely themselves so yes it’s an exciting time I would like to kick off the day uh uh it’s great to be here and I’m really looking forward to it there’s a lot of on the agenda it’s insightful there’s a lot of important conversations I think
This is going to be one of our best two-day Summits and I and again we’re thrilled to support it uh it’s great it’s a thought-provoking event uh and we’re excited to be here I’ll give you an overview of what we can expect I think it’s important to stress that all
Of these discussions are going to be posted to the AFS YouTube channel next week so that everyone can view any segments that they miss and in fact I’ll tell you sometimes I go back and watch them again and pick up some things that I didn’t pick up the first time so I
Think that’s a great technology advant David that you that you do and I know sometimes are posted you keep them live for quite a while so I think that’s great um we are starting today with a discussion on one of the most important Technologies and capabilities uh that
The world’s wrestling with right now that’s human machine learning and Ai and Major General Kim krier has assembled a great group of thought leaders who focus on this uh and the related technologies that are impacting both the civilian and Military sectors as well as our own individual lives after that section uh
We have some of the world’s experts on C CCP and the threats and challenges we Face from our peer adversary China competition with China and other nations is probably the number one reason America has to innovate faster and more effectively and better we can’t outmuscle these countries uh we have to
Work smarter uh and not harder if we want to keep up and we want to thrive so I’m really looking forward uh to our great friend Bon gahad uh being joined by the head of strategy Daniel gazinski my head of strategy at comp Daniel gazinski and others discussing tactically resp responsive
Technologies U everyone understands how important it is to innovate how to put these capabilities to work uh put them in the hands of our war Fighters faster than ever before and we need to discuss how to focus on that we need to focus on the how uh what works what doesn’t how
To implement Advanced Technologies uh tactically in a tactical environment when the stakes are highest and it matters most after this uh Major General Heather Pringle of the Space Foundation will moderate a discussion on AI in space it’s great to have Tony Bruno of Ula the United launch Alliance joining us again
Along with Brian Morrison of G Dynamics mission systems and once again Major General Kim krider I’m really looking forward to their perspectives on one of the most important and and and at least to me one of the most fascinating issues we face and that’s the use of AI in
Space if we’re GNA succeed in space David I think we have to rely on Technologies such as AI to do those things uh uh that we can’t and certainly we can’t do as effectively uh and because of cost we can’t be up there uh to do it ourselves uh so that’s going to
Be an exciting and AI in space I think is something that needs more attention needs more time it’s thought-provoking we need to put some of the best Minds in this country on it at about 1M local time uh Deputy Attorney Richard uh Jackson from Oklahoma will be joined by Lieutenant
Colonel Bach with the Marine software Factory uh James Grimley who also heads advanced technology initiatives for the chakar nation and our good friend uh briger General Chad ruigi who leads the University of Tulsa’s cyber Innovation Institute they’re going to focus on public private Partnerships uh dual use Technologies uh and they’re going to
Focus on how to put that to work and how to make those Partnerships more effective and more effective and yield greater results fast results uh that apply both to the Tactical domain and others Shelley Brunswick is up next she’s gonna interview Dr Vivic law of General atomics I was really surprised
To learn that General atomics uh does some amazing work in nuclear fision uh and fusion uh and fully leveraging uh the power sources like this are vital to fully working living and benefiting from space and as we’ve always seen I think Innovations uh um uh created through the pursuit of space travel space
Exploration uh space habitation they create enormous benefits for us here on Earth after that Laura winter of the defense and Aerospace report she’ll have a conversation with Zachary Brown he’s with Aerospace Corporation and also Colonel Rett turbo recently retired from the space systems command the three of
Them are going to look into uh look into the future at the development of dual use technology we’re going to follow that up with LA talking more about Lessons Learned and driving causes of the Silicon Bank uh meltdown I think things like that the mortgage meltdown the other Financial crises those are things
We need to understand better uh figure out what drove it uh figure out to how to work to find ways to prevent or mitigate future Financial failures and after that uh we’re going to end the day on a high note with Lauren nosberger who’s the chief Innovation officer at
Seic she’ll be talking with her successor uh Venice Goodwin CIO of the US Air Force about cyber security and other key challenges so Al together David I think we have a pretty impressive lineup uh I hope everything everybody that’s watching uh looks forward to this enjoys it pays attention
And once again uh if you want to refer back to it it’ll be on the YouTube channel later for uh for your reference uh and and to go back and look at again so once again it’s fantastic to be down here in Austin uh uh at the South by
Southwest it’s a convenient time I think we get to leverage people coming for multiple purposes and so that’s useful but I’m really looking forward to well thank you so much for sort of teeing up today giving people a little bit an insight as what look forward to and uh
We’re gonna start right away with Major General Kim ker we’re going to turn it over to you Kim well thank you David it really is uh exciting to be here today as part of this South by Southwest event and I am particularly thrilled uh to be joined
Here on this panel with three of my very good friends uh longtime colleagues that I have served with uh in the military uh who are just phenomenal leaders and innovators in their own right uh with me today I have a lieutenant general D Dash Jameson uh Dash has 37 years of
Distinguished military service having commanded units from the Squadron level uh to a career culminating as the Director of the United States Air Forces intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and cyber effects Enterprise she led both air force and Joint units in locations to include Germany Hawaii Florida Afghanistan and Virginia she was
The driving force behind building a cohesive team of the Air Force intelligence and cyber forces into a single Warf fighting organization Lieutenant General Jameson was the Air Force representative to the 18 member intelligence Community senior leadership Forum representing Air Force equities across the United States intelligence Enterprise also joining me today is
Lieutenant General John Shaw Lieutenant General Shaw has 33 years of experience in National Security space and aerospace engineering with a focus on leading large-scale technical Global organizations General Shaw’s last active duty assignment as a three star general in the United States space force was Deputy commander of United States space
Command where he directed over 12,000 Personnel worldwide to defend the nation’s critical space capabilities and deliver space effects to terrestrial Warf Fighters and Human Society before joining us space command Joe sha was the last commander of 14th Air Force and the first commander of space Operations Command at Vandenberg
Air Force Base J Shaw spent over 30 years as a leader of large complex and highly technical organizations responsible for some of the world’s most critical space capabilities within both the Department of Defense and the national reconnaissance office he’s also served as a senior policy adviser in the office
Of Secretary of Defense and as a co-chair or member of several us delegations discussing space security issues with Russian and international delegations and last but not least Dr Joel moer is joining us Dr moer is a physicist and a strategist in science and technology he recently retired as
The chief science officer of the United States space force where he developed long-term strategies and prioritized the service’s $300 million annual investment in basic and applied research he also served on the chief of space operations staff as the Scientific Advisor and led efforts to anticipate future Trends threats and opportunities
For the space force related to science and Technologies prior to the establishment of the space force Dr moer was a space scientist with the Air Force research lab and has more than 30 years experience leading and exec in research related to the autonomy of Space Systems wow what an incredible group I
Have with me here today we have an expert in intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance we have an expert in space operations and we have an expert in the Science and Technology of space including the application of AI a perfect Trio to help us get get into this topic on human machine teaming
With AI now there’s a lot to be said about artificial intelligence these days and how it’s changing and continuing to change the world in which we live in and one thing for certain the Advent of AI is here and it’s here to stay because of the many benefits we’ve seen AI can
Provide when it’s used constructively we see AI advancing our ability to diagnose diseases and create life-saving vaccines we we’ experienced Ai and its ability to rapidly translate languages to break down barriers to communication and collaboration and we all have interacted with AI in some form or another in our customer service exchanges with
Organizations in every sector of society in all of these applications and so many more AI is proving itself as a quintessential du use technology that can provide advantages in both Commercial and Military settings the application of advanced Ai and military operations is beginning to prove very effective in creating comprehensive
Competitive advantages to outpace adversarial threats particularly in support of complex decision- making where there’s a lot of information to sift through analyze make sense of and take action on in very short tactical timelines in these cases we are often reminded that artificial intelligence is not a substitute for human intelligence
But a tool to amplify creativity and Ingenuity but how that’s what we’re going to dive in on today so Dash we’re g to start with you now you recently published a paper on human machine teaming with AI as a means to reinvent the intelligence cycle and create decision advant if you would
Please walk us through the fundamental premise of the paper and what an improved framework for decision- making looks like when humans and machines are teamed together well I first want to say thank you very much Kim uh and of course my distinguished panel members both John and Joel are actually having this
Discussion on human machine teaming Ai and its impact on National Security what a treat uh not for just the audience but for me to be a participant in this endeavor I also want to give a special shout out to the Mitchell Institute for publishing my paper the human machine teaming the intelligence cycle
Reimagined and I I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the special competitive studies program Intelligence panel that really has taken a serious look at the examination of AI and its impact on the intelligence Community but to get to the macro overview that you you first asked me about you know I
Would first have to let’s put some context in this and I would offer with the proliferation of publicly available information and commercially available collection such as imagery and Communications from space whether it be Planet Labs or Starling as examples and couple that with the intelligence community’s Exquisite capabilities it
Has led to a near ubiquitous coverage this results in both opportunities and challenges related to what we call too much data today the Intel cycle is really centered on humans and working every aspect however with the Advent of artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence and from now on I’ll just
Call it AI uh the traditional cych can no longer keep pace and address the volume or scale of today’s datar Rich information environment additionally the existing tools can’t Advance the cycle to the degree and speed the future and today’s multi-threat environment requires to deal with our near-peer competitors the vast adapation of
Artificial intelligence necessitates a shift in Mission focused human machine teaming that can operate with flexibility and speed to meet ever compressing data driven decision making timelines so let’s put some context in understanding what do I mean when I say human machine teaming so I’m going to
Give you my definition that I based my paper off of and it’s it’s the task delegation between humans and machines partnering to use Innovative Technology based capabilities to achieve desired outcomes I’m endeavoring to advance the delegation of tasks according to the current DOD policy of human on the loop so I’m not
Removing that or going or discussing completely autonomous capabilities I’m going to work with human on the loop so let’s put this in something that we’ve we’ve dealt with for years in study in Academia and actually in practice so I’m gonna I’m going to use John Boyd’s food
Mo as the construct to give you another way to comprehend what I’m trying to say and with the aim and speed uh the udal loop tries to more rapidly advance decision advantage over your competitor so in the loop if we use observe and Orient machines excel at volume searches identifying patterns
Outliers anomalies and sources of origin their processing ability now reaches speeds previously unimaginative for this um decide and act humans excel at validation intimating inferred relationships and delineating intent to address the why for critical decision making B based on Rules of Engagement policies or international law and that
Really is the macro premise of the paper yeah that what a great paper and and thank you for pointing out the Mitchell Institute Dash because that is the organization that published the paper and I certainly encourage all of our listeners uh to go take a look and and
Dive in on that uh that paper that you just talked about in those insights that you that you explained in great detail with some really interesting uh visual Graphics uh to really walk us through uh this shift towards human machine teaming uh and how we can leverage AI more
Effectively in that decision making process and thanks for reminding everybody of John Boyd and the udalo observe Orient decide and act and how this human machine teaming process really helps advance that and accelerate that in this new age where we have to be able to move much because there’s much
More information to be consumed much more information to be interpreted uh and to take action on so with that John I want to pass the the mantle over to you uh in this idea of human machine teaming in the framework that Dash laid out even what we know about the space
Domain and the operations that are happening uh in protecting and defending our capabilities in that domain to address the threats in that domain M talk to us a little bit about how you see humans and machine teaming this idea of humans on the loop when it comes to
Supporting decision makings and using AI uh to address those challenges yeah thanks Kim and hey I I’d Echo what Dash said great to be part of this panel great to see you and dash and Joel again um and and if if if the audience hasn’t already written it down yes go get
Dash’s paper find your best AI tool and say get me Dash’s paper and it’ll be right there in front of you and take a good look at it because it’s foundational everything that you’re going to hear from this panel here today and it’s terrific um what I would say is
That and and and Dash’s paper and her comments just now were in a in a kind of a general nature covering all domains I think what she said is is is um applies to all domains and we need to look at the application of AI in in an all
Domain capacity but your question to mekin was about space the domain and and I think I would like to point out that I I think no domain is more needing of AI to be uh effective in a human AI uh teeming uh relationship than the space
Domain now now we skipped over a really obvious question would have taken the entire day and that is what is AI um exactly um but uh you know at its Cutting Edge it is rivaling or even exceeding the cognitive abilities of humans some would call that super Ai and
In doing so in many cases it’s doing it in counterintuitive ways ways that humans may not think to think about or do or behave but uh super AI is doing those kinds of things and so why is that helpful to the space domain well probably more than any other domain except maybe cyber
Itself um space is a counterintuitive domain from a physics perspective from our understanding of how it operates because we just as humans don’t spend a lot of time there and so a AI is going to find ways that that we can’t even practice or conceive or test on how
We’re going to need to be doing activities in the domain uh in the future the second is everything Dash said in general about Ai and its needs is especially true with space because you can’t understand what’s happening in the space domain without a lot of data
And a lot of sensors and the ability to to analyze that data very very quickly and discover patterns in real time with the with the the speed at which things could happen in the space domain so it is uh it is a natural fit for all the
Capabilities AI is going to bring and and then lastly I would point out um it’s true today and it’ll be even more true in the future almost every platform that humans are operating and will operate in the space domain is not going to have humans on it it’s going to be an
Autonomous self-guided and self likely self-learning kind of platform so if you envision a future where we have uh hundreds thousands tens of thousands of Platforms in the space domain uh that are operating autonomously how how do they fit into Dash’s construct that UDA construct of especially the decide act portion some
Of that is going to be autonomous through some platforms we need to find the right dividing line the right teaming Concept in a macro sense of where humans operating remotely from those capabilities are part of that broader team so I again I brought it up
By saying the space to is is right for exploring all these possibilities on AI and human teaming thank you so much John uh really great insights uh and appreciate you pointing out that everything that we’re talking about here while very very pertinent to space for all the reasons
That you’ve described really does cut across all the domains which leads me over to Joel Joel you’ve been a longtime scientific researcher in the application of AI uh across multiple domains including space so what do you see as some of the immediate fundamental ways that this framework of human machine teaming with
AI can offer some new advantages well thanks Kim and and let me Echo the the comments of my panelist thank you for for assembling this this is a progress group and a great opportunity to talk through this very important problem um so you know there’s a lot of opportunities for AI and we’re
Just seeing them emerge these days you know obviously as we’ve been discussing today uh AI has huge benefits for operational problem solving and decision- making it it it helps us um get past our our human limitations and and ability to see patterns in our biases and and the time it takes us to
Think through a problem AI can help with all those things and we’re seeing that every day in a lot of different areas so so I think we’re going to see a lot more of that places probably we never really expected to see things the other thing that that we’re seeing today is it’s
Just making us more efficient humans you know um technology typically does this if you think the Advent of electricity or the internet that technology allows us to do more and and better and faster things um and and AI is doing that through robotic process Automation and other things that
That offload some of the tedious things um from humans and as John said in space uh that’s that we have that problem in Spades the the need to uh to have Automation and in AI is helping us because we’re just not there but the you know the the principal
Thing that I think that we’re just seeing a growing opportunity is the the situational awareness that AI can give us and by that I mean you know we’re not able to see all the patterns if there’s one thing that an AI is good at is detecting patterns and and exposing
Those and and maybe we as humans don’t see see that so so it it helps us understand our situation in ways that that we probably couldn’t have without it and that’s a true teaming relationship and you know some of that awareness is internal to the human and I
Hope we get a chance to talk a little bit more about this when you talk about human machine teeming many times the the machine helps the human in a very internal way there’s some fascinating work going on where uh AI uh looking at data from the human body for like
Electroencephalograms can analyze your mind State and tell you whether you’re susceptible to task overloading or or your body is stressed your mind is stressed cognitive security might be an issue so so it truly is a a teaming relationship that I think we’re just barely seeing the scratching the surface
In terms of how that’s going to play out in the future yeah for sure uh you know and this whole idea a of situation awareness certainly I think everybody can appreciate that being able to use artificial intelligence to to see things uh and bring information together in
Ways that the human might not be able to see because the environment may be too too big too complex too far away as in the case of of space uh too vast uh or there’s just too much complexity going on for us to really discern what’s really happening into your point Joel
What are the patterns of activity that are going on in a particular situation or in a particular environment uh that we need to be aware of that we need to pay attention to that we need to draw our attention to uh artificial intelligence can oftentimes help us zero
In on what it is that we need to know help us zero in on that degree of intelligence that’s most crucial and understand the changes uh in the environment that we would draw our intelligence our insights towards the next step of you know decision making and potentially taking some
Action uh and certainly we find this in the case of having to address threats uh again across all domains uh so Dash and John I’m going to take it back to both of you uh from your operational experiences uh when we think about the threat environments that we’re faced
With Beyond just knowing Beyond just understanding Beyond just awareness we’re thinking about using AI to help us discern intelligence uh and to help us make decisions to stay safe stay ahead of a Potential Threat how does human machine teaming help us do that in a very fluid
Uh way that responds to changes in that environment uh and if I turn the question around a little bit I’ll also ask you to think about how can AI potentially make us more vulnerable well John if you don’t mind uh being the Intel threat person how
About if I take a stab at this first and you can add color and correct my misperceptions please go first Ash and hopefully you’ll say everything and you probably will so I have nothing left to say no I don’t think so but I think you know Kim you and Joel and John have
Brought up some really great examples of how and why um we need to be safer from the environment we’re facing you know you really only have to look at the threats today that that we’re facing to see times have changed and so I’m going to set some vignettes of literally things
That have happened in the last 60 to 70 days that we would not have imagined previously so it’s you know let’s kick it off with know the houth firing the first anti- ship ballistic missile a few months ago in combat the Russians and ukrainians using hundreds if not thousands of small
Unmanned aerial systems every single day on the front lines and we’ve seen that cycle just explode in speed capability and development technology integration is moving faster than we could ever predict using artificial intelligence to help track and Destroy these small uas as one example is a problem all militaries all governments and all
Populations really need to think about or should be addressing today let me give you another vignette that could blow your mind the ukrainians have figured out how to use unmanned surface vessels to destroy a large part of the Russian Black Sea Fleet they sent out a auton an unman
Surface vessel hundreds of miles away to destroy very large complex ships this is from a service that did not have this capability less than 24 months ago let’s take a look at what Israel is claiming in Gaza they are saying they are using using artificial intelligence to make Target recommendations against equipment such
As rocket launchers today now they say that the AI is there to make a recommendation a human reviews and validates or invalidates that recommendation if it’s a valid Target they then send it to a the soldiers in the field to action on you kind of have to go oh my gosh
Integration of technology in innovative ways is proving its worth on today’s Battlefield and I got to say I would tell you initially it is rewarding those first and early adopters something for us to really think about so then I want to give you a perspective from the other side and and
When I say the other side is hey what about in the near F in the near future when nefarious non-state actors get a hold of these types of Technologies and try to use them against the United States or our allies are we ready for that today because today is here no one
Should think that the bad guys aren’t thinking of how to use chat GPT or other released AI tools to increase their target efficiency their hudal Loop whether employing against employing small weapons or large ones or ones that we use deterrence against today it’s imperative we look ahead of this turn these are not
Lessons you want to learn after the fact so kind of to get to Kim so what’s going to keep us safe and what’s gonna um help us mitigate some of these threats I don’t want to just throw it over to John uh but I’ll give you a couple sentences
Of of my thoughts and I would say you know that’s why I wrote the paper I I truly believe that the reim a reimagined intelligence cycle with human machine teaming has to be effective in being ahead of these Bad actors and not just sensing and infusing but identifying and
VA validating their actions before they happen so that we can make our decisions appropriately that’s only going to happen if we start experimenting exercising and training with AI today in all facets so I’m going to hand it over to the true operator to correct me and
To add some color John over to you well just as I expected Dash gave gave all my answers in better ways than I could so I guess I have nothing else to say no I I do maybe I’ll add one one thing um she is absolutely right when she says that
We have to stay on top of innovation and not underestimate any potential adversary state or non-state actor anywhere and we have to Leverage The Best of what we can do as a nation and as a set of Allied Nations to do that in an Innovative way and so to get to the
Theme of the this broader Forum that we’re all participating in which which is looking at dual use capabilities we have to absolutely have good integration between the commercial sector and the Department of Defense as we look how to leverage AI across the board now I think a quick like viewpoint
On history and why this is so OB obious and why the convergence particularly for space points us this way you know we first started doing things in space and what I call the first Space Age back in the Cold War it was government that led the way in virtually everything and then
After the Cold War ended we got into a different age where it was still being led by government but commercial was starting to get Innovative and the best example is we had this government system called GPS right but there were many commercial companies have figured out
How to how to use it in so many many different ways and innovative ways that led to wealth generation for the nation and for the world now we’re in a completely different era where commercial is actually leading the way in a lot of space Technologies you know
Dash talked about a couple of them earlier with regard to uh you know ISR from space which which most of our data is now coming from commercial capabilities and new communication systems in proliferated low earth orbit architectures are being led by commercial Ventures and and government
Is actually trying to latch on to those in many ways I haven’t you know it’ be I’m not sure the latest and most accurate figure but the amount of government investment in AI right now is something like two to four orders of magnitude that’s a lot two to four orders of magnitude less
Than commercial and financial industry and so on investment in AI right now it would be foolish for us not to be looking at all of that and find ways to integrate it in an Innovative way to stay ahead of this multi this this full spum of potential threats that could come at
Us yeah absolutely but yet we’re you know we’re not necessarily taking full advantage of it in the ways that we could to your point John you know the Investments are are low compared to commercial industry uh the opportunity is there the challenges only continue to increase um and yet you know we haven’t
Fully adopted it and certainly haven’t fully adopted AI in a way that it can interact well with humans humans can interact well with it to create the kinds of advantages that we’re talking about uh in the decisionmaking arena yeah hey Kim if I could add real quick
You know maybe that ratio of orders of magnitude maybe that’s the way it should be maybe we let commercial be the engine that generates all the solutions what we can’t do is not beet part of it and and get that right solution that that benefits us from a security perspective
AB absolutely absolutely we absolutely need to tap into it so so why is it so hard Joel why why is it why are we so slow on the uptake of some of these Technologies uh and taking advantage of what commercial industry is driving that that is an ex excellent question Kim and
And one that that frustrates me often but let me start you ask what’s so difficult let me start with what is so easy and it kind of gets to some of the things that Dash and John were saying you know we are at a point in in time in
The development of AI you know early on in in the 90s it was kind of obscure we talked about artificial neural networks and and then then we had a sort of a pause and then we we discovered deep neural networks and and there was a resurgent and then most recently it’s
Been these large language models and the Transformers architectures so this round this this sort of new scurve that we’re on uh one of the characteristics of it is is it’s very um easy to implement there’s it’s very Democratic very open a lot of uh developers are are producing
Their products in this this space in a very open way and it’s fairly simple you know an old Geer like me can go and and open a a simple python script and and connect together some of these things uh in in play around with with the artificial
Networks there’s a dark side to that that means the barrier to entry to uh the bad guys is is pretty low too uh it’s fairly easy to to hook these up um just reading an article about how scammers are being uh accelerated by virtue of having the capabilities of
Large language models and chat Bots just think about the spam that you get in your your text messages your emails now you can start interacting with some of those spam emails uh and on the other end is is a chatbot so it’s allowed them
To scale up that kind of thing so so the point here is there’s a lot of risks like we talked about um because um as this technology becomes available it’s kind of in the hands of good guys as well as bad guys and from a government perspective we don’t deal with that very
Well you know we uh want to have solid Mission Assurance we want to make sure we’re not adding risk to our systems and and that that we we’re not creating new vulnerabilities and and threat surfaces attack surfaces so that tends to make us very risk Avers in these new
Technologies and and one thing that we have to be aware of you know we we recognize that Technologies such as Ai and and large language models are coming at us faster than ever that also means that we have the mandate to respond to the risks faster than ever we need to be
Preparing faster we need to we don’t have the luxury to debate the morals and the ethics and the possible risks for years before we implement it because uh we’ll get run right over and and that’s that’s sort of the downside of exponential technology development is that it also incurs an exponential cost
In in terms of of addressing the risks and so in short we just got to get off our DS and do it because if we don’t it we’re going to find just ourselves on the wrong side of that and I I completely agree with u with John about
The orders of magnitude investment um if we’re not in there um as part of that early on we’re going to pay the price later just think about the the development of the internet um had we had the foresight to think about putting in just a few security controls in the T
Tcpip stack early on we could have avoided a whole lot of cyber security problems since since the invention of the internet so we need to think through those we we can’t Sher our responsibility but we got to do it quickly so that’s kind of what makes it
Hard yeah absolutely so there’s risk of not taking advantage of it because certainly AI is available to the adversaries too as you point out Joel um so how do we get ahead of these risks how do we and what’s it going to take uh to really get to the point where we
Trust our systems we’re willing to use these systems uh and we’re willing to work with them in a way that’s going to continue to help us Advance uh in all of our processes including our decision-making Dash what do you think well I want to comment
Um I think I think John brought up a really great uh statement when he said you know why can’t we just rely on Commercial they’re leading us and they’re they’re doing this and they’re doing it for a reason and I’ll bring up what Joel said is you know we’re going
To have to take risks to me it’s about en encouraging us to experiment and fail and learn and address and fail not as much but Advance forward or come to a fork in the road where you say that doesn’t work I’m GNA go this way but you’re continuously testing trying and
Experimenting we do not have a culture that allows that to happen in a way that you are Ro wed or you are um highlighted by taking these ongoing risks and failing I like to say failing forward uh you know so I I kind of go I
I think another thing is and it kind of touches on it we get wetted to status quo very easily you know the traditional cycle for the intelligence Community was is extremely effective and it’s been the backbone of the intelligence Community for over 50 years however we all know as technology
Advances and and as we’ve explained in today’s information dominant environment it requires a reimagining um of a cycle to to harness these capabilities and I’m not saying we got to throw the baby out with the bathwater all the time but but I just would propose we got to experiment you
Know and my paper just is one example of hey hey let’s take these interwoven four functions Discovery generation Fusion Insight delivery flesh out the task delegation of human machine teaming and and use these AI tools simultaneously and continuously to evaluate how we doing it and see what are the anomalies what are the
Relationships what are the patterns it allows us to actually then start to develop Kim what you said a a somewhat of a confidence that you can identify techniques tactics and perhaps some procedures identify new procedures but it’s going to also re require a restructuring of training to fundamentally shift and ingrain this
Type of culture and identify new skill sets required to encourage this to happen you know I would tell you that authenticating information and Source attribution is a critical function to ensure uh the identity of the data and every decision maker every operator wants us to be able to do that and they
Want us to be able to provide the ability to discredit deep fakes Bots or malicious Fabrications you using these tools using this experiment using AI in this teaming fashion actually gives us not just uh confidence it forms trust Kim I think you said how do we get trust this forms
Trust in our Partnerships in our data in our algorithms and allows our decision makers and our operators to understand how we’re doing this and we need to be very transparent because it allows us to work out as Joel said inherent bias uh you know I think this is how the
US and its allies collectively ensure that machines are used where they shine and in ways that they add value while our most precious resource the human is used where they can Excel and advocate for the critical decisionmaking outcomes in the timelines that are required old cycle will not allow that
To happen we got to we got to do something different now that was really well said Dash thank you so much there was so much there that you added to uh the discussion here today and some of the reasons why we don’t use AI is because you know we don’t have enough
Familiarity with it we need to experiment with it we need to work with it we need to better understand how this teaming process is going to work uh and we need to to deal with the the idea that there could very well be inherent biases in the AI uh that we need to
Unpack realize or you know potentially um build into uh our data in such a way that we disrupt those biases in the future that we recognize that there can be inherent uh biases in our data that we need to avoid that we need to make sure our data is more complete uh and
More diverse so that those biases can be can be worked out but without experimenting with the AI and using the AI we may never come to that realization which in and of itself can be a real risk and could impact our ability to trust that technology okay we’re running out of
Time here this has been such an exciting conversation I think I’m GNA hit you John with our last question and then we’ll see if others want to add on to it uh which is what do you envision that the world’s going to look like or maybe
The outer world’s going to look like 20 years from now uh for humans and Machines working side by side uh and how do we evolve as a society uh to to make the most out of the capabilities that we can um derive from artificial intelligence as a mission
Partner well you you know pick your future your sci-fi movie or whatever there’s there’s visions of utop is that AI brings us right where it solves all of our problems and and and solves health issues and extends our lifespans and makes things and and eliminates poverty I mean those are very hopeful
Optimistic then there are the dystopian Visions right where the machines take over and humans lose all creativity and we become a secondary species on our own planet um where do what you know call me either either a realist or an optimist whatever I’m a panopen we’re gonna we’re
Going to have the same uh sorts of challenges living with AI that we have today there’re going to be some great benefits and and Joel actually hit it right electricity was seen as oh no it’s going to ruin Human Society no it’s gonna be wonderful for Human Society
Well it Advanced Human Society but we brought with us everything that we had before that right I think that’s kind of how I think it’s going to play out there’ll be some wonderful ways that AI helps us as a society to to understand ourselves better and to advance further
Into the cosmos and those are going to be some wonderful things there are going to be bad actors like Joel was talking about that are going to use try to use AI for their own nefarious purposes state or non-state actors as Dash say we got to be prepared for those so when I
Say Pantop we gotta it’s going to be great and it’s going to be awful at the same time and we have to be prepared for that um so but in the end uh I’m optimistic I would say um the most important thing we need to do I
I would just say Dash’s answer to your last question was absolutely right repetitive training exercising War gaming and such we could point to count I could point to many examples in the past and we’re out of time here where military Doctrine Advanced with new technologies but the way it advanced in
A good way if you used it right was that you practice with it you War gained with it and you found out how to use it in war most effectively whether it was combined arms or armor or Maritime carrier aircraft or whatever right and those that didn’t strive to
Learn how to use it effectively suffered defeats and then had to learn it the hard way let’s learn it the easy way and do it right the first time absolutely Joel last word yeah if I I’ll add to to what John just said and dash said earlier you know couple of
Things two points one is you know I agree um as Ray Delio said with AI we’re creating new species that that that is very smart has a lot of facts but has no common sense nor any emotions so in that sense I call it the anti-dog because
Dogs have lots of emotions with no uh no data or facts so we have to learn more like a cat okay I got jel okay we have to learn to live with that new species and I think it’s more than any technology that’s come before it’s going to be culturally changing because that’s
The way technology works it’s exponential the other thing I’ll just quickly say is you know we talk a lot about artificial general intelligence and and whether there will be some sort of Singularity someday where where these machines outthink us and I don’t know if that’s the case and it’s going to be
Hard to tell my my point is that I think we’re just today we’re marching towards artificial general intelligence it’s these AIS are getting better and better we probably won’t recognize the day that it it passes the threshold and so we just need to be careful that we’re paying attention to how we’re applying
It and and understanding that it’s going to impact us very deeply and culturally and and just think about 20 years ago before we had the cell phone the smartphone um this is going to be that times 10 20 years forward um so strap yourself in it’s going to be
Exciting if I could just jump in for just a second I I think what Joel and John have talked about is extremely encouraging and I think that they both highlighted you know we don’t ever go into the future alone there’s a reason why we have partners and allies and when
Electricity was discovered and when we looked at the internet what did we do we talked about what’s the ethical issues and we didn’t do it in a vacuum we actually had forums and and we had vast communities of interests that talked about what are the ethical issues of
Implementing this technology I think and then I’m heartened and warmed to read the vast na numbers of Nations that are having these conversations together so as we progress in the 20 years I’m very hopeful that the dialogue isn’t just going to end with talk we’re actually
Going to establish as we have in the past International norms and laws to ensure that we all can grow together I’m with John I’m positive I think we’re all in the same boat we’re all positive we’re all excited there are so many opportunities in front of us we’ve got
To work with the AI we got to understand the challenges and risks and we’ve got to unpack all of these additional uh concerns uh that you touched on here today uh and make the most of it because it really can offer us a significant amount of benefits thank you so much
Dash Jameson John Shaw Joel moer what a power team I’ve had the opportunity to join me today my dear friends thank you for being with us human machine teaming with AI what an exciting topic now for the rest of the session over to you David today’s world is driven by access to
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Disruptors that will help us the inovation and Propel the world into a truly connected future today’s world is driven by the world today is on the Kim thank you so much um thank you enough for hosting that brilliant discussion it’s fantastic to have four brilliant leaders speaking about a topic
That is so timely and important something that we’re all dealing with right now um the human uh machine interface uh how we relate to Ai and how it impacts our our very lives so can’t thank you enough for that important conversation um and then what’s really
Interesting is that I can’t think of a better way to tee this up because we have to innovate we have to deal with and master these uh Technologies in order for us to stay the strongest military political and economic power in the world and that leads us into sort of
The why uh the the purpose uh that drives a lot of uh this Innovation is our ability to compete with China and our other near peer adversaries so we’re goingon to have a great conversation next with Yan yekik uh who is with The Epic Times he’s their senior editor and
A reporter um really honored to have um some Heroes of mine Joe B Joo I was put his name Joe really glad to have you here um he was one of the leading um dissident uh protesters at tinman Square Uprising uh which is a you know very
It’s a milestone it’s a really important date in our history the world’s history very excited to have Brigadier General Robert Spalding um with simpi AI um who has been talking on China and Reporting on this this these challenges for you know a decade or plus and also
Dr Win chin a human rights activist and a deep cccp expert she really understands all of the different aspects all the different things that the CCP does in terms of uh gaining advantage and she does a very methodical job with that and really um really thankful to
Have her here so we always take a little bit of a break uh so that you can get a cup of coffee and all those good things uh so please do that and we’re going to be joined here in a second with Yan and a fantastic panel looking forward to that
Well David thanks so much for that introduction and uh you know at Epoch times we’re very very proud to be uh partnering with America’s future series and I’m completely thrilled here to be able to introduce an incredibly an incredibly star studded cast here on our panel We’ve Got Deep deep deep knowledge
So let let me start off by introducing feno Joe he was a student leader in the 1989 student protest that centered in kenman square which of course you know about he was actually number five on the most wanted list uh subsequent uh to the massacre um today he is the executive
Director of human rights in China and the co-founder and president of humanitarian China and he’s going to talk about how the CCP has been really good at manufacturing technological tools of repression and how those things then get basically put out across a much broader audience and and similar uh
Related topics then we have W Chen W Chen is an activist with Amnesty International um and she is a currently a scientist at a top top American University and she was born in China towards the end of the great cultural revolution so she’s going to talk about
The US education system and how the Chinese Communist party co-opts that system uh today even and finally uh we have Ro Rob Spalding he’s a retired United States Air Force General um he’s served in MA senior positions of strategy and diplomacy in the state department and the Department of Defense
For over a quarter Century uh today he’s a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and he’s also the CEO of seer which is a Harden Standalone 5G service and software platform and so he’s going to talk about the lack of resilience in our civilian and defense capabilities and
Also how we can actually deal with that in a meaningful way so I’m going to start off with just asking you to kind of give us a little bit of an introduction into your area thano why don’t we start with you uh sure uh hi um yeah thank you for
Having me here it’s always honor to speak at uh this important program and about the topics uh we all care so much I was a t student leader in 1989 35 years ago to me I um was just doing my duty to my country but uh uh after the massacre
I realized I was uh number five on the government most wanted list and uh from then on I became a activist I’m proud of last 35 years what I been doing even though it’s always uphill battle against such uh increasingly stronger uh totalitarian regime with the most advanced technology
And a lot of it with the help willing help of United States um I’m glad we are having this kind of conversation now you know we can alert more people with the immediate and direct risk we are facing uh from CCP reg um so tell us a little bit about
Just to start us off tell us a little bit about this uh you know these specific you I know you have a particular tool in mind that the CCP develops specifically to Target dissidents such as yourself but then has been deployed on a broader population right I uh when we were protesting
In 1989 for uh democracy and freedom in China uh technology and uh free flow of information uh that’s what we wanted and we want technology to change China uh I think this is exactly a surprise you know the opposite of it has happened since CH especially join
WTO uh when they started this firewall uh this great firewall on the cyberace uh at the same time they can buil all the products uh to United States and uh so from then on you we were the first uh targets of ccp’s uh aggression on cyberspace our email uh regularly being
Hacked uh leaked monitored and a lot of times with the help of us companies and my uh accounts here on Linkin on Zoom uh uh were censored by the US companies uh very clearly at the order of uh Beijing and because U of my profile as a TM student leader as a
Human rights activist and U SBI you know has investigate report on this everyone can find out if you just search uh my name you can find uh no search Zoom you can find it yeah it tells specifically how us company uh yeah like Zoom are hiring uh people yeah from China’s State
Security operators to give them Specific Instructions as to you know whom to Monitor and um surveillance but you for most American people this seems remote and uh far away from their daily life what they don’t realize is that you know well we are being targeted the same technology the same mechanism can be
Applied to everyone and that’s increasingly uh manufacted in many such in it’s now for example the hiking of uh government email yeah US government and uh organizations universities and the website being targeted uh shut down yeah we were the first group of targets but uh at that time you know when we
Were uh trying to you call for help you for more attention we were ignored because uh us as a whole uh was busy cooperating uh with CCP in order to get more profit but uh with the help of us companies this kind of Technology this kind of mechanism uh has been brly fting
Everywhere and increasingly everyone is at risk you know for example the the the emails of NOS all over the world uh or specifically mentioned in a recently leaked document from this company called isun uh they even boasted that they control some government emails of certain countries uh which seem to be uh
China’s partner in the one belt one road program but that’s definitely not limited there and the way for example they harvest all the social media data trying to uh build a profile for everyone yeah that’s basically a a global effort um but of this it it doesn’t stop
At you know personal information level the same method uh can be used to acquire very sensitive military information or uh technology and that’s definitely what they’re aiming at well and of course um there’s a plat certain platform that everybody’s familiar with uh which is called Tik Tok
Which also has you know kind of a much deeper collection capability perhaps that’s something we can talk about a little bit later in the show here uh when tell tell us about your experience in US Academia and a little bit about actually you know contrast that with
Your you know Journey from China because you also graduate from one of China’s top universities oh right yeah I came so I I came to the United States can can you hear me yes okay I came to the United States in the 90s for graduate school and I
Mean at that time I really enjoyed the freedom in the United States but when I started to speak about human rights in China in the early 2000 I already noticed that the Chinese students the Chinese student body in American universities is having some problem with s and I remember it was in
Like 200000 or something like a one of my best friends he happened to be the student leader of the Chinese student scholar Association cssa and one day he told me like when you’d better not to criticize the Chinese government it’s a asked me to report your activities to
Them and I was really surprised because that you know think about it in the United States Chinese students from China right like are required by the Chinese Consulate to monitor other students so that was in 2000 and in the past 24 years I have been activist for amasty international and we focus on
Like in my my group of amast international focus on human rights lawyers in China and our prison of conscience is uh uh Mr gishan uh he has been disappeared uh since 2017 because he openly defended the rights of fallenone underground Christians and other victim groups so I have been
Speaking out for human rights in China for 24 years and because of that I pretty much disconnected with all my relatives in China like I never visited them I Tred to minimum keep like a minimum communication with anyone in China and but what really shocked me was
Like last summer when I talked to one of the Chinese student um at a at another prestigious like University right his family went through the C so basically his parents went through what funo went through and he in a private setting he told me about his story but then later
On when I student a group like you know a Western student group interested in Chinese history uh suggest me like say like can you invite him to tell us about his family experience at the T and this graduate student like same same age as me like you know like 20 years
Ago right he also freaked out he said no I’m not going to tell anyone in public my family experience and I felt so sad it has been 23 years and American universities did not change at all like still students are afraid about expressing their opinion about the Chinese government and actually has been
Even worse because now these are all open in several universities let’s talk about like a um you know like in October 2022 right um Berkeley um in like a Berkeley College of Music in Boston right there was one student called W he threatened another Chinese student um
Because the Chinese student uh the the the victim supported the the white paper protest against covid zero policy and posted some posters on campus so he openly wish this this guy openly threatened the victim that he’s going to chop off her her her hands and also like
He threatened like he’s going to report her information to the Chinese police so that in China like you know they can threaten her her parents and this happen again again in other universities it seems like this cssa the Chinese student organizations they have been organizing activities to Target those who speak
Against the Chinese government and Target those activists who come to campus to speak about a weaker genocide or any human rights topic and the more shocking part is that universities usually they remain silent towards all this harassment like they don’t take any action they say you know this is all
Like you know these Chinese people’s business and the pro Communist Party student body seems to be dominant right like you know because they are very loud and they can motivate many students to write a letters to University anomy and like they become the majority of the student body and very few student would
Step out and say no to this say no say like we should have the freedom of expression very few student will step out and the universities would not protect these victims who were harassed and we call them student dissidents like the universities will not protect students disent from China they would
Favor the decisions of the C CSA while cssa is controlled by the Chinese culate and the Chinese Embassy all over the world for example George Washington University cssa received 50% of his funding from the Chinese Embassy in DC and they also openly like you know uh
You know like a uh I I remember several years ago um they actually like uh threatened also have some threatened to students like the Chinese student organization like they threatened uh local victims like who because they they favor Chinese Democracy so we see this again again but if you look deep into
The pro problem of the universities much deeper than like a uh remain silent in the past 10 years American universities already received over1 billion dollars of funding donation or funding from Chinese entities from Chinese government to Chinese you know private companies have tie with the Chinese government so there’s definitely money involved
And in the past 20 years there also plenty a lot of like a scientific collaboration with Chinese research institutes for example we talk about covid right the Wuhan lab we also hey Wuhan lab it looks like they’re engineering some virus that’s making them gain a function but you may not
Notice if you read the publication of the Wuhan lab they collaborated with University of North Carolina they received funding from NIH so there’s all kinds of collaboration all kinds of like a funding involved so not only like the students um you know in the United States they they dare not speak out
Because universities they’re basically they collaborators with the Chinese government and also the university professors they become brainwashers through Decades of collaboration because all they know about China is like oh China is so good to us right they give us money to do research and Chinese researchers are so kind they’re like
Saying People Like Us these all downplayed the human rights atrocity in China like in American universities like I have been in this higher education system in in the past 30 years you cannot talk about human rights in China if you talk about human rights China they say you’re political you know you
Can talk about human rights in the United States you can talk about anything in the US you can say Trump is the bad you’re not political but if you say Shin ping is bad they say you’re political so they already have this strong censorship against speeches uh in
The in the about the Chinese dissidence and this is what thing I’m I’m I’m very concerned about because once they brainwashed once the university professors this the university admin system are brainwashed by the Chinese propaganda we’re talking about the most important technology right they are the most Brilliant Minds in the United
States they train students and these students would go out and work for Tesla work for space act work for defense companies but they already have this fantasy towards CCP then then I think we have some serious problem here right we sanction China not let them to get this
Key technology so that they can use this technology for military to threaten other country and and like you know persecute their own people but they can use the most brilliant mind in American universities to develop technology for them and we are talking about a sanction Huawei but do you know Huawei is giving
$300 million per year as like a fundings research funds to top universities around the world so they already doing this they’re already giving money to universities to the education system um and also like a gr uh transform the minds of the American Elites to serve the purpose of the the
Communism so you know this is kind of a perfect segue into getting General Spalding to speak here because you know talking about Huawei Huawei has been very busy building infrastructure in countries all over the world and I’ve spoken with diplomats uh myself who told me the reason they chose Huawei and this
Is even in some liberal democracies I might add uh because it was a great deal they they they they they had the best uh they had the best offer and they didn’t maybe think about the fact that there might be another reason why the the cost
Was so low so perhaps uh uh General Spalding if if you could speak now to this yes thank you Yan thank you for having me on so I mean both of the both funks and one talk about these challenges that we have today and I think one of the
Things that I realized when I was working at the White House was the integral nature of our infrastructure in supporting this cap these capabilities whether they be influencing our citizens whether it be influencing Chinese citizens when they’re abroad or whether it be essentially attacking ability to communicate in in times of
Crisis or natural disaster or just when uh the Chinese Communist party needs to create a distraction maybe over over potential invasion of Taiwan that our networks really weren’t you know able to support either the protection of our society from that influence or the ability to continue through um some kind
Of natural disaster attack so we’ve been very focused um at the people I’ve been working with I’ve dedicated my life after leaving the military to really focusing on how do we Harden our society on the infrastructure side how do we protect our citizens I think one of the
Things that’s that’s very very important that we essentially not really focused on since the beginning of um you know this Rush from Silicon Valley to a mobile internet where you know everything that you do is tracked you know by platforms like Tik Tok and and used by B dance to feed feed you
Algorithms I think this idea that you should have all your data open is a very dangerous one for democracy and I think you know me in particular I believe very strongly that encryption ought to be a a basic human right that your ability to keep your data private and data
Collected about you private um is is a foundational right if we’re going to maintain the principles and um and values of our Republic uh through through the digital age and I think that’s one of the things that we missed that the Chinese Communist party got right and we thought this world that we
Were creating that silicon value Valley um you know deluded us diluted us into believing was going to provide a means for freeing the rest of the world that in fact it could be controlled by governments it could be controlled by corporations to ends that are counter to the values and principles that we
Believe in in our constitution and so um much less you know uh much less laws or regulations or rules much more about technology particularly the technology that is in our everyday lives whether it be protecting our ability to communicate when there’s a natural disaster or preventing us from being influenced to
You know counter our own best interest these are things that infrastructure uh needs to be focused on from a technology perspective um let me just ask this specific question what what’s the issue with having Huawei infrastructure built in 100 I I forget how many nations now but
It’s I think it’s almost 150 or something like that including you know a number of uh liberal democracies and I believe there’s still Huawei infrastructure in the US and certainly in Canada there is well you you appreciate this Yan I mean I used to drop 2,000 pound bombs on um on
Communications ites as part of a strategy for controlling a country when you want to get them to do what you want to do and and the thing that really blew my mind away was the ability to just build those and then have control over them from the very beginning so it’s not
Just about shutting it off you can shut it off but you also want to listen in on it and the more listening in on it then you have the ability to go after people like Punk saw and one uh if they if they counter you know have a a message
Counter to to what you want and even we’re seeing our own government do some of these things so this is not it’s broken containment it’s no longer just in the authoritarian regimes this desire to control information to cancel people to to gain Intelligence on people this is something that’s it really is uh
Something that governments can’t stop from doing they they just feel compelled to need to use that information to maintain the narratives that they want you to continue to believe and trust in and I think this is so counter to the world that sprung up out of the Enlightenment period and then of course
Was accelerated by the the the US Constitution and the foundation of America you know uh thanksful you know perhaps uh you can speak to this a little bit you know I I had a number of interviews recently with China Watchers China experts we’re talking and this theme keeps coming up you know we
Imagined you know in America in Canada that you know we would by investing huge amounts of money essentially building that regime you know the US was single-handedly perhaps considered as having built that regime uh that we were going to change them that they were going to become you
Know a democracy or something like that but it seems like it actually went to speak to Rob’s comments here kind of went in the other direction it’s like they’ve changed us and this kind of surveillance technology has actually developed in a lot of places where we
Didn’t expect as a result I don’t know if you have any thoughts on this uh yes this is a very tragic said U reality now unfortunately this isn’t a complete surprise to me uh yeah because we realize this government uh has no regard for human life dignity when they R the
Tanks on the peaceful protesters 35 years ago you know while the whole world was watching uh but it’s a shame that United States you know beginning with George W bush uh Embrace this brutal regime immediately Bush actually sent someone like within a week U to uh
Comfort sha you know who was uh troubled uh like by uh yeah the killing because uh Chinese people were rebelling everywhere all over China against the massacre but uh yeah uh Bush’s support uh give him confidence and uh eventually American Technology and the trade enabled this regime uh most people just don’t realize
There is zero private Enterprise in China every company serves for the purpose of a state and that’s state only and so for example if you sanction one company another one will pop up immediately doing the same business maybe hiring exactly the same people and uh uh oh you know the US
Companies if they are not allowed to invest in some technologies uh they they would do some other deals yeah that’s I think what uh we’re facing you this belief in free market economy where you know companies uh must uh have the rights to do their business
That’s a problem now in fact yeah the CCP regime has so successfully manipulated this game that us companies were basically knocking over each other uh to gain fer of pij that’s the situation we are facing with with the trade and the technology exchange and and well yeah uh this
That’s from there you the the whole society talking about universities uh I work with Chinese students all the time so today you I talk to all the victims including the the Berkeley students who were harassed and you Freedom loving Chinese students in United States now they have to live underground basically they
Cannot publicize their thoughts they cannot organize any event because us universities have institutionalized BCP censorship in the name of for example following China’s Uh custom you or keeping the safety of Chinese students uh we are facing this all the time yeah we have for example talked to
All many U us universities just simply trying to install a vast sculpture of Nobel Peace la le who died in prison you know now people are paying attention to Russian hero Nani but when he died like the whole world was ignoring him he he was like the first uh Nobel peace law to
Die in prison without ever seeing a price and now he is denied opportunity just yeah to for us universities to show him yeah that’s that’s the situation now so uh this is so pervasive and uh we’re fighting this uh really uphill battle but I’m glad like recent years we are
Getting more audience on this I mean this is this is fascinating you know hearing from when that this type of you know what we call cancel culture now already was happening on college campuses in America in 2000 again courtesy of the Chinese regime you know I think that really kind of
Highlights how the because we know that this is a you know increased dramatically in all sorts of previews uh uh in all sorts of dimensions on college campus today and I you can’t I can’t help about wonder if this isn’t another way that the Chinese regime changed
Changed us as opposed to kind of the dream of doing it in the opposite direction uh when uh I’m just thinking about that right now about this thousand talents program and you know the one of the things that that uh i’ I’ve been hearing about recently quite a bit of
You know some basically there’s uh there’s been numerous instances of people that are obviously you know deeply affiliated with regime for example with the people’s Liberation Army working in high level labs in America and you know if you suggest that there might be some issue you know the
Label racist you know again sort of linking back to this cancel culture that’s racist you’re not allowed to say that how do you react to this sort of situation yourself I feel we need to speak out I feel like the biggest problem in higher education is that the people are
Ignorant about you know the the problem of the Chinese regime right they they think China has human rights problem and us also has human rights problem so China’s problem is not any more serious than our problem that’s a a common notion among the the US uh universities
Like they don’t think human rights in China is a problem they think it’s as bad as us then basically you know that’s not a problem right and and also they really uh hate uh US military like uh many brilliant students like from top universities they don’t want to work for defense companies
They say they don’t want to create a weapon to kill people they say like I see Americans killed so many people all over the world right by sending our troops here and there but they’re willing to work with Chinese military they don’t think it’s a problem to work
With Chinese military because in their definition Chinese military they didn’t kill anyone around the world so that’s all they know about you know and then we talk about you know let’s talk about wer genocide about like T masaka they say you’re political we don’t want to hear about that you’re you’re anti-china like
Basically once you criticize the Chinese regime they say you’re anti-china so so here is a I think we are talking about something a lot deeper than just Talent Southern Talent problem like we’re talking about the Deep uh deeply rooted self-censorship and now like a it’s like a propaganda in universities like people
Are already brainwashed you have to awake them from brainwashing you have to keep uh pounding them like say okay here’s a problem you need to know about China like I think like if you want to make a breakthrough you have to understand the their language you can’t
Hold a Bible say you know I want to tell you what the Bible said they wouldn’t listen because they’re aists you have to speak to them in a language that they can understand they they they they would favor women’s rights right so I say let’s talk about women’s rights in China
Let’s talk about the consquence of one child policy about so many women went through Force abortion went through Force sterilization let’s talk about the systematic uh sterilization Chinese government is having towards wager women right they they’re sterilizing basically majority of Waker woman now so you have to start a conversation from there so
That they would listen they will be surprised they say I’ve never heard anything like this then they can get to know about other stuff and I just feel it’s important important for us who still work at higher education are still in this system to speak out like I see
The problem like many American conservatives basically their strategy is like we’re going to home school we’re going to religious universities we’re not going to these Elite universities because they’re all leftists basically when you keep doing that I mean I don’t blame anyone who choose that pass but if
Everyone choose that pass basically you abandon the battlefield you know you you completely leave this field to the CC pieace infiltration and if all Chinese students go underground like when they speak about democracy then basically you abandon the battlefield we just need to speak out we need to support each other
We also need to um what do you say like a chain each other help each other like a learn from the experience of each other it’s not easy to awake someone from propaganda I myself I came to the us as a very brainwashed Chinese students and I remember my American
Colleagues told me about t Mas car and it took me at least six months to accept that I was brainwashed that took me a long time and you can imagine the reaction for someone who are brainwashed if you try to awake them they are going to push back they’re
Going to be angry they’re going to say you’re anti-china they’re going to cry they’re going to be really emotional but you have to do it do it um especially Americans that’s what I told my Western friends like see remember my Western friends awoke me from this propaganda
And you are unique in your position to awake other Chinese because Chinese people they always afraid of each other like you don’t know who is a spy right but they trust their American friends they trust Westerner they say oh you’re Westerner you know you have a different you’re different race you’re not likely
To be a CCP spy so you’re not like you’re not likely to to lie to me and chck me into doing something so so we are all responsible to awake uh you know the the people in the in universities and second I would say it’s very important to have the right policy
Because universities live on federal grants you know every day they rely on federal funding to support their research to maintain their operation that’s their main income so if you have the right policy to bend uh for example like if you can we have the policy that any student group in universities cannot
Receive money from a foreign entity otherwise you cannot operate in the University right if we have such a law in the US then basically cssa will have to disconnect with the Chinese Consulate or they have to withdraw from the University so so I think that will really protect our American um you know
Academia Freedom so I think just so my suggestions to is like number one everyone should speak out we should support students at a grassroot level and number two we need to have the right policy in the US government to prevent our University from falling into the hands of foreign
Governments oh so one of the things I often uh talk about Tick Tock and get invited to speak about that and I I like to mention to people that there’s something called the 2017 National Intelligence law okay and I mean I’m going to mention this very briefly
Because I think it applies to frankly every area that we’ve been discussing here today right um 27 2017 National Intelligence law basically says that if you if the Chinese regime makes a demand on you to effectively become a spy you need to do so by law I mean and some one
Of you can jump in if if you interpreted that law differently the other piece that’s very important is the doctrine of military civil fusion and that is that you know that’s actually one of the top seven priorities of xiin ping I mean this this this doctrine’s been in place
For a while but now it’s actually being something that everybody has to implement if they possibly can right so now this is in the context of Tik Tok but this is also in the context of infrastructure so perhaps General Spalding if you could comment on that a little
Bit so one thing we say here in the west is that um politics is or war is politics by other means in other words we use military force to achieve a political outcome and that’s been that’s Prett pretty consistent um throughout the de development of well Warfare in
The west um and it’s become it’s gotten to such a point where we focus so much on the application of violence on the battlefield to achieve a political outcome that we’ve in essence disconnected it from the what the reason you go to war and the reason you go to
War um as as the you know cloudwood says again war is politics by other means is for a political outcome well what we found is these this this infrastructure this technology this ecosystem uh that Silicon Valley developed and really gave to China and allowed them to dominate was designed to
Influence people to do things economically to be a better Shopper um and what the Chinese Communist Party realizes well if I can influence you to be a better Shopper I can also influence you to be a better communist and these same channels work quite well and so Tik
Tok is a very good example is of the maturation of this way of War so if you think about uh War from the perspective of the West the airplane really was the epitome and you know I flew the B2 the stealth bomber when you put the air that
Airplane together with networks uh GPS guided bombs and the ability to collect intelligence you know you could go anywhere you could do anything but even more powerful than that I believe uh Tik Tock represents the next evolution of the greatest weapons in Warfare in that they can go directly to to the citizenry
And they can go directly to the individual and they can be tailored to the individual so this ability to manipulate your perceptions your behaviors at an individual level is really what we’re talking about impairing that the the infrastructure um the ability to collect data about you everywhere and then using
Artificial intelligence to leverage that data in ways that manipulate your behaviors is really what we’re talking about so when you can do that if you think about our constitution The Federalist Papers you know the Federalist Papers really talk about um the reason that the um that the colonies
Believed that they needed a republic was because that each of the republics could be picked off one by one and if they needed to come together and protect themselves you know of course at that time they were thinking army navy you know an army could come and attack us or
Somebody could attack us from SE there was no such thing as an internet there is no such thing as this ability to go right into your homes and so I tell people you know the the the really The Awakening moment for me as a B2 pilot uh
Was realizing that I could you know take this two billion doll machine go anywhere around the world and do things on behalf of the country that wants to achieve a political outcome and get back home and my kids you know believe in communism because they’ve been influenced through the you know right
Through the tools that are in their own hands and right in their own living rooms and I think this is the thing so Warfare has has has been elevated to a new plane kwiz is no longer uh the the person that I listen to you know you’d
Be much more um inclined to understand this by listening to Ma’s own words ma spoke about this type of political Warfare but he didn’t have the means to wage it globally today the Chinese Communist Party does another good example somebody from the West that talked about this but isn’t thought of
In the sense of warfare is makavelli you reading the prints you really get a sense of what Ma was trying to do he just never had the tools to do it and we gave him the tools in these very very F powerful Technologies and ecosystems you know and I might add
There’s there’s another element too because you know in the kind of communist mentality or the it’s everything is basically a power play every interaction uh between a human being is one person trying to exert power over another and that’s it right and and I think that you know the that
Mentality has also created a situation where it’s kind of become a moral thing like people accept as good and just and fine that manip that you know these Technologies are used to manipulate us and that and that we can expect that as opposed to like that’s outrageous right um I’m wondering funo
If you have any thoughts about that oh I’m sorry see that okay yeah I mean the the idea just being that basically in in the Communist mindset everything is one person trying to exert power over another and that’s all there is right that there is no there’s no sort of deep human
Relationship that’s the that’s the that’s the extent of it but that also creates this kind of weird uh lack of Morality In The Way We deploy these powerful information Technologies right and I’m just wondering if this you know we keep talking about this theme of communist China having changed us right
Uh it’s almost like we accept that these manipulations are fine right yeah I think uh that’s true from the beginning to the ideology of Communism you when the uh begin uh in Europe and then in China uh for CCP they never had their intention ofing you uh the world basically they
Want to be the engineer of human Souls everywhere and uh that’s that’s the the way they they do it they uh they are uh brainwashing our people and now they can they can do it uh where you know everyone is enemy of each other and you have to fight power struggle there’s of
Course what is tragic is that United States never realized this in the beginning that we are facing existential threat from this regime there’s no peace between such a regime and uh a democracy like United States and especially the rule based International Alor that United States trying to
Keep when I wanted to ask you about this you know go kind of going back to this question of you know students that are affiliated with um say Chinese military institutions is there a concern that these students are working in top level American universities doing you know Cutting Edge research
Um because the there’s two positions on this right some people think that that that’s a crazy proposition and others say well you’re being you’re being discriminatory against those Chinese so how do you view that uh the students working uh in the Chinese military before they came to the
US they probably uh you know have some issues on the National Security like of America right because we know all the Chinese government sponsored students starting from 2019 they had to sign a contract before they they came that they they promised they will serve the country they promised they will you know
Follow the order of the CCP and and once they come to the United States and we we also notice that like usually Chinese government would send only send sponsor students to study in the area like they want to get the technology and they always sponsor projects like they think
They bring them technology but not others projects I already noticed this kind of collaboration uh they have like a you know a boundary like they they only restrict to those area with technology that the CCP wants actually in some European countries like Sweden they already stopped accepting students
Who were government sponsored by China right they already stopped doing that but the United States we still allow many of them to come to study uh I think it’ll go back to the original problem of American universities because the professors if the the univ the atomy if
The professors don’t think this is a threat if they don’t think Chinese military is a threat if they don’t think China has a human rights issue then you know these are all fine right like basically the I read one of the letters written by the CCH president to the
Students like it was open letter and basically in that open letter he said we should not discriminate anyone because where they had worked before so look look at this letter this is a statement from a top university in the US that they should not discriminate students just because they from a Chinese
Military and hundreds of University professors from Stanford from Princeton they wrote a a letter to doj like Department of Justice protesting the China initiative they think this is anti-china this is racism so you see how much influence they already have universities and this is actually the as
I mentioned like it’s already very deep universities but still nowadays they have to carry the policy of the US right like you know United States if we have the right policy then no matter what the professors think they will say okay we have to follow the rule we have to deny
Certain students we cannot get them Visa I mean we just have to take actions at the same time try to awake them from this propaganda you know and as a case in point you know the sort of in these foyer emails uh between some you know the NIH and University in America and
The Wuhan Institute of biology you see kind of the chummy relationship you have which you know there’s Bally 100% chance the Chinese military is operating right in the in the Wuhan Institute of biology okay we’re about to finish we have about three minutes left I’m gonna give uh one
Minute as a just final closeup statement let’s start with Fango please kind of we felt a democratization uh will always be a threat uh to United States and all the freedom loving people and today it I I’m glad many people are waking up to the fact that uh the
Influence of CCP regime is pervasive and uh Global and it is already immediate at the direct threat to everyone so we must F back and uh so when do you H quick quick final statement and then we’ll do General spaling I want to say freedom of speech
Is not about the freedom to speak for everyone to speak but also allow everyone’s voice to be heard so if we need to hear voices from everyone then we can know exactly what this word is like I think what I said is not about just about protecting the rights of
Students dissidents but also allow everyone in the United United States know what’s happening in China what is the true nature of CCP then that can help us to make the correct uh policy to protect our freedom and our future and general Spalding a final thought yes you know the the Western
Tradition has been based on the rule of law and I think uh there is no rolling back the digital future it is part of our lives today just as um you know the smartphone you know a company each of the four of us just about everywhere we
Go and we have to accept that uh and then understand how we instantiate in the infrastructure that supports those devices the the values and principles of our Republic they need to be available when we dister and they also need to protect our information from the spying eyes of Corporations or governments and
They need to protect our the ability to have our voice heard within that so the ability to have um you know political speech not be cancelled or you know dissidence uh dissent of the government or corporations this has to be um speech that is honored and protected in this
Infrastructure and so we have to do our atmost to ensure that the the very Foundation the senu if you will of this Digital World supports the type of world that we want to live in well thanks o Joo when Chen uh General Rob Spalding it’s great to have sat down with you
Here I’m Yan Kell senior editor with the epoch times also host of the show American thought leaders we a number of you have been and sending it back to you David the world today is on the brink of remarkable technological transformation a new era of machine human and digital coexistence will bring
Forward new possibilities for businesses governments communities and individuals across the globe the rate of innovation is moving faster with each year that passes this belief led to the creation of evoke comex Innovation Foundry evoke creates new solutions that Empower Global communities by providing access to Technologies others never imagined
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Don’t stop there we’re also forging alliance with leading universities worldwide to ensure we Empower Future Leaders who will build connections that set ideas free we deliver intent based insightful on demand Technologies and services EV global technology Landscapes to power the world welcome to the new ofcity yan yan thank you so much really
Appreciate that fantastic discussion appreciate your hosting and leading that um this is a really important discussion I appreciate Joe um General Spalding uh Dr Chin all of you sharing your experiences and your insights you guys are way closer to this um Joe um you’re um I always pronounce your name wrong
But Joe your um your your experience at tinman square and your advocacy for human rights and the democratization of um of China is really really important and um it’s inspiring thank you all so much for your comments and your insights and um I look forward to seeing you guys
Down the road um we’re looking forward now also to a conversation between bong gahad and a group of people talking about actively responsive uh Technologies sort of where the rubber meets the road how we actually Implement these Technologies and and how they could be used for best effect looking
Forward to Daniel jinsky of compact joining uh J Jason Melo KMC group Brian TR Andy lopsa you’ll introduce your folks give a little backround on them that’s that’ll be great but I want to thank you in advance for this really important conversation and we’re looking
Forward to it so we’ll turn it over to you now good afternoon I’m I’m bong gahad and I have the pleasure of being your moderator for this next panel on what we’re calling tactically responsive Technologies first off I want to thank the America’s future series for hosting
This panel as part of the Dual use Tech Summit broadcasted from Austin Community College and conveniently in conjunction with South by Southwest event happening at the same time now uh we’re Liv in a warfighting era of complexity and unpredictability the need for agility adaptability and responsiveness has never been more
Pressing from rapid prototyping and agile manufacturing to Adaptive Logistics and autonomous systems tactically responsive Technologies at our disposal can really bolster our nation’s defense posture and Safeguard our collective security interest the key though is synchronizing and implementing these Technologies into our war fighting systems to be highly effective some of
These Technologies are powerful and may require a new war fighting Doctrine to be to be useful the need to be techically responsive in a dynamic operational environment requires the efficient use of these Technologies for the war fighters to succeed and we have witnessed enormous technological advancement in the last decade alone from Advanced
Communications like 5G and XG to artificial intelligence and machine learning space launch and the question becomes how to effectively harness these capabilities and avoid the valley debt that seem to creeping in from every corner navigate through an enormous procurement bureaucracy at the Pentagon and get these into the hands of the
Users so this afternoon we will unpack all of this to a series of questions I will ask the panel hope hoping to elicit dialogue across the Spectrum topics we’re going to be talking about today and we will view this from a lens of industry and in keeping with the theme
Of The Summit look at it from a standpoint of dual use and you can Define what that means in your mind so now the panel I’m very happy and pleased to have this group of individuals join me today allow me the privilege of introducing this group and I’ll start
With Brian tley who was the vice president of Space Systems at Pacific defense Brian Le of Space Systems business developing Leading Edge multi-function payad capability or space situational awareness he served as the Director of Space Systems prior to his current position and before joining Pacific defense Brian worked exclusively
With raon intelligence and space at Ron Technologies Brian holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Ohio State University and a master’s uh degree in Engineering Management from from USC next is Andy lapsa thank you Andy for joining and Andy’s the co-founder and CEO at Stoke space Stoke is building
Fully and rapidly re reusable rockets and space vehicles to enable seamless Mobility to through and from space uh in three years sto has developed a new rl10 class hydrogen oxygen rocket engine which features an actively cooled heat shield to enable rapid reuse of their upper stage Andy was a foundational uh in in
Early work with the blue origin uh and he holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell and a PhD in aerospace engineering uh from the University of Michigan next I’m really happy that Jason Melo can join us Jason is the CEO and co-founder of the KMC Group LLC
Where he provides executive level Consulting to the defense intelligence and space sectors for both commercial uh and the government sector uh previously Jason served as the president of fireplace space Transport Services a holy on subsidiary of fireplace Aerospace Incorporated I knew Jason as he’s a retired colonel in the
United States Air Force uh with assignments at the nro OSD and at the Air Force office of scientific research o osr he also served in the white house for three years as a White House military social leate kind of fun times uh I’m sure during during the day there
Jason and Jason holds a masters of arts in organizational management from George Washington University a master of engineering from the University of Massachusetts and a Bachelor of Science and chemical engineering from rooster poly Technic Institute uh and lastly um pleasure to have Dan gasinski from comptech uh who named the president of comptech
Satellite networks Technologies Incorporated uh in 2022 and previously he’s held various senior management positions at comp Tech including VP of product and strategy for comptech Systems Prior to joining comptech in 2019 Dan had PM leadership roles at GE SRA Nevada Corporation as well as L3 Harris and Dan holds a bachelor’s degree
In inou from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree uh from Duke University again welcome gentlemen for and thank you for for joining me this afternoon uh on this panel on this very important topic around ically responsive Technologies to begin with our discussion this afternoon let me ask
Each one of you to talk a little bit about what you and your companies are doing in support of dual use Technologies and te and technologies that can be operationalized in support of immediate need uh in in response to a war fighting requirement and I’ll start
With Andy U kind of with the work you’re doing there with Stoke Andy if you could sure well we started Stoke a handful of years ago late 2019 with the idea that uh we really wanted to help push um the ability to access space to space through space from space and push
That to its logical conclusion as fast as possible um I think all of us are well aware of the many many different innovations that have happened in the area of space launch over the last 10 years uh and those are undeniably transformative in our industry um Falcon
9 of course and SpaceX are are Forefront in making all of that happen I think because of those things we have a um very exciting outlook for commercial space as well as new um and proliferated space assets for the dod but I also think it’s very very early in the days
Of space development I think um there’s a good solid factor of 10 to 20 Improvement that we can make on what Falcon 9 delivers uh that is the reason why SpaceX is working on Starship um and those improvements are enabled one and only way and that is with rapidly reable
Vehicles that fly very very frequently um and so I think that the US industrial base the National Security the space economy in general needs more than just one big company um kind of monopolizing that access and that’s why why we were formed I also think that the premise of
Building fully reasonable vehicles that come and go um you know every day that’s not been solved yet it’s not proven and the race is not won and uh we need more than one horse in the race to go do that and so our our technology that we’ve developed um really focuses on making
The space vehicle the upper stage fully and rapidly reable we’ve done some interesting and unique novel kind of uh technology and applications to do that and I think what’s been interesting in the last few years as we’ve kind of matured that technology is the additional use cases that have come out
Right our initial thought is again bring space launch to its logical conclusion but when you do that it turns turns out that other forms of Mobility are also very important and enabled by the same technology and and those are the three space and from space aspects um and so
I’m super excited about uh the ability to kind of explore those and develop those further and I think those are a th% needed and essential to get the um you know tactically responsive um aspect of our in space assets uh so I’m excited to you know be on this panel and talk to
Some of the other complimentary technologies that that hopefully we can help um bring to the table right oh thanks Andy I certainly you you mentioned before the uh the trend towards proliferated architecture is kind of really breaking the mold if you will of how space should be done uh in
The future so thank you for that uh dad let me ask you from a compex standpoint and you guys are are well known in com Tech in Communications Arena uh you know in terms of looking at technologies that allow for flexibility and responsiveness what what are you guys doing uh within
The company to date uh to to uh to enable some of that concept yeah um it’s a really interesting time that we’re in I think across the industry and you as the point was made um quite a significant transformation going on as we’re watching you know Satellite Systems um kind of continue to
Proliferate it brings to front of mind I think a couple of those major Transformations that we’re seeing um across the industry and then some of the adjustments that need to be made in um what the supply chain looks like as well as what those in products um look like
And I think the three big shift that I’m seeing right is is first a shift towards what I’ll say is digitization and virtualization you really building out heavily softwar defined systems that are uh very flexible that you know kind of understand that the the world that you’re Fielding them into may not look
The same uh five years from now as it does today um and I think that’s an important shift that um you know folks need to be mindful of the second really comes down to standardization building things around open interfaces so that pieces can you know plug and play um and
Be transitioned into the future um and then I think really the the third big shift that we’re seeing is there’s a significant challenge in delivering against um the quantity of systems that are required um for these proliferated ecosystems right it’s a you know transition from you know one satellite
That’s expected to last for 20 to 25 years to constellations of hundreds if not thousands of satellites and you know there there’s a significant effort that has to be done to scale up and support that um you we we recently just opened um a large onshore manufacturing
Facility in Chandler um that’s one of the things that you know I think I’m I’m kind of excited about is how do you bring digitization uh virtualization and then actual you know real on the ground manufacturing um all at the same time yeah thank you Dan I I’ll come back
To some of the points you made kind of later on as well as some of the points that Andy made but uh let me ask uh Brian Brian I’m familiar with kind of what what pafic defense folks are doing and to dance Point around stand standardization using mosa maybe uh and
Software defined radios could could you talk to the panel about some of the things Pacific defense is doing around around that you know those two areas yeah no absolutely had on two key uh key points for Pacific defense um Civ defense is uh was a open architecture
Based uh company or a seos integrated platform that’s traditionally focused on um ground based systems um for the Marines and some other work for uh other applications where I’ve come into Pacific defenses we’re developing a mosa space based uh sensor and to your point we’re leveraging open architecture um
And Open Standards right in order to leverage uh C products really support the tactically responsive space initiative um and be able to be rapidly reconfigurable to face the evolving threats as they come as you said it will not be the same three years from now or
Two years from now as it is today so that’s how PD is positioned to support thanks Brian and and Jason kind of last let me ask you having come from government I know while at OSD you led the small satellite coordinating activity where uh it was an effort to
Try to consolidate or you have everybody collaborate across the OD around the development of small satellites uh also with your with your launch background I mean do you see you know proliferated sense in a proliferated architecture or proliferated future you know what some of the remaining challenges are in terms
Of Technology uh as well as access access to space uh you know via VIA launch any any any thoughts around that Jason I appreciate bang I I think you know there is you know when you look across I think the entire ecosystem you know from you know understand the
Government side where I think you know the key part is really understand the requirements that the government has and how to define those so that it makes it more I would say advantageous to commercial companies to be able to step in and provide solutions for industry and to really create that dual use
Technology that dual use capability I know working in OSD and then heading to Firefly AOS space right after you know especially with techly responsive space that was one thing that I know for know since the early 2000s the government has been trying to do it and then even in
The mid 2000s when I was working it for a few different organizations there was always that challenge of trying to figure out you have the launch piece but then also the satellite piece but what we see now is more of companies coming in and providing those different layers
So it’s not just the access to space it’s the satellites it’s also the deployment but you know some of the other parts I think that are key you mentioned specifically you when you look at inter interoperability integration and then also the resilience to the threats I think if there’s something
That when you’re looking at an endtoend system you know those are a couple key things I think we need to look at along with other things we’re probably not focused on but the data analytics piece and also how do we improve communication how do we ensure that when we have
Systems to be able to operate and do a responsive launch to responsive deployment of uh space Vehicles Etc up on orbit how can you do that and and lastly I would say the cost Effectiveness and efficiency is always an issue one from the government side because your limited budgets but then
From the commercial side you have to be able to provide and have that backing both from an investor or either from the government paying it to be able to allow that system to be affordable and then to be able to execute on it in a timely
Fashion yeah no I’ll pick up on your your comment about uh you know vulnerabilities and you know from a security standpoint and I know a lot of these uh you know responsive Technologies are truly dual use meaning there’s a commercial side of it you know the military DOD taken advantage of that
From that standpoint you know what what strategies can we employ to ensure that you know security is Paramount in in the development and the deployment of a lot of these Technologies any any thoughts around around that Jason I’ll start with you yeah I think I think from the
Security side I think it’s it’s really addressing from understand the requirements so both from what the government has and what capability right and I think the the big Improvement that I’ve seen especially with space for standing up and and really being leading in this area is looking at how to you
Know engage commercial and also addressing the security problem you know from the Cyber threats but also I think there’s other aspects with our adversaries is how do we keep the systems secure from a communication standpoint but also the other part is how do we look at you know the IP and
Try to protect what companies have to offer so it’s kind of two different you know parts to it but I would say lastly I think you know when I look at the problem two you have to be able to understand how you can have a rapid deployment that allows you to not only
Address what you’re trying to do both from whether a launch or you know depending on what part but if if an adversary has the ability to interfere in that deployment whether from a Cyber attack or be able to get into your system or your structure I think that’s
Is going to be one of the big problems and one of the threats that we need to address moving forward right yeah to to that end Brian again looking at some of the capabilities that pacific defense you know is trying to trying to develop in and and
Deploy uh you know uh software defined radios could could could be vulnerable to uh to to cyber attacks and threats uh are you are you guys specifically add addressing how to mitigate uh those concerns and and those potential risks yeah sure B couple approaches so as a payload provider obviously we do not
Want to be the weakest link in the chain right in terms of what brings down the whole system um so from that standpoint again Civic defense we’re doing open architecture uh system so our payload think of a a multi-slot chassis which has multiple you know multiple cards so
You you have a redundancy and a layered element to your cyber uh strategy there your security strategy so you have the ability at least card by card within the payload you have some layer of redundancy there um from a particular program perspective we have an effort underway with afrl where we are looking
To leverage some of their uh Advanced cyber Security Solutions or cyber resiliency Solutions I should say into our our open system architecture right that’s one of the things we’re trying to further with them and we work that into our open architecture and demonstrate um that we have cyber resilient
Capability in terms of how we want to operate and reconfigure okay Brian thank you Dan you know you talk about the digitization I think that’s the term used of Technologies uh do you sense though that there’s a uh a a cultural uh aspect to uh to the dod
Adopting full up you know Open Standards uh architect uh in in in Future Weapons development the the sense the need for for you know changing the culture or or the thinking process maybe uh maybe there additional training development that is required you to be to be made across dood to uh
To Open the Eyes if you will uh on the advantages of those kinds of Technologies so so bong I think there’s a couple of layers to this right and you know at the end of the day there there there’s always right kind of a a challenge in getting Buy in to adopt
Anything that looks like a major change right people need to get familiar with the technology they need to be comfortable with it um but I think in a lot of cases um it also just comes down to it’s a really significant challenge to fully recapitalize a lot of the
Equipment that’s out there and you know I think while while we would all like to see kind of a switch get flipped and you go straight from Legacy systems into these future All Digital architectures um that’s a multi- decade effort to go make all of those changes is really you
Have to be focused on not just Fielding things that solve the problems of the future but things that also kind of speak those Legacy languages of the past whether it’s a bridging system or whether it’s a system that’s U Got the ability to support both modes I think
That’s um a problem that also gets lost in that kind of industry to government uh discussion area right and so um I I I think there’s a kind of a really near-term focus on how do we design develop systems that uh bring forward those Legacy modes and then you know
There there’s kind of that second layer of um how do you actually get that done in a way that you know preserves the cyber security posture preserves the data Integrity posture on those existing systems when you bring something new online yeah no no thank you that you
Know kind of along those slides I know that uh it’s always been a challenge for for the Department to embrace new technology given the fact as you point out Dan that there’s like all these Legacy radios whatever it is that somehow you need to keep in the
Inventory because you know we still have it so I I there a realization that there’s a difficulty in actually doing an effective transition from new to Old for for for that for that reason you know Andy you you’re kind of coming at this uh I mean really totally new with
With you know a lot of uh uh Investments kind of being thrown into your technology uh how can in your mind how can industry and and government partner uh to to facilitate uh rapidly adopting and implementing some of these emerging Technologies to to meet uh evolving
Defense needs do is there a a recipe or a formula to to making that more effective well I think uh you hit it on it at the very end I think the first thing is that we need to figure that the answer to that question out and I think
There’s a lot of uh room for improvement there um in my mind this this era of space development is very similar to the creation of the airplane and the Air Force this is an entire new domain that um you know there’s kind of a race to go
Master and figure out and um and you know we do have adversaries who are moving very very fast in this area and we need to to keep up and stay on top so so we have to figure out the answer to that question um I don’t know what the
Answer to that is but I do know um there are great Outlets out there for small companies to get going the SBI program is wonderful to to start right uh we used it to catalyze our um our company to provide a signal to the investment community and that was very effective uh
After that uh to get to meaningful dollars from the government is very very difficult uh it’s a multi-year task uh takes teams of experts who know how to work the system and and get into the system it’s very difficult to to move from the SBI world to to meaningful
Investment to actually go deploy new technology um and what I would say is I think that there have been efforts good efforts you know things like diu are wonderful but I in my opinion they’re uh way underfunded right they have a number of new um they have a strong demand
Signal to the services that they they answer to um but they have a hard time finding money to put behind those things and uh but that outlet is is a wonderful way to make informed bets on the companies that are going to move us into the future I think they there needs to
Be more money in programs behind those to help bridge the gap you know this is the classic Valley of Death yeah um you to get to that from that very small scale to to real deployments the last comment I’ll make here is that I think the US has um
Depended a little bit too much on Silicon Valley to fill that Gap in the last 10 years Silicon Valley has filled that Gap in the last 10 years they deployed huge amounts of money um but but in the world of higher interest rates that money is is much harder to
Find and and the government has to be aware of that and and be ready and willing to step in in order to to keep our foot yeah yeah know it’s always been a topic of great discourse of course and you know kind of the ability of some of
These uh commercial companies who are Nimble and flexible you know how are they able to navigate through the uh you know the highly bureaucratic process we have in in DOD and the department has in procuring some of these systems so it really becomes a matter of business
Patience right you know how long will will companies stick around you know through the the cus process Andy and you know getting theu maybe interested in Beyond uh for it to become a program record I’m sure that that’s that’s an issue that every company on this panel
Kind of are you know are faced with and kind of just curious about you know what what it would what it would take how how patient one needs to be uh to allow for that big victory in the end of getting a program record in place uh Jason any
Thoughts around that having now been in OSD Air Force and and also uh in the industry you know any any ideas around kind of how how to navigate that process yeah I mean I think you first I think Andy Andy spot on with with his comment
So I I can tell you you know being on the government side and releasing rfps rfis and especially in responsive space in the mid 2000s and then being on you know the Firefly Aerospace side and then go and now on the Consulting side working with many different companies
But also working with private Equity Venture Etc to look at how you address the issue um you know the industry government Partnerships is what we need to really um I would say rapidly adopt and Implement these new technologies because what we right now is such an adversarial threat that the
Collaborations are absolutely vital so if if we don’t look at how we build that and the key part to there is I think what Andy was was kind of you know poking at which is there’s the financial piece to it too you know the government
Has a lot of requirements but if if the government’s not put in the funding into the organizations to adequately fund and get the commercial development the challenge you have is when private Equity dries up or the funding line dries up there’s the challenges of these companies being able to survive and I
Think that ends up producing a whole another problem because then you lose the private sector Innovation and when you lose the private sector Innovation it’s going to cost the government even more in the long term to be able to accelerate research and development and really build that type of uh you know
Future I would say structure to move forward I I know you know the last job I had in the Air Force was funding all the grants for the Air Force and space force with the universities but that’s the first part of getting that money and I think bridging that Valley of Death I
Think you know talking to the government they understand that it’s the biggest challenge uh I would say we have not just as a government partner but as on the industry side is figing out what is those avenues that we can go forward and that’s where I think all of us on this
Panel probably have many stories but it’s trying to figure out work with the right Advocates to say how we can we move it forward and then how do we identify that this next technology is truly needed to be able to secure you know one to avoid any future threats but
Really to be the next part of innovation for our country and I think I think kind of going by kind of what you said there I think I think you you run the risk of of having uh let me call it isolated application of some of these technically responsive Technologies and that it
Becomes a oneoff you know so the challenge has always become how do you scale it and have you know the entire D or or national security take advantage of of that technology uh so I think that there’s an issue there of of having a lot of one-offs and never really
Bridging the Gap uh this this valid death that that you and Andy kind of spoke of any any other thoughts around that guys Brian any any any ideas around how to do that yeah no I think um both Jason and Andy pretty spot on from the cfic defense perspective and what we’ve
Seen again the uh trying to bridge that Valley of Death right that’s that is the challenge ex said for for anyone with a a good idea good technology or when you have your first prototypes right you’re trying to figure how do I get a transition partner how do I prove that
This thing has legs and get it to you know an operational use what we’ve seen uh in the past year plus are there are some good efforts that are out there um project Apollo at the new space to band awareness tap lab in Colorado Springs that’s uh looking like a very good
Sandbox for uh newcomers to get in and demonstrate their technology and try to get something in the war Fighter’s hands you know within say 12 to 14 months um out here in Los Angeles SSC is having the space Den stood up again another kind a digital sandbox where you have
Access to some classified space and those things are are beneficial for for newer companies or newer efforts at least that I’m a part of where you’re trying to get in there and showcase your capability and demonstrate um how you can play a part in a larger architecture
Larger solution U but it’s not easy and you asked about patience um I think none of us really have patients I guess that that would be the first that’ be the first criteria um but uh you just keep you keep at it looking for said how do
You keep it moving forward yeah without knowing ultimately becomes you know the technology being becoming a program of record kind of whole whole scale usage across DOD across all kinds of domains uh and that’s always been kind of the challenge with a lot of these uh emerging Technologies right so Dan any
Any thoughts around some of the things we talked about yeah so I mean there’s definitely a couple of parts and you know I I I like to be a positive person right I think you know at the end of the day you’ve actually seen I would say
Over the last 10 or 15 years you know a lot of progress right in terms of how hard it is to get technology across that valley of death um it’s not perfect it’s never going to be perfect but you I think there are meaningful step steps
That have been taken to kind of reward companies with bringing forward innovative solutions and things like other transaction authorities have been leveraged to go buy commercial Solutions and do a little bit of a try before you buy where you don’t crush it with the full weight of government compliance in
Advance of a purchase right which kind of inherently can start stifling Innovation it takes all of your innovators and moves them to the compliance team um and so I think there has been you know I think a lot of progress um and a lot of movement in the right direction
Um I think it’s very supportive of like what I’ll call small to mediumsized gambles right if if you can go move forward with a bunch of mediumsized bets um some of them are probably going to pay off and in aggregate I think that’s okay but there is still kind of a unique
Challenge in those really big transformational changes the sorts of things that actually move the needle on a global scale um that’s a big bet and it requires success uh with really great technology but then also kind of a heroic champion on the government side someone who’s willing to go move Heaven
And Earth because they really need this and they really care about the mission um and getting both of those things to to line up is is not guaranteed right and so I think it leaves people very cautious about making those big bets even when they know it’s a need it’s
Something that’s a Difference Maker that people are kind of lining up and standing up and raising their hand and saying I need this they need to do more than that they have to you know pull some clever heroics to make it happen I think that’s a challenge and I would
Imagine that you as the basically the solution provider probably need to help the user side you know Define what their what they need what what they what they need uh strategy kind of around around that great and demand if you will that’s right yeah you know it’s kind of unique
Right because I think the communication space has been that you know very commercial SLG government dual use for a very long time compared to some other segments in the sense that um you know Communications technologies that are fielded today a lot of which were developed commercially and then kind of
Poured it over to a government application and so there is a pretty good blueprint a pretty good roadmap and maybe a little bit more familiarity on both s sides of the coin than there are in other parts of the industry um definitely don’t have it solved but I
Think uh you know 20 plus years of familiarity with that process has helped a lot yeah and a lot of thing a lot of times too I think uh you know part of uh how some of these emerging Technologies fail in being able to transition into a
Full up you know operational system or program record are are all the requirements that DOD demands on on you know capability for all the I I call Iles right you know how do you go from a oneoff system to now you need all the reliability triple n and you know and
And the supportability from a uh production manufacturing standpoint typically that’s not addressed up front in the in you know in the early stage of Technology development uh it becomes an issue issue once uh it becomes more of a an enduring capability you know any any thoughts around I guess something you
Can’t avoid you need to have those kinds of abilities for for each one of these systems or for each one of these systems but but how do you how do you get around that issue you know how do you incentivize a a company focused on technology to address kind the bigger
You know once becomes operational the sustainability aspect of of of the capability of the weapon system and any thoughts around that Jason yeah I I would just say you know part of it is I think getting to a point where on the government’s side you know the rapid
Prototyping and and getting to even the demonstrations for example you know back in 2014 I remember submitting you know put in out RFI for tackle responsive space and and we got only two responses but then you flash fast forward to you know the victus knock and the other one
You know I had the you know you know the honor to to one helped capture that win that for Firefly but what it showed was a rapid system right it it showed that the government lessened the requirements to some degree and allowed companies both from I would say Millennium space
The spacecraft provider and fari you know looking at the launch spe and be able to execute a mission so to see something like that you know be executed really helped to one the process I think was very streamlined from an acquisition standpoint from the time it was awarded
And and we need more of that but I’d hit on the point that I think both Brian and and Dan made is you need that program a record so you know we have these you know techly responsive launch and then looking at Sally but what’s that program
A record so that Andy can go out there and say Hey My My rocket is available it’s ready to go but what am I going to compete against you know because he needs to build that long-term business strategy so I would say it’s kind of pulling together but the rapid
Prototyping taking that streamline acquisition process is needed for commercial companies to come in and be able to execute and show long-term to investors hey there’s a there’s a large program and as you B I think you know the department it’s challenging to create those new programs but there has
To be the champion there to do it so yeah just my thoughts no that’s great uh great thought there Jason thanks for that and I’m kind of wondering you know how much of an engagement uh you know companies like like Stoke Andy would need to have with
The government to you know to convince them that there’s another option or an alternative to a certain solution uh any thoughts on on on your interaction so far uh to date Andy you know how how successful you’ve been engaging with the government could it be changed could it
Be modified could it be improved any thoughts around that well I think first of all our engagement has been very positive and I think um you know particularly around some of the unique capabilities that we provide Beyond Just Launch right I think I think um there are a number of providers focused on
Launch and that’s good we need that and like I said at the very beginning I think there’s a factor of 20 Improvement that we can have not only on cost but also availability and reliability um over what’s in the market today I think that will happen I think some of the new
Capabilities around maneuverability in space being able to be truly technically responsive with our capabilities being able to go from one orbit to the next On Demand Being able to respond to new assets that appear um maybe from adversaries and being able to respond to those being able to respond to um
Adversaries you know approaching our assets and and being able to move those that’s very very important I think in the long long term U if you think about how we move goods and services on Earth We’re very adaptive with um you know aircraft carriers or air aircraft
Themselves or um you know um things like this we just simply don’t have that capability in space and we need it as soon as possible so um that conversation is very interesting in our reusable technology our reusable space vehicle are um you know I think well suited to to play in that
Arena I would say that that those discussions I think are very positive as I said before it does take a long time to to kind of build the Rapport uh and you know in some ways it should but I would also emphasize that one of the very interesting uh piece of
Advice I got early on in our company from um from a very high level official in the government was to not worry about the government customer for five years put your head down and build and by the time you build the thing if you are able
To deliver on what you say then the government customer will be knocking down down your door uh which I thought was really interesting I think it was you know in a lot of ways it was good advice uh in other ways it was unfortunate advice because I would like
To think that the government would be able to play better in that you know kind of that early phase um how you get around that or what to look for I think the government should be I can’t remember who said it maybe Jason um we should be getting
Better at making those midsize bets um to be able to foster a lot of the really good ideas that are developed at the small scale and bring them up into the midscale in order to bridge to an eventual program of record um I think the that’s the idea behind uh OTAs and
Things like the diu are doing um I just think that they need more emphasis and and more muscle behind them yeah and I think the Dilemma you face Andy kind of you know kind of going back to what the advice you got from a senior exec or a
Senior government person kind of just burying your head down for five years you have investors to worry about right somehow you need to to show them that there’s uh something at the end of the tunnel uh and that’s by the way that’s what feeds my my comment earlier is that
That uh the US has gotten used to relying on Silicon Valley to provide that bridge yeah right I don’t think that it will necessarily always be there that’s right that’s right Brian any thoughts well I think it goes back because I Echo a lot with what Andy was
Just saying and uh um in terms of of requirements I guess that that’s where the OTAs uh keep those going the idea of a complete solution or 100% requirements being defined and met up front but just feel like those days are gone um if you’re able to keep your head
Down for five years and demonstrate something more power to you I think the more insight that can be shared with industry of what’s the Gap what do you need solved let us bring you a capability and let us bring at least that initial discussion of hey this
Solution may not be a five 10 year lifetime this gets you two years or probably better than two but you can get it for this price point or it’s available now or it could be available in within a year um letting Industry Drive the solution I think is is is
Where we need to go and you’re seeing that change to D stand point I think this conversation was happening you know many years ago but the last few I feel like that’s the push what’s the capability you have today what can you field and let’s talk and let’s move
Forward from there yeah there still is not enough prototyping or demonstration of that initial capability I think that’s the next phase and that’s back toing too let me ask you guys like a what might be a trick question here you know we we’ve kind of treated a lot of these
Emerging Technologies as kind of officer you know kind of isolated piece by piece if you look at the power of the collection of these things you know AI ml Communications Advanced Communications Quantum all of those things you ever you envision A system that is uh that requires all those those
Things to call L as one uh to provide a particular solution would would would Jad C2 be be something that would need all those Technologies to to be able to work together in an efficient manner Jason picked picked on me I was waiting
For Dan to jump in on that one I think I you know I think you know to you know bong when you look at all the different merging Technologies I think the challenge that the government has is finding out how they’re going to utilize each of them in their system of systems
And and I think it doesn’t and and that’s what think is the challenge is because whether you have the ground system side the data analytics or being able to figure out how to get the communication networks to to be the most efficient to be able to get War you know
To be able to get data or should say information into the cockpit to get it to the you know the warfire depending wherever they are instantaneously I think that’s the challenge but you know I go back to you know just one of the key points is you
You got to be able to have those feedback loops with the government right and I think that’s where industry have the const communication understanding the risk understanding how to develop those public private Partnerships and I think I think Dan you know start off the The Call by saying about open architectures
Etc I I think what I’ve seen both on the government side and on the you know on the commercial side and Advising companies right now is you got to be able to have those standards in place and the open architectures where companies can plug and play their
Systems and be able to whether it’s on the ground whether it’s on orbit whether it’s you know a lunar ler to the Moon Etc where you can be able to the government customer can come in there work with IND industry to say hey here’s how we’re implementing these new
Technologies and then we’re doing it for this reason this is the requirement we’re meeting and here’s the funing line associated with that so um that that’s kind of how I would look at you know those techn you know trying to implement emerging Technologies from that standpoint do you see that as the role
Of the government though to fully you know adopt and let’s say open standards and and have commercial follow or is it is it something that the commercial folks should should really uh trying to push and influence the government’s uh you know thinking around around
That I mean I think we’ve seen go go on Dan yeah no I was gonna say I think recently we’ve seen some really good movement where you’ve got industry and government kind of working together to stand up these consortiums and I really think that’s probably the right answer
Because in most cases you know the various government agencies that weigh on this and have you know kind of a vested interest in success um don’t necessarily have the depth of Staff necessary to go run that by themselves they can’t generate and put together a standard get it you know reviewed by all
Of the relevant parties and released in a timely manner um industry you know teams you know often have that kind of deep bench of technical folks that you know sit on standard bodies for a living right and they participate in things like the 3gpp working groups it’s no big
Deal to have them you know join in on another um additional standard um and then you really get you know kind of some meaningful discussion and you I found in a lot of cases the uh sorts of conversations that you wish were happening between industry and government happen in those standards
Working groups right where it’s the well how are you really using the system and what’s the real reason for this type of flexibility and it promotes a really good you know technical to technical interchange of you know the importance of various different priorities and you
Know Jason I think you made a a couple of really good points in that uh last set of comments right that I I think are um super interesting and just going back to the original question that you know bong had had about you know coalescing Ai and machine learning and U standards
And interoperability I think that’s a huge part of Fielding u a broadly successful system right is you you free up people that are currently doing super tedious tasks related to setting up and maintaining Communications infrastructure to do the sorts of things that people are really good at um things
Like racking and stacking frequency allocation that’s a super tedious task for a human being can be done by a machine much more efficiently much more effectively and then you let that operator go focus on the job that they’re there for and so you know ultimately I think driving that level of
Um you know kind of the stack of systems talking to each other is very important um standardization being another Big Driver of that um I I can only point to the number of times throughout my career there’s been that you know friction heat and waste generated of adop ing
Somebody’s new standard for your box to talk to right and it’s like you spend more time uh adapting a system to comply with some other systems interface uh that that’s heat and waste it doesn’t move the ball forward at all it doesn’t get us any closer to the spot that we
Want to be and if you’re able to break out those standards between boxes you can swap them out quickly and efficiently kind of keep Pace with um you know the latest changes pretty readily without spending you know uh 50% of your engineering on interfaces yeah a
Lot of times though Dan can I see you know protectionism coming coming into play where you know you have a a vendor with a certain technology and of course you know kind of their future kind of you know resid on on on government continually using that technology so
There’s there’s always going to be a challenge of of of really industry the primes in particular of pushing in technology because it benefits them and not not necessarily the the entire government so there’s that Dynamic that somehow we we we need to also kind of
Address it and and resolve uh to make it truly open standards across across the board because I think there’s certainly a lot of promise for you know uh software defined radios and mosa uh and all of that um as as as Brian pointed out earlier kind of what
What the PD guys are are doing yeah well there’s a there’s a level of procurement discipline that comes into play making sure that you’re buying systems that comply with those standards right and in a lot of cases it’s easy to say hey I want to buy this because it’s the latest
And greatest today and you know they they don’t comply with any of these future standards that are going to make my life easier in five years um but it’s slightly ahead and so that’s what we want to buy and so so you really have to make sure you’re you’re buying not just
With um current capabilities in mind making sure that there’s that level of compliance and adherence to some of those standards that are out there right Brian were you going to say something I thought I saw you raise your hand or yeah I just got to kind of footstop
Daniel’s point there on in yours bong from a if we can at least get the standards to be flown down at least in some of the requirements for the acquisition that’s that’s part one then to Daniel’s point you can at least know what you’re bidding and buying against
But from our standpoint right we’re always trying to look for what’s Best in breed that we could put into our payload and provide a solution quicker I think that’s going to have to be the mindset going forward if we want to really be responsive as the threats change we’re
Finally getting to the point where launches are obviously happening more rapidly than we ever anticipated which is you know very exciting but now if we can keep the hardware up to date and obviously the software is much easier to to update on orbit you know then I think
We truly get to that responsive uh truly technically responsive future State we want to be in it’s griv by the standards yeah no things I kind of started out with was kind of talking about the ability to navigate through the bureaucracy that is that Department of
Defense and you know given kind of uh your your individuals uh interaction with the the government so far uh you know what else can we do I guess you know we’ve done uh the uh the modification of the acquisition sub uh system the framework uh but we still have the
Budgeting process that we have to contend with as well as the requirements process that Jason talked about which could take years years right to be fully developed and and validated and approved when we’re talking about tactically responsive Technologies we’re talking you know a year and a half maybe less
Kind of spin times and all that so how do you synchronize you know the way we need to be with with a lot of these responsive Technologies with the way we’re currently buying systems you know H how do we how do we how do we address that issue that we can’t really
Ignore because it’s there any any thoughts around that Andy you know being that you’re kind of in you know in the front end of a lot of these things with with the government any any thoughts do you see that as continuing to be an impediment uh to to progress based on your experience
Today well I think first of all um I don’t know if I would view it as an impediment for us so far because we have been successful at raising funds for our development through other means right my the the tone of my comments I think is that the government should be aware that
There are transformational technologies that need to happen and are happening and the move is the the world is moving very very fast right now and the government needs to be ready and willing to step in in order to uh to continue that development going forward as the
Private markets continue to shift that I think is the spirit of my comments um I will say that you know I feel like we’ve had where we have had discussions with the government they have been very positive and uh and we’ve made you know
Good progress there but it is a it is an Venture um I do want to go back also on on what Brian said and U you know he was saying has as availability of launch has gone up and is more than we any of us have anticipated um I want to put a
Little historical context on that I think and that is this if you look at you know we’re we’re almost broke a hundred launches out of the US last year almost entirely from SpaceX um and this year that will finally happen but those 100 launches if you look at moving any
Other you know any other modality of Transportation could be shipping could be aircraft could be over road if you said you only had a hundred trips of any of those types in a year it’s a poultry number it’s a very very small number and so if you look at space as either an
Economy or a you know a real domain for the war fighter or for National Security importance or anything like that we’re in very very early days and you have to start thinking about what is what does it mean to do a thousand or 10,000 trips how do we do that because
That’s what’s going to be tactically responsive we’re not even close to tactically responsive today and the constellations and the different layers that that we’ve talked about kind of in passing in this um where we have hundreds or thousands of satellites um disrupting other you know kind of bespoke multi-billion dollar individual
Satellites that live for 25 years those layers are going to have service lives especially if they’re commercially viable for 3 to five years not 25 years it’s the same way our Communications evolve on the ground with cell phones going from 3G to 4G to 5G right we’re
Going to have the same thing in space but that’s only possible if we’re constantly moving to space and back right and I think that’s the world that we need to position ourselves for not only in our technology but also you know in the way that the government does its
Procurements right um and so I think that is a mental shift it’s hard it’s easy to to focus on all of the change that’s happened in the 10 last 10 years and it’s exciting because it’s created all of this newness but it’s also very important to to not get comfortable because there’s
So much more Improvement that has to and will be made and in the us and our allies have to be on top of it really really interesting point Randy thanks for that Jason any any thoughts around what else well no I think I think what
What I just want to add what what Annie was saying because I think as we try to get to the next part of industrializing space I think you know there’s a lot of Ambitions out there but I agree the access to space is still a challenge you know launching Rockets is still a
Challenge we’ve seen launch providers go bankrupt we’ve seen still accidents but when you look at like a SpaceX model that’s probably the closest to a responsive space you can get right because you know one is there’s standards that are being implemented you know you even look at the the cubat for
Example but eventually you need those interfac inter faces to be you know well adopted across all the providers and then be able so you can swap payloads for example so for example if the government needs a mission and you know Stoke is ready to launch and you know
It’s on another you know vehicle and I can swap it over within you know less than a day that’s responsive space right but there’s a lot of process procedures that need to be worked out and also with the satellite side right being able to make sure your systems are able to do
That I think eventually we do need to get to if you truly want you know to get to techly responsive space and when you say that it’s not just space access but on the ins space side you have to have the capability to one have these stands
But almost have the FedEx so for example if you need to go from one place to another or or certain company you put it on you get it there or you take it off as needed so the challenges are there I think the government’s ready and willing
To step in but I I would say I go back to the comment I think Andy made earlier you know when about the government you know someone making recommendation stay silent for 5 years I think that has a some value to it but I think the government is so small sometimes that
It’s looking across Silicon Valley and all these new companies it it’s a lot of pushing to the government and I think that’s the part that sometimes gets lost and and really monetizing and trying to say how hey this is where my value is but the government needs to do the
Polling and make sure clearances and other avenues are there for free flow communication so I think when that’s all pulled together it makes it much easier to to move forward with emerging Technologies and and what we’re talking about today how about the need for multiple vendors to provide the same or
You know the product or the services and the first diversifying supply chain if you will by adding you know more sources that you can kind of rely on for launch for for whatever it is that you’re you’re you’re trying to develop any thoughts around that J based
On your comments yeah I I would just say you know quickly I would say yes right I I think the government does need you know there’s there’s a space on the launch side for multiple vendors to be you know the capabilities just like you need multiple space ports you know right
Now we’re very limited and then I would say even on the satellite side if you don’t have the multiple vendors I think space development agency Derek what he’s doing is really showing you know providing opportunities out there and some may fail but you know there’s rigid enough requirements and the fundings
Behind it to be able to show hey you know multiple vendors does work but it’s part of this interoperability that is so much needed yeah we certainly have examples enough examples of not putting all your EGS and one basket you know so the verification supply chain multiple
Vendors I think is kind of a path forward to to you know enabling some of these capabilities that we need for the war fighter to the future I want to reemphasize that that’s especially important in a world where the technology is changing so fast in a world where the technology is changing
So fast you absolutely need multiple suppliers because the innovation is as important as the delivered product and you can’t be single string on Innovation right so you have to you have to keep a competitive landscape in that World um you know if if if all you’re doing is
Shipping out millions of units of you know something that’s standard maybe you can argue that you don’t need that many multiple uh suppliers because there’s nothing changing right when things are changing you need it will continue to change because of competitiveness that’s the US’s Secret sauce that’s a super that
Makes us robust right Dan any thoughts yeah I mean I I’ll foot stomp that point right and I think we’ve seen it you know time and time again right where you know as soon as you wind up in kind of an offshoot where you’ve got only a single
Vendor um you know Innovation is just kind of naturally stifled right you fall into a risk reducing mindset um it becomes about you know H how do you do something that’s safe and kind of keep yourself out of trouble right you don’t want any Reds on your status charts um
You just want to be delivering on time and you know plugging in new Innovative um approaches is you know not generally looked upon well in that sort of environment and so I think you know there there’s certainly kind of the value in that you know continued competition whether it’s price whether
It’s Technology Innovation whether it’s you know looking around the corners for what you know could be or should be next um I think that’s that’s super important um bong at the front end your question you kind of ask the about um you know the budgeting process right and how that
Supports some of these Innovations I think there’s you know a big point that you know others have made more eloquently than I will today um but the process is built to procure platforms rather than capabilities and there’s that shift that’s necessary for how do you go by the ability to do something
Right and and whether it’s the ability to get a satellite into any Orbit on you know some fixed period of time whether it’s a flexible communications platform it needs to be written and procured in such a way um that there’s flexibility for three to five years from now um you
Understand that the target has changed the process of you know developing and then verifying and validating a set of requirements and getting that out and you put out for procurement you know can take five seven eight years um to get through the process and you wind up you
Know purchasing a Blackberry in an iPhone World um in that context right you need to be able to say I need the ability to communicate I need the ability to you know send emails I need the ability to send text messages and I I leave some level of discretion to the
Procuring team on exactly what that is so they can go pick and pull from the best available set of Technologies um in play at that time good good point Dan thank you choices so I heard kind of throughout the conversation today you know kind of two basic themes basically one of you
Know standardization being being critical and enabling some of these technically respon or tactically responsive Technologies as well as Open Standards uh I think we’re coming up close to the end of our panel discussion so let me let me open it up for for any last minute thoughts or themes that you guys
Might want to impart on the on the on the panel here today before we end so let me just go around the room here and I let me start with Brian since I haven’t heard from you Andy I’m all for 10,000 launchers a year that I’ll sell more payload
So I like that thought I think that would be kind of my parting thought with with the last um question you know I still think there is a need for the rapid prototyping and the newer technology to be developed in parallel in concert with what is the program of
Record or the program of need today we know that’s never in sync completely so you can’t just shift all the left or all to the right you need this new capability to continuously be developed so that we are able to insert a new solution uh when Andy’s ready to put up
100 a day right we’ll be ready to go so I do think that’s that’s a challenge in the acquisition process um and again I think from a Pacific defense standpoint the in order for us to really leverage what our company does best our our ew application suite and we’re based on the
Open Standards architecture seos Sosa space VPX we’re seeing that shift into the space uh Arena so that’s that’s uh been nice to see from an industry perspective and like I said working with colleagues in that standpoint we’re seeing traction there um but I think that that’s how we’ll be able to
Contribute more know technically respons to you know near term and future just heavily relying on the Open Standards and being able to deliver on our commitments thanks Brian U Andy any lasting thoughts well I guess as as the conversation moved on we talked about things like procurements and valley of
Death and and things of that nature medium-sized bets the importance of mediumsized bets to bridge from small to programs of record um yeah I guess I I I’m thinking about you how how does the government make that selection and you somebody mentioned the government is actually you know relatively small and
And uh it’s difficult to make that decision um and I think that the things that I would look for are the ones who are able to develop iterate manufacture as quickly as possible because again in this for continuously changing world uh the ability to move quickly and deliver
Importantly on what you you claim is very important so which are the companies that are able to deliver on that track record who are able to say what they’re going to do and then actually go and deliver that uh I think that’s where a lot of the you know the
Challenge in that phase of growth happens from a good idea to actually delivering product is an ability to to deliver on on what you say and um the importance of you know vertical manufacturing and um fast iteration and and again delivering on your word being able to predict what’s going to happen
And deliver on both timeline and on budget is very important so those are the companies that I think I would look for um and I think you know at least for our small company we’ve been we’ve been good at that so far in in moving into
More and more comp complexity as we go through our development you Dan yeah so I mean it’s a really kind of interesting time uh when you look at just how much change we’ve had over the last you know 10 or 15 years and I think
If anybody had asked me a few years ago um to predict the current state of the space industry today I definitely would have gotten that question wrong um to me the biggest thing that it’s brought to the front of mind is the need to be flexible to to bake in designs with a
High level of flexibility maybe more than you think you need um at the time that you’re putting something together um and then really adopting some of those you know best practices on standard interfaces um flexible development models the ability to uh kind of interpret what’s required now what’s
Required five years from now um and be flexible it it’s a it’s a really interesting ride and I think uh you know the conversations today kind of you know bring to bear to me like how many moving Parts there are in this ecosystem that are all advancing kind of on their own
Parallel paths that are going to impact what the future looks like um it’s been exciting to listen to thank you Dan it’s clear that we we you know we could have used another couple hours probably have but I’ll give I know we’re probably over time here but Jason I’ll give you the
Last word if you will no I well thank you bong really appreciate it and I know just thank my fellow panelists Andy Brian and Dan I I I can tell you you know I agree with everything that said I think you know being able to rapidly deploy new capabilities is so important
And we you know we cannot be afraid of failure both on the government side and Industry side and and I I guess I’ll leave with you know the industry government Partnerships are essential in my mind for harnessing the power of emerging technologies that will someday be that next technology that we need to
Combat our security challenges and and the threats because the threats are real and I think working closely having that clear communication requirements but really addressing the acquisition the program Baseline and trying to build programs is so important because I can tell you advising a you know a lot of
Smaller companies the challenge is there and it’s amazing how much of an impact it has on their ability to innovate and provide their future technology you know to the warf fighter and and I would say at the end of the day we just need to help help those companies with the
Government to have those Partnerships to really a avoid you know the future threats that keep our country safe so with that said uh thank you so much and that that’s all I have bong thank you Jason well gentlemen again you know thank you for for joining
Me this afternoon uh on this panel this great topic thank you for your well articulated commentary on the subject uh uh again thank you again uh and uh I guess with that we’ll we’ll say goodbye to the panel thank you thank you bong thank you so much thank you for
Leading that fantastic discussion they’re always great um really appreciate you’re having Dan jinsky join us great to have Jason Brian Andy uh thank you all for your your insights and your um your expertise um looking forward to V you helping us with our very next one uh thanks again for all
Your great work and now we’re going to turn this over to Major General Heather Pringle Heather uh leads the Space Foundation and it’s been great working with her um she’s going to host a fantastic session on AI and space space which is one of the most timely and
Interesting topics that I think we could prob possibly cover during our our programs here um honored to have Tory Bruno come back uh Tori has joined us several times with the United launch Alliance has a lot of interesting insights on uh Ai and AI in space in
Particular always great to have an AI expert like major general Kim cder join us as well as Brian Morrison of General Dynamics mission systems so um major uh General Pringle thank you so much for organizing this fantastic discussion we’re really looking forward to it well thank you David it’s really
Great to join South by Southwest on the topic of dual use Technologies today we’re going to discuss two fast evolving Tech technologies that of space and artificial intelligence which have dual use applications I’m really lucky to be joined here by such eminent leaders in both of these fields first uh we have
Tor Bruno who is the president and CEO of United launch Alliance we also have Kim krier who is the founding partner of Alara Nova but she was also the first Chief data officer for the United States Air Force and then we also have Brian Morrison with us here today who is the
Vice president and general manager of space cyber and intelligence systems line of business for General Dynamics mission system so welcome to all of you thank you so much for joining me well I’m really looking forward to digging into this topic with all of you it’s uh
Very rich and Tori I’m going to start with you maybe a stage setter for how artificial intelligence or machine learning they’ve really taken over the um popular press but how have you seen it being applied to space the space ecosystem is it a national security or maybe system design where have you seen
It being applied well Heathers all of the above AI is going to be the industrial revolution of the information age it is going to do is doing for my knowledge workers what automation did for workers in the factory it’s unchaining them from all of the drudgery and the tedium that
A knowledge worker has and letting them focus on the most exciting and interesting in Innovative parts of their job so we’re pretty excited about it here well that’s really great uh Brian where have you seen it being applied in in your uh background you have a really
Rich background and where do you see it going in the future Heather I when I think about sort of where we are in history I think of us as about 20 years into the era of big data right and in the last 20 years our data flows have
Grown and grown and grown but I think we are not realizing I don’t think we’re close to scratching the surface of the promise of Big Data because we’re pped by that data and that’s where I think AI can really rescue us from our difficulty in separating the signal from the noise
Um you know data at ex a scale is meaningless until you start to really discriminate between signal and noise and to me that’s the that’s the real promise of AI well I couldn’t agree with you more and how about we dig into the data just a little bit more with uh
Former Chief data officer for the United States Air Force uh Kim krider you know how can AI help us in the space industry to uh get a better hold of it or to uh as Tori said you know help revolutionize the knowledge worker yeah thank you so much uh for
Having me today Heather to be part of this this panel uh I would 100% agree with both Tori and Brian on the importance of AI um and the impact that it is having already and it will continue to have uh on Space industry on Space capabilities space missions uh
Across military and civil and Commercial uh activities but as Brian points out it really does come down to the data I mean everything that we know about space everything that we uh understand about space everything that we do in space uh really depends on data uh and our
Ability to get data effective ly processed either on orbit or back down on the ground we really have to spend a lot of time thinking about the data now Ran’s right I mean we’ve been after this big data uh challenge for a long time uh I think that it’s a challenge that we’re
Still getting after as Brian points out we still find ourselves in uh overwhelmed in the swamps of data uh we need to continue to focus on how to best um curate that data how to best well first of all identify what data is most important you know to the specific
Mission the specific need that we’re trying to address uh and then how we’re going to make that data accessible and we talked about it when I was a chief data officer at the Air Force Level uh Eileen vadin who’s the current CDO picked up on this same concept and
It’s been used at the OSD DOD level as well Vault making the data visible accessible usable linked trusted uh and then of course they added integrated and secure which is are all key components of how you best govern and manage your data so what data do you
Need to to find how do you make that data visible uh how do you make that data accessible by the machines or the people that need to use it how do you make the data usable and this is really where we get into uh when we’re starting
To realize how we need to cleanse the data uh does that data have anomalies does that data to have errors we need to understand that AI can help us do that actually uh you can use AI to better help you curate your data and and make
It more usable uh and then you’ve got to be able to figure out as you’re thinking about how you’re going to use that data what data sets do you want to link together to start to derive some insights and some understandings uh and then you can begin to apply some
Analytics too and some more advanced AI Technologies too of course you want your data to be trusted we can talk talk about this more as we go but there are anomalies in data some of those anomalies are just again poor sloppy dirty data some of those anomalies are
Anomalies that are inserted by bad guys right so we want to be able to find those anomalies we want to know if the data’s been so-called poisoned in any way because that will certainly impact how we’re going to use it and do we trust it and there’s a lot that we need
To think about in walking through that process of really making sure that we understand how to make the best use of our data um we’ve we’ve been doing this for some time uh in the Air Force and then in the space force the space force stood up you
Know when I became the chief Technology Innovation officer for the space force I certainly took that same focus and passion for how we’re going to best manage and leverage data across all Mission areas uh of the Department of the Air Force now very much focused on space and very much first and foremost
Focused on getting our arms around effective comprehensive space domain awareness uh which has been a very important part of the data activities within the space force but data management and the application of AI uh supports every Mission area uh of the space force not just space domain
Awareness uh we can argue that you know again because we rely on data in everything we do data and the ability to effectively leverage it to derive insight and wisdom with AI uh and to be able to perform more effectively on that data with AI a human machine team with that information and
AI is in every single Mission area of the space force I would pile on too Kim that you know that’s the right way to think about this and in the kind of fascinating relationship that AI has with data we think about that application in terms terms of you know of discriminatory or
Analytical AI to mine our data but at the same time AI has a vious appetite for data you know there’s no free lunch with AI you have to make a major human investment in feeding it data that we pre-classified we analyze with people in order for it to be trained on especially
The Deep neural Nets and then generative AI relies on massive databases to do its function and then finally we get to the kind of functions that you were talking about so it’s a really integrated data tool kind of environment that I think is in a way very unique today absolutely
Tori 100% agree with you which again reinforces how precious that data really is we’ve got to be able to get it right if that data is poorly managed if there are significant problems if reusing the wrong data set wow look what could happen to the AI algorithms that we’re
Trying to train that we’re ultimately going to rely upon um in in being able to support some of the work that needs to be done well and Brian I think you’ve had a few good examples of how you’ve been doing that in your background and there’s really a lot to unpack there
Whether it’s uh you know using data as the authoritative source of truth and how you get the right sets or how have you seen um data curation uh occur in the space ecosystem or in space applications have you seen any uh special use cases there that you’d like to talk
About I I think the the most obvious and I think understandable use cases to the Layman are you know you imagine our imagery satellites collecting thousands and thousands of high resolution photos in in very short time spans and doing it over and over again every p and it’s
Just generating more data than anyone could interpret triage handle and in some cases even transmit um back to Earth so AI is really in many ways the most promising solution I can imagine for dealing with that problem now in that context the the uh provence of our data is
Relatively secure right we an image is an image now there’s plenty of ways to do sort of denial and deception and to spoof images but there we can I think in large part trust our our data so now we have a processing problem again separating signal from the noise when
Can we use an AI tool to tell us look a human needs to look at this image very very soon this image can be treated to much later in the analytical process or processing at the edge right so Kim talked a little bit about the notion of
What we do on orbit and what we do on the ground right space it turns out is pretty far away so we’ve always got to worry about compute at the edge and bandwidth back to the Earth and AI can really help us to sort of triage those
Things to do some Edge Computing to allow us to conserve bandwidth back down to the earth now the other challenge of course Kim talked uh I thought quite eloquently about the the threats of of data Integrity so look I’m a cyber operator at heart so whenever I think
About use of AI I think of it in two ways both offensive and defensive right and our peer adversaries are doing the same thing so we’ve got to be cleare eyed all the time about the threats to our data is someone inserting either into the underlying data on which an AI
Is training an error or um a um a bias or is someone affecting the model itself the training model itself and I you know I don’t think any of us have clear answers to that except to say that it is both an opportunity and a risk at
The same time help just giv say what a you know the photo analyst is such a great example Brian because that’s what we were talking about that symbiosis between the expert in the tool in the past we had armies of experts studying these images and they also had to be
Specialized in the kind of thing they would look for in the image so that they could recognize it in 90% of the images they looked at boring as hell and only the last five or 10% had any value and now we’re in a position where we can use
AI to take that burden off of them and let that highly trained extremely valuable and rare expert really apply that knowledge where it counts the most I really want to pull on the thread of how we’re leveraging the data and the potential that if the data were
Corrupted or poisoned as uh you’ve been saying there’s a unique part of artificial intelligence that is the algorithms that once it has learned on a data set and it’s created the algorithm for where it’s going it can’t unlearn the data without going all the way back to the beginning and recomputing all
Those GPU hours and days and weeks if you were so what are your thoughts uh for anyone on data unlearning as a part of artificial intelligence how are we going to get around that challenge in this technology well your first your first strategy is to understand this is
A supply chain just like our physical supply chain and it has to be secure the commercial AI industry faces this problem all the time because they Farm out they Outsource they bit workk the training sets they are whole companies that do nothing but provide training data and they’re supposed to have humans
Classif find data and because it’s you know it’s sourced anywhere in the world they often have other AI algorithms doing their work for them so they can make more money we can’t have that in this industry we have to secure the supply chain of our training sets just
Like we would our chips or our Hardware or anything else yeah you know I’ve not heard that phrase uh Tori but it’s it’s a perfect analogy and it’s it’s an act ual fact that data is the supply source for a for Effective Ai and we have to understand
That supply chain we have to manage that supply chain very effectively we have to secure that supply chain so the use of the term supply chain I think is is very relevant here um I would also add to that that it’s very important that we understand how our AI Works how our
Models are intended to work you know there’s this whole focus on being being able to ensure that your AI your algorithms are explainable uh how are they intended to derive uh a result now it gets very complex when you’re talking about large language models and deep neural
Networks but even still uh you have to have some sense of how does this model work how is this model learning from the data that it’s being fed uh and if there are you know some errors in the data if there’s malicious uh compromised data in the
System uh if we have a better understand of how that AI is constructed and how that AI acts on the data we may be able to isolate some of that problem but it certainly is a challenge uh and again to tor’s point we have to take this supply
Chain issue very seriously you know I I read a a fact that is is quite interesting and I think um Illuminating of how significant uh this problem is is that it costs about $4 million today to train a large language mod estimate um within the next five years based on the
Amount of data that these large language models are going to be using uh it’s going to estimate to cost over 500 million to train that large language model so you go from four million today to 500 million you have a much larger um cost challenge if you have to go back in
And and retrain your data and you haven’t designed your AI very effectively to understand how am I going to deal with some potential uh anomaly perturbation uh problem in my data I I certainly agree with everything the two of you have said and I the only thing I
Would add is that I think there’s an opportunity for us to engineer our our algorithms and our agents going forward to kind of be regenerative right we can build them for retraining and relearning I know it’s easy for me to say and hard for the engineers to do but in the same
Way that we design for supply chain I think we can move towards a model where dis where we are designing for retraining so to what degree do you think companies or industry uh particularly in the space business will do this on their own or do you think
That the government has role in ensuring the AI is transparent we do understand what the boundaries are uh what do you think the relationship should be between industry which is just moving at the speed of light with artificial intelligence and uh Kim you know your point about the growth uh in this
They’re they’re not going to want to go back and start start back over uh retraining and algorithm but uh what do you think the role of government should be well you know there there’s an argument to be made about how much government should be involved right um I
Mean Brian makes a great Point uh you know there’s definitely from a technology stpoint um there are rapid advances in you know what’s referring to is Gen generative adversarial AI which you actually learn how to you know sort of play your AI model off of you know a
Potential ad AR adversarial attack uh and you can you can learn better uh your your AI model can learn better in that in that manner so technology can definitely advance to help uh address some of these challenges with respect to government in particular um you know we we’ve seen the
Pendulum kind of swinging uh here with regards to you know some some folks arguing for you know really tight restrictions uh regulations on on how AI is developed on the use of AI um we the first legislation that we’ve seen uh so far is actually the European Union uh last year
Released a what they call the AI act it it is the first legislative uh act you know that tries to restrict and ban certain uses of AI um and of course we’ve seen in our own country you know very prominent leaders uh in the software and AI
Technology field come out and say you know we really should have a pause uh and take a moratorium on AI others would argue that’s a really bad thing to do uh I happen to agree with that you know position of we don’t want to take a pause our adversaries are not taking a
Pause what we need to do is get smarter about how we’re going to get out and stay out in front of you know adversarial activity um but what do we do you know government US government and we’ve seen a little bit from the UK as well have come out with some guidelines
Some principles some important um ways in which we really should be very thoughtful about how we develop AI ensuring that the AI is verifiable uh is explainable as I mentioned before you know all these aspects of trustworthy AI certainly raising the Consciousness and awareness of the general public of the
Users of the developers of AI what some of these challenges are and what you should be asking about when when you’re going going to look to integrate AI into your capabilities um and and how you’re going to assess uh the viability of your models or the way in which those models
Have been developed have been verified have been tested out and I think that’s going to be a critical Factor so you we had the executive order for AI that was released last year under the Biden Administration that lays out some of these general principles um talks about
The ethical use of AI talks about you know really being aware the potential for bias in your data and what that could do to skew outcomes all of those things we need to take a close look at and that will drive policy and you know
Other ways in which we go go about the development and use of AI uh and I think that that is a good role for government to play uh is in Awareness is in guide guidance and is in policy uh on how we’re going to you know manage our
Effective integration of AI but we’ve got it we’ve got to take advantage of it as Tori said at the beginning this is the the new Revolution opportunity this is going to advance everything that we do in our our human existence uh the way in which we learn the way in which we go
Through our daily activities day dayto day is only going to continue to be en enhanced through AI so it’s it’s out there it’s it’s in the world we have to be able to take advantage of it to get the most out of it but we have to do it you know really mindful
Uh thoughtfully and with you know some of this awareness of how to manage the risks you know and i’ I’d add to that maybe two ideas the first being government should always do what only government can do and in our world there’s a special role that government
Can play to enable this because when you when you use AI you know there’s that voracious need for data especially on the Gen side your data goes into the wild and in defense and certainly Aerospace and itar related things we have to have our own environment and so the gov cloud
Is being stood up to provide that for us the generative part of that is still pretty immature there so there’s a lot of work for the government to do to help us to be able to utilize the tool while keeping our data safe and secure and out
Of our adversaries hands the other thing I would offer that you touched on also Kim is that you know if if you know a a society or a company or a leader that thinks that something being legal is the only measure of whether it is right or wrong
Is an environment that is deeply flawed okay we use laws where there is no other effective means of robust accountability and that you should never say well it’s legal so it’s okay that’s never true rarely true and so we really need those guidelines you talked about policy and in ethical guidelines in
Frameworks that are not necessarily criminal laws or even civil laws but they’re guidance and we’re going to need people to adhere to those and to do the right thing because a legal framework cannot solve all of society’s problems Brian any thoughts or uh
So I I I agree with um what both of you have said I I guess I would add that I don’t think we need great incentives from the government to invest here in Industry we are presuming that AI should be part of the solution to every customer problem we’re called on to
Solve right that’s the Baseline presumption and Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has said that we should be doing exactly that and I think many of us are um what I think we need help with is of course law and policy as you suggested um I think it would be
Helpful for the government to help us hold the line on assuring data Integrity into the models um as Kim suggested I think it’s helpful to have the government really hold the line on what I would call the explicability of our models right um it’s not enough in the high consequence High ra environment
Ments in which the four of us operate to say this is what comes out of the model it looks good but we don’t really understand how it arrive there we don’t many commercial Industries have that luxury the four of us don’t right we you know lives are at stake and
International Security is at stake so we need to be held to account for the explicability of our models and the Integrity of our models um and also frankly um as you suggested the law and policy you know as we proceeded further and further down our journey with AI I
Worry that some of our law and policy structures which are wholly the province of the government um I worry that we’re already a little bit behind right what does it mean to be discriminating and proportionate from the perspective of the law of armed conflict when an AI is
In the loop for decision whether to deploy a weapon system right and I don’t I don’t think we know that yet um does training data collected inside the US constitute collection on us persons for purposes of our surveillance laws and I think we’re still struggling with some of these some
Of these legal and policy questions that I think it’s got to be a sort of national conversation with policy makers in every Branch um and Industry and Academia and thought leaders you know throughout the country so with this difficult landscape how would you uh what advice would you give to a
Company wanting to get into this area to take advantage or take an AI technology apply it to the space domain or take a space uh technology and add AI to it do you have some thoughts or advice that any of you would share well I I would
Say like any other new Endeavor you start where there’s lwh hanging fruit and it will make a big difference and move that needle you should also have a strategy around what you’ll do and what you won’t do like Brian just talked about you know there are things that uh
Are going to be inappropriate at this stage of the game for AI so of you know set those aside and deal with the things that uh you can deal with right now you know I think one thing that’s different about AI than almost any other technology that I’ve seen is that we can
Use AI to solve the problems of AI right so we we hinted at this a little when when I talked about uh retraining right so as we begin to look at that lwh hanging fruit all of the obstacles we see towards the higher and higher fruit we should be thinking about solving those
Problems with the tool itself um it becomes almost uh um layered and layered and layered but I think that unlike bandwidth problems we’ve dealt with or big data problems AI can really turn into a flywheel of acceleration in a way that we we sort of haven’t seen I think
You’re absolutely right Brian uh I’ve even heard of algorithms of a AI that have been trained to monitor other AI so kind of a teacher student if you will parent child if you will and that type of relationship is really going to benefit humans as they’re trying to
Interact with something that can truly outpace them it can outsmart them it can out innovate them in some areas but it’s very dependent on the data that it’s been exposed to so that’s a excellent point well so I have about five minutes left and I kind of want to get to a
Lightning round of uh two questions I’ll combine it uh together and if you would each of you answer what skills do you think uh the future space Workforce needs to look at in terms of artificial intelligence how they can get best up to speed and then secondly who or what
Company or what country are you watching for the future of space and AI so Tori uh I’ll start with you you can answer one or both of those questions if you would sure I’ll hit them both real quick you know AI is a brand new tool and what
I need my knowledge workers to do is not to become AI experts I have I have those just to understand the environment and generally how it works so that they can pursue our strategy that we call 9010 if if it takes an expert but 90% of the time they’re bored that’s an AI
Application the second part of your question oh it’s China it’s all about China it’s it’s China in anti-satellite weapons it’s China in regional conflict and it is absolutely China in AI in cyber that’s excellent point uh so Kim how about you yeah I’ll pile on a some some of
Tor’s comments and add add some additional thoughts here um I would agree that we don’t need everybody to be AI experts um we certainly need everybody to be very familiar with what artificial intelligence is what artificial intelligence can do uh what effective responsible trustworthy artificial intelligence entails um this
Whole notion of artificial intelligence being developed in such a way and trained in such a way that it can you know learn uh and protect itself over time is a really uh valuable concept that that Brian teased out earlier uh these are all things that we need our
Knowledge workers and our uh Guardians and anybody in the space business to know about because space is going to become more and more dependent not just on data but the ability to act on that data very effectively with AI all forms of AI not just AI to discern uh imagery
In space or imagery about what’s happening on the ground but also AI to optimize operations AI to look and detect for anomalies AI to support Automation and autonomy in particular in this in the very far reaches of space uh space is very very far away and we have
To be able to depend on that AI very effectively uh so all of that is very important and we need knowledge workers that understand that appreciate that and demand that in the capabilities that they’re looking to uh bring forward um what am I keeping an eye on well
Certainly China you know we absolutely don’t want to take our our eye off at China they are the pacing threat uh Russia is no slouch when it comes to you know their interest in investment uh in AI particularly in the area of applying it for know um offensive cyber attacks
Uh as we’ve seen seen in in a variety of scenarios and I’m sure Brian can speak on this as well um you know in our other adversaries any anybody in the world can certainly today figure out ways to leverage data in AI for ill and so we
We’ve got to be very wide-eyed about the threats that can come you know from insiders uh from everyday users they’re all out there but what excites me the most I just want to sort of finish on this thought what excites me the most about the use of AI particularly as it
Relates to space is this idea of autonomy uh and Robotics you know and the application of AI in machines that can actually do things uh I think this is going to advance the way in which uh we we do space operations the way in which we’re able to explore the far
Reaches of space the way in which we’re able to uh conduct ourselves in space uh and team with activities on the ground um to create new advantages so I think autonomy uh is is is really the future of of the advancement of AI autonomy Ai and space uh great
Combination okay Brian what are your thoughts so when I think about the skills that I think we’ll need in the near term to really Drive our AI Journey forward I’m confident that we have the best computer scientists on the planet the best Engineers on the planet where I
Think actually we need to put a little effort and I’m probably betraying a bias here is I think we need some different sorts of language skills to really when you’re thinking about so easy is to think about this in the context of chat GPT right when you’re thinking about
Prompt engineering right that’s really a language problem um but when we’re thinking about how to explain our algorithms or the outputs of our AI again that’s a langu anguage problem and I think it it will be many of these same computer scientists um but we really need to work
On how we a communicate with our AI so that’s the prompt engineering and then B how we Comm communicate about our AI so we can have faith and confidence in what our algorithm is telling us so that’s what I think about skills um with regard to what I’m watching so technologically
What I’m really interested in at the moment is Edge processing right just to save us that that bandwidth problem and that I talked about a little obviously um China is the the threat that sort of swallows The Horizon right and in many ways as secretary Kendall has said in the past
Um you know our Edge has eroded our technological Edge has eroded as a society China has the benefit of being able to really drive all elements of National Power in One Direction and we don’t have that we’re a sort of disaggregated instit uh industry and we’re all going in our own Direction so
To me our response to that is we need to Leverage The Power of our own system of governance the power of our free market to really Drive our innovation in a way that I think maybe more planned economy can’t do and history has shown that um
The bet on the free market is is often a good one so really what I what I W to drive through industry not just in my business but in everybody’s is this notion that we have to out inovate our peer adversaries and um I think we’re
Suited for that as a as a nation as a people uh as an industry but I think that’s really the hope to sort of regain or preserve our technology iCal Edge that’s a excellent point Brian and it speaks to the role that government has with industry which we touched on
Earlier but I really liked that you brought forward the idea of all elements of national power coming together if you will the Diplomatic uh side of it so we’re protecting intellectual property the informational aspects so that we’re all well informed and understanding it and the military so we’re securing our National Data supply
Chain Tori that was such a great point and then the economic aspect so if we continue to allow this uh competitive free market to expand and grow whether it’s a space economy or a an AI one uh the two together are really going to be powerful and and they have the potential
To secure our future so I just want to say I wish we could uh keep talking about both of these Technologies how they come together but I really want to say thank you all for joining me here today this was such a rich discussion it was informative for me I hope it was
Also informative for our audience at South by Southwest thank you all for joining me today David back over to you today’s world is driven by access to technology and information we rely on it for everything from doctor visits and education to military operations and Emergency Services connectivity sits at
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Remarkable technological transformation a new era of machine human and digital coexistence will bring forward new possibilities for businesses governments communities and individuals across the globe the rate of innovation is moving faster with each year that passes this belief led to the creation of evoke comex Innovation Foundry evoke creates new solutions that Empower
Global communities by providing access to Technologies others never imagined possible working across businesses with Partners suppliers customers and Academia our Innovation Foundry serves two vital purposes first evoke is pioneering new technologies to disrupt existing maret markets and create future networks that are focused on better customer outcomes second through our
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Network Technologies with compex expertise and location-based services to deliver real-time analytics and intelligence at the edge of the iot together comtech and circle are delivering smart enabled solutions to provide customers with extraordinary insights and new capabilities that can create substantial impact by exploiting the full power of iot networks decart Labs is integrating
Their industry-leading Cloud native supercomputer and data processing capabilities with compex Communications Technologies to provide customers with powerful insights and services today comtech and decart labs are infusing the power of artificial intelligence machine learning and monitoring insights to deliver realtime actionable intelligence of developing situations wish Nish brings leading distributed Ledger solutions to further
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To empower the world welcome to the new era of connectivity and collaboration welcome to evoke Heather thank you thank you so much for leading that fantastic discussion on that incredibly interesting uh topic it’s really important um subject that we uh we really need to get a handle up really
Appreciate your conversation about AI in space great to have Tony Bruno join us that was fantastic to have you with us again sir as I mentioned Major General Kim crder has been a um you’ve been a big support of us support of American’s future series and it was great to have
Brian Morrison join us for the first time that was fantastic um major uh General uh generals Heather and uh Kim looking forward to you guys uh being with us again in September at our space Innovation Summit working with you guys on that one thanks again so much and now
We’re going to turn it over to a conversation um led by Richard Jackson who is the with the state of Oklahoma he’s the deputy attorney general for cyber security technology and digital assets gonna have a great conversation there about public private Partnerships and dual use innovation that’s something
We absolutely have to be able to do our government and our um agencies have to work in concert with private Enterprise for us to out innovate our our new enemies and and adversaries so this is an important conversation fantastic to have briger General Chad rigie join us again um really do appreciate him
Joining us again and congratulations on his role now at the University of Tulsa leading cyber the Cyber Innovation Institute I’m gonna turn it over to you Richard thank you so much and we look forward to hearing this conversation hello everyone and welcome to America’s future series panel titled public private Partnerships facilitating
Dual use innovation my name is Richard Jackson I am the deputy attorney general for cyber security technology and digital assets for the state of Oklahoma I’m a commercial engagement lead for the Marine Innovation units technology brand and I will be moderating today’s panel this panel will focus on the role
Of the Innovation facilitator the critical element of coordination support coaching and partner functions that many times are the key element in driving real results in defense Innovation often cross functional usually interorganizational and frequently Silo Buster Silo busting syst energy Seekers The Innovation facilitator is a force multiplier for Meaningful progress and
Here today to discuss several of the important ideas around public private Partnerships are three panelists with a wealth of experience in dual use technology military operations and innovation in novel and emerging Technologies they are technical experts academic and practical research and development Partners investment and business operation Specialists the
Panelists really do consist of nation leading contributors in dual use Technologies and it is my pleasure to introduce them to you you the first panelist I have the honor of introducing is Mr James Grimsley Mr Grimsley serves as the executive director for advanced technology initiatives with the Chaka
Nation of Oklahoma as well as as an Oklahoma Transportation commissioner with oversight and Governor’s responsibilities for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation Mr Grimsley currently serves as the board of direct on the board of directors for commercial drone Alliance as well as a variety of other boards and advisory groups as part
Of Mr grimsley’s choon Nation duties he currently manages the FAA Beyond program and previously managed the faa’s integration pilot program the IP for the Chaka nation and in October of 2022 the US Secretary of Transportation Peter budajudge appointed Mr Grimsley to the faa’s advanced Aviation advisory Council
Mr Grimley has also served on multiple FAA Aviation rle making committees including the Beyond visual line of site Arc James thank you for joining us today thank you glad to be here our next panelist is Mr Kevin MC denness special adviser to America’s Frontier fund the first investment platform committed to reinvigorating our
Nation’s Innovation and Manufacturing prowess and critical Frontier of Technology sectors Kevin previously served as the director for re research and analysis on the National Security Commission for our official intelligence where he co-led the commission’s work on promoting and protecting us technology advances microelectronics and public private Partnerships and before that in
As part of the Office of Management and budgets National Security division where he provided oversight and strategic direction to the National Defense Investments across the Department of Defense the department of energy the national nuclear Security Administration and the intelligence Community Kevin also served on the intelligence the artificial intelligence and machine
Learning team at the defense Innovation unit helping to develop launch and manage the X viw detection Challenge and Kevin began his career in the office of the under secretary of defense for policy covering a range of issues including defense Partnerships in Latin America Global defense posture and US
Strategic forces Kevin glad you could be here here thanks so much for having me great to be here appreciate it and our final panelist is Chad rigie Chad retired from the United States Air Force in 2023 as a general officer with 29 years of cyber operations Communications and information
Technology experience he is a nine-time commander including the White House communications agency and prior to his retirement he served as director of command control Communications computers and cyber as well as Chief Information officer for us European command currently Chad is executive director of the Oklahoma cyber Innovation Institute
At the University of Tulsa focusing on developing testing and develop deploying cyber research outcomes and Technology developments Chad also serves as the chairman and CEO of the Air Force cyberspace and Air Traffic Control Association and on the board of advisers for both the military cyber professionals Association and the air
And space forces association’s cyber Patriot program Chad thank you for coming on RJ great to be here thanks glad you could join us Chad we’re going to start off with you just as the dod has taken considerable steps to revamp its relationship towards modern technology and we see it all over the
Space throughout the dod and procurement so to have universities made a modernization effort in the way that they go about academically oriented research and development to the point of even reconsidering the entire academic R&D model can you tell us how Academia has embraced these changes both in the
Dod and in Academia how The Institute model differs from traditional academic research and what the university Institute you are affiliated with does to promote Innovation yeah well thank you RJ uh a lot to unpack in your uh in your question and I’m going to do my best to
Address this uh first of all it’s a pleasure to join you and America’s future series once again uh this is a world class organization that does such a a huge contribution to our nation by getting these important conversations out into uh out into the ether and so
This is this is great to join uh my fellow panelists to offer some thoughts today uh I’m returning from a week of travel and uh and unfortunately I’ve hit Oklahoma and I’ve got some sort of uh uh of allergies that have hit me with everything that’s blooming so I’m going
To do my best to to uh to keep the voice uh level and stable uh but it is uh it’s great to be here nonetheless RJ I’d like to start by just kind of describing uh my new adventure uh as you noted I retired uh just several months
Ago uh moved to Tulsa Oklahoma and uh and I have taken up uh taken up this uh the the Reigns of the Oklahoma cyber Innovations Institute this is an organization that has stood up under the University of Tulsa and I have the privilege of uh of being the very first
Employee and the Very first executive director of this uh unique uh unique Institute The Institute actually has a vision and uh and funding which is always a good thing and so I have received funding from uh two different sources half of my funding actually comes from uh the state of Oklahoma so
RJ you have a role in that uh and that that level of funding is uh is to think about uh cyber Workforce Development at the K through 12 level across the state of Oklahoma so what sort of Education what sort of cyber training uh do our students that are going through the the
The process what do they need to know what’s important for them how do we how do we get them ready for uh for Tech of the future so that’s pretty exciting I get to think about uh the future of our nation by way of the students that are
Going through the Oklahoma school system and so I’m I’m just I’m thrilled with that the other half of my funding actually comes from a Family Foundation uh called The George Kaiser Family Foundation they are investing in uh Tulsa Tulsa as a uh Tech Hub Tulsa as a cyber security ecosystem and they’re uh
They’re working to attract talented companies uh individuals businesses into the Tulsa area uh to bring in uh their technology the exciting part about both those levels of funding is the marrying up and so I’ll have an opportunity to work with businesses that are coming into the Tulsa area understand their
Demands understand their needs by way of a technology Workforce and then marry them up with uh those that are going through University or those that are coming out of the K through2 system and so it’s a really exciting place to be right now I feel the energy about what’s
Taking place in Tulsa and across the state of Oklahoma and I’m just privileged to be here uh RJ uh to your questions um you know I I spent uh as you noted 29 years in uniform I got to see a lot of what our nation uh especially on the dod side was
Doing by way of Technology of the future I got to go through the experiences of covid as we figured out how to get to teams and zoom and all of those types of things on our uh DOD systems that was that was quite quite frankly groundbreaking because we were throwing
Policy and readjusting policy on the fly to connect all of those dispar workers uh to their homes and so that was unique for what we had normally done in DOD I’ve gotten to see the proliferation of commercial uh capabilities that have come online in DOD uh think starlink and
Others that have uh now become commonplace in our in our normal day-to-day military operations I’ve gotten to see uh a Pursuit from the uh from the Air Force specifically uh for an as a service model so we were thinking about the way that uh uh Enterprise Information
Technology was going to be uh consumed the way that it was going to be acquired and uh and we went after new ways of doing business we looked at other transactional authorities so what were the what were the acquisition rules that were in place and then how did we break
Down those silos uh to get better and faster to get more uh relevant technology into our systems and so I’ve gotten to see all of that over my military career and that was exciting to see um I think we all acknowledge that we’re still not moving fast enough and
So uh you know the particular organization that you’re part of diu the Innovation spark plugs that are out there uh those are continuing to help us innovatively think about information technology and Technology as a whole in DOD I will tell you R.J I’ve been pleasantly surprised as I’ve come into
Academia and uh and I’m I’m quite frankly an outsider uh I have come into the University of Tulsa I’ve been here this is now my seventh week um but I’ve gotten to re-evaluate uh the way that I used to view Academia versus the way that uh I
Can see it actually moving today and uh and so I’m I’m happily uh happily reporting that uh things are moving very well things are getting very uh very detailed on the way that our academian are thinking about the research and development that they do on a daily
Basis no longer is it the days of just the academian that are doing research for the sake of research and doing the things that they want they’re now trying to find purpose they’re now trying to find detailed application of their research to meaningful good things uh
For our nation I would call call it applied research and so for example uh we have some folks here at the University of Tulsa that are uh contributing on a daily basis to some software uh research for the Department of Defense uh they actually have deliverables that they do on a daily
Basis um to report back what their research is uh is revealing and uh and detailing and so that I think is um uh focused uh research that I I think is is along the lines of what we’re trying to do now we’re we’re trying to to be Innovative we’re trying to make sure
That the work that we’re doing actually connects to something meaningful and so I’m getting to see that happen right now I have an opportunity to work with a a group of uh folks very closely uh under the University of Tulsa we have a program that is actually funded by that
George Kaiser Family Foundation I previously mentioned it’s called The Cyber fellows program in this cyber fellows program we have 30 plus uh cyber professionals that are going through their normal PhD studies they have um they have faculty that are serving as advisers they’re taking them through that very technical uh background that
They have um but what I think is unique about this cyber fellows program is we marry up those studies of the very technical cyber data analytics AI machine learning learning in others and now we bring in some entrepreneurial training as well we have them interfaced with Venture capitalists to make sure
That the research that they’re doing as part of their PHD actually can apply and become a a meaningful business of the future I think this is an example of innovation in action I think this is an example of where Academia is making a a shift for the good and so I’m just very
Pleased with that just a year ago the University of Tulsa stood up what they called the center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship under our business college that particular Institute as well a year uh a year Advanced of mine uh has already made huge gains of uh of getting uh not only the business school
But across all the other colleges at the University of Tulsa to get that entrepreneurial thinking to get that Innovation Spirit into all of the de all all of the degree programs and I’m just I’m I’m thrilled to see that in action I think about one particular cyber fellow
You know we’re getting ready to graduate our first uh inaugural class of cyber fellows two fellows that have gone through about four years of training they’re going to graduate here as doctors in the spring time frame one of those uh one of those cyber fellows actually leads our jolt Innovation club
For the University I think that’s remarkable that we have a cyber fellow studying very high-end complicated technical data that marries that up on a daily basis with Innovation and I just think that that’s a huge uh a huge gain for not only our University our state
But for our nation so with that you know RJ I uh I I think that I’m in a really exciting place right now um my Oklahoma cyber Innovations Institute I think is at the foreground of that Innovation it’s at the for it’s at the foreground of conversations with businesses and
Venture capitalists to try and figure out how do we get better and faster and more relevant and so with that I’m gonna I’m gonna stop my uh stop my comments but look forward to any questions that you may have over well thanks so much um all right James over to you now that
We’ve heard kind of what’s happening in in true academic circles we’re going to we’re going to move into what I’ll call the the more of the Blended or or Blended facilitator James we focus a lot on federal initiatives the chips act many of they quote 2030 initiatives like the Marine
Corp Force design 2030 or the Air Force’s Science and Technology strategy of 2030 those are often broad strategic initiatives with Associated funding and we’ve seen for example with efforts to streamline defense acquisition processes that oftentimes they are cumbersome and bureaucratic but James your work tends to be very much more practical in scope
And as a Tribal Sovereign with a bit of a ace up your sleeve with respect to Administration can you speak to the work that you do and how having an innovation partner like the choak nation can have unique advantages in defense Innovation sure yeah very good question um first
The Chaka nation is the third largest Native American tribe or ferally recognized Native American tribe each tribe has a unique treaty so each tribe the sovereignty is sort of expressed in different ways by just depending on each treaty so we are sovereign we’re Sovereign Nation Under a nation uh we uh
We do compacts with States so when we work with a state government or another level of government we always exercise compacts or enter into compacts just like U any other Sovereign would um the cha nation has a very proud history of supporting our veterans and supporting National Defense uh we had very honored
Chaka tribal members in World War I who served uh before they they were even recognized as Citizens so the Chaka tribal members were serving in the military before they even had citizenship we had the code talkers as you I’m sure you’ve heard about in in
World War on um but it’s it’s been very interesting kind of my background I’m an engineer by background uh undergraduate aerospace engineering all my graduate work with mechanical engineering I worked in defense for about 20 years so started working with the air force uh directly as a civilian engineer and then
I went to a large contractor became a young VP there but my whole first 20 years involved defense uh after that 20 years I started to get out in more the entrepreneurial world so I had a small company we were doing a lot of things uh and then eventually I went to University
Of Oklahoma as an associate vice president for research so I’ve had kind of all that whole span of working in directly in the defense Community for both the dod uh as a contractor and then going into Academia and the uh the how I got connected with the tribe is I grew up in
The heart of the Chaka Nation reservation both sides of my family have grown up here so have very deep ties I I have deep appreciation and respect for the Chaka culture I grew up in the middle of it um I had left back in a time when this was a very impoverished
Area uh had some of the highest unemployment in the country uh not a lot of opportunities the the area was sort of dying not a lot of Industry here um and those of us who could go to college did you know we found a way to go out
And I never thought I would even come back because I didn’t ever think there would be opportunities um I went school pay for my own school made it through and and while I was out working in Industry working in defense all these other positions the tribe started coming
Into its own and uh with a lot of the things happened in the late 80s U the tribe came very self-sufficient and they started making Investments back into the economy back into our local communities and my reintroduction to the tribe was uh when I was at the University when
They reached out to me and said we bought a large piece of property we would like you to look at it I said okay you know I’m from this area is almost more of a courtesy than anything else and while I was touring the property with them they said we think we would
Like to use this for Aviation um which was pretty audacious and I I being the engineer I was a little negative I started talking about all the challenges if going to get involved merging Aviation here’s a ton of challenges they very patiently listened to me and then
They said could we hire you as a consultant to figure out all that stuff and so I was sort of you know no promises but yes I’ll help you um as we started digging into what the opportunities were for the tribe I was blown away um they can leverage
Sovereignty in ways that actually help with a lot of the regulatory gridlock we have and one of the things that I always struggle with uh in defense was for most of our history past few decades um the dod was the Vanguard on Aviation literally all Aviation aeronautical
Technology derived from the dod uh and then it found its way into civil civilian use and civil use um what’s happened in the last 10 to 20 years is you know new propulsion systems electric propulsion electric flight um industry is was in there for a period was
Actually ahead and it it became a much different issue in terms of global economic security uh we have economic Rivals now with China and how quickly they innovate how quickly they’re working in things and then at the same time we’re seeing this asymmetric uh shift of balance with things like
Consumer drones as we’re seeing in Ukraine right now how that could be very useful in a in a a war environment and so what started concerning me was we did necessarily have a relief valve um you know the military has restricted use airspace the military can innovate and
Use their own airspace but nothing like that exists outside of the military and so as we were architecting what the tribe could do we realized that they have sovereignty over the surface they have a lot of resources they can invest in safety infrastructure groundbased Radars things like that and we realize
That we could create the next best thing to a military test environment where we guarantee that that safety on the ground that that part of the risk and then we could invest in the infrastructure to mitigate air risks and so we really do think we’re the next best thing to a
Military test range we function like a military test range but in in terms of how the tribes getting into that there’s multiple facets as you talk about the P3 tribes are unique and that they can function like a business we have a business arm we have like our in our
Case we have a whole uh holding company of quite a few companies that we own uh we can function like a government which I’m part of the core government part um and we have all these different ways that we can operate so we can kind of
Leverage that in ways that we can foster Innovation and Innovation is it’s it’s interesting because if you try to prescribe it sometimes it doesn’t quite occur and happen U and as you see when big large organizations get to a certain size compliance is very very important you can’t function without compliance
That compliance sometimes works against you with Innovation that’s why we we see tremendous success stories of you know two or three young people get together in their garage or or at Starbucks and they hatch an idea and then they create something that’s disruptive to technology to Industry and so every
Large organization struggles with that and as we’re seeing the things that are happening especially with the uas with electric propulsion a a as we see the convergence of things like generative AI all of these things are uh creating immense opportunities but it’s also creating a situation in this world where
We’ve never faced the threats that we have globally uh and it’s it’s we now have to consider Economic Security at the same level that we consider uh our national security like you know that’s part of our defense strategy now so it’s it’s it’s very interesting I I kind of a
Lot lifelong Observer of how does innovation happen how do you Foster that environment and uh at the at the point we’re at right now with the tribe we have a small agog group we’re kind of carved out where we’re doing our own thing and so we’ve recreated that
Initial entrepreneurial uh part at our test range and our Test Facilities where we’re doing that we’re developing our own Vehicles we’re doing a whole lot of kind of innovation for the tribe itself um but moving ahead we have to figure out how we leverage as part of
Acquisition reform um you know we have to how we leverage the strengths of Industry uh we some ways we’ve been here before the late 50s where we had the defense production act and things like that but we have to figure out how we leverage that in ways that’s going to
Benefit our National Economic Security um and I love the things that have been happening with things like agility Prime and the replicator program some of these other things these to me are acquisition reform programs that that are going to be successful um but yeah this it’s it’s something that I’ve been really excited
About we’re doing some really neat things the truck Foundation has had a lot of historic first in aviation it’s been a point of great pride uh the tribe literally came from nowhere uh five or six years ago did this from scratch and it’s really paying some big dividends I’ll stop there
Outstanding now to our last question Kevin uh we know that having a great idea like what James mentioned three guys in a garage who have a great disruptive idea or the capability to innovate like partnering with Chad’s Institute at the University of Tulsa sometimes that’s not enough for an
Emerging business or a group of Founders to to keep their organization surviving long enough to be able to develop what will consider meaningful products or to be able to scale to the level of production needed to have meaningful impact in defense Innovation or in dual use Technologies can you speak to the
Perspective of venture capital on the Dual use thesis what developments have occurred in the industry around American defense Innovation broadly and how VC Partners help Founders and Builders translate their Vision into viable businesses and by virtue of that new or novel and emerging dual use use capabilities well thanks so much for the
Question and and I really think it’s a fascinating moment to look at this dual use thesis and the recognition if you just look around the world of the importance of commercial technology on the battlefield I mean take Ukraine as an example that’s come up in this conversation already the use of
Commercial drones cell phones other you widely available commercial devices is having a real impact uh on the way that the conflict’s being prosecuted and I think there’s a lot of lessons from that not only for the Department of Defense but also for entrepreneurs to think about the uses of these Technologies and
For us as investors you know we’re it’s it’s one thing to be a group of three founders in a garage and and launch an app it’s another to invent the next semiconductor to create the next Quantum technology that’s going to have an impact on defense missions and so on
Some what we call these deep Tech Frontier Tech technologies that require more time more access to infrastructure often more technical expertise and so our role as investors is to really help bring that Capital that’s necessary but also the coaching and if you look at the team and the teams that are doing this
Very well right now as investors they have a lot a really deep understanding of the defense need and they also have kind of an understanding of where the technology is going and they can help coach some of these new startups into the right parts of the Department of
Defense and that can mean finding uh you know is where’s the right program executive office to work with you know what the right application of this technology how might you find early and Rapid experimentation customer feedback in a previous role you know before uh working with the American frontier fund
I was at the defense Innovation unit what used to be called diu 2.0 now it’s diu 3.0 and under diu 2.0 we really focused on speed to contract and speed to prototype right so how can you get this technology in the hands of users and then rapidly iterate such that
You’re improving it and meeting the mission need faster and faster and you see some of the things that that James mentioned some of these more recent programs like agility Prime and replicator really building on that to get to mass so we have one instance of a
Successful prototype how do we get to a thousand how can we have a thousand on Advanced systems uh ready to to operate you know autonomously and and in a in a formation so for again for us as investors we have a unique model uh at America’s Frontier fund where we have a
Fund Frontier fund one alpha that focuses on scaling Capital but we also have an incubation program uh called Roadrunner Venture Studios and that is really taking an idea and helping to turn it into a company that earlier stage people talk about the value of death but really there are multiple
Valys of death there’s from an idea to a prototype and then there’s a prototype to scale and you could even say um a successful scale to International those are all three different potential values of death that need help from different often different investors but different
Skill sets as well and so for us when we’re focused on this early incubation stage thinking about how to get you know first prototype first uh Revenue with the Department of Defense or with another government customer it’s a lot of coaching and even if you have especially in these Frontier
Technologies where you have a lot of technical expertise required you may not have the business or financial expertise if you’re working with a university Professor who’s founding a company or a National Lab um you know PhD level technical individual you know you have to pair that technical expertise with
The understanding of the business model for a dual use kit company and then also uh with with the mission need and that’s where uh often another thing that you know investors that do this well can do is help build the right Partnerships it’s not just a single startup operating
But it’s operating an ecosystem whether with defense primes or or other partners that can help understand the mission need bring the capability to the Department of Defense and then scale it as well so it’s really an exciting again exciting time uh when it comes to defense Innovation and dual use you see
A lot more funds focused on this and rightly so because the arsenal of democracy is built on technology we have to make sure that we have our our qualitative Edge in terms of technology and it’s often these Innovative young companies that are bringing the most disruption and the faster we can
Experiment and then scale it into the Department of Defense I think the more successful will be and their deterence capability will be as well outstanding well as we close in our time here it’s a few things that I wanted to call to the Forefront that our our great
Panelists have pulled out some some some items that have stood out to me one talking a lot about Outsiders moving into new or novel institutions bringing a wealth of experience to an area that may not have been able to benefit from that experience that they’re starting to work into innovating not just
Technologies but also institutions processes and programs as well another having a startup mindset I think everyone has mentioned talking about having the ability to not just be technically sound or understanding the military case or the mission case but also to know that this is not in a silo
That you have to be able to operate these businesses so having a startup mindset a business Founders mindset thinking of also the business element of what we’re discussing talking also about purpose-driven applied research and the mission set and capabilities right this is not researched for its own sake there
Is a broader Mission and we know that to understand both in terms of Economic Security but also National Security National Defense again putting the duel in dual use Technologies and finally speed and rapidity we are not the only country running this race and so it is incumbent upon us as technologists researchers academics
Capital partners and people who work in the government to also help facilitate the pace of operation and the tempo which we’re operating so again I want to say thank you to our panelists Chad rigie Kevin mcginness James Grimsley for the great insights in facilitating dual use innovation gentlemen thank you so much
For coming on okay and then um if you’d like to find out more about our panelists or what they are working on you can feel feel free to reach out to any of us on LinkedIn and you can also reach out directly to James atas choon
Nation.com or you can reach out to Chad chadra that’s R AE utulsa.edu and you can get in contact with Kevin Kevin Americas frontier. org and feel free to reach out to me as well richard. Jackson oag.gov for Kevin Chad and James and on behalf of America’s future series I’m
Richard Jackson thank you for joining us today’s world is driven by access to technology and information we rely on it for everything from doctor visits and education to military operations and Emergency Services connectivity sits at the heart of it all but a large amount of the global population remains
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Connectivity only comtech has the experience Innovation and vision to build connections around the world that set ideas free learn more at com.com hello I’m Shelley Brunswick and it’s a pleasure to join America’s future series for their dual use Tech Summit I have the honor to interview Dr VC L the chief
Executive for General atomics Dr L is a global Visionary and strategic leader with a remarkable Journey spanning esteemed roles at loed Martin Boeing and Reliance Industries limited his expertise in aerospace engineering and Business Development has eared him numerous accolades he’s been recognized for his unparalleled achievements Dr L
Holds prestigious titles such as the president’s Lifetime Achievement Award presented to him by the president of the United States in September 2022 and he was conferred the world leader award by the House of Lords in the United Kingdom in 2023 welcome Dr L thank you so much Shelly it’s an honor
To be with you well it’s an honor to be with you today your work represents the Pinnacle of innovation in defense technology and dual use application today we’re eager to delve into how we can leverage Innovation and creative capabilities to ensure our nation security and the security of our allies
Especially in the face of growing near-peer threats and the rapid evolution of Technologies let’s explore the future of building Partnerships as well as the role of dual use and disruptive Technologies Dr L I’m going to start with collaborations with your esteem roles with the US Japan Business Council
The US India Business Council and your recent participation at the India us Forum you have a unique vantage point on International collaboration especially in the Realms of defense and dual use Technologies given the critical importance of synergy between the private sector Academia and government and driving those Innovations could you
Share your insights on the collaboration models that you have found to be most effective absolutely Shelly as you rightly said um you know in this globalized world and and a technology world and all the geopolitics of of to day um there are certain models that
Seem to to work and in my experience um when we’re talking about International collaboration I think it is several groups of stakeholders that need to come together uh on a particular issue on on several issues but they largely fall into the following stakeholder brackets uh one is the political Spectrum so uh
If the political spect of the countries involved or that uh are kind of aligned in terms of the objectives that certainly um paves the way for collaboration the second bucket I would say is the bureaucracy and the bureaucrat critic structures as as you know they’re different in every country
With differing priorities depending on the local situations and if those bureaucratic structures can marry together for a particular particular cause or several causes that again paves the way for good collaboration the third area I would say is Academia and think tanks and it’s often underspoken but I think Academia and think tanks
Have a huge role to play in collaboration and they’re often not in the decisionmaking OR charts on a particular issue but they have a significant behind the scenes role to inform and to debate various issues and so I think alignment with the the academic communities is very important for
Collaboration then I would go as another group of stakeholders that would be involved in the collaborative model would be the industry and the industry captains whether large small or medium Industries they all have a voice and they have a role to play in making sure a collaboration succeeds or doesn’t and
So I think those voices are again very important um the fifth bucket I would say is uh media and Communications and to have the right perception on the on the problem and to debate uh in the public domain the the pros and cons that is very important and
Finally as a sixth bucket of stakeholders that I think is important for collaboration it would be the end user um who would benefit from whatever the um collaborative model is and making sure that the end user indeed wants that type of service or platform um and and
That’s of course critical so with these stake six stakeholder uh buckets I think one can form a good uh collaborative model and indeed especially when we talk International collaboration I have found that if the stars align in all these six categories you’re able to make progress I love that
If the stars align no pun intended since we both are in the space industry as well all right let’s dive into one of those stakeholder buckets you know fostering an environment that encourages Innovation is essential for staying ahead of threats what recommendations do you have for policy makers industry
Leaders and Academia to cultivate a more Innovative defense ecosystem that’s an excellent question Charlie and I think no one country has a lock on the best ideas in today’s day and age and so I think there is a lot of Merit at looking at the startup communities in the different countries
These days when we talk about Innovation a lot of the best and brightest ideas and a lot of the startup companies that are incubating these ideas will eventually become unicorns and so I think uh from an international perspective to get more Innovation it’s important to partner with startup
Companies and with new ideas fresh ideas folks coming out of Academia and other institutions and as we do that I think another important aspect is Workforce Development because in whether it’s a stem or other categories to be able to get the best talent uh is going to be where the eventual
Competition will be in terms of innovation absolutely I completely agree you know I’m a big proponent for Workforce Development and capacity building not only in the United States but around the world bringing those underrepresented groups into the space ecosystem and Technology ecosystem let’s let’s pivot to uh dual
Use technology since that’s what our Summit is about today could you share your vision on how dual use Technologies might influence future defense strategies and international security policies yes in my observation um this is a very important point you know there used to be a time where defense
Technologies would eventually end up in the commercial domain but increasingly so it is kind of the opposite now where uh a lot of the latest and greatest Technologies are in fact incubated in the commercial domain and are then applied to the defense or the space realm and
So that inherently means that a lot of the fundamental Technologies with which we are talking about um are dual use or multi-use in that sense and and um and it can spawn from any area it doesn’t necessarily have to be in the defense domain and the ability to recognize then
How they integrate into various use cases um is is very important and critical and with the pace of Technology uh development being so fast as it is I think um what we have to keep in Pace with is also the technology adoption into various use cases and um
That certainly is no small challenge but I think those those entities that are able to do that will be able to succeed I agree and and I think some of what we’ve even seen you know at one time the launch industry was completely government run and we’ve seen how that’s
Now pivoted to Commercial and now the same launch providers for both the government and Industry you know are the same companies and the government is now using launch as a service I think that’s one example of dual use the other example is you know a lot of entrepreneurs especially in Silicon
Valley they’re creating products and services on the commercial side and then finding a military application uh one of the yeah one of the examples I highlight is I know NASA has outlined their architecture for their return to the moon and onto Mars with the emis program and they’ve laid out their architecture
Where they may have some technology gaps where they’d love for industry to look at Tech insertion into their government strategy absolutely absolutely well I’m GNA pivot into a really fun topic now disruptive Technologies you know a couple people have told me that you know if you’re not disrupting you’ll be disrupted so I
Think this is a fun area to talk about especially with your background and as we’re seeing the rapid evolution of AI Quantum Computing and unmanned systems what do you identify as the most disruptive Technologies poised to reshape the defense industry right that’s an excellent question Shelly and and I think
Datadriven defense technology in other words where will the money be spent and what technologies are the future what are the technologies that will change defense platforms how can oems and local Partners push continuous innovation and capability enhancement or what are the data and intelligence solutions that will enhance uh long-term
Capabilities uh what are the challenges to implementing on existing platforms those are all the relevant questions that we all um have to address as we move forward and as I think through all those aspects um three things come to mind uh one is I think the trends will
Be uh towards open architecture so that will continue to be a trend I think as as we as we uh think through uh data driven defense technology the second I think will be a big focus is electronic Warfare I think that in the years to come is going to get more and more
Emphasis and the third area I think which will continue to be uh very significant as we go down this technology path is Big Data and cloud computing so I think all three of these areas are going to be real drivers if you will uh in terms of future
Technology excellent you talked a little bit on it but could you elaborate on the challenges and opportunities that these Technologies present you know obviously all technologies have good and bad we’re hearing about that with AI but particular in terms of integrating into the existing systems and Frameworks you talked about having that open
Architecture but as you and I both know many of the defense Legacy systems were not created for plug-and playay so what are your thoughts on that integration into these existing systems and Frameworks yes um that that’s a significant challenge in I think um the way to to address that in the near and
Longer term is to to ensure that as the you know systems go through their mid-light of Life upgrades or next level uh continuous Improvement cycles that it is integrated in a meaningful manner not just because technology is available but also because how is that going to serve the overall
Um platform so doing a uh I would say a detailed engineering analysis of what technologies to be adopted make sense and when in terms of the various block upgrades that one does uh and depending on the overall mission of that platform or service I think that’s important to
Think through not not just blindly adopt everything that’s out there and do it in a systematic way so that because you know there’s a long tail in terms of maintenance and repair and overhaul and training and Logistics depending on what we’re talking about and so um tweaking something um or
Adopting some new technology has to also have its follow through pieces all laid out and unless one has thought through all that um just make a change for for the sake of making a change may not deal the results required excellent excellent and Dr L given your unique intersection of technical expertise and
Strategic Vision alongside your engagement with key International ad um advisory groups and defense councils how do you envision the role of disruptive Technologies like AI Hypersonic systems and space-based surveillance in shaping future Global Security Arch tectures K all those areas that you described are I think critical to
National Security and certainly a lot of focus I know is being put on those but I think going forward I cannot stress enough that um deterrence against aggression um has to be the way to go and um as an example in the Indian Ocean Maritime regions um in order to deter
Aggression you need persistent uh intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capability uh whether that’s collected from space or Airborne or Surface assets and I think um persistent Airborne surveillance of the maritime domain as an example is probably the most coste effective near-term option for like-minded countries to strengthen this deterrence
Um I think given the massive surface area in question long endurance uncrewed airbone systems are optimized for providing the necessary persistence um and uh you know given sufficient collection assets I would like to suggest that you know for example the quad could establish a mechanism for realtime sensor data
Sharing in order to create a common operating picture for each of uh the like-minded members excellent I’m going to Pivot to a lightning round question and we talked about it a little bit and you brought up the workforce and we know in the US we have some Workforce
Challenges um you know we have a aging Workforce here in the United States and that’s being emulated by other nations around the world like Japan and the European Union what are some of your thoughts um as you travel the world that are some of the best practices to help
Us uh entice or encourage or create access points for the next generation of leaders to come into the space uh the technology Industries and help uh be the next generation of leaders here yeah I I personally feel um strongly about a very uh methodical way of doing this through high school and
Then into college and in you know into this more advanced degrees and and certainly at the workplace in terms of training and continuous learning not only in the at the entry level but all the way through one’s career um as you know technology keeps changing and we
Have to keep Pace with it and we have to get our Workforce so to speak updated very very much more often than than in the past and and that pace continues to increase um because um knowledge is going to be critical and so uh I am very uh bullish
On Knowledge Management and knowledge retention and certainly Knowledge Management is a huge area where the Guiding Light let us say of an organization has a has a an a responsibility to pass that on to the next uh set of leaders and so on and because not everything can be written
Down not everything is a science many things are in art and whether you’re talking about um you know hardcore technology knowledge or you’re talking about quality knowledge and and quality control knowledge and so forth all those things one can really end up with a significant Gap if one has not got a
Very deliberate continuous learning process in place and I think uh spawning young you know um inspiring Young Minds in high school and through college and through internship programs um is is one way of making sure we we get the interest and the quality of the folks
That we need in the industry but also to keep them engaged continuous learning even after they’re in in their roles absolutely I completely agree with you we’re seeing how AI is changing things uh with note taking and transcribing meetings and uh you know I think being adaptable and incorporating that new
Technology to make all of us more efficient is really important being those lifelong Learners and being adaptable I’m going to ask another lightning round question about supply chain resiliency um from your experience what strategies are most effective in building a resilient supply chain for defense Technologies do you think dual
Use technology will strengthen these assets uh these aspects and what are some of your initiatives that you’ve seen seen work well right so that’s a that’s a big area but I think in supply chain I think coming to the realization that we live in a globalized world and so as one as
Part of doing business uh globally there are certain expectations in many countries across the world that their um value add when one does defense trade as an example continues to go up and so um it’s no longer just a buying selling relationship between countries uh countries are interested in upskilling
And getting workforces developed they’re interested in manufacturing work in logistics work and maintenance work and so as you look at your supply chain no matter how vertically integrated you may start off as you have to make some buy or make decisions that not only make sense for your own business but
Certainly how you then take the business that you’re going to so you know not make but buy and how do you what are the criteria you set for outsourcing uh and Beyond Outsourcing what are the parameters you put in place so you still have tight controls on that
Whole process because if you let go too much too quickly um that could be a problem for you as you are the final responsible uh entity to put that all together and certainly when you have um you know factors like covid come into play or or other world events uh
Depending on the region that you are um you know working with or Outsourcing to you have to factor in all those risks um uh before you lay out a plan so I think in supply chain a lot of the strategy work has to be very methodical and has
To be um Revisited I would say very very much more often as opposed to just you know letting it play out and and to be able to foresee issues before they become issues is very critical absolent I’m I mean we know how challenged the Aerospace and space industry was during
Covid with the supply chains um and you know one of the groups that I partner with is manufacturers Edge which is part of the Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology to help those manufacturing companies in each state continue to thrive so they can support the Aerospace and space
Industry as we pivot to our last question what what kind of interview would this be without a policy and Regulatory com uh Insight from you so with your thoughts uh about the regulatory framework governing Global Aviation and space exploration what policy Innovations do you believe are necessary to support the
Rapid advancement and deployment of these Technologies in a way that harmonizes with International Security and diplomatic objectives yeah that’s that’s a wonderful question shy I think um you know we live in the world where there are non-state actors now we live in a world where we need persistent
Surveillance we need robust data sharing between countries we need constant training cooperation between countries in particular Special Forces skills uh we need military police force collaborations um with asymmetric Warfare against roog Rogue States as we seen them we need electromagnetic spectrum dominance we need the ability to correlate pedabytes of available
Sensor data into realtime operational pictures uh we need to be able to deliver massive numbers especially you know in my mind loitering Munitions and while minimizing exp exposure to personnel and as we look at all these things and an ability to uh secure sea Lanes sea lines for Commerce
And L to maintain logistical dominance um all these things require certainly policy and Regulatory oversight and and uh those six buckets of stakeholders I think need to be um very much at the table as some of these policies and Frameworks are put together because it affects all of us
And I think to have forward leaning and forward-looking policies uh and regul Frameworks not just domestically but internationally is going to be critical for like-minded Nations to pull together to uh address some of these threats that we face oh excellent thank you so much Dr L I know
Our time has gone so quickly um but I wanted to give you the last opportunity for anything else you wanted to share with our audience today about dual use technology disruptive technology policy framework International collaboration diplomacy I could go on and on with the areas you’re an expert in well that’s
That’s very kind of you Shelly it’s it’s been an honor talking to you but I think to sum up I could say that all these areas that you that you addressed uh during during this session are are very critical and we can probably spend hours
On each one of these topics but I do think that um the uh you know through through series like you have here just bringing awareness to the issue and um the the common threat in all of this I would say is Workforce Development and inspiring younger Minds to come into the
Space and help address these issues in the decades ahead is probably uh a passion of The Guiding Light as we you know uh move on into into uh the future we need to make sure that we have a very robust Act and inspired Workforce and
That that I think would be a major area of uh progress well thank thank you Dr L for your insights today you’ve had added incredible value to this conference um you understand these complex Landscapes of Defense defense technology and Innovation the work you’re doing not only advances our military capabilities
But also strengthens our nation security and technological leadership on the the global stage thank you for sharing your expertise and for contributing to our nation’s defense I would also like to thank America’s future series for hosting this Dynamic discussion today and until next time I’m Shelley Brunswick and I’ll see you around the
Galaxy ky ky thank you so much that was fantastic really want to thank you and Dr La for a fascinating conversation around dual use Technologies and shaping the future um want to say in particular that I think it’s fantastic that we have U Innovative companies like General
Atomics who focus on Vision Fusion other really critical energy sources uh to uh help uh be able to explore and live in and occupy and develop space as well as clean energy sources like that I think that’s a really important conversation appreciate your leadership on this on this important discussion next up we’re
Going to have another interesting conversation also about the future of dual use uh this is developing dual use technology with foresight it’s led by Laur winter Laura want to say thank you in advance um she is a an editor and a journalist reporter with the defense and
Airspace report the down link uh podcast U she has sary Tyson Brown she’ll introduce him the airspace Corporation can’t say enough good things about the airspace Corporation really thrilled to have Colonel Rett Trull who is recently retired from the space force but he was direct deputy director Space Systems
Integrations office and I want to thank all of them for that we’ll take a little break as we always do between these and when we come back if you’ve had a chance to get some coffee or something like that um you will we’ll be joined by Laura so Laura look forward to your
Great conversation hello and welcome back to the Dual use Tech Summit I’m Laura winter I am the editor and host of the downlink podcast which for those of you who are interested in the intersection of space the space business and defense you can get it and subscribe wherever you get your
Podcast now this segment is going to be really good fun but also serious I’m going to ask you in our audience to at once use your imagination and think strategically about the long-term goals you want to achieve for our nation’s economy and Security in space because it’s already intertwined and dependent
On Space Systems right what’s the offworld destination technologically or economically after 2030 or how about after 20 or 30 years how are we or or how should we Leverage What are now just nent Technologies to set up future generations of Americans for success in space for the fifth Industrial
Revolution and how do we secure it so I’m really excited for this discussion so I’m honored to have with us here today two gentlemen who spent a great deal of time thinking about the future in space beyond 2030 we have United State space force Colonel Wallace Rett
Turnbull who serves as a deputy director of the Space Systems integration office at space systems command and Zack Brown who is the senior project leader for strategic foresight at the Aerospace corporation’s Center for space policy and strategy gentlemen thank you so much for joining me welcome to the Dual use
Tech Summit hi Laura yeah glad to be here yeah same sounds like this is gonna be a fun conversation now I think just to start us off we need to answer why as in why is it important to not just think but actually plan and make strategic investments in space technology
Development today as in this year in 2024 for a future that is 20 or 30 years out and I’m pointedly starting with this question because the push back is going to be well hey we already have a ton of strategically critical issues that we’ve got to tackle right here on Earth with
Space Systems and we need to do it like now right like securing satellite Communications for operations that counter houti attacks on International Shipping in the Red Sea region you know for operation Prosperity Guardian so you know there are thousands of Terminals and satellite signals being jammed and degraded which is a technical challenge
Directly related to space the economy and national interests so guys right like why spent time money and effort Thinking Beyond 2030 and Zach why don’t you start us off wow well uh first of all thank you for that very simple question to add oh be my pleasure
Obviously you know I I I love talking about this kind of topic working on the the strategy and foresight team at at Aerospace this is kind of our bread and butter and even before I joined Aerospace I I’ve been thinking about this a lot because as I I’ve told you
Before like I come to this from a intelligence background I’ve been an analyst for a long time and I like to think about how systems work together to to create what we what we think of as the future um I would say that you know everyone agrees I think that we’re in a
Crucial period of change in the global environment uh we’re in what you know the a lot of folks call auka environments volatile uncertain complex ambiguous their pace of change itself seems to be accelerating so I fully understand that leaders particularly in the you know in the defense department
And the intelligence community and also in the private sector are swamped by day-to-day crises that emerge and we’re responding to all these different activities but I would say it’s important for us to step back and think about how the actions that we’re taking now or the actions that we’re not taking
Uh will carry forth into this future because I like to tell people I think of the future as a what results from the interaction of lots of different systems all around the world things that you and I are doing every day things that we’re not doing the decisions we make the
Decisions we don’t make things we say the things we don’t say the things we do the things we don’t do and if we think more um proactively about what kind of future we want to have we can make those small Investments and small changes now and the present and make those Futures
That we want to happen a little bit more likely to come we can’t predict what’s going to happen but we can we can do the things we can do now to ensure that the future we get is the one that is more preferable for us and for the nation and the world I
Think and red want to take a swing at it sure yeah I you know a couple different thoughts um so obviously we have a lot of work to do right now and so we definitely need to focus on some of those n-term challenges um that you talked about in your introduction for
Sure um but we also the the as Zach said like the the rate of change is happening so fast that if we wait to see where things go and try to catch up we’ll never get there and it’s it’s a lot easier to lead the
Change than it is to catch up on the change and if we uh as a space fairing Nation where space is a vital part of our economy don’t take a leadership role on trying to understand where things are headed and prepare now um for that potential future then somebody else is
Going to do it for us and we’re gonna be in that you know we’re gonna be playing catchup and uh I I would rather be leading the pack than trying to play catchup and so I think it’s important to balance the focus on the near-term priorities um and then think about where
Do we really want to go then the other thing I’ll add just from I’m a technologist at hard and engineer is from a technology perspective right some of this stuff takes a really long time to develop and if you don’t start now then um you’re G to you you never get
There right because the technology there’s a lot of learning that has to go on um there’s a lot of experimentation that we have to do to really understand if if we envision the future that we want um you know just one example you know there’s a lot of interest in the
Moon now and what’s happening in cison or space the space between um the Earth and the moon um a lot of technology is going into making that a reality um but it takes incremental steps and learning um you know just last week we saw an American spacecraft land on the moon for
The first time since 1972 um we have to do that development and that learning in that trial and that experimentation now to really understand where we want to go and if we really want to be a space fairing Nation where we’re going back and forth between the
Earth and the moon for example you’re going to have to have communications and Logistics and refueling and all of those things and that takes time to build out and we’ve got to start that now now you’re both from defens minded organizations right one that’s a branch of the military that organizes trains
And equips space forces and one that is a fredly funded research and development center so Rett how does space systems command approach this long-term strategic thinking about the future um you know beyond 2030 you know what say are your top two priorities you could possibly even go to three and I’d like
To even just Backtrack on a s that you said you know the intuitive machines im1 Mission being the first US mission to the moon since 1972 which is amazing but also what’s really amazing is that it was a commercial mission right and that there should be at least one more commercial
Mission from the United States this year so things are certainly changing on the moon right so how do we protect that how do we protect you know us intellectual property that’s going to the moon so on and so on so yeah I’m really interested to hear what your you know priorities
Are for you know planning for this future yes so um it obviously a lot of different priorities that we have because we have a big mission set a lot of different things we’re working on but but relative to the point that you made about a this was a commercial company
That landed a spacecraft on the moon um I think that how do we work with the commercial sector is definitely one of our priorities and one where we’re putting a lot of effort in in fact um just this last year we stood up a commercial space office whose only job
Is to focus on what is the commercial sector doing and how can we apply that to solve our problems today and in the future um you know in the past space uh was a very expensive thing it still is but it’s getting cheaper right and it at
One time it was something only nation states could do and you needed the resources of a nation state to operate to get to space and to operate in space that’s not true today today um the largest operator of space vehicles in the world is a private company SpaceX
They you know headquartered down the road um from where we’re sitting here at space systems command um that’s a very different world from the one uh you know 20 30 years ago I joined the military 29 years ago flying satellites um for the US Air Force where you know where we had
A couple of dozen spacecraft total right and and today SpaceX operates over 4,000 um so a very very different world um we want to be part of that world and we want to leverage that those capabilities to to help do our job right it’s frankly
Uh it’s a lot cheaper for us to let some of those other companies do their research and development and do the fielding and just be a customer of some of those things um and so the priority for me in in in terms of of this question is thinking is thinking through
That of what are the things that we as a service as a military service really need to organically do and invest in because those are uniquely military things and then what are the things that we really could use use commercial capabilities for and then how do we structure um our planning um our
Architectures our investments so that we can take advantage of those strategic um and Commercial capabilities but that’s a lot of what to do with like what’s happening now right because with the commercial space office you know I know Colonel NY and and and his group I mean they are definitely you
Know getting requirements from you know basically from one combat Command right space command but also from others and and and trying to get things from the commercial industry you know out there as soon as possible but what about Beyond 2030 yeah so um that’s hard right I mean
You only have so much so many dollars that’s why I’m wondering like what what your priorities would you know what what you think they should be you know 20 years from now like what C what do you what do you want to do now that will set
Set up the space force like in 20 years yeah so um I I don’t know what’s what technology is going to look like in TW 20 years or 30 years right um it certainly couldn’t have predicted it when I started 29 years ago um but uh we
We can have an idea right and we can help shape it by we can shape it through the Investments that we make and the Partnerships that we build um so I think we we can help guide that future um but you know when I think about what does
That future look like for me one of the the key things that we’re we’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about is what would it mean if we didn’t have to think about maneuvering and where we go um uh Lieutenant General John Shaw who recently retired as the deputy commander
Of us space command um coined the term maneuver without regret today every single spacecraft we launch has a limited life it right it’s got a certain amount of fuel um and when that’s used up it’s gone and you can’t move um which really limits your ability to use those
Spacecraft in novel ways to um you know be able to respond to New Missions to new threats and those kinds of things right so to me that future is hey you know I’m a big sci-fi nut I read a lot of Science Fiction and and and you never
Think you nobody ever talks about Fuel and Delta V in those science fiction stories right they just they just go where they need to go if what would that kind of future look like and what do we need to get there right and so from a very practical perspective if that’s the
If that’s sort of the future we envision you got to back that up and say okay what do you need today to make that possible right so someday what what would that mean that mean maybe new new types of propulsion and we our labs are certainly investing in that um and I
Know the commercial sector is as well um and we’re very interested in some of those things um it might mean um new types of um you know electrical systems like nuclear technology and and spacecraft might is something that there’s a lot of interest in now um not
Necessarily from space force but just in in general that that that’s where the technology is going now that it’s you know safe enough and small enough to to do that kind of thing um it also might mean hey how do we refuel are there gas stations in space right and if you think
About the very practical thing of hey I need to um either pull up to the gas station and put fuel into my car or I need that pulled my electric vehicle up and plug it in to charge all of that infrastructure works today because we built out an infrastructure that’s based
On um that has a logistics tail to be able to supply all of those things it has standards and interfaces the nozzle fits into the gas tank um the charger plugs into your charging port um and all of that had to be built out um we need
To think about what does that look like for space right and what are the standards that we’re going to use um it doesn’t make sense in my opinion to have a different standard for the military than it does for commercial right because commercial capabilities are
Going to need the same kind of things so can we partner with the commercial companies who are building those that infrastructure out now here’s the interface that we’re going to use here’s what the nozzle looks like here’s what the port looks like um here’s the protocol we use for actually getting the
Spacecraft to autonomously connect and and transfer fuel or energy or whatever it is right um how are we going to Stage that how are we going to replenish it um we need to think about those things today if we’re going to have those in 20 years and Zack what about the Aerospace
Corporation’s approach and priorities I mean do you think about this a lot yeah well you know I I I think everything that that Rhett was saying is spot on and I you know I happen to agree as a as a Sci-Fi nerd and as a a space
Efficient Auto I think a lot of the the stuff that we don’t talk about enough is what what all just refer to as orbital or CIS lunar infrastructure like the the kind of infrastructure that expands all the way out from space all the way down to the ground and into society and these
Are the things that you know we we don’t spend enough time thinking about the people the systems the standards that will underly and underwrite any any expansion Cy lunar that we want to do in the next 20 30 50 years and it’s very cool that we’re we’re developing new
Propulsion systems it’s very cool that we’re sending more launches uh into orbit but there’s a lot of other work that has to go on top of that for the type of future we want in space and that raises the question of you know what is
The future we want we can talk all day about you know is it is it you know lunar habitation is it going to Mars is it you know expanding into to the asteroid belt all these different things that people talk about a lot that requires infrastructure standards and
And more I don’t want to say boring because it’s not boring a lot of people are fascinated by it but it’s hard work that has to be done there’s also the other aspects of you know radiation problem s and you know biological you
Know how do we do um you know how do we are we able to carry Offspring to term in space if we want to have it other worlds and fulltime with settlements you know those are questions that need to be answered uh and it’s great that everyone
Is excited about the future of space right now it’s an exciting time to be part of the space Community for sure but we have a lot of work to do on on figuring out some of these hard problems and I I think you raised a great point
About infrastructure but I want to foot stop all right well just going on for that and and and Zach this kind of came from one of the articles that I read that you authored and you know what are some of the key drivers or should I say
Forces shaping the future of dual use space Technologies beyond the next five years or up to 20 30 years you know what are those forces and I’m using that word really pointedly because it’s something that you used in in your article to explain how we shape our future yeah so
Uh just to to to to queue in the rest of the audience that’s listening so briefly uh I I think of the future in terms of forces of continuity and forces of change and they kind of brought up against each other and whatever wins out you know that’s kind of the future that
We get forces of continuity can be anything from you know we all do things every day it’s like our our patterns that we that we act out you know we go get our coffee at the same place we you know we do those are forces of continuity and then a force of change
Might be something disruptive that happens like that coffee shop we go to closes down and a new one pops up and which one do we start going to so over time these patterns that we all sort of go through as a civilization and as a people and as as organizations as
Enterprises those sort of write and code out the future that we’re going to get because we’re on these tracks and there’s there’s disruptions from time to time that happen so that’s kind of my my thinking about the future in a nutshell I think the biggest forces of change
That are happening right now I mean we talked about the the vuka environment we live in and it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen of course you know the world’s a complex system emergence is a property and there’s going to be things that we cannot predict no matter no
Matter how much data we collect but I think it’s very safe to say um um digitization is going to be a force that continues over the next 20 30 years everything will be codified Quantified the expansion of sensors not only in orbit but also in in the atmosphere all
The way down to the ground in our phones and our in our street lamps and our appliances uh subsurface you know underwater sensors all kind sensors everywhere so there’s quantification of data from ubiquitous sensors and imaging that’s that’s I think that’s a driving force that is going to continue for the
Next 20 30 years uh AI is going to continue whether or not there’s ups and downs I mean we know from the history of artificial intelligence that uh people may be familiar with the The Gardener hype cycle AI tends to go more like an assign W like it goes up and down over
You know the last the last AI summer and winter um we’re in a AI summer or spring right now and there’s some signs that that might be slowing down soon um but I’m sure that’s that’s a trend that will continue to go on for 20 30 years AI is
Going to get better this is the you know open AI just released their new video producing um AI application I forget what it’s called but it can produce you know basically liveaction content on demand and that’s the worst it’s ever going to be it’s only going to get
Better from that so we’re in A Brave World of of content creation and Eng generative AI for sure so so it’s digitization it’s artificial intelligence Robotics are obviously going to be a driving force in the future and then sadly on the on the other side I think uh you know the
Social and political forces you know um lack of trust in institutions it’s an increasingly transparent world we live in there’s various sources of conflicting um sources of authority and information people can go to those are problems that we have to deal with as a as a society and as a country um so
That’s another driving force and then the last one I would say is uh increasingly people you know living these you know living living online lives like in the in the internet everything there’s a there’s a great phrase that I’ve seen and I know I’m driving on so I’ll wrap here I just want
You to get back to space a little bit just just a sorry oh so and then commercialization bringing it back to space I think there you go that you know the the expansion of commercial space Enterprise is going is the thing that’s going to continue as launch prices continue to go down and
Put more things in orbit that’s that’s certainly another Trend what do you think R what are some of the key drivers um from the perch that you said you know that for for space and for the next let’s say five 10 20 years yeah so I think um first and
Foremost you know you my my perspective is colored through a sort of a defense lens right and so I think in terms of geopolitics great power comp competition um you know it’s not going away um it’s it’s here it’s very real um that drives competition amongst Nations here on
Earth and it drives competition amongst nations in space and so from my perspective I think that’s one thing that we really need to uh be cognizant of um and follow very closely and that really should inform the choices that we make um you know as an example China um
Is uh you know making huge strides in space in their space program both from their civil and Commercial side but also the military side and nearly everything they do is dual use it’s uh you know both maybe have a commercial or civil use but also a military use we’ve seen
China um actually field and test uh anti-satellite weapons um that are designed to uh you know effectively attack United States space capabilities um uh you know both commercial and uh military so uh that’s the world we live in today um I don’t think that that competition is going to go away I think
It will become more intense as we move out beyond Earth orbit into C ler space those um you know those same interests economic interests geopolitical interests are still going to be there and we have to be very cognizant of that and um I think that really needs to
Inform um the you know where we go from an overall strategy and and what kind of architecture we want to build out yeah can I can I add on to that of course you can well you know just to um to duvail with the point about China I mean I think you
Know even even if you know China’s not going to go away China is a civilizational state that’s been around for thousands of years and they have a continental size nation state and they have the money to invest in space capabilities on on par with the United States well they have the command
Economy as well so that makes it easier and the other thing that they also have just I’m sorry to to BD in but I do want to underscore what Rhett had just said but they have a policy of civil military Fusion right so you can’t actually get a
License to be a private launch company without actually signing for the license that states that if the state needs it for whatever reason they can basically come and have it so it’s a very different very different scene yeah absolutely and uh they have a vision for the long-term expansion into the solar
System and you know do we have a matching ision uh I if we do I haven’t seen it because I I think that we tend to in in this country and in our system we tend to focus on the near-term challenge particularly in the defense and the National Security space we’re
Focused on the peer rival the you know the near peer rival the the challenge of a near-term threat of a war with China or Russia or another great adversary even our lesser adversary like Iran or North Korea and those are very important things that we have to do and with the
National Security Enterprise exists to undertake but the question is where does our national narrative and Grand strategy on where we want to go and what is the future of space we want as a nation and as a free Democratic people uh I think that is a compelling question to start thinking
About which is exactly the question I was goingon to ask actually you’re killing me Zach my gosh I spent all this time like preparing to interview you so cut you can just ask me well we’ll just yeah we’re going to get on it but I was going to was going to
Say right you are aware that China recently revealed a four Stage Road map right I mean this isn’t some cute we little thing this is huge you know for space resources utilization and it will reportedly you know eventually span the entire solar system by 2100 I mean
That’s a vision right that’s that’s a real north star kind of thing um and it starts at the moon right goes to the near Earth asteroid and onto Mars and yeah I mean the question has to be asked and I do think we need to batter it around even a little bit more
We’re not going to kill the horse or a dead horse but we do need to you know keep kicking at it a bit because the United States does not yet have a comparable plan and it’s it’s like a lack of a vision or of a plan but it brings
Uncertainty right about where we as a nation as the leader of the Artemis Accord want to do so how does that affect our planning right how does that actually how do you guys navigate through that right and and Rett I’m gonna hit you up first sure um and and
I’ll be just caveat right up front right that from a uh from my perspective as a uniform military officer um that sort of overarching strategy I think is important uh but it is up to the civilian leadership of this country to figure out what that strategy is right
Right um but but my job as a member of the space force our our mission in the space force is to secure our nation’s interest in from and to space um that means whatever that strategy is we have to be prepared um to secure our interest
There and so that’s where space force I think is focused right certainly on the so when you look at what we’re doing near Mid and far term certainly in near term we’re focused on right now um what do we do the secure nation’s interests around the world and um and and we’re
Busy every single day doing that right in the midterm and far term we’re planning for what we think is that potential future where as I said there’s going continue to be great power competition um our interests are going to expand Beyond sort of geosynchronous Earth orbit where they are today out
Into um CIS lar space and the rest of the solar system and so we’ve got to think now about if we have to secure our nation’s interest on Mars what what does that mean right if we have to do that on the moon what does that mean back to
Some of the you know the points Zach was making earlier about infrastructure it’s not sexy it is kind of boring to a lot of people but it’s really important you can’t it’s fun and nerdy infrastructure right and you need that and so we’ve got to think through what is that infrastructure look like
How much of that is civil how much of that is military how much of that is commercial um you know what is our job Visa some of the commercial capabilities if you know if China attacks a commercial operator what do space Force’s role we still have to work
Through um with our civilian leadership on what does that mean um but we can’t sit still so we’ve got to invest today uh to be ready to do that I’ve got to follow on just with what you just said about you know whether or not a a a commercial
Actor you know came under attack but what about a commercial doctor that just is in distress right what if it’s even not even one of our commercial actors but because of the outer space treaty we have obligations right just like we like we do you know in the high seas right if
Somebody is in distress we go how does that work yeah so I today I don’t know I mean there is an obligation under the outer space treaty to provide um Aid to you know a human space flight in distress um and you know we would have to work through with
NASA and the national leadership on what does that mean what can we do like you know we don’t have search and rescue for space today right like the Air Force and the and the the Navy have search and rescue capabilities um for down aircraft and that kind of thing we don’t have
That for space um is that in our plan not today um is that something that we could do in the future maybe is that something that a commercial operator could do in the future maybe um you know I think we have to think through that and what does what what’s the right
Answer for the nation to do that and that that question will become more important as um we start to send more and more humans into space Oh we’ve got a few commercial space stations allegedly coming online at least what three before the end of of this decade
At least that’s the plan but Zach you know what about you I mean we talk about you know the vision or or you know not having a similar Vision maybe we don’t need a similar Vision to the Chinese but they at least have one right and they’re planning to it and they’re making
Investments to it and they’re even making Investments to well I hate to say but search and rescue I mean they did have a conference I think about a year and a half ago or something like that just specifically on you know search and rescue in space and on the moon and
Stuff so so Z how do we plan despite not having that North Star yeah well you know I at first I would say like I I empathize with Colonel turn’s is I do too yeah you know the military departments the services within those departments like the space force are you
Know they’re they’re charged with defending our interests in the domains that they are largely responsible for and they always have to Envision you know what capabilities will they need in five years in 10 years and 50 years to meet the threats and have to maintain advantage or dominance over whatever
Those threats might be obviously that’s a difficult question that’s that’s largely technology focused you know whatever the policy of the United States is in 20xx you know the space force and the Air Force and the Army will will execute and defend those policies um from a national level from National
Command you know we talk about National command authorities in the military sphere but we’re really talking about I think is what is our national conversation as a people in general roll and that through the Democratic process what do we want as a people for space and from space and Americans I think too
Few Americans uh understand how Reliant their lives are upon space and the interactions they have have every day with the space infrastructure that’s that’s in orbit today because we’ve grown up with it we we’ve lived with it for now 50 60 75 years and the things
That we do every day we take for granted and it’s not until they come under threat that we will realize um unfortunately now to to to answer your question uh do we need a vision I I think we do that you know my opinion is
That that we do uh I think my team if they were here um you know we have a a report called project Northstar which is about you know what America’s guiding Northstar vision for the long-term future and the the result of that was we we really don’t have one we probably
Should think about having one but the way that we do strategy in this country traditionally has been largely reactive I don’t think anyone would disagree that we we focus on you know the five dep these fiveyear Cycles in the defense department we focus on four-year political process and two years for for
Seats in Congress and that’s really as large as we as longterm as we go for for strategy in this country the president sets National Security strategy every 4ish years or so um but but there’s you know the that and that is the beauty of our system in that it’s kind of a
Bubbling up of all these different ideas and we kind of figure a way out as we go forward and that’s marketly different from the way the Chinese Communist Party does things they have a centralized Direction and vision do we need a centralized Direction I don’t think so I
Think it’s the the beauty of our open system that we we don’t have that but we should probably agree on what are some general things we want to achieve in the long term do we want to safeguard Liberty and democracy for all people on Earth do we want to ensure Americans are
Prosperous and we have a place in the world and we’re we’re free from foreign uh coercion and intervention all those things that everybody I think would agree upon as as a nation and what place of leadership or not do we want to have in the world I we have a place of
Leadership now do we want to retain that or do there’s some who is say we should give it up and it’s not my job to say if they’re right or wrong but you know we need to have that conversation and decide what our vision is because space
Plays such a central role in that and will place an even larger place an even larger role in that um certainly for the rest of the century and into our future so as we’re going towards the future right and and as you said it was you know it’s very much based on
Technological developments discoveries uh you know how the commercial industry is pushing forward uh are they receiving the right signals to develop the Technologies but there’s also this balance right there’s this you know tradeoff between you know risk and Innovation when investing in space technology which is usually inherently
Dual use right but you can’t really push the limits of Technology without rolling the dice without taking risk right so like SpaceX does this you know has already done this many times while testing out various uh prototypes for start ship but we’ve seen two really big you know risk-taking events right for
The test launches so how can we maybe make risk and risk taking more palatable how can we do that go for it Zach well you know rett’s rett’s already like wiping his brow I got time to think about this uh look I think it’s a leadership
Thing it’s a leadership thing and it’s a cultural thing um look if you talk about risk taking you don’t get riskier than the the guys in the 50s with the right stuff you know the Buzz Aldrin like you know we were a very risk um I don’t
What’s the opposite of a verse a risk embracing Nation during the early Cold War when we you know we had to get ahead of those pesky Soviets you know that was a that a motivating force but wasn’t that interesting as well that at that time you know when when we really kicked
Off the space program that we really did actually have a really long-term plan I mean we didn’t just sort of like Get on the moon in four years you know what I mean it did actually it was a long that was a longterm Vision really a longterm
Vision and a lot of risk a lot R of left and right turns there was a lot of risky exercises and tests demonstrations and and and you know people lives lost right um should we try to regain some of that as a country I think we probably should
I think a lot of because you know as as things like same thing with artificial intelligence and bear with me as space becomes more routine over the last 50 years or so it’s also become more bureaucratized and we need that for safety reasons and we prioritize the
Safety of our astronauts and our systems that’s very important stuff but we also we lose some of the innovativeness and the risk-taking and the drive I think from the early days and some would argue we’re in a new period now we may need to to get back some of that culture um I
Tend to agree with that personally but but we still have to maintain the balance between there’s also the question of taxpayer money you know where are we investing taxpayer money wisely of course we want to be stewards of that in the government private sector has a little less that but they still
Have fiduciary responsibility to their stakeholders and to their investors um so it’s got to be a a combination and it’s I’ll come back to that continuity of change continuity and change forces that are kind of competing you’ve got the risk averse and the risk taking and they’ve got to have a conversation and
Where that washes out that’s that’s how we get ahead you for you r i I do have to say that space force is in a in a wonderful but yet painful position right because you know in the military you don’t join the military to be risk-free right I mean
Let’s be honest you know we’ve both deployed to Afghanistan that certainly was not risk- free that was just here on Earth right space space force you know it’s it’s inherently risky and and even more so so uh when you think about the technologies that are necessary to keep
Our just our satellites let alone you know man missions up there so how are you guys able to go about making risk more palatable and I would say that would be kind of a a priority and yet a very tough thing to do because if you can get the higher ups
To accept more risk you could actually test out more stuff yeah I think um so you know as I mention earlier I’m an engineer at heart it’s been a long time since I had to whip out my HP 48 and crunch some numbers um but I am an engineer at heart
And so when I think about risk I think of it from an engineering perspective right and we so for from an engineering perspective there’s a you know handful of different ways that you can deal with risk you can you can assume the risk meaning that hey if the thing bad thing
Happens that’s okay I can absorb that right you can mitigate it by let’s let’s take some understand what could cause the risk to occur and then take some steps to prevent that and then my favorite is you could shift it you could make it somebody else’s problem right um
And and there there are other approaches to but those are I think the three primary ones um but and that’s directly applicable to how we think about space force and and some of the things that um you know Zach was just talking about right so from a um so assuming the risk
Perspective right if you look at the the spacecraft that I grew up in the space force flying in the air force and then before I TR joined the space force um cost over a billion dollars each and that was in$ 1995 right um so you look at you know I
I grew up working with our strategic satellite Communications that the satellites the president would use to communicate in the event of nuclear war and our strategic missile warning satellites the SAT the satellites that would detect a missile launch against the United States those are things that have to
Work they have to work all the time um launch back then was really hard hard and it was really expensive um and so we put basically the whole kitchen sink into each of those satellites um you know for example on Missile warning today we have a system called the space
Base infrared system SB uh we have six of those satellites around the globe and they monitor any missile launch anywhere on Earth um they’re staying you know the ones watching um the Red Sea are staying pretty busy right now um those are critical systems um but we’ve got six of
Them and they’re really big and they the bad guys know where they are and so it wouldn’t be really hard to shoot one of those down right or or somehow otherwise take that out um that’s a risk that we can’t assume like that that risk is too
Great because it leaves us blind in space um so how do you mitigate that well one way is just to make it cheaper and and make more of them right and our next generation of missile missile warning architecture is going to do that they’ll be in a different orbit it’ll be
A lot more satellites um and that right there gives you a lot more ability to absorb that risk and to mitigate the risk the you know each one’s cheaper each one is not as critical so if I lose one or two or three I can keep doing the
Job but it’s also they’re not as expensive so I can try out new things and we’re seeing that today um that both space systems command and the space development agency are trying out some new trying out some new architecture designs trying out some new sensor designs to see what works because
They’re cheaper we can launch them build them and launch them more quickly more inexpensively we can try things out so that’s a different way to mitigate the risk and then and then finally in some respects right we could we could pass the risk onto somebody else and that’s
Where I think commercial comes in um right if we want to be able to use different commercial capabilities um and if there’s two or three or four commercial operators who who I can buy this capability from then I can just do that instead of having to
Assume that risk myself I can just you know buy it on the commercial Market that doesn’t make sense for everything maybe missile warning for example is not one that’s quite ready yet for um you know the commercial sector but uh but those are things that we want to think
About and different ways to approach the risk so I think the the fact that launch is a lot cheaper um thanks and and you know large part to innovation in the commercial sector the fact that building satellites is a lot cheaper and takes a lot less time um is you know
Really um shows that we can think of different ways to do the same job in a way that there’s a lot less risk um and so that allows us to take more risk on individual missions try out new technologies because all of our eggs aren’t in one basket um and so I think
That’s where space force is definitely headed as far as if you look at the what we’re building now versus what we had built in the past um is we’re building an architecture that allows us to take a lot more risk and therefore also be better stewards of public money right yeah
Right because if it’s cheaper uh to build and cheaper to launch then there is less money at risk so to speak yes now this last question I want to ask you and I know Rett you have something to say about this um what if you could choose out of all
The things would be a key approach to adequately meet the needs of today’s commercial and defense space operations and the threat landscape right because I know that you will always be thinking about the threat landscape but in a way that’s evolvable for the future right is I I have this
Feeling that the word modular might come into this or interoperable might come to mind so what would be a key approach or or approaches yeah so I I I think I mean you’ve nailed it they’re interoperable is one of the things I would think about right is
Um today most of our systems aren’t interoperable right even aside space force many of our systems they’re built by different manufacturers they use different ground systems they use different antennas um you know they’re they’re not interoperable because when we built them they didn’t need to be um
Today they need to be um so and this is where I think the we really have to have a conversation and a partnership with industry um you know one one approach and we’ve done this and you know the the military has done this in the past is
Just a and say hey if you want to do business with us this is what you’re going to use um and you know and the all the engineers are like wait but nobody else in the world uses that tough go build it right and it’s and we end up
Getting something really bespoke and expensive um and and sometimes there’s good reasons for that U but the more often I think it makes much more sense to figure out well what’s best practice the commercial operators have um really they have more skin in the game here
Because they’ve got to show a profit or loss and and actually make money on whatever they’re building um and so they’ve got a fair amount of skin in the game on making sure that they make the right choices from a technology perspective from an interoperability perspective so let’s partner with
Commercial companies figure out what are those standards the things where we really need to agree on hey if I want to be able to use starlink as an example um as a backup Communication System well all of my communications gear needs to be able to talk to starlink right um if
I want to be able to do if you’re sat can do inter satellite uh Communications satellite to satellite cross links and and communication um which provides a fair amount of resilience in a you know in in a contested kind of environment where somebody’s trying to um deny your
Com links or they’ve taken out your ground station or something if I want to be able to talk from my satellite to your satellite well we’ve got to be on the same wavelength we’ve got to be able to understand each other’s uh Communications protocols and those kinds
Of things and so we need to have a conversation about what are those do those make sense for us to adopt are there places where we need to tweak it um and be very judicious about that so just is one example of what we’re doing there uh in that regard is space systems
Command recently stood up a actual formal standards body with industry and the itle e um who is a you know who who kind of respected standards organization it’s the major major organization and it’s very heavy on Engineers yeah to run this for us um to say look we want to have standards that
We agree on we need commercial buyin um but we don’t want we we don’t know best necessarily so let’s have a conversation and then when we can find agreement let’s standardize it let’s put it down in writing and agree to it and then publish it so that everybody can use it
And I think that helps us all I mean it you know from a just for the audience like I mean you use this every day you don’t have to negotiate a new Wi-Fi protocol and and you know change the configuration on your phone every time you connect to a new access point it
Just works it works because there’s a Wi-Fi Consortium who said this is the standard we’re all going to use um and so we need the same kinds of things for space to be able to whether it’s refueling whether it’s communication whether it’s uh you know navigation and
Positioning all of those things we need standards that we can all agree on um and work together and I’d like to underline something you said that I’m not really sure the audience will be too terribly aware of but when the i e actually gets involved into standards making it isn’t
Just even a us thing it’s a very International thing and because we have um really a world economy and a lot of parts that go into us-based systems um are in Supply chains that are sometimes you know originate overseas so it becomes even more important yeah when
You’re talking about you know going back also to to drisking things because if things can become more standard and it can be part of that supply chain process then it becomes less expensive to actually try new things yes that’s true exactly Zach final word on
That uh I would I would just say that I agree completely I think you know you mentioned modularity I I would say from for my view the best way we can under you know mitigate risk and uncertainty is by investing in resilience by redundance by you know modularity
Interoperability one thing that I think that will help that over the mid to long term is um uh The Honorable John Plum just announced a sap revision program in space capabilities at DOD that was endorsed by the dep secretary uh that will help I think bring a lot of space
Capabilities more into the open over the mere term and that will help to to allow us to do more interoperability to establish those standards because a big problem that we’ve had in the past and for good reason is most space capabilities have been very compartmentalized and secretive and we
Couldn’t talk about any of them and even amongst ourselves in the United States government you couldn’t talk about any of the capabilities we had and so few so so few people knew about them that interoperability would be is with just a pipe tream right so I think that as we
Get more open and transparent going forward we will be able to invest more broadly in things like modularity and interop ability and I think that’s a good thing gentlemen we have reached the end of our time for this segment so R Zach thank you so much for joining me
Today Laura thanks um Zach it was great to enjoy the conversation absolutely Laura Laura thank you so much it was fantastic again as always we appreciate your uh time your energy your effort and leading this panel and all the other ones you’ve met for us in the past
Fantastic I want to thank Zachary and I want to thank colon col particular thank you all for your your Insight also thank you for your leadership in this important Arena important we stay ahead of our your care adversaries that will only be done if we innovate FAS to the Future so I really
Appreciate that um Laura um up next we’re going to take a little break as we always do give people a chance to um get a cup of coffee as I say and then uh we’ll come back with you and you’re going to have a great conversation with
Bucky bhau of the diu director space the space portfolio and also George Poland the Milky Way economy um Milky Way Eon they’re cheap Economist talking about the Silicon Bank meltdown and uh I think that’s uh very important for us to look back on and and learn from history of
Course if we don’t learn from history we’ll repeat it so I’m looking forward to that conversation I’m looking forward to your insights I don’t think everyone knows as much as they need to know about that U very unfortunate situation ramifications it’s had uh across the technology looking forward to that we’ll be back
With you in just a moment hello and welcome back to the Dual use Tech Summit I’m Laura winter I’m the editor and host of the downlink podcast it covers the intersection of space the space business and defense and in fact check it out wherever you get your podcast but for this segment today
I am honored to be joined by the chief of the defense Innovation unit space portfolio Bucky Boo and by George Poland George is the chief Economist and co-founder of Milky Way economy and is also an economic facilitator to the space force Futures workshops gentlemen thank you so much for joining
Me thank you thanks for having me Laura now you both are well known in the space Community but we’re speaking to a larger generalist audience today let’s give our viewers the chance to understand a wee bit more about your roles and how you fit into this space and defense Mosaic
So starting with you Becky you lead a double life you’re a major general a pilot and you’ve deployed more than 10 times beginning with Desert Storm briefly give us an idea of what you do in uniform and then what managing the space portfolio for the defense innovis
Unit actually means sure well I’ve spent um you know more than 25 years uh as part of the Air Force in air combat command uh doing a mission we call Personnel recovery and includes combat search and rescue and other extremist uh types of missions uh ranging from you
Know civil search and rescue um out in the ocean and Other Extreme environments to uh to hostage recovery and so it’s a it’s a very Niche uh part of the of the combat and Special Operations uh forces uh but relative to this conversation um BigTime user of space uh so uh in lots
Of different ways uh from Communications to uh uh uh intelligence and imagery uh to Precision navigation and timing uh that so um I’ve spent my entire career uh you learning how to use the space to make my mission better and um and then in in my role with the defense inovation
Unit um as a director uh for space our our job at at diu is to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology and uh and to do so with Focus speed and scale so that so that we can uh achieve strategic uh outcomes uh which is very very very important in today’s uh uh
Hyper Innovative uh world where uh you know even our e even our uh not just our near pure adversaries but uh other other uh State actors and non-state actors can can use uh space more easily today than they could 30 years ago and George you’re very much a
Renaissance Astro advisor and yes I did just sort of make that up but you’re also a book author fifth Industrial Revolution evangelist a Marine and you also put your money where your mouth is you’re an investor briefly explain what you do at that intersection between the space economy and defense sure so in
Nowhere near the same way uh that Bucky has amazing hats I also wear multiple hats as he’s alluded to I have uh several teaching appointments where I get to uh educate young people on Space industrialization deep technology I also have a a teaching appointment with uh Columbia in addition to Franklin Pierce
Law school so I also get to teach lawyers about technology and economics so I get to teach fish how to fly um and then I do enjoy writing um I’ve done several books on my own and with partners and contribute to chapter and editing for I think we’re coming up on
12 soon this year um so I’m I’m really big fan of deep Tech in general and of course space I view as a part of deep Tech um in terms of what milkway economy does it is a partnership we provide Boutique economic and financial services to companies that are small and medium
Siiz within deep Tech um space in particular and then also as our partnership so M economy the partnership we have a number of Investments we’ve made uh We’ve made over two dozen Investments that’s our own money we are this isn’t VC right so we’re not LPS and
GPS and that whole world uh this is our money that we put out there uh our check sizes are five and six figure so we you’re looking for 78 figure checks please don’t call me that’s not my market um but we but we do put our money
Albeit small where our mouth is and uh yeah I’m just really excited to be part of this conversation I’ve enjoyed previous panels that I’ve done with Bucky and yourself and so I’m thinking this will be a lively one fantastic um you know I brought you both
Here because I I know that you’re both heavily involved in uh new space companies and how the capital flows to them so that they can keep doing what they’re doing and and you know developing technology for our national security but here we are a year after
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank so I see it as an opportunity to take stock of what has been learned and share it with a wider audience because we have been recently and perhaps even rudely reminded that America’s strategic competitors continue to put their National treasure their Capital into developing their military space
Capabilities with urgency as an example while Russia’s nuclear anti-satellite weapon has grabbed headlines right in December China placed a very powerful Optical remote sensing satellite into geostationary orbit it’s called the Y gun 41 and according to reports it’s being used to identify and track car-sized objects in the indopacific region visually from roughly
36,000 kmet away what that means is that a stealth B2 bomber can’t actually hide and again it takes a lot of capital and money to do that China and Russia have command economies but in the United States we rely on Partnerships with the commercial sector to conceive fund and
Develop new technologies that are required to defend our national interest and that partnership is kind of like a balance between public interests that’s the taxpayers money and non-government investors that’s private as well as corporate Capital venture capital and it’s kind of worked well right or at least everyone thought so until the
Silicon Valley bank failure so George you were in the trenches when that bank failure occurred just to refresh everyone’s memory can you briefly explain what happened in the immediate effect it had on the St companies you work with sure so on a on a cold blistery day in March uh the phones the
Last year the phone started to ring it’s a dark novel yeah it is it’s the beginning of a very dark novel uh the phone started to ring and on the other end of the phone were companies um nvcs that that we work with were we’re all friends saying that their money was tied
Up that they didn’t know if they were going to be able to make pay role because of what was happening at their Bank their banking institution um now they weren’t actually able to get into their bank accounts right no they they were not actually able to get their bank
Accounts now we should take one step back and just do the professor pulling econ 101 here real briefly right so so Banks make money by taking in deposits and then loaning out that money okay now they also offer a lot of services and they tread you fees if you overdraft but
Generally speaking that’s how they make their money okay and um it’s not in the bank’s best interest any bank to have a lot of extra cash on hand it makes more sense for them to keep just enough liquidity that they’re required to keep so when people come in and demand some
Of their deposits back out for payroll and the like that they have it um now unfortunately we had a number of things happening all at the same time so the market was already pretty jittery um it’s important that we remind people that the collapse of FTX which also was
Very much a tech and very much a California phenomenon had happened just a few months prior in November and so the people were already nervous and then when Silicon Valley Bank started showing its stress and of course EV it’s eventual collapse people’s um spidey sense was already at 10 and so as things
Contracted there became a combination of three different things happening at the same time so the first was that people who banked with them so these are small space technology companies and some of the bigger and mediumsized space technology companies who banked with them could not access their bank
Accounts going to access their funds okay the the second thing that happened here is many VCS also Tech VCS also use Silicon Valley Bank for their banking okay so now you have a situation where even if you had a portfolio company that was in trouble and maybe needed a a
Quick Bridge Loan well you were also in a position where you have access to your Capital so both those things are happening the same time and then the third thing is like I mentioned there was some hangover still and some nervousness from FTX a few months
Earlier but also many of us were in these chairs or slightly different chairs and taller buildings instead of my home office um uh 101 15 years ago we we remember the last time Banks started to collapse and Cascade and so there was a great deal of worry about contagion and so
With all three of those thing happening at the same time it’s easy now to look back a year later and say hey look we we turned out okay didn’t we question mark but in the middle of those nights in March that is not what it felt like and what did this failure actually
Now looking back revealed to you about the resiliency of the current system we use to deliver you know the new space Technologies and capabilities for defense h so I so I’ll I’ll te jump in too yeah I would tease some of that over to Bucky side but I think one of the
Things that revealed to us is um you know when we’re engaging with these companies and one of the things has to be you know who’s your secondary and tertiary banking Partners right I I need to know that you have second and third options if a situation like this should
Ever emerge again um there was definitely concentration risk so we had too much of our industry revolving around this one entity and so while our financial power and our economic strength can be our greatest asset As Americans American Industries if we don’t make sure that we have some sort
Of diversification it can also hurt us and in this instance it hurt us um the other thing was we found out that the uh you know the back stops were in place that the new rules were there so you know uh depositors were made whole people did have access to their money
After a few days although everyone was holding their breath um so it the system did work and so I think the the regulations in place showed that they were able to handle the situation so I’ll I’ll start with a quick story um something that few in the
Space uh Community IA know but um and it’s not really on my resume because when I graduated high school the first job I had was Banking and uh and I worked for a savings and loan wow I never knew in California during when the when the savings of loan
Um collapse happened if you remember back that time you know Franklin fund all they had all these new high-risk uh High reward uh investment funds had appeared so all the money left were leaving the banks and the savings loans they basically they just took that money like George said and they wrote
Mortgages they didn’t they didn’t they weren’t really Diversified in other things so so uh how safe was that and it was federally insured but it didn’t matter when uh when a one savings alone collaps there was a run and um I remember the 20-year-old something you
Know version of me uh getting tasked to drive to Wells Fargo and bring back a bag of bag of cash because because the bank did not want to tell people they didn’t have Bank cash to to give them you know money if they wanted to withdrawn and um seen that in it’s
Wonderful life that was that was Bas yeah exactly so that so the the interesting and reason I say that though is because you know um any kind of any kind of uh disturbance of the force in a financial sector uh it it can spiral out
Of control very rapidly and uh and and I had seen the first uh hand of that now I said ween Setter uh cool day in March and and uh I’m actually driving out to see a space launch with uh with I had John olon who’s also a major general in
The space force and another friend who fortunately is one of my lawyers so driving out driving out to see the the launch and we got there and we’re all excited it’s because we we work with both launch company and the satellite company that’s writing on and um and immediately start getting peppered by
Questions because the same thing we don’t know if we can make payroll we don’t know what this means and and so uh and these are like good companies right they’re not they’re not like you know five by night you know space startups and um and so we started
Uh I was on the phone most that day and this is I think this like the Saturday morning now so the amazing thing is that um uh like most the other I I’ll put in in the plagues uh that we’ve been uh riding through including covid you that that
Have that have tried to derail this this fledgling uh you know economically nent industry uh uh by Monday it like you know uh you know it was survivable and and I think that’s that that speaks to the resilience that that uh George spoke about um know uh uh you know banks are
Not interested in watching other Banks uh collapse and and uh and so and and neither is the government and so uh our economy and uh and the security around it is is very important and just to add some real numbers uh there’s more than more than 33,000 um technology startups
Uh across the United States that all had their money in in silen Valley Bank and um and between four and 500 Venture uh and other uh investors who did the same thing and uh of course at first day people on Monday morning are like well geez you know what what’s wrong with
These people they all put their money in the same bank well it’s because you know banking like all other parts of the of the economy you know they uh they have a target market and um and you try you know uh try being a a high-tech startup
And going to a Traditional Bank uh and trying to get uh uh loans or Services uh even get debt Equity uh to to buy space things it’s it’s nearly impossible and so the uh so the so uh Silicon Valley Bank uh for many uh decades literally
Has been uh been there to provide the type of financial services for uh for the tech sector and um uh and I think the good the good thing that’s probably happening on the backside of of what happened last last year is that you we need more diversity uh we don’t need we
Don’t need uh the big traditional Banks uh to be financing uh the you know the U early stage space sector that probably won’t work out uh very well because they’re they’re not really well placed to do it but certainly other competitive uh um parts of the of the banking
Industry that that can that can provide these services but I think it’s a more compelling issue which George could probably talk to which is how do how and when do we normalize the space economy the new space economy with the rest of the financial sector because you could
Have a you the latest plague uh you know it’s just might as well throw it on the deck here is this back craze right so it’s like why are we taking really really good technology companies that where the government is an anchor customer and the only way that they can
Raise uh significant capital is by doing a SPC transaction is insane and and and that speaks to incentive structures that speaks to um um actually cultural and communication gaps between between the tech sector and in the financial sector and uh and George and I spent a lot of
Time with others talking about how how do we how do we get the pendulum to swing past this uh this point where the the the financial sector really recognizes what’s going on here and can come in and actually not with everybody but with certainly with the winners uh
As uh set them on a on a path you can’t Venture Capital uh fund yourself uh to to being a great company because you won’t own it you won’t own the company at the end of the day you have to you need to be able to trans transition to
Other uh financial instruments and and tools and and George can speak about those yeah we can I mean one of the things that you hit on there which I think is important is as other as Bucky pointed out it’s in no bank’s best interest to see another bank
Go away right this the competition between Banks is not the competition you see what I would call in a normal Market structure right because if your bank looks insolvent if your bank looks like it’s about to tip over even if I’m the strongest Bank in the room I’m adding
Risk because now everyone’s questioning their banking relationships and so I think what svb did is it opened up a chance for other Banks and perhaps even Boutique shops to step in and say you know what we can provide some of these Financial Services we want to go out and
Diversify from maybe they’ve been in software for a long time or maybe they’ve been in other parts of tech for a long time but now they want to add space to their portfolio this gives them an opportunity um I also think that it’s important to keep in mind that Banks got
In trouble for another reason because we went through a period of time where we saw 11 11 interest rate hikes in a row right and so when you have 11 interest rate hikes in a row I don’t want to be the guy who just points a finger like hey Bank why don’t
You do better 11 interest rate hikes in in a row I’m going to use the word everyone hates using unprecedented it’s it’s really hard to find times it’s so overused I’m done with it but it’s it’s really hard to find another Peri of time
Where we see 11 in a row in two years like that and so remember they’re taking in deposits and they have an interest on that deposit they’re making a loan based on the market rates right they have they have duration risk and then all of a sudden interest rates are moving and
They’re moving and they’re moving and they’re moving and so it makes some instability in their balance sheets and then we’re going out and telling them hey you know what we also need to do we also need you to offer financial services and products to some of these really risky companies they’re trying to
Do the next big thing in techer in space not super appealant to to the people who have to manage the risk of of interest rates swinging that quickly so there there was a lot of stresses there but I think we did overall respond well to it
And I I hope that what we find out in 24 um as we move through 24 is that it’s opened up an opportunity for other Banks to go into these markets and provide services here that weren’t before um I I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that
Happens I I think that’s a great point that you bring up George because you know it’s not like the it’s not like the the board and all the executives at Sila Valley Bank were off doing like you know crazy things and U you know uh it just
You know that it’s really a perfect storm and and um and yeah at at the core of what we’re talking around is is risk right and how we manage risk and great companies um are the product disruptive companies are are basically Risk Takers and and if you never take any risk
You’re not leading right and uh and so so having the capacity not just the government side on uh economically um Economic Security drives National Security as is foundational to it so you can’t be a world leader in space if if you’re second rate at at financing and building commercial uh
Space Technologies it does that’s that’s not that’s not U that’s not consistent so um so uh uh fortunately though I I think we did avert a disaster a lot of kudos to the people who made that happen and and um and there will be other uh they all the other challenges down the
Road always are and and it makes us think differently too about on the government side uh how do we how do we make sure that we can and what are the things that we can actually do to help these companies like during Co we uh we were a letter writing machine we didn’t
Have to spend any money we wrote letters and and those letters said these companies are important they need to be able to keep their factories open uh and working uh during during the pandemic and they did and and um imagine a rocket company trying to do remote work it
Doesn’t work it doesn’t it doesn’t happen right so the and um and uh but that’s that’s why we have organizations like diu and the space force and and and NASA and you know uh we are all uh Partners together in and trying to make sure that we’re delivering the best
Capabilities and and also trying to go after the these dual tracks of uh commercial and National Security which works out really well for us I I think there’s another part if I can Laura and then I I promise I’ll stop talking I think but there’s another part there of
The funding structure that Bucky hit on that makes me want to talk about it which is after we saw both economic conditions change and our our risk tolerance right because we all got a little spooked change we did see the Venture and the private Equity Community pull back right and so there’s some
Great statistics out there Bank of America puts them out Mackenzie puts them out but no matter how you slice it um you know VC fundraising went down by about 50 or 60% in say 60% at least because if we’re talking about a a comparison between 2023 and uh
2021 2023 saw 19 billion invested globally according to space capital and that’s a market difference from 30 billion that was invested globally in 20 you know 21 yeah although 21 was a pretty banner year that wasn’t that wasn’t the Benchmark but but it it uh but actually huge decline I mean that’s
Massive it is but there’s there’s other factors in that too um you know uh over the past 10 years uh investors have got have become smarter about space I mean you know it’s like when uh when we first started uh working space know uh the demand signal for for a launch low cost
Launch was so strong and uh and that’s why you had all these you know launch companies it’s like you know there’s like bigger you know dozens dozens and dozens of you know mostly PowerPoint large companies but large companies nonetheless and really only about a you know uh you know between six and eight
Like like real companies that are like building things and launching things so the but the uh but uh those demand signals are really important to get right and uh and then and then the other side uh you know as a a responsible person on the government side it it’s um
You know I we we can’t we can’t treat uh economic things like it’s AYSO soccer every kid gets a trophy right no it’s not like that you know only the best performers uh and uh get it and it it’s got to be competitive and uh government should not perturb the market we we
Should be we should be uh in fact it’s our national defense strategy one of the core TS of the national defense strategy is that we’re going to fast follow uh commercial Innovation right and uh and that that means letting the market market help decide who those winners are
And um if we have some unique thing that serves a government purpose that’s different but but U but generally speaking that that’s our defense industrial base um but uh but it’s it’s important to uh to to really focus on on the best performers and and that sends a
Good signal also to the financial markets that that um uh that we really we recognize where where the talent is right I I want to jump back in here and kind of turn our heads back to risk I don’t think anyone can argue with the idea that you know the best performers
Uh should win out and and should get the prize and that it is an AYSO soccer though I I did play and I love AYSO soccer so um but when this event happened right when Silicon Valley Bank you know did fail and speaking with with
Guys you know like like you um like you Bucky and George you know you guys show me the way because I’m admittedly not the smartest person when it comes to banking Adventure Capital Acquisitions rapid adoption right but what really surprised me was how a bank failure revealed opportunities to our strategic
Competitors to scoop up what should be us Sovereign intellectual property that technology I mean even before it you know gets into the competition and and goes for that prize could either one of you because I I really like for the audience to also understand you know
What the other side of the risk is for you know the current capital way that we we do things you know explain to your audience the asymmetric risks because and and obviously without naming names but you know I’ve heard stories and mostly actually from you
Guys so go ahead George you go so yes so I’ll go first on this one so so my concern right and either this is the uh the the Marine teenager in me or this is the the patrion me I’m not sure which one but my concern the thing that keeps
Me up at night um you know cleaning my rifle is I worry that sometimes there could be a disconnect between the best Technologies and the best firms because if we think about finance and economics that’s not the same as engineering and Manufacturing so I can have a dream team
Of engineering guys and gals or people working on a bench building things but they they don’t have their finances in order and and you could have a technology that gets shelved under those situations because we haven’t provided all the financial tools that available and I don’t I’m not saying we need to
Invent new Financial tools we have plenty of them that exist in other markets we just need to make sure they come here to space and that we’re using them because I don’t want to see technology we really need get shelv because someone tried to build their own
Version of QuickBooks and they don’t run their business well or they do a bad job at a pitch check like those aren’t those aren’t skills that give us military Technologies or du Technologies a couple years ago when we uh and we do we every year we sponsor uh
A workshop called the state of space industrial base and uh and we’re about to release our report for um for last year 23 and and uh in previous reports we and we survey and we get we really give the the indust industrial base the tech sector a chance to to speak and
It’s not just a bunch of Talking Heads like me and George but uh but uh but the interesting thing is so when we first asked the question said how many of you are using debt financing this is like two years ago and it was like there’s
Like one there was only like one company that that was even you know entertaining it and the others hadn’t even really thought about it and there’s there’s space companies have raised you know series EF and G and and it’s like that that’s that’s not healthy but but trying to unlock those other financial
Instruments is is so important and uh and that’s an area where the government can help incentivize things and you know what we lower the risk uh the temperature of risk significantly because um here’s the one thing that’s a consistent theme two things are consistent in this thing one is
Diversity and the other one is resiliency right so you can’t you can’t have resiliency without diversity right so that so uh it should make you very nervous anytime you see a mon monopolistic there’s only one bank there’s only one company there’s only one Whatever uh that’s driving all these
Things and um and it’s probably really good for that bank or that company or whoever you know that has got that Monopoly until until they stumble and and there’s there’s a lot at risk there um you we have a we have an amazing financial
Sector in U in uh in our country and uh you know you can go and swing a rope a long rope in in Manhattan and probably smack you know a bunch of Ivory Towers that represent the the greatest banks in the world there’s not just one of them
You know there’s lots of them and uh and and they and the interest and they they’re um uh you know what what it compe mates or whatever you want to say obvious those Banks they’re in it for in it to win it but they’re also they they they’re in it
To make sure that their sector uh uh stays alive and well telecom’s the same way right so you don’t have just one AT&T or you know it’s not like the Sole Provider of all mobile Telecom and uh thank good well exactly and you can make an argument that T-Mobile who was like
Nobody could be like everybody and and because you know so that diversity drives competition and that competition is healthy and it and it uh and and um and so it’s really really important that we find ways to do this uh in space as well and and and we are you know my job
If you ask me what my job is really day is two things write checks and build benches right so my or or build a menu so if you say hey I’m interested in a company that can do remote sensing from space I go okay here’s like you know
Three four five winners and we’ve worked with all of them and because I don’t do acquisition and if and acquisition people do acquisition and acquisition people want menus they don’t want you to say well here’s the winner you go you’re not an acquisition guy you know what
What are you doing that’s my job so my job is to build a menu and and and to identify great companies and and so uh you know investors are like that too they they recognize it’s really what how the Venture model really works is uh is uh you know you
Can afford to take some risk because you know some percentage of of those companies are going to be uh off-scale winners the unicorns right and and and that’s how that how that system works and look at the unicorns we’ve had uh over the past half century that’s been
Really amazing um the other thing too which I think is really important uh you know um space is going to be significant contributor to our uh us uh gross national product or gross domestic product uh in this century and I mean like a major one uh you know all digital
Financial things that came out of the internet that’s like 10 point something percent of our our GDP today and if 30 years ago if you said hey this thing that you used to like you know look up a restaurant or a paper at UC Berkeley is
Going to like be 10% of the GDP people laugh right they did they because they couldn’t see it but uh space is going to be like that space is going to be one of the big double digit contributors to to the the future of the Financial Health
Of this nation and uh it it hasn’t it hasn’t had that uh that moment but it’s it’s it’s on its way there and um and we recognize that I think the financial sector realizes it we just have to make good decisions to make sure that the US is first and uh
And stays in the lead I’d question one thing I think we all recognize it but that’s also because we’re in the space Community right I hate to say that but I’m just going to push back on that just for a quick second I’m not sure that the entire financial sector recognizes it if
They do I mean sure Morgan stany did write that report saying you know that space economy is going to be worth you know a trillion dollars by 2040 when it’s probably going to be worth a trillion dollars before that but if the financial sector was really recognizing that space was going to be
Such an in in an important factor in our national economy and in fact in the world economy then why is it so hard for space companies to interact with other Banks besides Silicon Valley Bank right if they see it as important you know how can we get those
Other Banks besides this one single Bank to then provide those tools that are necessary and to to be willing to take that risk because space is risky and George you’re my banker sort of kind of Banker pass person so you you you go for it well so there’s there’s a couple
Things there right so I say the first thing is let’s look at the way the markets function right I mean we we have to remember that we’re talking about a a world economy or or even if we just want to talk smaller in just the US economy worth hundreds of trillions of dollars
You know the the world economy is measured in trillions of dollarss 110 trillion dollars right now or something like along those lines and so even if we’re looking at space economy estimates um I prefer mine to Morgan Stanley I say four trillion by the 2040s buty that
It’s in May um but if you look at that number or look at the Chinese space agency’s number right they say 10 trillion by 2050 okay so look at those numbers and but then keep that in mind with the size of the the global economy right so you’re still talking about a
Contributor perhaps a critical contributor but in percentage terms it’s not going to gather the same amount of attention that say oil and gas does or Telco does or farming does right it’s just it’s not going to capture that same amount of attention and therefore it’s not going to capture that same amount of
Banking relationships that much of financial attention and the like I think that what’s important for us to look at is how have we seen this evolve other places right and so the eest one to do is look at T how did it happen there and how can we have something similar happen
Here for space so if we stop and look at what happened there we saw a number of early companies coming out of World War II as we slowly entered the cold war that were receiving large amounts of research and they were closely located to research universities producing very highend technology that benefited both
Um the use of Pentagon and the use of the commercial sector and then as that progressed those companies had the opportunity to make money right so they they went public Etc um they merged with other companies people had the the opportunity for liquidity because if you don’t give an
Investor liquidity which means they get their money back they can never put it in another company okay and as that happened with tech you develop this whole culture of oh I was a googler right or I was Amazon employee number 82 or whatever it was and as they went
Through the steps they then themselves became entrepreneurs or investors in in the Next Generation and the Next Generation that’s what happened we haven’t managed to do that with space that’s and that’s a problem right because if you look at the the early space companies and Bucky made a good
Point here where did those early investors and those early entrepreneurs find their liquidity with some spats right and I’m not going to be the 18th person to pile on how bad most facts performance have been but you can pull up your own data you know how bad
They’ve been and so when that happens you don’t create this this this living breathing Financial ecosystem that says okay I had some real winners last time in this sector I’m going to put money back into it because while we all are always going to be enthusiastic about
Technology and space we have to remember that my dollars they compete so if I see something amazing happening over in AI or in biotech or blockchain my money might go there instead right because it’s not just you know I made my money in space it stays in space it’s also the
Money I have has to compete with these other technologies that tip of the sphere that might be in my same interest group and so because we haven’t seen those early Tech Pioneers have big WIS have successful exits and then move on to their second or third companies or
Start their own VC firms we haven’t seen this ecosystem take off right and and that’s what we’re missing we need to we need to really study what the economic and fincial models were that made that happen for Tech and try to duplicate that here so part of the government
Innovation process that I’m a part of as uh so somewhat laugh similarly like with George I’d encourage you to just look up now how how many how many banks um you know uh lost everything on that FTX uh Fiasco which was around you know cryptocurrency it be like there there’s there’s no
Anchor government customer for cryptocurrency there’s a there is a well-defined anchor customer for for space technology and uh and uh the amount of money that the US government has put in you know SpaceX would not exist uh you know without without uh you know uh uh transactions of the of US
Government especially the Department of Defense in NASA so um so we’re doing our part and we and we we are very conscientious about that and and and that’s you you’ll you would not be surprised you would hopefully expect that there’s a lot of collaboration on the government side to make sure that we
Get this right you know um uh you don’t have to go back very long ago to see collapse of companies like cylindra right and understand that you know you can want you know um solar power uh all you want but but you can’t you can’t defy the the market right the mark the
Market is the market and and uh you will succeed or fail based on the market forces not government forces and so so for us it’s really important and that’s like at the at the core of what diu does and how we do things is we identif our we identify problems not requirements we
Ident what’s a problem we’re trying to solve and we go to Great companies uh not just basic but across all sectors and said tell us how your commercial solution can solve this problem and in selecting those companies uh we don’t just look at the technology we look at
The team but more importantly you know what’s the what’s you know what’s the commercial viability of this product or service you know outside of the defense context and um there’s some things you know uh I mean the first thing that we did did was commercial synthetic
Aperture radar small SS and uh yeah and there was absolutely zero uh us industrial base for that you know for commercially and so we had to create a commercial sector where there was none and U and that you know it’s it’s paying off now but that wasn’t very um that was
Kind of high- risk and we needed to address what are all the commercial markets for that Beyond uh day night all- weather you know imagery and a lot of it was Asset Management it was uh all kinds of other unique things and and uh surprise surprise you know it doesn’t
Matter all the best remote sensing companies in the United States that they have a healthy amount of uh commercial Market is offshore you know doing agriculture doing uh other things and and uh and Noah to the you know they licens the technology be used that way because there’s no commercial company
Develops for a domestic Market only right they develop for a global market market and that that’s the exciting thing if you want to see things scale they need to they need to be able to scale and take advantage of that market um that Global Marketplace and and so and there’s there’s some risk
With that uh because then you’re democratizing uh technology but um um really I think the you could say well yeah uh the banking sector and and I think it’s also important to clarify that yes self silen value Bank did fail but it was a it was a graceful H failure
Uh there you know well because because 30 33,000 companies that will Define the future and fund your 401k and uh and four to 500 Venture firms that actually build those companies didn’t disappear that that would have been you you would know that we’d be we’d be I’d be selling apples on
This Street Corner uh on the other side of the freeway overpass right now I wouldn’t be sitting in my Gucci Silicon Valley diu office uh talking to you two because that would be that would that would really have led to a financial collapse that would have been really
Epic so the so we we have institutional mechanisms and and and they will become better and stronger and um and and the diversification is is where we really need to uh to look at at we can’t government mandate that but certainly the sector is going to look at
That and um and I and actually you know the the Venture Community is pretty articulate and what they need from us uh they’ve been very consistent which is Meaningful contracts you just way if if you know uh buy what you say you’re gonna buy and and and and and and buy it
Scale it because uh in the last decade we’ we’ve seen some close to $300 billion invested in in the new space Arena and um and um it’d be nice to say that you know we’ve got like a a trillion dollars worth of you know um you know business you know transactions
To basically reinforce that but uh but it hasn’t got gotten to that level yet so so but it will it will in time and uh and I think uh uh the amazing thing is the cost of launch dropping uh the access to space there in the next couple years the
Three of us could form a space company and uh and never have to build a satellite because we could do it uh we could be a software company and and uh providing great services and space and that’s really the dream you know Jeff Bezos said that he couldn’t build Amazon
If not for the you know the financial digital Finance um you know the overnight delivery and um and the internet which is all infrastructure and if that infrastructure didn’t exist he couldn’t build his business and and that’s that’s there’s there’s the most significant the Googles of the 21st
Century are going to be built on Space infrastructure and we don’t even know what those companies are yet but that’s that’s what’s at stake if we if we’re not bold if we’re not you know but in being bold doesn’t mean being stupid and uh we uh we make sure that we we build
This economy um and uh so so we we continue to be a leader gentlemen we’ve run out of time Bucky George thank you for joining me today for this segment of the Dual U Summit oh Laura Laura thank you so much for leading that very interesting discussion
Um I really appreciate all the insights ex said in the background um regarding the Silicon Bank meltdown uh thank you so much for leading that and we look forward to you leading other fantastic conversations with us in the future and next up we’re going to have Laura nosberger of sa their Chief uh
Innovation officer uh who is going to be interviewing visiting with uh Venice goodwine who is the CIO of the US Air Force and I believe that Lauren you had that same position before so this will be a great conversation of people who maybe walked to M each other shoes Etc
And talk about a little bit about the challenges regarded to cyber and the future of Defense especially as they affect the the United States Air Force thank you so much for doing this and we look forward to your um to your conversation thank you for that introduction I am very excited to be
Here with Miss Venus goodwine today the department of the Air Force Chief Information officer I am Lauren kellenberger just coming out of that that same job in June um and it’s a pleasure um to now get to spend some time with Miss goodwine in her role as
The da CIO Venus it’s great to see you today how’s it going good morning it is always exciting to have a chat with you Lauren my friend my colleague definitely my fellow Game Changer I’m gonna call us that um you know having now followed you
In this role I want to say right up front thank you for setting a path for me I I’m excited about continuing the things that you have started and then uh having the opportunity to really put my little Twist on it as well but I wanted
To just tell you thank you um very much well I appreciate it and you are definitely uh the right person to to jump into this job and um we we have a a good history together I would love um I would love for you to share with our
Viewers a little bit about your journey because youve had an incredible journey uniform military Reserve civilian uh industry um so you just have a a really incredible background getting to this point and if you could uh throw in kind of where we met I think that would be a
Fun part of the story as well well thank you you know that’s interesting you’re right um I have had really uh enormous amount of opportunities and I like to tell um people when I’m speaking to them some that were afforded to me and some that I
Just created you know um my husband was active duty military he retired and so we ended up living in Japan for 10 years and so it was at that time in 2006 I said one day I’d like to be a CIO and no kidding I started to to chart this
Course to doing that well along that Journey um I came to the headquarters staff if you remember I was in uniform at that time and really the reason I came to staff is because I had just finished a CIO graduate certificate program with the University of Maryland
And I wanted to get some really onhand experience in a CIO organization so I put on my uniform for four years and came to the staff and voila that’s where you and I met um I was Major goodwine at the time soon then turned um promoted to
Lieutenant Colonel but you had come on as the chief Innovation officer a highly qualified employee bringing all that great industry experience and I remember when we met um because always coming from industry it’s a little different coming into do right and in any of the military departments because we do
Things a little bit different however Not So Different that you can’t come from the outside and be successful and I think you Prov that and so when we met it was how do we I think our initial Focus was how do we make this risk management framework thing easier to be
Used um by our operational Community but also staying in line with the intent of the risk management framework which is as we both know is just understanding the posture of any software application that’s going to be connected to our system and so um I’ll tell you um you
Came in guns are blazing and blaring and that was great and and really made some changes and opened our eyes and so from you I really had the opportunity to get that view from the outside in even though I had been in Industry um myself but at different levels and in different
Spaces than you and so I think our partnership there is where it began and then I left and you were still here I left and went to USD a to be the Chief Information Security Officer and then you um became the CIO and I was like wow
So you know I was cheering from you from the outside because I could say I know her when and then when the opportunity came for me to come back and work for you trust me I ran at towards the opportunity and prepared myself so that
I can Prevail and get selected and I did and so then working as director of Enterprise it really executing your vision um you know within one of the three directors here in the in the organization and so I think that not only we met we started at different at
Particular points in our career but what I like is how we ended up me following you in this seat is that that’s the story in and of itself it is and you know I remember from major Goodwin and Colonel goodwine um definitely you helped keep me out of
A lot of trouble um for sure um you know because I I did I did want to really shake things up and and we shook a lot of things up together um but you so really good at reminding me hey we have to write something down and we
That this goes into the process and this is how that how how this will stay and have lasting effect in this building and I’m I’m so glad um you know with your your knowledge you have the mission and the technology but you also really know how the building works and you can kind
Of make a lot of these good things stick so that’s exciting I think um it’s exciting for me and it’s exciting for our Air Force um why don’t you tell us a little bit though about a time in your career when maybe you weren’t sure you
Were going to be a CIO one day maybe maybe you didn’t maybe you didn’t know yet you hit some real challenges and you had to you know you had to overcome something you know you you have arrived but I’m sure you didn’t always know um
So share share a little bit of that with us oh yeah oh absolutely um I had had um what I call in my career the term is a diminisher um and again anyone that knows me know I have some little A type personality about things I’m kind of
Rules driven and you and I know that because those times where we um I like to say had healthy tension um it was because I was trying to stick to the to the rule rule rule and you were saying let’s innovate innovate and then I think we ended up making that marriage work
Between the two but in my career um at mostly as a civilian I worked for the United States Marine Corps in in Japan and my role there was to um execute the nmci the Navy Marine Corps internet then became the Next Generation Enterprise Network and um I had a leader that I
Work for and I remember saying hey I wan to you know I want to do something different at the time you know I had done that you know for all of the overseas installations and I was coming back to the States and I said I heard about this thing called being an sces
You know I’m interested in that so i’ like to broaden the aperture of my role and I remember the words he said to me and it was good luck with that and I thought what good luck with bro in my role or good luck with being an SCS and
He was like yeah that doesn’t happen and I thought wow but what I will tell you he I I called him a diminisher because if you actually study the term there’s a whole book about it it’s just those individuals and he meant really no harm he was I think articulating what he saw
Saw and but what it did was fueled me it’s like okay how do I then overcome this and I like to tell people um every time someone puts a barrier in front of you it just really becomes an opportunity for you to be Innovative to get around or over that barrier and
Sometimes you may have to go under it and and I like to think that when I ran into those types of situations in my career that’s what I did and I did it the Innovative way it was meaning I had to take a career broadening assignment
You know to move an organization or I had to take an assignment out of my comfort zone and so I’ve kind of used those things to bring me back to the goal that I ultimately had but I’ve had that a couple of times people told me no
That I couldn’t do something and really it was they were speaking from their own frame of reference but not knowing that the I I believe that the um the culture and the um organization was ready to change just that individual was not and so the the the moral of the story is
Don’t let people tell you you know that don’t have the authority to do so yeah absolutely and what was there anything in that experience you know sometimes people just you know say stuff and you have to you definitely have to push it out but then some people will say
Something and you have to kind of decide am I GNA internalize this and you know is there something to learn here or is this you’re you’re just hitting at my shell and I just I just don’t need that right now um was was there any thing in
Your career where you were just like hey I I learned something just now about myself and this is going to be kind of a a pivot point that that kind of grows me did you have any experiences like that no that was it um Lauren you hit on it
Because when someone says that to you um it does force you to take a look at yourself it’s like is he saying that you know as I stated because he thinks I’m not qualified and maybe my goal is too high maybe I should go sit down and be
Happy being an nh4 you know and maybe I’ve set my sights too high and so it caused me to reflect and so I tell people you have to do self-reflection and one thing I like about me is I’m very self-aware I know my my um strengths but I know my areas of
Improvement as well and so I try to work on those but what I have learned really is um I allow people to have their opinion and but not let them force me to form a different opinion about myself as a result but that has come with time right
If you had asked me that you know um not Venus good wine where I am today but if you ask me that Venus good wine maybe 20 years ago you know or 15 years ago that may be may have been a different story and so sometimes people say things to
You and it kind of shakes you at your core but I will tell you self-reflect I started this thing um as I’ve been speaking as I’m telling you know when I speak to women about leadership and and having a seat at the table I always tell
Them to have a mirror with them and they’re like what I said that mirror is not for you to check your lipstick in the middle of a meeting that mirror is for you every time you’re sitting in a space and you feel like you don’t belong
I want you to look at that mirror on the slide and remind yourself that you’re there because you should be and you earn to be there and so really um to your to answer your question is yes I’ve been shaking at my core but through maturity
And time and I will say good mentorship and coaching um I have now become very self-aware and I know how to deal with those things a little differently now than I have in the past I think a lot of folks um I think a lot of folks will be
Really encouraged to hear that and I’ll share from my own experience too it’s probably been the last uh 15 years that I’ve really or maybe even 10 that I’ve really felt you know just very confident in my own skin I know who I am I know
Where I’m strong I know where I’m weak um I I remember just being in my 20s and even early 30s just you know feeling like I have to be perfect all the time and U almost not myself professionally and then you know Wonderful the day when
I was when I just realized you know what I’m gonna be me all the time and I’m gonna bring all of me and I think it it’s been good and takes it takes different people a different amount of time to be able to arrive there um so so
You’ve been in your in your job six months now um which in CIO time is is actually a long time um you know but in a lot of jobs you know it’s probably before you even feel up to speed you know good thing you had a rolling start with with some prior
Jobs but has it gone as expected um any surprises I would I would love to here especially your your biggest surprise I will tell you um has it gone as I expected um you know what I’m gonna say yes to that and here’s why because the people right and and you know
Because I I was within the organization and in a directorate um and so I knew the people and I knew my counterparts right um and I always tell people it’s so funny it’s like when you come from the organization you know where the bodies are buried and that’s good but
Also when you come from the organization you now become they the they that every the they that everyone talks about I wish they would fix this and I wish they would do that well I am now they and so I’m very aware of that and so um coming
Into the seat what what has surprised me to be honest is the shift in the responsibility of the CIO and let me explain because you had the same responsibility but I think what’s a little different is we now have this great thing called the great power competition our secretary of the Air
Force has really focused on if you ask him what’s his priorities since he’s been here he will tell you three things right China China China and so what that’s done for the CIO organization myself my leadership and all of the team is really to have us focus on are we
Doing things that actually are preparing us if deterrence fails and we have to switch to a conflict and why that matters is because it is an enabler there are some people that want to put the CIO in the box and say yes go do compliance things you know for you and
Privacy while all those things are very important you know um if you think about our platforms our air breathing platforms today or if you think about all the things that the Air Force and the space force bring to a fight it requires it so the CIO role is huge and
The secretary and the under secretary and the both Chiefs have really spoken up about where are we with our it and so that it’s a surprise not in that I didn’t know but what’s surprising is wow the the responsibility now that I have is very big um and in that you know the
First week in the seat again even though I came from the organization my first week in the seat you know what I did I got on the phone with the matcom commanders you remember them right our four stars that make the the Air Force go around and I asked them what do you
Need from me as a CIO and you know the things they told me right they said hey you know what um I need to make sure that I have data I need data to be readily accessible I like great I have a cdao that’s going to
Help me do that he said I need resilient infrastructure I said great I have a program that’s going to help me do that um they said and I need to make sure that it’s all that available at a time and place of my choosing and more importantly having data that can
Traverse all multiple domains and I said great that falls within my wheelhouse because as you know I have the sizzo that works for me I have the cdao that works for me and then of course direct of Enterprise it so putting that together those were my marching orders
And so being in the seats for six months we’ve had to refrain how we look at the problem I spend a lot of time making sure everyone understands the why um what does it look like to be ready for a great power competition because we’re op reoptimizing for that and that really is
Do I have the right people with the right skill do I understand the requirement am I agile in the delivery of the capability that enable the war fighter but you only know those things when you talk to the war fighter and so I’ve spent a lot of my time going to
Some of the war fighter things you rather it’s a command and control conference rather it’s a a war fighter Symposium so I get to actually hear um from the war Fighters and spending time with the matcom commanders and then I come back to my team and so there’s a
Renewed um sense of urgency here yes all the things that we normally do to run the business business still happen but there’s some extra things we need to do um to reoptimize for great power competition and so that’s a little bit of our new Focus so again being in the
Organization so the past six months like you said I had a running start so I wasn’t new to the organization but was new is being in the organization now as we reoptimize great power competition it requires a different look but I’m happy because I did wear the uniform and so I
Definitely understand um the war fighter and it also opened some doors for me because I had relationships with people that are the the actual War Fighters and own the requirements so um that’s what I think has somewhat be been the surprise um for me and the key and you know this
Communication people have to understand the why and when they understand that I think they’re um they have a renewed sense of accomplishment in the organization yeah I agree that that has definitely been something um that I think was probably the the most for me was being able to solve for mcom commanders get
Out and just do really good stuff for General herrian um and um you know during my tenure was just um it was I think one of the things that made me feel just I don’t know the most mission imple was some of the things that we actually did together for for General
Briy and out there um about a year before every went wild in Ukraine and um you know kind of looking at that and realizing hey that you know a CIO of a a military service can make a a real difference in a battle through that for thought and through that partnership was
Really big um and so I love that um I love that in the department of the Air Force um the the CIO uh truly does have a seat of a table is in the mission um is in the you know the web attack C2 um now uh I I was never particularly great
At the compliant side of those things uh myself um I was so glad we had um people that did but um but yeah we have a war fighting CIO organization and not something that um is a little bit different especially about the about those Military Department have to live
In both worlds you’re not just kind of keeping up with business Network so it’s a it’s a big job all right um let’s uh let’s talk about people for a minute um so um so you have a a very large cyber Workforce um I think something around 24,000 people
That you have to kind of um care for in that Community um while also providing service to 750,000 Airmen and Guardians um and then you know over a million if you bring in contractors dependents um you know multiple levels cion all of those things it’s a lot of folks um and
You have probably a lot of the same barriers um Asal companies bringing in cyber Talent software developer Talent how are you dealing with talent in general in the world’s greatest air force this morning yes I will tell you you’re right and so I’m I’m fortunate as you mentioned our Workforce consists of
Our military our civilians you know and our contractors so that civilian piece falls under me and so in partnersh ship with the dod CIO we have embarked upon as a result of the do DOD Workforce strategy how do we do talent management better and so um I was last week at um
AFA and and I had the first DOD Chief talent management officer on a panel with me Brent parer and he talked about this new way of supply and demand for talent management on the same panel was Mark gorak who actually leads our defense cyber Workforce strategy implementation and so what does that
Mean for the Air Force first it means what talent do we need and so once you identify the work that needs to be done in order to reoptimize for great power power competition you have to ask well what work what skills do I need in order
To do that and so identifying the talent was the is the first piece in doing that and once I identify the talent how do I make sure it’s easier for them them to come and be a part of as you say the world’s greatest air force and so we’re
Working on things like making sure that our hiring process right now you you know it’ll probably take 80 Days industry it takes 40 we’re trying to get to 60 this year and then the year after that get down to 40 days and we need butts and seat with a computer on day
One not just you have your final job offer so we had a tabletop exercise looking at our hiring process it’s like I’ve identified this talent I want to bring it on but I’m losing tent because my process is so you know buried in bureaucracy and and processes so we work
With the dod Chief talent management officer with the tabletop and really identified some of those barriers that were the long lead time you know security clearance issues or having to get you know a drug test for for instance and so that was the other way
The other thing um so yes I I identifi the talent and I figure out a faster better way to bring them on but the other issue is pay parody and so I don’t compete in my talent yes I compete with industry but do you also know I compete
Within the Air Force as well because we have different pay systems you know you can be a GS if you’re Intel you could be part of the DPS um or you could be part of the Cyber accepted service or you could be part of acquisition demo and so
You have all these different pay systems and so how do we ensure parity just within across those different pay systems and so that’s another thing that we’ve tackled as well from the Cyber um specifically from a cyber and it perspective is how do we use the cybered
Service to um bring out industry so that we have that parody but also even within how do we pay them for the skills that they have and and I mean demonstrated skills that we will assess through assessments and you know of course credentialing is very important and we still college degrees are still
Important but that pay parody was also a piece that we had to deal with um but ALS also what we’ve realized is you don’t have to come into DOD or in the Air Force as a civilian and we used to call High to retire maybe your industry
And you say hey I want to do a good deed I want to go work you know in the air force for four years five years six years we allow you to come in and go back but also if you’re a civilian and maybe you have 20 years and you say I
Want to do a stin with industry to Broad myself we allow them to do exchange as well so using these exchange programs also has been another way for us to make sure that we can R retain our talent by reskilling them and upskilling them and giving them opportunities outside their
Normal day-to-day jobs so you know I identify the talent and yes I make sure that I could bring the talent on quickly I understand pay parity but I also understand that you have breadth and depth of experience is important because what we’re looking at from an IT
Perspective today is not the same thing we looked at five years ago or 10 years ago right I’m looking at softwar defined networks which is something new um that we’re embarking upon but it’s not taught in our Schoolhouse so how do I make sure that my Airmen and Guardians get that
Type of expertise I allow them to do interchange I’m sorry exchange programs with industry and then I also allow industry to come in so they can bring to us some skills that we don’t have and so it’s a whole concept of talent management that starts with acquisition
And then um acquiring the talent and identifying the talent but the other piece of that is when someone wants to leave we hold their place so that when they want to come back they can so making that easier as well and then from a cyber perspective as you know um
You’ve watched the news just like me um you just heard on the FBI Chris Ray and some others speak about this living off the land right that’s affecting a lot of our critical infrastructure so how do I train my staff to understand this new way of uh providing cyber protection
That comes with a whole of nation um effort and so we work a lot with our industry one to understand um the the skills that they have and how we leverage those skills but also the industry that supports us we hold them to the same standard of skills as well
And so now we have you know this um lexicon of of skills we call it our our our Workforce framework but really it’s this entire lexicon that no matter who you are where you are based on the role that you perform um no matter where you
Go that role is the same and the knowledge for that role is the same so it’s that long long-winded answer to say for talent talent management is key agreed and you’ve got you’ve got quite an Enterprise to manage over there and we’re glad that um we’re glad that
There’s a lot of really good riger um and uh some of the things that I saw in the department of the Air Force as I’m looking from the Private Industry side for things like vectoring people and true talent management there are a lot of really good best practices actually
That um that large businesses or even small businesses can can follow um that folks might not actually be aware of as much um the the military uh does does a really good job at at kind of helping people to get where they need to go for
That mission um so I want to talk about AI for a moment um I know this is top priorities to to leverage AI in a practical way to advance the mission um what is your approach to AI implementation and which missions are you most excited about applying Ai and related tools
To oh go that’s great so just like everyone else when you know all the large language models became available everyone jumped into the pool but they didn’t understand the temperature of the water right if you allow me to use that analogy and so it’s like wait hold on um
Let’s make sure we understand better of how we want to use Ai and in this context I’m speaking just of large language models because we’ve had artificial intelligence throughout the department um already so I put it into to one of two categories I’m focused on what I call everyday Ai and then I’m
Focused on game changing AI right that everyday AI is those things that I can do kind of cognitive that help my um Airmen and Guardians and even leadership um get better make better decisions using the AI or things that I can do to help make their job easier so
They can do some of the higher level work we started this with robotic process automation right um let the the Bots do certain things and so now we can have our individuals do high order work it’s the same thing with everyday AI you know if if all I need is the first draft
Of a a paper um because that’s what action officers do in the Pentagon AI could do that right I could train a large language model to create that first draft um if I need to um classify a position description which we know see is one of the things long pole in the
Tent that we found out during our um tabletop exercise I could train AI to do that as long as you have enriched data and what I mean by that is enriched meaning I have the data because I’m a data rich organiz a but now the enrichment comes when I apply the the
Rules to it back to my example of you know position classification if I’m going to classify position not only do I have the date of all the positions that are available um I also have to make sure that the um the lolm understands the rules that come into doing a
Classification so that’s the the everyday AI that we’re working on um and and I’ll talk to you about a landing Zone that we’ve created um in our um azure tenant to do that but it’s this game Chang in AI which is totally different because that is the type of AI
That requires a one a larger investment but also a total shift in culture and when I talk to the pacaf commander and I ask him what are your AI needs he says targeting so how do I use artificial intelligence to help him with targeting because what is targeting right it give
Me courses of actions on that I should take based on a Target or um and so as one way of gamechanging AI so how do you use AI to do that but the key there is that can’t be something that I use an open source um in the internet kind of
Model I need it to be trained on specifically with on my data in the confin in the confines of my own organization where I can protect um what is being trained and learned by the llm and so we make a distinction between those things so how am I doing that one
I created um what we call Innovation Landing Zone um our our vice Chief at the time but now our chief of staff of the Air Force has a Innovation program he calls project holet and it’s one of those isy every Airman can code and how do we Implement that in this environment
But we did it so that they could use some of the Innovation that we’re trying to bring to bear for the war fighter rather that’s you know our Azure virtual desktop or our our large language models um generative AI in our Azure environment and we did that and so we
Were able to allow our um uh you know I had a a guard that said hey I have a problem I need to solve and he went into our Landing Zone which is within our Microsoft tenant which is io5 and was able to generate a mesh Network that he
Needed for oper so he solved the operational problem problem in my Innovation Landing Zone and so those are the type things that I’m using to bring AI to bear it’s putting people in a safe place where they could um actual actually um um I don’t want to say
Exercise but yeah but kind of create and innovate um and then once it becomes something that’s usable um then we make the decision rather it’s something that’s scalable and so again looking at AI two different ways the kind of the everyday AI that we’ll use that’ll help with kind of productivity and help
Individuals do their work their work faster um but then that game changing AI that I know is going to help the warf fighter at the edge because one of the things we talk about is so much data comes from sensors in the Air Force and
We need to be able to get through that data and make sense of that data so that we can act and so I’ll have to do that game change in AI there but you have to have the confidence in the decisions um and the choices that are provided by AI
So that’s has been my Approach um I have a chief um um data and um AI officer and a whole organization that’s helping me do that awesome and and Venus Miss goodwine D C it has been fantastic uh to do a chat with you today I know we need
To get you down to the secretary’s office um to continue um making sure that the CIO is supporting great power competition but I really appreciate you taking time to chat with me go down memory lane a little bit and uh it’s been really fun thank you so much no
Lauren thank you I appreciate it again thank you for laying the foundation that you did I I take the Baton on on this relay and really to move the ball forward and so that whoever I pass the Baton will also continue so thank you to you and the other cios that came before
You but I find it a a sheer pleasure to be able to enable the warf fighter of the Air Force and the space force so thank you for this opportunity to talk about some of the things that we’re doing it is definitely a challenge even in the world’s greatest air and space
NES the world’s greatest Lauren thank you so much that was fantastic I really appreciate your conversation with Venice goodwine fantastic to have the two of you together two of the top leaders in the Air Force in uh cyber security in as cios and in Chief Innovation officers
Can’t thank you enough for sharing your insights that really was a fantastic way to close out the day but to really close out the day I’m going to have my great and good friend uh Ken Peterman founder sorry the chairman CEO and president of comp telecommunications who is our um
Our presenting sponsor for this entire two-day Summit uh sort of close out the day and he does a fantastic job of summarizing the day giving some key insights and also giving you a sense that if you want to go back and watch something hey uh you can go
Back and watch it on YouTube and you know what to look for so Ken please tell us what you thought and and what you think people should uh should take away from today well I really enjoyed the day I mean it’s a long day it’s it’s it’s a little bit mentally exhausting because
There’s so much content as we uh as we bring together these experts uh brilliant leaders uh really uh thoughtful folks that are engaged in this technology every day putting it to work both commercially uh and uh for our government and for our war Fighters and so it is a little bit
Exhausting through the day that’s why I think it’s so valuable to have it on the American future series YouTube channel because you can go back and watch it again and again and I know that some of us uh uh like ourselves David we spend time on airplanes and and uh now that
Airplanes have inflight connectivity It’s a Wonderful way to go back onto the American uh future series YouTube channel and watch some of these things and and really have a chance to you know be thoughtful about it and ponder it and uh and then then and then some of it’s
Actionable actionable in our businesses actionable actionable in a political environment and all of that so uh I’ll tell you I also love the programming is so diverse uh I think most importantly each of the speakers focus on how improvements can be made to National Security our ability to compete globally
So I think that’s really important um and I love it when recommendations are offered uh they’re offered on how to improve Innovation how to innovate faster how to need how to make the needed changes in order to bring that Innovation to our Fighters our young sons and daughters in uniform uh who
Need it so desperately uh in the missions that they perform for all of us uh so going back to it uh I was very significantly uh very much anticipating the discussion led by our good friend Major General uh Kim frer uh and I think she didn’t disappoint she set the tone
By focusing on critical Technologies capabilities like human machine learning like AI artificial intelligence how they impact both the civilian and the military sectors I thought that was a really uh terrific terrific discussion if you didn’t see it once again go back to the YouTube channel on AFS and you’ll
Be able to catch it next week when we post it uh there was a great discussion on the challenges and threats posed by China uh and how they pose those threats not just to the US but to the rest of the world it’s very important that we maintain perspective on how incredibly
Difficult the critical competition with our nearer adversary is and we can’t ignore all the things China’s doing to compete uh and ultimately we replace us replace America as the premier economic and military power in the world um we saw uh bong gahad our good friend was joined by the head of strategy Daniel
Gazinski our head of strategy at comptech uh I thought that was a really brilliant discussion on tactically responsive Technologies these are technologies that that aren’t going to be innovated and incubated for long periods of time these are these are technologies that can be responsive in a tactical context uh today and I thought
That was really good I love it when leaders and I think I mentioned this this morning I love it when leaders um speak and get specific without getting overly technical okay it’s important to highlight the actual capabilities that technology enables uh these things that we’re implementing now these things that
Are on the horizon uh these things that are adversaries might be implementing that we need to deal with and be prepared uh to counter or otherwise uh deal with uh uh in a uh in a uh national uh uh sense of a national agenda I think we moved then uh to Major
General Heather Pringle of the Space Foundation he moderated the discussion on AI and space uh T Tony Bruno of Ula he’s always interesting he’s got great perspective and a great sense of humor I think having him speak with Brian Morrison who General anics mission systems and Major General kror uh they
Provided some interesting and some different some diverse diversity of perspective on one of the most important and fascinating issues we face and that’s the use of of AI in space uh space is clearly an environment uh where you have to do more with less uh payloads are coming down in price but
Still there’s a space size rate and cost uh limitation uh and on with respect to getting things in space and operating it so I think I think that’s uh very important uh and I think that uh when we put people in space and we talk about the equipment and the supplies they need
Uh we talk about the ability to leverage uh uh Power and those kinds of things I think that’s a very uh important conversation because we have an opportunity to be more productive and efficient and successful in space uh in certain areas than we are here on Earth and I think that’s an important
Conversation and of course we want to mitigate risk to humans so we need to use technology in order to do that as effectively as we can uh we saw s Shelley brunt uh She interviewed the CEO of a leading space and technology company Dr Vivic law of
General atomics and getting back I just mentioned this with respect to power and that kind of thing but they talked about uh the use uh companies like genomics with the Forefront of dual use Technologies they understand the challenges they’ve had some successes they have a vision for the future and
Looking at fusion and vision in terms of the value that it creates in space I think was a really compelling discussion Laura winter of defense and Aerospace report I talked with Zachary Brown of the Aerospace Corporation and Colonel Rett turble who recently retired as you know from space command these
Guys they’ve been working hard to advance Innovation and dual use technology they shared some great ites on how to make that happen faster I thought that was interesting and Laura uh uh then went on to discuss the Silicon Bank meltdown as a cautionary tale of what can we learn from that what
Can we what can we do to mitigate or retire the risk of that happening again at least happening uh uh in the same way so I thought that was uh a really really interesting discussion uh it was great to have some leaders who have studied Innovation and applying innovation in depth uh Bucky
Bhow of Defense Innovation unit and George Poland uh with Milky Way economy shared their insights and lastly I think I know you enjoyed this uh David but Lauren nosberger Chief Innovation officer at siic was talking with her successor uh Venice Goodwin CIO of the US Air Force about cyber security
Doctrine cyber security defense Innovation the current threats how the Air Force is addressing all of those issues so I’d recommend again anybody that uh that is interested in that go back to the to the YouTube channel take a look at the American future series site uh and reference these things uh
Going forward but you know David this is a two-day event uh uh it it was a busy day uh it was a a really compelling day the topics were relevant the topics were uh informed uh the the the the folks the the People speaking to them are some of
The best that we have in the nation to deal with this so I thought it was a great start great day one and I’m looking forward to day two we’ll do it again tomorrow well Ken thank you for fantastic sum up fantastic insights into that I think that’s going to help people
Focus a little bit on what they really care about most we do do look forward to doing it all again tomorrow look forward to seeing you in the morning and I hope you get a little bit of rest and uh we’ll see you and start Brighton early thank you David you do the
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