Thank you for being here. As the situation continues to evolve around the covid19 outbreak, we wanted to get you information about changes happening at the department impacting Service Members. I want to start with the latest numbers. Today there have been 30 seven reported cases, 18 military, 13 dependents, three civilian, and three contractors. We are continuing to monitor the situation and will provide updates each day as we receive them. Friday, deputy secretary norquist released Additional Guidance on travel. Effective today through may 11, all Domestic Travel for military personnel will be halted unless it meets one of a number of waiver criterias including Mission Central travel or humanitarian reasons. This will also restrict dod civilian hiring on dod installations to people within the immediate area of the facility. The secretary continues to state his top priority is to protect Service Members and family and maintain our ability to complete central missions. We are going to take all those efforts. I want to give a couple additional updates. Hasy, the Department Given authority to commissary store directors to impose restrictions on high demand products. This will be done in coordination with base leadership. The department is working to make sure Service Members and their families understand these changes and have access to the goods they need. Somely, i want to give you updates on what we are doing in the building. Starting today the secretary and the deputy secretary remain physically separated. We are attempting to put for lack of a better term a bubble around the two of them. That means they and their staffs will only interact via phone conference. We are screening people entering the secretary sweet and limiting the number of people who have access as well. Teamer today, the cmo hosted a Teletown Hall to address the protective measures we put in place. They got a bunch of good questions from people on the reservation which include this building as well as 70 eight other buildings in the National Capital region talking about force Protection Health protection measures. We are going to continue to do events like that here and around the country to keep people informed. I want to just think a number of people who worked on this problem for many weeks now. I believe we have had teams, a number of different bases, working on coronavirus issues, providing hhs support, at miramar, lachlan, and travis. Those teams have done an expounding outstanding job in a very demanding situation. They have continued to do a great job and everyone here at the department appreciates that. Last, i want to think the custodial staff at the pentagon. They have been asked over the past few weeks to really step up what they have done to help limit the spread of any Infectious Disease here. , theyk as you have seen are increasing their rounds, increasing the type of work they are doing, and that is to everybodys benefit here. I would say let us go straight to questions here. What the National Guard is doing in many states, is the Defense Department considering making available to civilian agencies medical facilities, medical equipment, medical personnel . I think you are all familiar with how the requests come into the department. So far we have received requests from hhs specific to the quarantining and housing of individuals who are either evacuated from wuhan, hubei province, or the grand princess and the diamond princess. 11 feederly, for the airports for individuals who flew back into the u. S. And need to be quarantined. We have not received any other ones at this time that we have responded to. We are looking at a number of different options with regard to resources and what we can do. I would point out the big benefit of the department of defense is logistics and planning support. Those are two things we are able to provide assistance to. There are other things where we will take a look as they come in, but at this time those are the only ones we have seen so far. Aside from the request itself, are you considering what you might be able to do in the area of medical assistance . We have done a look at abilities and resources and what we can do, and where we think we have capability to assist the civilian sector in the whole of government approach while still ensuring we have the resources necessary to take care of our personnel and their families and to focus on our central mission, strategic missions. We have done that analysis and are continuing to do it and will be providing that. If the secretary has that and can provide it as requests come in. Shelf,ave plans on the so have we looked at it . Absolutely. We do it every year routinely preparing for a variety of natural disasters. We do have plans looking at the capabilities we have. If we are asked to provide them or tasked to say what is possible, we can look at those plans. Plans cover natural disasters from the departments perspective, what we do is we look at what capabilities we best meetow they the requirements. If we are asked to do something, we look at what we have available and how to support that. Haveis is the closest i been standing next to somebody in about a week so it is throwing me off. There are obviously not doctors waiting around to go to work. They will be coming from civilian hospitals. How much can you actually support if you are asked . Those are great questions. Nowre going through right to identify what we can do. I want to emphasize the point that people have come up and said, what about this idea . What about that idea . We are trying to step through each of those questions we receive and say, here is possible here is what is possible. If we do this, here is the consequence. Why dont we mobilize the guard and the reserve . I think that is what youre talking about right now. The challenge is if you mobilize reserve medical personnel from their civilian jobs, they are no longer in their civilian jobs. That impacts the community where they worked. That is the tradeoff. Whether it is a natural disaster, coronavirus or anything else, that is part of the tradeoff we look at as we offer options going forward. Give us some idea of the capacity that is out there within the department of defense. How many hospital beds . How many doctors . If it comes to that. We have 36 hospitals in the united states. From the standpoint of a domestic response, 36 hospitals within the united states. As many of you are aware, they are relatively small hospitals. They are not 1000 bed hospitals. They range in size. Many of them are configured to support our immediate military needs. They take care of the activeduty population and their families and some retirees. We have some large facilities like here in the d. C. Area, walter reed, that have more diverse services. We have Smaller Services in remote facilities like Fort Wainwright in alaska. It has a small hospital that offers basic Community Hospital services. Unfortunately, the answer is it depends on the community and what the requirement was to support the Operational Force in the community that has determined the size of the hospitals that we have. Publicly ask for the corps of engineers to construct facilities. What could the corps of engineers realistically do . Im not going to be able to answer that question for the corps of engineers. The first question, some of those hospitals we do have, the way they are configured, a lot of neonatal, pediatric care beds in those hospitals. Our doctors are unsurprisingly highly trained in traumatic injuries and dealing with traumatic injuries. We have a much younger population we are dealing with treating in our hospitals. All of these factor into what is that capability we have for a potential outbreak that generally has been more devastating to Older Persons who different types of attention. That is being looked at as how we take the services we provide or the skills we have and see what we can do. With regard to the question about the governors comment, we have not received an rfa or request to do any construction. That would be something we would look at. At this time i think there are other options out there that we have seen private companies are able to do constructions. Facilities, but we have not been asked to look at that yet. Atare standing by to look them as they come in and work with the white house to best support those. Forward Vice President joe biden floated the idea of building these tend hospitals with 500 beds. Is that one of the options being considered right now . We do have tent hospitals. They are deployable. The challenge is they are designed to take care of trauma patients and combat casualties. We have a variety of capabilities, much like our fixed facility hospitals, are deployable hospitals vary in size and the specific capabilities are tailored to whatever the mission is. We have supported humanitarian operations in the past. We have supported relief efforts during natural disasters. What we are trying to be careful at is not overpromising. We want to be factual about what we have. Our fixed facilities are designed to support what we have. They are not 1000 bed medical centers all over the united states. They are small Community Hospitals. Are deployable hospitals range in size and capabilities and are focused and designed to take care of those in combat. Them,are asked to deploy we have great colleagues and i am proud to serve with them. As mr. Hoffman said, they deliver excellent care if asked to do so. But the colleagues we have in uniform are focused on a specific military need that we have. To Service Members in afghanistan and iraq have enough tests . Im not aware of any lack of tests. I believe there has been concerned about the fact that the equipment to run the tests, the specific machine is not in afghanistan. Thats true. We have a relatively small footprint in afghanistan. We have now 13 labs up and running with that machine around the world. The closest one to afghanistan is a military lab, our lab in germany. Thee are other nations in middle east that have the specific type of equipment. What we do with any lab we cannot perform in a deployed environment is we fly or ship it to the nearest lab that can perform it. That does not mean they are not getting tested. We are just not running the test itself in afghanistan. To be clear, i had this conversation with general mckenzie. I think centcom has put out a statement. We are not a well of any aware of any individual in afghanistan that has indicated an inability to test. We are confident they are able to get tested in country. The test results are reported back to the individual. On the first question, just to point out, talking about tents and tent hospitals, one limiting factor being personnel. Even if we were able to build tents for hospitals, we still need doctors, the nurses, equipment and all that in there. As the general mentioned, those individuals from our system would come from existing hospitals. As you heard, general abrams discussed on thursday how he called up those doctors who were assigned to him, but were not yet deployed. He called those doctors. They went to help in u. S. Forces korea. In many cases they came from a domestic military facilities. That is what would happen with the hospital like that. The other thing i would ask is you look at this and the framework of civilian society and how many beds in hospitals are available on the civilian side versus we have surge capacity. We have capability. That number is when you look at what dod can do, compared to what is existing, i dont know if you have the percentage, but it was two or 3 of the hospital beds are dod beds. Barbara . A couple of followups. What is the latest information the threatout what volume is that you are planning against . What does the data tell you about how Many Americans including military might need hospitalization . Also, can you tell us how many ventilators are in military inventory and also, my other quick question, you mentioned i think the secretary and the deputy are no longer within eyeball range of each other. What is your recommendation to the chairman, the vice chairman, the nuclear forces, special ops, the short string forces that cannot afford to be fullstrength . We could spend the next hour going through the details. I will see if i can give an abbreviated response. From a data standpoint, now that we are getting accurate data from italy and from korea and from the united states, i think we are getting a clearer picture. Cdc is doing an excellent job updating that data so we understand how widespread this is. And your organizations have reported, this disease is easily transmitted. Ourof the big concerns on part is not so much the active duty force contracting the illness because it does not appear to make most younger people that sick. It is the active duty force contracting the ailments and spreading it to someone else. Of those who contracted, how do we minimize the risk of them spreading it to others and also, how do we ensure that we are prepared to take care of our own beneficiaries or if asked, take care of other patients as part of a whole of government response . How Many Americans . How Many Americans do i think well get infected . I think the cdc the scenarios you are planning. You must have an idea what you are planning against. We are going to leave Predictive Modeling to the cdc. We are going to speak with one voice from the government. Ventilators, can you talk about in the building, my recommendation has been, as i shared with you all during my last sessions, that people practice social distancing and where they can avoid getting within six feet of each other, that they do so. I have provided that advice for the last couple of weeks, the same advice the cdc has been providing. We put that out to everybody, that we want to practice social distancing because that is one of the very effective ways to minimize the spread and protect each other from getting sick. That is not unique to Senior Leaders. As far as the special forces or other units, the operational advice we have given to the services across, to look at those missions and identify the risk balance between medical risk and operational requirements, different units have come up with Different Solutions to that, to mitigate the risk while preserving mission capabilities. It is not a onesizefitsall. Specifics on what that units mission is and how best to support it going forward. As we have looked at the plans, they are all solid plans, at least the ones i have seen. They involve everything from shiftwork and having certain people Work Together for two weeks at a certain location, work from home, trading teams in and out, much as commercial companies are doing so you dont have everybody in one place at one time, common sense things to minimize the risk that an entire unit might be impacted at one time if someone gets sick. We are looking to have briefings this week. Dont hold me to it, but we are attempting to have a commander connect with you tomorrow. He will be able to get into some of these questions. Right now they are numbers we are not prepared to give out. The number deals with our deployable medical capability, which is a number we are not prepared to give out. We can get back to you on that and will work you through it. Im going to try something tricky. Im going to try to go with somebody on the line. Matthew cox from military. Com. Thank you, mr. Hoffman. Can you hear me ok . Yes. Could you provide an update on how the recent travel restrictions are affecting shipping dates for basic training, boot camp, as well as any deployment delays, cancellation updates . Instances, ic would refer you to the services. Has even ae given lot of flexibility to commanders to make waivers. The way the guidance was given with the ability of individuals to issue based on necessity. The commanders have that ability to determine that if a certain deployment or a certain rotation or a certain training, they have the ability to move forward with that if it is Mission Central. We are looking to move forward with Training Programs given the size of those programs and the impact a major delay on training could have. We are looking at that and may have updates in the near future, but for the most part, we believe the commanders at the fourstar level down to the one star level have the authority to minimize any disruption to their forces. And that any individual in that pipeline is looking for guidance on what to do, we have given instruction, tried to be as transparent and thorough as possible instructing them to reach out to their supervisor to get guidance. As a quick followup, is there any update on defender europe . I know deployments were halted the past couple days, there are 6000 on the ground right now, but there were supposed to be 20,000. Any updates as far as more troops who are going to be sent or not . I do not have any update. To eucom. Rect you they did indicate there was likely no Additional Forces that would be flowed forward to that. To that command or to that exercise. I do not have an update on the numbers of it. Although the main exercise may be somewhat constrained, look at individual pieces of that exercise and continue to get as much benefit as possible. If the guard is activated and a guardsman is a doctor fulltime in a local hospital, what will be the policy decision . Will that member of the military still be called up and taken away from that civilian hospital or would they be left . That is one of the calculations that have to be made in making a decision to do that. I have been wearing this uniform for 37 years, i have done whatever the country asked me to do. Anyone wearing this uniform would say the same thing. Has those decisions are made, Senior Leaders are going to balance, if we take someone from here and send them there, what is the impact . Is the benefit greater here than over there . From the military side we are here to deter and defend and support our civil colleagues, keythat is one of the considerations going forward. I am part of the tracking you keep commande to updated about what your civilian employment is. When there is a crisis, there is not a rush to deploy a bunch of jags. Its not the same way, but that is something to be looked at. Getting visibility down to the individual level, how are those medical providers being used in their local communities . If we have to make decisions, it is something that balances what is going on in the local community. Wasou have mentioned there surge capability for building field hospitals. Can you give us a sense of what those numbers were . Could the military put up a 500 bed hospital in affected areas in a rapid amount of time . Deployabledifferent hospital capability ranging from 25 beds up to much larger than that. The largest capability is the hospital ship, which has hundreds of beds. Then the question becomes, what do they need . The challenge is, if we build a 200 bed or 25 bed trauma hospital to take care of people with coronavirus, that is not a great solution to the challenge. Ast we are working through we participate in discussions is, here is what we have. Here is what it does very well, which is trauma care and acute care and emergency care. We have not been tasked to provide any specific location, but those are the types of medical capabilities that we have. We do not have any 500 bed hospitals designed for Infectious Disease outbreaks. That does not exist in the inventory. The doctor mentioned the comfort and im sure many of you have been on the comfort were the mercy and seen how it is configured. You have litters that are stacked four to the ceiling with individuals. You have open bay rooms because they are for trauma. For people who have suffered trauma, not Infectious Diseases. I just want to clarify. Defense isent of willing and able to support civilian authorities to the greatest extent possible at the direction of the president. We just want to make sure the conversation is informed by the facts of what is possible and what is not and what those tradeoffs are. We are engaged in these conversations across the government right now in how we can best support and we will continue to be part of those and follow the guidance set out by the secretary and by the president. Could you tell us what the chain of command is on dod guidelines . Secretary ofuty defense down to how does that work . Concerns been mounting about federal workers still coming to work. What are your policies on disclosures . How do you ensure that people are sick are not coming in . On the first one, you are asking, how are we promulgating guidance within the department . The secretary is in charge. On some issues he has delegated that to the deputy secretary. Pnr has the overall look at things affecting the workforce, forcean contractors, health protection, the pentagon reservation, but you additionally have the services that have responsibility for their personnel. It is a big building. It is a big organization. We have a lot of different twohour t itthis morning, we a v. T. C. Everybody, we are not even in the three rooms anymore, in a bunch of different rooms calling and we went through a lot of those decisions being evaluated, and the decisions in the next few days. And the second question, on federal workers who are sick still coming in . We have very clear guidance, if you are sick, you should not come into work. If you see somebody who is sick, send them home. If they look like or sound like they need help, get medical help for them. You may be aware, we have a small clinic downstairs in the building and theres a variety of other military medical facilities around the d. C. Area where folks can go for care depending on what they need. But this really starts with the individual, and i think it is not about policy at this point. Its about a shared commitment to minimize impact of this outbreak, and each of us individually has responsibility. If you are sick, or if you live with someone who is sick, stay home. Thats common sense. It is good medicine. And that is the message we are sharing with everybody. Some cities and states i have two people in my office i personally sent home, because they came in and said you should not be here, go home. I have a lot of work to do . I dont care, it can wait. The sun will come up tomorrow, i am very confident. I would rather we minimize this outbreak than try to get the next report done on time, and that is an important distinction right now. The priority is minimizing the spread of this outbreak. As the secretary said, our first commitment is to protecting the health of our Service Members and their families. That starts with our responsibility to them and responsibility their responsibility to stay home if sick. Encouraging telework is different from mandating telework. Every day we look at the numbers, what is the risk to the reservation, to the workforce, and we make changes. As you saw last week, we went from social distancing to, on monday, to on wednesday we banned international travel, on friday Domestic Travel, restricted. Ffet is shutbu down. There are Different Levels of risk, and we will work away up that as needed while still maintaining the ability to do strategic, essential missions. I will go to the phone again. Dan from the washington post. Nothing at this time. Ok. Another phone one, nick sc hifrin, pbs. Thank you so much for doing this. In terms of the secretary and deputy secretary, neither of them has made that distinction of separating the top official from his or her deputies. So can you explain a little why you have done that, and why you have taken that specific path . And back to afghanistan and iraq, i understand theres no lack of tests, although labs are being utilized elsewhere. Have there been any updates on quarantine in the war zones or any positives . I will take your last question first. No, we haveswer is not had any positive tests in afghanistan and thus far have not received any reports of anyone who needs care who is unable to receive it. From the standpoint of your question about social distancing, we have been very transparent and proactive in implementing cdc guidelines. My deputy is working from home this week. Thats not because im special. It is just the right thing to do. It is what commercial companies are doing, what nonprofits are doing. It is the right thing to do. I dont think we are doing anything particularly unusual. We are just him cementing cdc guidance. You have to look at each implementing cdc guidance. You have to look at each department and agency and what missions they have and what operations they have ongoing, and Resources Available to make those measures take place. The department of defense, we are set up so our commanders and leaders can do their jobs from anywhere in the world, at any time, so we are able to take advantage of that probably to an extent that even Major Companies and others are not able to. So we will continue to do what we need to to protect the leadership, protect the thatorce, so that we have ability as this goes on to help the civilian government respond. Any positive been cases in the pentagon reservation, any positive tests . And can you clarify whether the government is preparing for a National Quarantine, and whether the u. S. Military has been asked to prepare for that . The pentagon question we had one contractor, not in this building but in one of the other buildings within the pentagon complex, who was identified, said he was not feeling well, went in, was tested and was positive. Coworkers have been appropriately asked to stay home. None of them is sick at this point in time. That was five or six days ago. Hes doing fine, is the last report i heard. And we have the one marine who was at fort belfour. I think those are the two, in the reservation area. Your other question was about the instagram or text message hubbub that went on last night about a National Quarantine plan. Im not familiar with anything on that. Think the white house put out a statement that that was untrue and was not under consideration at this time, so i direct you to them. One quick followup. In terms of navy ships, you have one case on the uss boxer. The uss carney in south africa has pulled into court. And a u. S. Ambassador at maralago on march 7 visited that ship, and is seen in twitter pictures on board that ship. When are you going to, or is it appropriate to stop port calls and stop visitors from stepping on the ship bette . I dont have an update for you on the ships deployed or at sea. I have confidence the navy will look at that risk and decide when it is best to cease having onboard visitors. But i know they have taken steps already, with regard to 14 days at sea between ports to limit potential spread and evaluate if anyone came into contact with others. So we will continue to look at what they will do, but i refer you to the navy on what they may change without policy. I havent seen any changes recently. General, you said there were no positive tests in iraq or afghanistan. Can you say how many Service Members have been tested . Yes. Total as of yesterday morning, and i do not have the breakdown of active duty versus family members versus retirees, but in the 13 labs in dod with capability to do the test, we have done 495. Globally, right. And again, theres a lag in the data. As of yesterday morning, the update we received. Part of that is because we are collecting data, we have a lab in germany, a lab in korea running tests, so we want to make sure we get data in before we say how many on a particular day. This is fridays data. How many Service Members have tested positive . I am tracking 15 as of 5 00 this morning. We mentioned before, that will continue to change. Meant sorry, i specifically iraq and afghanistan. None. How many have been tested there . I dont know how many have been tested, but none have been positive. This is why i said at 5 00 in the morning it was 15. This was updated after i got my update. 5 00 in the morning, and this came out at 7 00 in the morning it was 18. Ok. One more thing for you. Every time we give you a number, we will give you a timestamp when it was updated so you can be on board with that. The reason i went with 15, in case you are wondering, i have the details of the 15 and dont have the details on the 18. I want to be clear on the hospital ship. Is there any role the hospital ship can play in an outbreak . Couldent or personnel, that be taken from the ship and brought we have supported our nation in a number of ways. As military medics, one thing the hospital ship is really good at is providing the care it is design for. If example a community has a large outbreak and there is a need for emergency room support or trauma support, a hospital ship is perfectly designed to do that. Whether that is the right capability to get to the right place, it is hard to get the hospital ship to st. Louis. But along the coast, it is an option to use. To go back towant something i said earlier, i would hate for anyone to misperceive our comments as we are not willing to help. Obviously if the option is the surgeon taking care of you or nobody, you want a surgeon. We are all here to help. That has been the message from the secretary since day one, supporting a whole of government response. What i personally would also feel uncomfortable with is if we say, the hospital ship is designed to take care of highly Infectious Disease patients. When you stack people four deep in litters, that doesnt really limit the spread of anything. So, its being honest about the capabilities and trying to be as transparent as we can about the capabilities and what they are designed to do. One of the things that has been hard in the last 2448 hours, a lot of information specifically on social media that mixes up what the militarys capabilities are versus what might be their intentions to do. Theres other things beyond just the idea of enforcing a mandatory quarantine. One was the military, the National Guard being used to curfew,nighttime Something Like that. I know that may not be something asked for at this point, but is there even a discussion at this point about the military being used for more of that Law Enforcement . It would not be unheard of. We saw after katrina, other natural disasters. Is there discussion at this point . To clarify, the military part, whether National Guard or would you address both . Governors have the ability to call the National Guard as they see fit. I think we saw today the governor of maryland activated guardsmen to assist with their response, so you will continue to see that. There are a lot of things we have planned about how to plan. We have a lot of things we can look at doing, and those are being looked at. We have requests coming in that we will look at. But as of right now, we will come out to you as much as we can and be public and transparent about this, coming to you and we have an announcement on something thats been decided, but i cant get into every rumor or speculation about what the military could do or may have been asked to do, or what somebody on some sort of text chain said they heard from their friend who heard from a guy who saw a thing, we cannot respond to all of that. But we are trying to be as transparent as we can about what we are doing, and you have been good about when you hear something coming to us, and we will let you know when something is fact or fiction and will get that out. We will do briefings here as much as we can. I will try to have the Service Chiefs here at least once if not twice a day this week to do briefings and get information to you as much as we can. One last thing on the ships, that you mentioned. The ships dont have people in them. So, we can get you a ship. Right now that has a bunch of merchant mariners on it that operate the ship. Medicalent, 1000 1200 professionals with the ship waiting. They have to come from somewhere else. That gets back to the staffing issue. The ship is great, but the personnel are not on it right now waiting to be deployed. They are in hospitals in lackland, or somewhere else. A a lot of times, the hospital ships, we partner with civilian groups that go out with us to do humanitarian missions, like in south america this last six months. One more, and then we have to go. Thank you so much. How ready is the pentagon to build hospital beds, if asked . What are surge capabilities . How fast could that be spun up . Is there a ballpark picture of how many beds could be provided . I think on the first question, to build beds, i dont think we have an estimate on building hospitals, constructing hospitals, pouring foundation and concrete and things like that. I dont think we have a number. That is not a request we have had, and that we have on the records for how to do that or the numbers we would do. We do have numbers on the tent, field hospitals, things like that, how quickly we can do that. We are looking into how fast we can deploy those. The good news right now is, isour country as a whole responding to this outbreak, we have not seen huge demand signals coming to the d. O. D. Yet saying we have a significant gap. I was here all weekend and did not receive anything specifically that says, we need this number of beds in this location. What we do have are these tailorable packages. Some can move very quickly by airplane. Others are much larger, like the ship, which takes a few days and you have to bring crew to it. What we have tried to be very clear about is that if folks need help, let us know what it is. Work through the white house, department of health and human services, that is the lead for this, and we can offer what we can do to meet that requirement with the capabilities that we have and how quickly it can move. And just finally, we have to go because the general obviously has a lot of important things to be doing, hes here 14 hours a day working on this, so i want to get him back to his office. The solution to coronavirus will be a whole of government approach and d. O. D. Will be part of that, so we will keep you updated on how we will play a role and what we will do. Thank you. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Tuesday morning, we discussed the role and powers of local, state and federal government during a Health Emergency with Georgetown University law centers national and Global Health law director and Arizona State universitys center for Public Health law director. Watch at 7 00 eastern, tuesday morning. Join the discussion. Voters, whatng issues should be president ial candidates address . What is important to me, media bias. No matter what network you look at, with the exception of a handful, there is rampant bias and they are dishonest about it. They tell you they are giving you objective information, when it is really not, and that is wrong, in my opinion. The most important issue to me in 2020 is raising the minimum wage. Iknow too many people who have to work multiple jobs to make ends meat and still cannot support their families. That needs to change. People addressing the issues and fulfilling campaign promises. There are many candidates fighting to say, this is my agenda, these are the people i want underneath me, this is the program i want to institute, this is where the money is going, these are the things i would like to address. Protecting agriculture, where our food comes from, some of our vast commodities, particularly in utah. The issue most important to me is the overwhelming threat Artificial Intelligence poses on our livelihoods, because we really cannot predict how dangerous it is going to be. The most important issue for me is how the candidates intend to address the growing encroachment of china, specifically in the pacific. Ive been out in the pacific and my country i was born out in the pacific and my country recently changed allegiance from taiwan to china, and that is concerning especially with things were hearing coming out of mainland china, so i would like to see candidates, id like to see how candidates intend to address that