Consumer of intelligence. I wonder ambitious revisionist china. The persistence of a weak but troublesome russia. Id like to draw you out on how we should think b about this notion of competition. With china and russia, maybe we should deal with them separately. And the practical priority steps for both the Intelligence Community and the Defense Community to really make that shift and focus. Yeah, thanks. That was a great question. I think at a very high level, i think this is the competition is about influence, ideas and control of technology and perhaps the internet and some other things here, so at a high level, i think thats what the Great Power Competition really means. Certainly at the military level, we look at it as a competition for maintaining competitive advantages. I dont just mean weapons systems, but it also means other things like access facing overflight. It involves influence. It involves partnerships. Theres a lot to be said for United States having head of the line privileges at the suez canal. Thats the result of a longterm relationship with egypt. And maintaining that relationship. So these things are really, really important. Thats how i think about t this. Big ideas and ultimately investments and economic aspects but also maintaining the competitive advantage. I think there are some things that need b to be focused on. First and foremost, we need to strive to understand well i would just say this. I think the most important requirement will be preventing strategic surprise. I think in materials of preventing strategic surprise, we have to think b about understanding the intent of our adversaries out u tlchlt other great power competitors. We have to understand what theyre doing with their advanced technologies and where they are with the document of this. We have to understand how they are changing traditional relationships that we have relied on in the past. And thousand those can impact us in the future. Were seeing with turkey for example an Interesting Development here in terms of some of the relationships they have with russia versus nato. This, this is an examine principle what im saying. Of course theyre reaching out to other traditional partners, not only in the area that i led, but really around the world. I dont think were going to wake up some day and find out theyre no longer in existence. The Intelligence Community, the broader National Security, the relationship between russia and china two of the great powers that we are concerned with. I recall secretary mattis. Making a comment to a group of us one time, what could be the worse case situation right here . Perhaps the worst case could be a stronger alignment between those two great power competitors and what that means to us. So i think those are the areas that from a very high strategic level, we ought b to be paying attention to. Sfwl grea. I spent a lot of time working on strategy in the pentagon. The fun and easy part is setting priorities and where youre going to put your emphasis. The hard part is deciding where and when you dont have unlimited resources. This braeter focus on china or russia and Great Power Competition. Where should this community afford to take risks . Is it the middle east . In certain types of military operations . How do you think about accepting and managing a degree of risk . The real challenge here. In the National Defense strategy, at least the current one, promulgated under secretary mattis was very clear in terms of where the focus was. It was focused on Great Power Competition and maintaining that competitive edge. I agreed with that and testified to that fact when asked. But i think when we look at other areas, we have to look carefully what our o interests are there. You know one of this things that strikes me is when you think about the different interests that we have that are not just interests for today or tomorrow, but have been enduring interest, preventing this area from being a platform for terrorists to attack us. Maintaining our freedom of commerce and navigation through the the region. Prevent iing instability. Preventing proliferation f of Nuclear Weapons then of course maintaining a favorable balance. These are enduring interests for us, so i think as we look at other areas, we have to look at how we address those interests. And i think what it requires is when it comes to military forces, i think it requires figuring out what is sustainable in this, in these areas. What level of military perresen is required and is sustainable for persistence over time. It will probably not be certainly not, but it need to be enough so we can ensure our interests are addressed. The other aspect is that the nastional Defense Strategy putsa a great focus on partnerships and this becomes absolutely key. Just as we talked about human mitigated to this, partnerships can be as well. And so making our partners strong, making sure that we have the right investments with them, were providing them the right equipment then the right support, i think can help, help off set, off set all of this. Then of course all that has to be underscored by you know, synchronization in our diplom diplomat diplomatic realms so were clear on what were trying to af comp lisch. Easier said than done as we both know. So in addition to this period of profound geo political change, we also areing a period of profound des ripgs. Whether its quantum computing, ai, robotics, genetic engineering, hyper sonic electric weapons, the list foreclosure on. Many of the Wonderful Companies are representative of the cutting edge in those areas, but in many of these areas, the u. S. And military rely on the sort of drivers of our innovative e ecosystem. Whether primarily driven by private cap it will ital in pla Silicon Valley and route 128 and austin and so forth. If you look at how the chinese are approaching this period of disruption, they have a multibillion dollar multiyear state directed investment program. A Civil Military doctrine that ensures their private companies are carrying water for their military and share iing the besf their innovations. So i wanted to ask you how do you see the challenge posed by this technological competition with china and are, is this community, our National Security community, really ready to compete effectively . Well, i think thats an excellent question. First and foremost, we have to make sure we take measures to protect ourselves and make sure as we begin to address this necessary competition here, we have to make sure that were, we have absolutely minimized our vulnerabilities in these particular areas. The defensive protective as pecht of this, protecting our technologies and capabilities are very, very important. I think we ought to and i you know, clearly i think what youre pointing towards here is Stronger Public private partnerships to address these challenges that we have. Ours is a system that is driven from the private side to the public largely. We need to learn how we leverage that. I think it is through much more effective much more effective Public Private partnerships and relationships on the very, very difficult issues. And i guess i would finally add that we have to, we have to make a commitment to prioritize and invest in the appropriate research and development on these cutting Edge Technologies to ensure that we are at the, we are where we need to be in this. And this, we cant rely solely on the private side. Certainly shouldnt rely on the public side to do this. The government side. It has to be b a partnership, but there has to be i think significant investment in this. This is what i think we see the chinese doing from their more centralized approach is really focusing in on that and driving the investments in that area and i think we need to, we need to do the same. Yeah. You mentioned earlier the importance of leveraging commercially available tools, open source data and so forth and particularly with you know, just increasingly exquisite ai applications for example maritime domain awareness, where we can literally identify track, characterize the behavior, the pattern of f life at sea of any substantial ship on the surface of the ocean. We can now leverage ai to have dramatically improve d facial ad b object recognition so all kinds of National Security applications. And again, though when you were at so com, which is kind of famous for being one of the more agile acquirers of technologies. I think the exception proves the rule. When you look at the companies out in that hallway, the smaller ones, who are really bent on serving the National Security community, theres still all kinds of obstacles they face as small, innovative tech companies. Whether its you know, navigate ing the grass of contract vehicles. Whether its crossing the what i call the valley of death between the successful prototype an the program of record. So as you think about the importance of integrating those technologies for our success and our ability to perform on the battlefield, what are the key obstacles that we need to go after and remove from your experience . Yeah, again, another great question. So i think the two things i learned as commander about this was theres really two things you have to do. Theres many things you have to do, but fifrl, you have to have a strategy for what youre doing technologically. How youre developing this and a plan for how youre approaching that. As you mention eed i think we requested so com with a goup of people who were very good at this and having a plan for the key things that we were focused on that were important to the soft team out this. So you know having that strategy that identifies the development, investments is a really important aspect of this. I think the other key on the soft side and from my experience was keeping the users close to the developers in this. To me, that was essential. Some of you had probably had the opportunity to visit soft works in tampa. Stood up by so com a few years ago. This was really focused on trying to provide a, an entrance. A doorway for people to kind of come in. Present their capabilities and look at how they can integrate then to have users there who could provide almost immediate feedback and leveraging concepts like rapid prototyping. So not only are you testing the viability of it, but youre also looking at ways you can speed up the introduction of this to our fight eers on the, around the world. So i think those things are, those two things really stand out for me. In an earlier life, i had an opportunity to lead kind of our ied efforts. And there was nothing in my career as a ranger that prepared me for that. One of the single biggest challenge i had. But what i came to recognize out of that, when we locked at this, we began to look at the ied challenge as a technical problem. And that we could solve this if we had a man hhattan project. If we had the right tool, we could solve that. But we had to look at it much more comp hrehensively. Not just the technology aspect, but the training aspect. The targeting aspect of it. And so my, my point here is that when we look at these challenges that we have out here, whether its any of the things ai advanced weapons, automation, a variety of Different Things out here, we really need to look at how we are organized for this to attack the problem comprehensively and address it that way. It does nothing to develop a good piece of technology if people arent trained on it. And if it does nothing to develop Good Technology if we arent putting pressure on the enemy at the same time were doing that to prevent him from responding to that. So i think the key piece here is we got to organize. We have to make sure we have a comprehensive approach to these challenges. Great. I want to bring in a question from the audience which really pertains to leadership. It says as a former military command commander, how did you remain open to intelligence assessments that did not comport with your view of a situation . Really a question about different views and dissent. Yeah, so one of the thing is started to do was every morning when you got the read book if you will, that kind of gave you the overnight i got in the habit of bringing in an Intelligence Analyst to come in and be with me when i went through that. Ultimately we had two of them in there as we developed the prose is. That gave me an opportunity to look at the report and have a conversation with somebody about what i was reading here. That was very, very helpful in terms of my understanding and being able to challenge some of my interpretation of what was happening out there versus what our very excellent analysts were seeing. And to me that was a great process. The other thing, i think, that we did were things like deep dives. We had tried to do them on weekly basis, probably ended up being a couple of times a month. But it was an opportunity for the j2 many times to direct j2 in conjunction with chief of staff as well as direct the topics we wanted to talk about and for me to talk with a variety of analysts who presented information to me, some of which was contrary to what i thought. So, you know, as a commander, i thought it was my responsibility to try to get a lot of different views into this thing, into the things that we were doing. And for me, those are some of the practical aspects of it as well. And, of course, you know, just like anybody else, theres another layer of leadership out there. And our Component Commanders and jt commanders have different assessment as well. So, one of the most important things you do as a commander is set the environment so there can be a dialogue, a discussion about whats happening out here and how were assessing it and interpreting whats happening. I think that was one of the most important leadership things that people can do especially as we kind of navigate this complex environment we find ourselves in. I could not agree more. Another great question from the audience about russian influence operations. So, how much concern do you have with russian offensive influence operations generally, but in particular, those that might be directed at u. S. Troops . I think we should be very concerned about what russia is doing with these capabilities, both in the information environment and both in the electronic environment that can impact our weapons. We should not make any assumptions that our objectives are aligned in these particular areas here. I remain very, very earn canned about these. As we become more technologically enabled, more in the digits, more in the electronic aspect of things, we increase our vulnerability. So, we have to be concerned about what russia is trying to do. I wanted to come back to your comment about the importance of allies and partners. This is a tremendous source of strategic advantage for the United States particularly when you contrast our position with a host of allies around the world versus say a china or russia who are much who dont enjoy that benefit. So, the question is is there a more strategic approach that we can take to working with our allies, to building partner capacity, to getting ourselves on the same page so that we have a shared set of capabilities to be more effective together against some of these big challenges . Yeah. I think there are some things particularly if you look at the technology side. I think we have to look at the more traditional things like our 5 is arrangements that have served us extremely well. While the 5 is are great partners to us, we have equally excellent partners outside the 5 is community. So, we have to look at how we share information and development of key technologies with them as well. I think we just have to look at how we open this up. I think we made progress in these areas, but theres more that needs to be done. And i couldnt agree with you more here. This really is our strategic advantage, i think, is our partnerships out here. You know, when you look at take iran, for example, the area im most familiar with. When you look at the people that are aligned with iran and look at the people that are aligned with the United States and the west, its not even comparable. So, this really is an important advantage for us. And we have to look at our relationships multiechelon. Its not enough for me to have a relationship with my counterpart. Its got to be a subordinate commanders, diplomats, and others above us as we look at these partners. We have to be very clear with them about what were doing. Its important to understand objectives and what it is theyre focusing on. Its important to understand what the red lines are in this. I think when we get into those levels of conversations with our partners, i think that serves us very, very well. Great. A question about from the audience again about space. Critical domain, maybe more so than its ever been. So, the question is what are your thoughts on space and support for the war fighter . How should we organize . And what should be our priorities . Well, i think great question. Ill stay away from space force here for a moment. I think smart move. Organizing combatant command around space is a good step. Weve certainly seen that. As a former commander i know tony thomas is out here as well. Im sure he shares the same thing. To be able to bring those capabilities to the broader area of events has been functional by that. I think you should look at our other Strategic Command or others here that were well served by that. So, i think thats the right piece. I think like cyber, i think looking at how we integrate Space Capabilities with things that are happening on the ground i think has got to be a priority, of course. And these cant be these cant be oneoff things. We have to look at how space is integrated into the things that were actually trying to accomplish in other areas. So, i think the challenge for us as we move forward in space will be looking at how we integrate those capabilities into the other tool kit that belongs to our war fighters. Absolutely. Well, we could go on. We have some great additional questions, but im getting the high sign. Please join me in thanking joe votel, a national treasure, for a wonderful conversation. Thank you. I was going to try and get you fired up here because the initial point of recession, were a little bit of subdued. So, i want you to feel free to get enthusiastic here. Weve got a great panel coming. So, lots of cheering for them, and were going to have a great discussion. So, welcome back. Before we jump into this next session, let me remind