Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion 20240702

Good morning. I am the director here in brookings but i want to welcome everybody to the event today. How much money for defense is enough . This event began with a call i got from someone i respect he said to me, simply, how do we decide how much money the u. S. Should spend on defense . I know a bit about the federal budget, but i have to confess, im a lot more comfortable talking about things like Social Security, low Income Home Energy assistance programs, the state and local Tax Deduction and about the Defense Budget. So i called michael hamlin, my colleague here, and i put the question to him. How much of the u. S. Spent on defense. Mike said, funny last, i just finished a 20,000 word answer to that question. So here we are. You could read it on her website, but he promised me he wont try to read them all today. I want to start today with a question i can answer. How much the u. S. Spent on defense. The short answer is, we spend a lot on defense. There are lots of ways to measure this, but lets start with a few basics. This is a pie chart that shows how we spent the federal budget in the last fiscal year. We spent about 900 billion on defense, roughly one out of every eight dollars in government spending, 12 of all federal spending. You can see the biggest light that slice of the budget is mandatory spending or entitlements, benefits like Social Security and medicare, and that is a growing part of the federal budget, but that defense slice is pretty big, particularly when compared to the nondefense discretionary budget, which is funding all the things we talk about the federal government does, national parks, grants to state and local governments, and so forth. Even though it is only 12 of the budget, it is pretty big. The department of defense buys more goods, services and software than all other federal Government Agencies combined. The department of defense employs about 2. 2 million people, uniform and civilians. That is substantially more than all the other executive Branch Agencies combined. And something i learned in prepping for this, one third of all civilian federal employees are employed by the department of defense. Of fact, some people say we spend more on defense than the, or as much as the next 10 countries combined, china, russia, india, saudi arabia, uk, germany, and so forth, but mike tells me that calculation may understate how much the chinese spend on defense. They dont have a table to tell us about functional. But another way to look at the Defense Budget is to look at what we spent over history. This is a cbo chart that shows historical funding for defense in real terms, inflation adjusted terms. It shows what cbo projects it will spend based on the department of defense base budget. That greenline is wh congress does. They say we have so much for the base budg, and if we have war like in afghanistan or ukraine, they put that on top so it doesnt get built into the base, although i think it often does. The point here is that you can see that the fence is expected to rise in real terms over the next decade, and treva sharp was one of the speakers today. He said the trend is generally rising and this represents one area of washington policymakers of both parties keep finding ways to agree. In fact, when you listen to the congressional debate, it seems to be, should we spent more or less on nondefense discretionary , or how much more should we spend on defense in real terms. Another way to measure the Defense Budget is to look at it as a share of gdp, how much effort we put into Defense Budget. Of course, the chart looks a little different here. This is defense spending as a shared gdp, it was high during the vietnam war for obvious reason. It is got up and down with wars and is now about 3 of gdp. That is an interesting number, because we keep telling allies they have to spend at least 2 of gdp. Mike will talk about this more in detail. Let me explain to you a little bit about the order of the program today. Mike will give a 15 minute presentation of his paper on this. He is a man of many titles, but most relevant to this one is he is the defensive strategy and director of the center on Security Strategy and technology in the form policy program. He has been here at brookings for nearly 30 years. He is a phd from princeton in public and international affairs. After he speaks, i will be joined on the panel with two other experts on defense spending, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute, and a variety of jobs and roles advising the pentagon and members of congress on defense spending. She has a graduate degree in Foreign Service from georgetown. Also, travis sharp, a senior fellow at the center for strategic and budgetary assessment, where he has been for five years. Is also a Lieutenant Commander in the naval reserve. He is that she also has a phd from princeton, and it is and security studies. I will turn the podium over to mike and be back after his presentation. Thank you. Thank you, david, good morning everyone. It is nice to have you here. I will try to spend 15 minutes making the Defense Budget accessible to those of you who dont think about it full time. Also, i will set up a conversation about how much is enough. To quote the famous book from the whiz kids of the 1960s who wrote a book with that title, and of course, david has already captured the ying and yang about how to think about this. On the one hand, the military budget is enormous, almost 1 trillion. That doesnt count veterans benefits. It is account homeland security. It is a lot of money and is substantially more than the cold war average, even after adjusting for inflation. It is substantially more than the peak from the cold war, if you can believe that. On the other hand, as the last chart showed, it is only little more than 3 of gdp. As mackenzie and i were observing a moment ago, 12 of the federal budget is a lot, but it is also a lot less than it used to be. In the early years after world war ii, even after world war ii when we downsize, we were spending about half the federal budget. Half of the budget on the military. It really is entitlements that jumps out at those of us who do defense and Foreign Policy quite often, and probably a lot of human you see that chart as a big enchilada. I come out this from the perspective of a cheap hawk. My papers called how to be cheap talk in the 2020. Those of you who remember Newt Gingrich when he was speaker, after the republicans had taken congress in 1994 and he wanted to downsize government, someone asked him how that squares with you being a hawk, with you being part of the legacy of the reagan revolution and a loyal apostle of president reagan who inherently left office a few years before at that point. Newt gingrich said, i am a cheap hawk. Im not really of the same political persuasion as Newt Gingrich, in general, but on this point, philosophically, i am sort of in the same boat. I would like to talk about how to be a cheap hawk. What im trying to do is spend enough to make sure that at least, based on my analyses, we are in a robust position in a very troubled time in Global Politics with a lot of challenges around the world. And yet, trying to minimize the burden on the taxpayer, and also viewing the overall size of the deficit and the debt as longterm National Security challenges unto themselves. The Defense Department cant solve that problem. Im a little bit concerned about her politics that was come back to the discretionary accounts, socalled discretionary accounts, which are only one third of the federal budget together, defense and domestic. Try to put pressure on those will we leave entitlements alone and essentially leave the revenue issue alone. That wont work. But nonetheless, at a time of fiscal distress and challenge to work countries longterm economic foundations, i do think, for me at least, it is better to be a cheap hawk then to, essentially, bless each and every pentagon request. That is a philosophy i am coming from. When you think about how to build a defense strategy, we should begin with this question. Is part of why david wanted to have this event. He wanted to think from first principles. If youre a generalist thinking about her role in the world and military posture, how do you understand the basic conceptual drivers of an 850 billion Year National Defense Program at a military that is not huge by historical standards or even by Current International standards, 1. 3 million active duty, even if you add in all the reservists and guards men and women, were up to about 3 million. That is small compared to the cold war average, small even compared to china today. Does not even that big compared to india or north korea for that matter. It is a defense establish that is fairly small in size, yet being asked to do a lot. What is it being asked to do next let me speak to that question. When you think about building a military strategy and a forced posture, you have to consider who might fight against you, who might fight with you, how many of these kinds of fights or wars you have to be ready for any given moment, and with what degree of readiness and advance. Finally, what does the war look like . What is an adequate margin of insurance or safety in terms of your confidence level that you could win that war. With the ultimate goal, of course, being that we want to deter the war. We want to convince our would be adversaries that is not worth the fight against us. Mackenzie has used this phrase when she talks about preparing for war. We want to be Strong Enough that, if we wind up in conflict, our troops live in the enemy dies. When she says it, it sounds better. With that georgia accent. But the core point for me is that you want to have enough military capability and credibility to fight, that we will prevent the worst from happening in the first place. Were at a point in National Defense strategy were china and russia have become our top concerns for planning. Heaven forbid we actually fight them. We have to now go back to the old line that the purpose of military forces in the future must largely be to prevent war from happening. I duly, that would always be true. But is especially true when you deal with a Nuclear Armed superpower. When you think about general principles for defense planning, who might you fight, against whom, who would fight with you, how many wars at a time and what does the war look like, what margin of insurance or advantage or over match do you seek so the enemy will hopefully not want to fight you in the first place . What i was saying to those of you think we spend too much on the military, what i would submit to you is that we already have a fairly modest and minimal set of standards for how to define the answers to those questions. Ever since the National Defense strategy of 2018 and continue now with secretary alston, were only planning to fight one more at a time. For a long time through the cold war and after, at least we hypothetically envision being able to fight to at a time. The goal was to make sure that if we get involved in one more someplace, no aggressor sees a window of opportunity or weakening of deterrence elsewhere. You want to prevent opportunistic aggressors from seizing on the fact that you are already engaged in one place and attacking you at the same time. That is a nice standard to have gives an extra margin of insurance and also gives you an extra margin in case youre wrong about how many forces would be required to win a given conflict. By the way, we are always wrong about that, because military planning is an imperfect enterprise. Back in the Bush Administration years, that administration thought that defeating Saddam Hussein might take 5 to 10 times as much pain, suffering in american casualties is a dead. Luckily in that case, we exaggerated or overemphasized or over inflated our best prognostications of what the war would look like. The second Bush Administration made exactly the opposite problem. What im trying to convey is not a political point about agendas, it is more a point about military planning. In military planning, if you get even within 25 to 50 of the ballpark of what you think you need to win the war, and that turned out to be validated by events, that is about as accurate as you will be. So they two more capability gives you an extra margin of error. That was a nice thing to have when we could do it when iraq and north korea were the chief concerns. It wound up being harder to defeat even the taliban and isis and al qaeda than we thought. We did not have complete success, even against those much more limited capabilities. Today we plan on being able to defeat either russia or china, not both at the same time. By the way, if we do wind up fighting russia or china, we dont assume that north korea will try to attack at the same moment. We want to maintain limited deterrence against them on the peninsula. Otherwise, not assume additional conflict. Similarly with iran. Were only assuming one bit more at a time as a planning framework for the military. Will have a little bit of a debate in a few minutes about how much is enough to sustain that strategy, but i think it is worth dwelling a little bit on the fact that that is a fairly modest set of planning criteria for what a superpower with 60 allies around the world really needs to have. Also, we have just seen a period of two decades of conflict in which the United States did fight two wars at the same time not a very good job we had to do both simultaneously. Against much lesser foes that we are talking about today. That is the framework. Let me asked my colleague to call up a few slides. I will give you a little bit of background of the Defense Budget and try to race through a couple of additional points before the conversation on stage. This is to remind you of the Historical Perspective of where we are today. We are below the peak of the iraq and afghanistan conflicts in the size of the u. S. Defense budget once you adjust for inflation, but we are well above the cold war. This doesnt really answer any bottom line question, because dollars dont fight dollars on the battlefield, dollars by capabilities that hopefully are adequate to win wars or deter them. That is my first graphic to remind you about where we are. There was a mini build up in the trump years, as you can see. It was shorter than the buildup we have after 9 11 or the buildup we had during the vietnam conflict or the vacant peacetime buildup of the 1980s. Cold war numbers right between 500 billion a year and 750 billion a year. Just to give you a little bit of a sense of the international perspective. David mentioned that, depending on how you count it, we spend more than the next six, eight, 10 countries combined. That is not the ultimate question, but it is worth knowing as a matter of input who is putting resources into their militaries. There is some good news if he put the Defense Budget in global perspective. I know this is a little hard to read. The United States on this graph a couple years ago was spending about 38 of the world total of all expenditures on armed forces. Our nato allies added in another 17 . All of nato combined is 56 of World Military spending. That is good news and bad news. It is good in the sense that we have a lot of rich allies. Were spending a lot on military. Many have not been spending it well and not spending as much as we think they should. And by the way, they all represent obligations, because now we have to have a big enough and Strong Enough American Military to defend all of them. Is not just their Defense Budgets add to our own, but their territorial protection becomes our burden as well, as if it were american soil. That is what the nato pact really means. I want you to have some sense of resource allocation. We go to the next chart. It will continue this. All the other allies around the world, and another 12 of total World Military spending. The Usled Coalition of nato allies, asian allies, other major security partners, including in the middle east, it represents about 68 of all World Military spending. That should give us confidence that we are in a pretty strong position. But it should not give us any kind of overconfidence for the very reason that most of the conflicts we might fight would be near adversaries own soil. Also, dollars dont fight dollars, you dont have to have a Defense Budget anywhere near the size of the United States and its allies to defeat us. Just asked the taliban. They just won a war with a defense or military budget of their own, probably somewhere in the range of one 1000s of our budget. I want you to see these inputs but not to think they are conclusive analyses or predictions of outcomes in any hypothetical conflict. Just a couple more. We can go fast. This is giving you a sense. Mackenzie and i were talking on the sidelines that the 240 billion estimate of the Chinese Military budget is highly debated and uncertain by plus or 50 . In other words, it can be well into the 300 billion range when you convert. It could be even higher than that. It is somewhere between one third and one half of American Military spending. Easily the secondbiggest budget on earth. It has been doubling every 7 to 10 years and will probably keep doubling every 7 to 10 years. It is less than 2 of the china gdp, but their gdp is substantial enough that it is still a lot of money. Most of all, the more we worry about fighting against china is near their short and far from our shore. That is the fundamental reason why, even though these numbers are important to look at, i dont think they could come anywhere close to being a bottom Line Assessment of whether we spent enough on the military. A couple more to break down the granularity of the Defense Budget. If youre curious about which military services been the most, at this point, it is the navy and air force. Although bear in mind, the air force budget includes a lot of our intelligence budget out of the 850 billion in total u. S. National Defense Budgeting right now, 100 billion is the intelligence budget. Hidden within the Defense Department. Sort of hidden in plain sight, because the number 100 billion is now public in unclassified. Every other detail about the intelligence budget is classified, more or less. About 100 billion of that is overall defense spending. Much of it is in the air force to put up satellites and otherwise maintain technical capability. The navy budget includes the marine corps, because the department of the navy includes the marine corps. The department of the air force includes the space force, which is tiny, but still expensive given all the satellites. The army used to be the biggest Budget Service back when it was bigger and very active in iraq and afghanistan. It has now become the smallest of the big three departments. A lot of activities have been essentially shared across the whole defense base and represent almost 150 billion worth of total spending themselves. Finally, if youre wondering functionally how with ben, this is called the breakdown by appropriations title. We spend almost 200 billion a year on military personnel, as we should, for the all volunteer force. We spent about 330 billion on operations and maintenance. The reason the 23 number is higher is because it included a lot of ukraine money. 330 is probably closer to what it will be next year. We spent another 3 billion between procurement and research development, test and evaluation acquiring new weaponry. About 300 billion is investment for the future, the acquisition budget, 300 some billion is operations, which includes the civilian salaries, but also equipment repair, training, recruiting, many other things. Finally, almost 200 billion is for the men and women of the all volunteer force. I think i would like to now set the stage for the conversation that will follow. What i would like you to do is understand, basically, how i did my calculation to argue that we need small real growth in the Defense Budget above inflation. Therefore, i think the agreement between Speaker Mccarthy and President Biden from last spring, the default avoidance the agreement that is now in some degree a flux and in jeopardy as we try to Bring Congress back to town and see if they can come up with a budget, i think that agreement actually was not quite enough money for the military. My colleagues on stage, or at least one of them, may tell you it is not nearly enough. I think it is about 10 billion too little. The way i did the calculation was to take the forest the pentagon believes we should have for the future, that 1. 3 million activeduty military personnel, along with the modernization agenda that we believe is important for deterring china and russia and improving future capabilities. Take that budget and then project that out over a ten year period. Look at what kinds of expectations we should have about cost growing faster than currently budgeted for, what kind of expectations we should have about weaponry, inevitably causing more to build than we think. By the way, you shouldnt be surprised by that. Modernizing weaponry is the same thing as inventing new weaponry. Why would you ever think you could set invention to a schedule or exact cost . Im not trying to be complete defender of each and every program in u. S. Defense industry, but as a rule, you should expect costs to grow in some cases for technologies we dont know how to build when we start the program and have to figure it out along the way. The process of invention is inevitably a predictable. You will see cause growth in that area. That in a personnel account, it is not a good time to figure out whether and the personnel account, a good time to see if we can save money on housing, or some benefits. Generally speaking, we pay our volunteer well. They are doing incredibly well. They are being asked to do a lot. They dont make overtime and fewer and fewer people want to join. We have a crisis in volunteering at recruiting right now, which means, one of the next times i am appear will be a conversation about whether we need to seriously consider the draft. It is getting to that point. Before we get to that point, we should protect robots robust military compensation. We owe it to our men and women in uniform and we certainly need to make sure we incentivize people to join the military and stay in the military. Military readiness is reflected in the maintenance budget. This is already today a difficult and dangerous world. There is the potential for a crisis and conflict already today, which means, we cant skimp on maintenance, we cant skimp on training, we cant skimp on forward presence abroad. It is hard to think of a lot of ways you can save money there. I got a few specific ideas here and there to save a couple of hundred million, couple of billion. My old buddy who was comptroller of the pentagon said, finding savings in the military budget is hard, but keep trying. That was the title of one of his papers he wrote. He was right, youve got to keep looking for the savings, but when you find them, it is usually a couple of hundred million here, a couple of hundred million there. It is real money, worth dipping down and picking up the sidewalks, to fair phrase the former senator. It will not solve the dilemma of unmet needs in an 850 billion enterprise. I mentioned before, i like to quote mckenzie, we want our troops to not only be well compensated, but have the best equipment in the world so that we fight, they live, our enemy dies. Again, mckenzie puts it better than i do, but i am quoting her almost exactly. More importantly, we are at a time where we must be successful of russia and china, rather than fighting it out, figuring it out after the fact monthly smoke settled and maybe the Nuclear Mushroom clouds disappear. We dont want to get to that point. I would say, for contingencies in the western pacific over taiwan, for the terrence our nato allies and in eastern europe, we have to be pretty robust, especially our ability in our current forswear china or russia may perceive an achilles heel. They may perceive they can knock out power commander control, knock out our full at basis, knock out our Forward Deployed combat units in such a way they have a winter window of opportunity to successfully complete some kind of aggression in their neighborhood before we can get ourselves back off the map and come back at them. In my paper, i recommend a few savings and a few cuts in certain weapons, and i will talk about those in the discussion, but i also think that there are few specific abilities we still have that i want to close as quickly as possible to make sure china and russia dont see a pearl harbor like opportunity to knock us out of the ballpark for a month or two, so they can then complete an aggression, hoping that we somehow wont have the commitment to build ourselves back up and come back at them. I think that is the most likely way in which deterrence could fail. Not that an enemy thinks they could outlook us, but they think they can knock us out of the fight long enough to do their dirty business in their own neighborhoods, before we can come and reverse the aggression. We dont want to have those achilles dont want to have those fun abilities. There are some areas where the pentagon has not proposed enough spending to readdress some of those concerns. I realize this is a big, broad picture overview, but we are getting some of the details in the discussion and i look forward to being joined by my colleagues on stage. Thanks, mike. Great job. Treatment i want to start by reading something that jane harman and eric adalat wrote from the commission on National Defense strategy. They said that, we understand that fights over the top line budget are often shorthand for being strong on defense, however, spending more on defense does not guarantee we will deter china and rollback russian aggression. Spending less will almost certainly fail. It is also true that buying incrementally more of the same mix of weapons and Technology Wont produce a force necessary to meet the challenges posed by an increasingly aggressive china and russia. More alone, even better, better is better. It is hard to argue with that. With that sort of starting text, mckenzie, do you think that we can meet what you think are the defense needs in the United States with the kind of picture budget that mike was talking about, 1 real growth annually over the next decade or not . Thank you for taking me back to school this morning, dave. We had to read the book, actually, not to talk about the book. I think it was basically two years of my life answering that question ever since alongside this guy, which has been a lot of fun. So, the points, the answer to your question and the answer to the oped is, if we live in a world where you can clean sheet the Defense Budget, we have more than enough money, we are swimming in money, we are like scrooge mcduff in his gold coins money. That is not how the process works. There is no set baseline either for mandatory spending, which it auto increases above inflation every year. There is no debate. Discussion in congress, money tacked on, and we do that because we do that, for what are primarily healthcare programs. The kids defense sort of preestablished baseline, what is the president say, it is a little bit based, sometimes linked to strategy, sometimes more or less than other times. It is really much like your pac man chart is on holidays. Which is great, the federal budget is where the dollars go, essentially on the mandatory side the house, i called the pacman, the blue, those are essentially healthcare programs, for the most part. Within our own Defense Budget, it looks just like that too. It is a microcosm of federal ending. It looks like a pacman we have, spending, pending on autopilot that does not change year over year substantially, unless there is a total fundamentally rewrite in our global strategy. That is like a fundamental review. There have been attempts at doing that, although what we tend to do more often is chipped away, where we slowly cut to reduce the top line. If you can clean sheet a budget, build it from scratch every year and have a whiteboard by you, there is enough money. That is not the world we live in, it is not what budget it is with a 550 member board of directors. Essentially, it is strength and changes quite each year, essentially in recruiting crisis we have been having for several years now. Most of the Defense Budget is not available for strategic choices and changes year over year. It is probably less than 18 . Within that 18 or so to 20 can you make a lot of changes and shifts in reductions . Sure. There is consequences and maybe some benefits, but i just want to present the budget as it is, not as we wish it to be. We dont start from a whiteboard every year. We start with how we budgeted last year and change from there. So, is 1 real enough, or not . So, cdl has done great work over many years. They put up their longterm Defense Budget report. What they find, depending on the major accounts, operations and maintenance, research and development, whatever, there is a tend to exceed inflation by 2 to 8 each year. Exceed inflation. When you have total growth under inflation, then you have under budgeted deals. You have to cover those spreads with a top line that did not even meet inflation. If you ask me is 1 above inflation enough, but the typical annual cost growth of the budget just to exist on autopilot is 2 to 8 above inflation, you have to cut to exist. Just to maintain the military as today, no changes, no strategic thought, no big idea, you have to cut every year to exist. So, is 1 enough . As long as you are diminishing your global objective, your mission, your manpower, and your workload. Travis, where are you on this question . I think 1 real growth per year is not enough. I think somewhere in the range of 1 real growth to 3 real growth is what will be necessary to afford the type of additional investments that might outline as being deemed necessary. I will briefly sketch where that comes from. Mikes paper has a series of spending reductions that are worthy ideas, but the feasibility of implementing some of those proposals i think will be difficult, just to focus on the congressional side of things. Each year, the dod proposes certain divestments into weapons system and each year, congress blocks or limits some of those divestments. That means that i think because of constraints on congresss ability to implement reforms, and dods ability to implement reforms, the savings we would get out of some of the proposals of mikes paper would be less than we would hope for. To put that differently, the exit value of the savings is probably less than what is theoretically possible. Since we will be able to save less than those proposals, in order to invest in the types of things that might outline as being necessary, we will probably have to increase the top line. One more comment on the 1 to 3 benchmark that i mentioned from 2016 to 2023, average real growth in the u. S. Defense budget has been 2. 3 percent in real time, including supplemental funds. I think that a 1 to 3 target given that 2. 5 is the outcome is a reasonable projection that affect some of the agreements policymakers are reaching. I am a little concerned that you guys are conceding defeat before you have fought the battle here. If i gave you that same spiel and i said, well we are stuck with Social Security the way it is, and it is going to run out of money in 2033, there is no way we are going to cut benefits on old people, so we have got to find a way to increase spending on Social Security, or if i said, well, healthcare grows faster than Everything Else, we need to keep pumping more money into healthcare, this seems like a dangerous way to run the government budget. Assume that everything screwed up will be screwed up forever, and find a way to borrow money to pay for it. I understand what you are saying, makenzie, that if we cut the Defense Budget hello 1 they would have to make some ugly choices. I kind of wonder, well isnt that the point . How are we ever going to get a efficient Defense Budget or efficient healthcare budget if we dont say, look, you guys have got to figure out how to do better with this amount of money. So, i am going to fight the premise of that question, which is that government is efficient. It is not, right . If the Defense Department were a private company, theyd be bankrupt, chapter 11, sued repeatedly, taken to court and i mean, it is not even but that is not my question. My question is, if you give them a budget constraint, they might have to meet it. You are saying, they take 80 of the fending off the table, i am saying, fourth them not to take it off the table. Right. Let me revisit one of the main points, which i hope answers your question, which if i dont, i know you will not let me off the hook. I talk about the limited, strategic choices a Decision Maker actually has. That is important what to focus on. Basically, eight dials or real stats you can move up or move down, if you are the most senior person, you are the secretary, the president , whatever chairman of this committee. Those range in things from more great power, competition, less midtier defense, iran, north korea, counterterrorism, kind of what you want your military to specialize in more than other skill sets, or capabilities. Then, you have four sides, like mike talked about, readiness, total dollars spent, and modernization, how modern is it, and military is always enduring legacy and brand stuff. So, that is kind of what you are working with in terms of making choices and changes. You are pretty limited. Those are big choices and changes and they have big dollars sales to them. Fundamentally, that is still a fraction of total spending. Like i said, you want major muscle movements, you have to make major changes to outcomes that you would expect the military to achieve. I see the opposite happening. What i see is the military is super walmart, federal agencies. It is the easy button everybody pushes for everything. It is not moving in the direction of left, or be better at the fewer things we want you to do, china, taiwan scenario, et cetera. It is actually the House Appropriations bill that just came out, we have a whole bunch of other federal agencies really good at counter drug that should be doing that. The border, fentanyl, these are all really important things and i care about them too. I dont want the Defense Department doing these things. I dont see a serious discussion about me what you want them to do, and i can tell you where i am going to take the money from. And i could, and washington can, absolutely. Not saying there is not a dollar in the Defense Budget, by any sense. Im just saying, we have to be realistic about the outcomes those dollars energy. Just a couple of things i would add, david, it is an important ying and yang. We always want this budget conversation. Some of the specific things i propose, which i know a couple of them are not widely supported to my left here today, some are. Some are, some art, which include the navy prefers to operate one crew per ship. There is a logic to that. I have never been a sailor. I dont claim to understand details of how any ship in a given class could very from any other ship in that class, it still strikes me we could be more efficient. We already apply with minesweepers and some summaries, to have a couple of cruise work the same ships, you might train in home waters on one ship that fly across the ocean to meet up with your ship at a port in korea or japan, and the cruise swapout. I think we should ask the navy to do more of that. Culturally, and otherwise, it is hard, logistically it is hard. I am in favor of pushing them to do it. That is one of the reforms in my paper. Another thing, and i know makenzie does not like this , if you go to the headquarters in the pentagon, there are a lot of jobs that strike you, these young, strapping young men and women in uniform are doing the kind of work that looks like i do, they are sitting down at desks. Why not make some of those jobs civilian jobs, where the civilians dont need to go to training, they dont need professional military training, they dont need to go through various things to work their way up the rank structure. There are a number of maybe 300,000 out of the 1. 3 million active duty jobs are essentially like that. I am not suggesting all of them be turned into civilian jobs, but because of having the efficiencies of someone not having to do those military specific tasks, you can perhaps cut your work hours by 20 for whatever number of jobs you decide is in that category. I would like to put pressure on the od to look for those jobs. I dont know how to do it exactly the right number, but i have an estimate in my paper. One more specifically programmatic idea. I think we have a new weapons capability in the United States and if we have to fight a new year war, heaven forbid, we basically lost before we know the outcome. On the other hand, we now have two countries with big Nuclear Forces simultaneously problematic for us. One of which is willing to throw around it Nuclear Saber a little bit. Weve got to find a nuanced approach to nuclear modernization. I am in favor of building the be 21 bomber, probably because it is important for conventional missions. We will use that or the real world in conventional missions. I am in favor of using the marine force, youve got to keep our sailors safe undersea. I am really looking at do we look at a second place for building plutonium pits for Nuclear Weapons in south carolina, as we are currently planning to build for the department of energy. Do we need a longrange handoff weapon, stealthy cruise mission, and can we delay the replacement of the icbm, a closer call, but i think it is worth looking at. These are the kind of proposals i have in my paper, none of which are easy to implement, and the sum total of which, as travis hinted at, i actually got them through, youre saving maybe 15 billion a year, which is a lot worth of savings, but compared to 850, a moderate percentage. Lieutenant commander, what do you think about this more than one crew per ship thing, and what else . They keep me on the shore, because that is probably safer for everyone involved. I think i will probably steer clear of telling my colleagues how they should conduct their business. I wanted to Say Something to remind everybody of something that might said in introductory comments. There is this classic paper by bob hale about how to stearate efficiencies in the Defense Budget. The title of the papers quote, keep trying, but be realistic. I think that is a key description of what is happening on stage now. Mike is emphasizing the need to keep trying, mackenzie and i are saying, we need to be realistic. Here is why i think this dynamic is so important, i dont think you can realistically hope to achieve want to represent real growth in Defense Budget of what i think will be necessary, unless you are actively pursuing the types of reforms that mike outlines in his paper. The logic behind that, i think it is fairly straightforward. How can we, in good conscience, go to the american taxpayer and ask them to continue investing enormous amounts into the fence, unless we are demonstrating we are making efforts to be more efficient . The debate has to be about the specifics of some of the programs, but the tension between these two impulses is essential to achieving any of our defenses. Makenzie, you made a point at something you wrote, i think 14 Reform Efforts in the last eight congresses. Is there any way to change the dynamics so that we dont end up with a situation which both you and travis has referred to as, there are things that should be done, that we cant do because the 530 members of the board of directors wont do them. As travis said, buying weapons the pentagon does not want because Congress Wants them. Is there any political economy thing that will change this dynamics, or do you think we have to live with it . Yes, there is, actually. I have thought a lot on that question. Basically, how i summarize those Reform Efforts, release pending almost two decades now, jealous reformers are overfocused and have the pentagon buys things, where of course they buy things and labor, services, i. T. , technology, labor and software. Weapons systems are increasingly the commodity. Until reformers start to think differently and broader in scope about what covers reform, so similarly, you see flow from that, the kind of reform ideas that come, which focus on one account for weapons systems, particularly procurement me as it occurs with the operations of system maintenance, or the research and development and balance i would argue between procurement and ratio. Once there is a broader scope of a broader view of total defense investments and what can be reformed, then it opens the aperture. Here are my big takeaways that tom and i wrote about after we convened a group, some friends involved, kind of looking we kind of took a scalpel to the Defense Budget line by line, and took a back and looked at it with members of congress. Physically, a couple of things on the reform, serious defense reform is weaker than the purchase and acquisition, changing how the pentagon buys things. That is important to some extent although i think it has been over reformed, and other blocks labor services, software. Serious defense reform is the patient work of many years. Can you cut this weapons system like, okay, we cut, we are smart, thoughtful, that is great, that does not make you smart or thoughtful, in my opinion. That is an easy decision that makes you look at that probably has an argument by someone somewhere, does not mean you should cut. It requires leadership. You have to build coalitions to have real defense reform that has any meaningful money behind it me the kind that mike was talking about. You have to build coalitions with other parties and committees and jurisdictions in congress with Service Organizations like the Armed Services wrenches, their own veteran Services Organizations and others. You have to do actual work and outreach to build a case, make a case and bring them in. Then, most reforms for the Defense Budget, including some michael talked about, which i firmly support, there is an cost before you save a single dollar. Usually, the costs are two to three years before you reach a savings that come about five years later. Almost no reform can i find that is not cost money and implement. You want to close basis, you have to pay people to close bases. You have to do environmental remediation, new construction on another base if youre losing certain capabilities at one, like the hangar in maine, losing pa hangers and we have to go and build new ones. I can keep going down the list. Serious reform is not like receiving resending rpe down the line and saying i am reformed. Congressional work program light in the budget. Program. Travis, i think from the back of the envelope i did, about 35 of the Defense Budget is personnel. Personnel are expensive. We know that wages and Healthcare Benefits are going to rise faster than the rest of the budget, probably. We know, as mike said, there are choices to be made about uniform versus a. M. Unless we are going to replace the armed forces with robots and ai, which i suppose we will have to talk about, how does the pentagon get its arm around that cost and is is that just something we will have to accept . I will focus on congress and answering that question. I guess we have established that congress is the root of all evil. I see a theme. I thought it was china, but i guess im having second thoughts. From 2016 to 2023, congress added an aggregate 80 million to procurement accounts. That 80 billion amount is larger than the congressional adjustments that were made to the three other major defenses ending accounts combined. The point of me telling you that is to emphasize something that mckinsey just said, that Congress Continues to address the Defense Budget and programmatic terms, primarily through the medium of procurement, also through rmd. They take much less interest in terms of making spending adjustments to the military personnel account. What does it require in order to make reform to military personnel on the hill . As with all things, outcomes on the hill depend on the actions of individuals. You need policy entrepreneurs who are willing to frame problems and build coalitions in order to enact any type of meaningful change. If we are thinking, i guess about what is the current pipeline of defense policy entrepreneurs in congress, because United States has been blessed since the end of world war ii with having some incredibly powerful and effective defense policy entrepreneurs, that i think for various reasons relating to the political situation in the country, political rewards associated with becoming an expert in defense policy, that pipeline of defense policy entrepreneurs on the hill has strong shrunk a lot. I think in thinking about how you would implement any type of reform is identifying those member of congress that would be willing to lead their colleagues to Better Outcomes. Unfortunately, a pretty small list of people. Do you want to end that by declaring your candidacy for congress . [ laughter ] mike, i want to ask , i think there are a lot of things on peoples minds about what is going on right now. I want to address ukraine in two respects. The one that comes to mind first, just as a leg person, i have just been startled by sometimes the stories out of ukraine sound like when we were fighting world war i with people in trenches. Sometimes, i feel like i am watching a star wars movie where the ukrainians are sinning sending unmanned drones and hitting apartments, or whatever they are trying to get in moscow. So, what is it that we have learned from a, how ukraine fights, and b, how the russians seem to be better at defense and offense . What have we learned from ukraine that we should keep in mind as we tweak the u. S. Defense budget . A good question. I would first speak briefly to the previous conversation. To converse in the sense that, if you look at the action between congress and the executive branch over the years, and travis was looking back wistfully at some of the great reformers, senators, great men and women of the cold war and postcold war period, i think u. S. Military personnel policy overall is very good today. There are potential tweaks here and there. I put it in sort of from a budget point of view. In negative times, i dont know how to shrink the military personnel account. That is another way of saying that we as a country are paying our men and women well. And we are proud of it and we should continue doing it. We are not making them rich, but they are reasonably well compensated compared to people of similar age and educational background. In fact, they make more than about 90 of their civilian counterparts. They dont make overtime. They dont control their own schedule. They deployed to combat zones when told to go, they cant take their families with them, they dont get the help for their families they might need and a lot of people in the military have young kids. I am not suggesting they are overpaid by any stretch of the imagination, but i think we should feel generally good about the compensation system. The flip side, there is not a lot to. The one thing i thought that was not particularly optimized when i got into this is ms. 30 years ago is the way we did military pension. And we fixed that. It used to be you had to stay in for 20 years. If you did, you got a very good pension. If you stay in for 11 years, 19 months, you got zip. To me, this was a perverse group of incentives by people staying would make 20, a lot of people would get out before 10, because why bother, unless you are going to commit to being in their 50 more years, you are not going to get a pension anyway. Now, we are doing it a lot more like the 401 k s the fear that is the success of congress and the executive branch working together over the years. I wanted to put that positive spin into things, which then comes back to this uncomfortable reality it is hard to cut the defense Defense Budget when you have spent 50 years building up a compensation system, even though it has cracks and strength, and shortfalls, has worked pretty good for the good of the country. I like the way you framed it as usual. You are brilliant, even on fields that are your first order of business. The way i would put it, yeah, more strikes me as being like the past that as being futuristic. There are good debates about this now. Some of my good friends and favorite scholars in the field have recently written about this. Stephen dental wrote an excellent article in Foreign Affairs about what a lot of this war still looks like world war i. Fred hagan just wrote an article about how stick with ukrainians, they may still achieve a major new weaponry they had should get in the future. I lean toward the interpretation to the extent there is a disagreement, but we will find out on the battlefield. Lesson one, you have got to stay flexible and supple because the lessons are being learned much by month. Lesson two would be, youve got to make sure your commanding control survives the initial attack. Thank goodness we helped president zelenskyy and his government do that. The cia deserves a lot of credit here the National Security agency deserves a lot of. They kept the Ukrainian Cyber systems robust, kept president zelenskyy himself aware of the dangers of his own presidency, so he was more careful in those days and weeks. Decapitation strikes are i think the number one worry i would have. On the tactical battlefield, these drones and these apps that let you send targeting information about where the russians might be if you are a regular citizen, all of that, they are cool and they do work, until the russians figure out how to counter them. That is essentially the argument in the Foreign Affairs piece, for every measure, there is a counter measure. In all balance, earth is still a protective medium against explosives. You got to have ways of communicating, ways of knowing where the enemy is, that is where the competition happens between the drones, anti drones, jammers, surface to air missiles. That competition will continue. One side they get a bit of an advantage, the other side may get a bit of an advantage, but so far, more or less a wash. Again, if you can strike hard in early with the capability the enemy does not you have and is not prepared to get, then you can be effective. If you leave yourselves vulnerable to that kind of strike, you could really be in trouble. That is why the u. S. Military posture in the western pacific is generally still problematic. We depend on big bases in okinawa and guam, locations like that to defend taiwan. We have got to go toward a more dispersed system of not just alternative basis, and the pentagon is doing, but unmanned, underwater systems that can carry sensors, ships, and help taiwan require those capabilities in greater numbers to make sure the chinese dont see that sort of pearl harbor opportunity. That is my obsession. It is more about resilience and survivability that improving our salary. We should do all of those things, but i obsess more about improving our resilience and survivability. Met travis, you have more on what we have learned from ukraine and the times of the stories of the fighter jets and fleets of ai powered drones, is our Defense Budget prepared for this kind of technological change . I think one implication of ukraine that i think is important is, i think the conflict so far has emphasized to me, at least, the need for the u. S. Military to maintain some degree of balance in the force, by which i mean Like Star Wars balancing the force. [ laughter ] not becoming overly invested, or committed to the highest Technology Solutions to military problems, although in some cases, we are going to want to make those types of investments. The reason that follows, as mike mentioned, the crane conflict has been a conflict where lowerlevel technologies, classic technologies have often proven quite effective. Of course, the battle is moved and counter moved. Somebody explodes an opportunity, it goes back and forth. I would be concerned about the United States getting into inner positions in the future where our military forces are not able to operate alongside our allies and partners military forces of the type we have seen demonstrated in ukraine, because we have got too much in the higher end technologies, which by the way, because of classification and other things, might make it difficult to be sharing information or operating alongside partners. There is still place for some of the lower tech approaches. Makenzie, you once wrote two policymakers, for instance, cutting staff by 25 , serious reform comes to eliminating 100 of something. I really like that line. I want to make a question about what we should eliminate. Does it make is for us still build huge aircraft carriers . Are they just sitting ropes for fancy attack missiles and stuff . I thought you were going to ask about a different article i wrote. You wrote a lot of articles. [ laughter ] not a book, i dont have any experience as a book writer. Mike has the experience as a book writer, excellent book writer, might i add. I propose the entire secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Later this week, i will call for elimination of, it will break the brains of washington spaceman. You are talking about capability, i want to talk organizations. When i say the elimination of something, but the future of the carrier. Michael, it is not that simple. I understand the thinking by some in this town, if xyz does not survive the threat range, the Rocket Missile range of china, it is not useful anymore. I dont want to get to the war. Wars are really expensive. I would rather prevent it. Global peace time, presents assurance, dissuasion, competition, gray zones, everything you can think of that is showing the flag, Something Like that. These are carriers primarily to do that. There arent enough of them, at least according to the combat commanders, we have a supply demand miss match that is so fundamentally out of whack, i am not sure how to address that when you talk about this or that capability of the carrier, i think broader in terms of the deterrence and presence, what we use are carriers for, and avoiding the war, so much more expensive than maintaining this giant military at peace time. I have more than 100 questions, i will not ask them. On the carrier, i spent about eight pages on the carrier question. I would say, we are a slightly smaller fleet, not letting commanders have much say in how we use them, they be there more for deterrent purposes, also having longerrange, Unmanned Aircraft flying off so they dont have to be within 500 miles of chinas sure to be effective. As makenzie points out, they are effective for deterrence of north korea, iran, other contingencies. Essentially, if we wound up in a fight with china, heaven forbid, the carriers might end up being more useful in the oil tankers headed for china if we wound up doing a counter blockade. China locks taiwan, which i think is a better strategy than trying to evade. And we decide we want to block that blockade, we will need carriers to do so in the pacific. We may also want to use carriers or summary to threaten chinas the line to inflict plain pain to force a negotiated settlement. We will have to get into a world of those kinds of somewhat messy ways of thinking of military outcomes and carriers can still have a role, but maybe not right up against the shore of china. This is taking a depressing turn. Welcome to our world. [ laughter ] turn to questions. If you have a question, raise your hand, site stand up. Tell us who you are and remember questions and with a question mark. There are a couple over here. Why dont you go to the isle there. We will take two or three at a time. Stand up, tell us who you are. John reviewed. I work for capital one. Thanks for hosting this. The gl account this is an acronym freezone. The overseas Contingency Operation account. I got it. I want to think about the ocl account, i think about it in the context of, something there to account for almost one time costs, in addition to the base. It also has me thinking of the discussion about upfront costs, essentially the reform, sometimes in addition to the constituents who dont want to change things, sometimes the money aspect. We cant spend that because we dont have the money. Is there any oversight for establishing an account for what are essentially one time cost that you implement to save money over the future, even better than war costs, you can attach, and the payback period, it just seems like a much better use of ocl. Over there to the gentleman in the blue. Thanks. Sean carberry, National Defense magazine. You fairly and rightly knocked congress through the discussion, but one big piece of this that is easy, low hanging fruit would be actually passing budgets on time, not continuing resolution that was the actual purchase power loss, delays, inefficiencies. What, if anything can be done differently at this point to get that message across that that is arguably the easiest thing to gain efficiency and budget power in defense . Want to pass it . Hi, my name is caroline reed. I am coming from the embassy of japan. I am hearing at the beginning a lot of comparisons with cold war spending. Basically, we all know that came to a head with the fall of the berlin wall, and after that came peace dividends. I am wondering what your opinions are on what kind of Global Conditions you would need to see before we could ever take a look at perhaps decreasing the spending of defense, or should it continue on this deterrent path, increasing forever . Great questions. I am going to suggest not everybody answer every one. The first question on the domestic side, is there something we can do to encourage congress to spend money on things that would pay off in the long run, even if it costs in the short run . The want to take that one . I can take that, briefly. One idea that i was kicking around last year, which was just borrowed from something they had been kicking around in the 80s. Creating a reserve account that would be money set aside to deal with the unpredictability that is inherent to inflation forecast in defense spending, which has been a huge issue the last two years. Inflation has been around a lot. It has been volatile. The Defense Budget is structured around a series of assumptions around inflation. If the assumptions are wrong, you may have less money available in terms of purchasing power than you need, or you could have too much beer the idea behind this reserve account is, you set aside some money in order to make the Defense Budget hole, defending on where deflation actually happens. If it ends up you dont need to spend or to make of oracle inflation, the money stays in the account. It creates this way of dealing with an inflation issue that i think would be more rigorous, and probably have Better Outcomes than alternatives. That is one of those proposals that i also think marriage merits consideration. Can congress somehow structure scoring, so you dont get penalized for doing things that cost money on your one and two, and save money in year eight through 10 . I like your idea a lot. No one is looking at it, to your question, or at least i am not hearing chatter about it. It is not a bad idea. It is worth trying. For breaking the Defense Budget into more of how the state works there n investments, exactly, where you have capital and operating budgets, so where you have a clearer picture of what lies true military capability that can go and get the bad guy. I am a good catholic. That is fine. Kind of, what buys the tip of the sphere capability to go and fight and win when needed, short of that bureaucracy that is Everything Else, the annual budget. Because, of course, capital ensures longerterm. It takes five years to get this building, get this carrier, whatever. That way, policymakers have a much clearer sense of where the dollars go. You can think it is all quickly going to aircraft carriers. I prefer that. Sorry, i will have to take the second question. I have long advocated that congress, there paycheck should be sequestered for each day passed start of the fiscal year, not a totally wacky idea, because they probably get their job of some consequence for actual members that they are imposing. Let me help my colleague there. What are the downsides of operating on a continuing resolution for the Defense Budget remarks how much time do we have . We dont have very much. Mike, do you want to try that . In short, you can start new programs. If you are trying to be supple, learn lessons from ukraine and react, then you are delayed six months, or what have you. When you try to get into longer term maintenance, that accounts for longerterm acquisition me for what mackenzies colleague general for acquisitions. All of those things that would allow you to do serious, longer term planning become hostage to this process. Really, it interferes with strategy, it also interferes with Good Business administration and economics. Thank you. Is there any hope we could have a peace dividends in my lifetime . No, not for us, dude. We are too old. It is going to take 10 to 30 years at least to settle the state of great power relations to a happier course, in my estimation. Obviously, i am violating yogi bears personable of never trying to predict the future. It is easier to predict the past, usually safer. Even if we do well with china, and we have the means to stabilize this relationship, but i think it will take one to three decades. So, you and i are in our 60s, right . I think our odds are modest for a big peace dividend in our lifetime. Josh, howard brookings, formally assistant secretary of defense. Mike, you did a wonderful job of putting our spending in the context of other nations. I think it is worthwhile to, so i am asking, if you would elaborate on the challenges involved in taking advantages of the defense spending in other nations. We have nato in some places, other defense things. As you are thinking about how much is enough and what should be done, could you talk a little bit about leveraging i spending . Thank you. National defense strategy. We have ultimately had a poor structure that was built for the past 30 years, and not necessarily that applies to defense threats we are likely to face over the next 20 or 30. Earlier this week, deputy secretary of defense enough a thoroughly significant change in approach, at least on the margins to purchase up to 2000 Autonomous Vehicles that would be used in a fundamentally different way. Can the department actually do that . Okay, going to the easy questions now. Leveraging our allies. I will start by maybe reiterating a point, using different language to clarify the point, our allies are both our greatest asset, but also an extension of our commit. We have 60 strategic allies and or partners around the world. 60. One third of all countries around the globe, we either have a formal treaty in which we say, we will treat their territory like our own, for all defense purposes, or something close to that by way of formal understanding, mostly in northeast asia, and broader middle east. What that means is, weve got a lot of places we might have to fight, and hopefully deter. So, i am amazed at the strength of our coalition. When i was in graduate school before the cold war ended, no jokes, the cold war was underway already by that point, but had not yet ended. All of the theories i read were talking about the likelihood that once the cold war ended, if it ended, there would be new blocks of power that would form because people would want a balance against each other. We have not seen that. We have seen countries that want to get into the u. S. Alliance system, even as we continue to make mistakes in our Foreign Policy. We made mistakes in vietnam earlier, mistakes of how we fought the iraq and afghanistan wars. People can still see into our democracy. They believe democracy is a better form of government because it is transparent and people change power. We have all of these allies supporting our alliances in ways that have ty nsekhe needed what i would prefer. Nonetheless, that is where the allies are usually help will, because they together constitute 30 of World Military bending, but they also give us 60 more places we have to worry about around the world. On balance, it is a very good thing for our brand strategy, based on the idea that we should not let eurasia tend to its own matters, because that did not work so well before world war i or world war ii. I think the grand strategy is important, but should not be seen as something where the allies contribution ways in and gives us additional asset. On the other hand, they know we have got there back and we know that it is going to be hard to convince them short of threatening to abandon the alliance, that they are going to have some help with these security challenges. Sometimes, and i will finish on this, the places where we most credibly threaten abandonment are the places where they are already ending the most. Donald trump did not like south korea, but south korea is an amazingly good ally that spends a lot on its military. Some of our northeastern allies, they may not be the best government in all cases, but theys tend to spend, five, six, eight of gdp on their military. Some of us spent too much, but they are burden sharing in some sense and sometimes using those forces against their own people. It is a little of a mixed bag. On balance, i think we will have to view the allied as a mixed bag in financial terms, but a huge asset in grand strategic terms. And the Autonomous Vehicles question . Travis . Sure, can we produce a large number of Unmanned Systems that perform Different Missions that have modular designs . Yes. We have done it before, during vietnam. Lightning bug was an unmanned system that was basically one of the first Unmanned Systems that went on to play a role in isr, supporting the vietnam war. The lesson in that case was that the air force had to create a series of exceptions to standard acquisition policy, and also had to form very close, iterative relationships with the industry in order to be able to generate these types of capabilities rapidly to respond to an operational environment. Can we do the same thing today with a collaborative combat program . Senior theology leaders are saying the right thing, definitely recognizing what is stated, but a lot less to do. Some of these challenges technologies not only procuring them and working with a different set of suppliers and all of that, but also trying to figure out how you reorganize your operations to take advantage of them and the history of technology is that incumbents often are the ones that struggled to do this. How much of a threat to the way that the pentagon is organized is the growth of Autonomous Vehicles, ai, and all of this stuff that really requires a different approach to using people and thinking . It is going to require a lot of really big changes, redesigning the structure of squadrons, having pilots of manned aircraft comfortable operating alongside Autonomous Vehicles. These are huge organizational and virtual changes. As is often the case of military innovation, you need Senior Leaders setting the tone from the top to let the rank and file understand that if they are taking actions to achieve these goals, it will be consistent with their advancement and Mission Organization and the air force deserves credit for having provided exactly that. I think we have time for a couple of more. The gentleman in the back. Is there another one . Okay. My name is roger coach eddie , i am an editorial contributor to the hill and. Im one of the few people in the room that claims no expertise whatsoever on the subject. It has been very informative. No, i am with you on that. Like most, lehman, if i could use the term, i tend to reduce the question two very simple propositions. In economic terms, what you usually ask is, if i am going out to dinner, i look at the menu. If i am looking at a house to buy, what do i pay for and what do i get . You can slice and dice the Defense Budget in many ways. The average person would be most comfortable with the geographic slicing and icing of the Defense Budget. That never comes up among professionals. If i could pose the question, i think it would be informative for those of us who have no expertise by saying, if we end up trillion dollars each year in defense, probably 250 billion is for your 250 billion is for east asia, 250 billion is for the middle east, and Everything Else is for the rest. If you had to address the question in the impossible way for an export and sort of say, okay, geographically, how much do we spend on defending our borders, how much do we spend of the budget defending our territory, and then pretend for a moment that you had to answer the question, okay, now lets extend that, how much more should we spend for this, that, or the other thing. Big mac i love the question, if i could start. Bill, my colleague here when i started at brookings 30 years ago, the late bill kaufman attempted to do what you pointed out in the last book he wrote. It was after the cold war ended me so he tried to adapt a little at least to the new world, although at that one, china had not risen to the way it is now. I was glad he did it and i repeated his percentages in my own book, defense 101. I talked about why it is so hard to answer the questions on the terms you just requested, because in fact, the forces that we have a broad, in which we have got that 1. 3 million u. S. Activeduty. About 200,000 are a broad on any given day. Mostly they are in japan, korea, germany, poland, uk, italy, and a few countries in the middle east with smaller numbers, and then at sea. A few hundred here, couple of thousand there, in places like australia, singapore, the netherlands, et cetera. So, most of those 200,000, however, dont really cost us more to have a broad then they do if we would have kept them at home, because the allies pay for a lot of additional calls. If you added the added cost to us, less than 10 of the cost of a given unit or person. It is not so much the bases are brought, it is the fact that we have these commitments to reinforcing the events of crisis or coupling. Then, you can start asking, if we did not have a commitment for south korea, for example, geographically challenging place for defense of a faraway, continental power like us. Of course, we had this debate in 1950, whether we should try to defend south korea. We decided no, until the day north korea invaded, and we changed our mind. A complete swing in north america strategic thinking. The forces we have in south korea now are about 30,000 day to day, 30,000 u. S. Military personnel. That is a tiny fraction of our defense capabilities, a little over 2 . If you want, you can say that we spend 2 of our annual budget on south korea. Even those forces could swing elsewhere if they were needed. Rumsfeld pulled their brigade out of south korea to fight the war on terror at one point. Even those verses are somewhat punishable. The bottom line is that, korea represents more than a 15 billion commitment per year in our defense establishment, because we would need hundreds of thousands of u. S. Troops to win a war there. Going back to what i said at the beginning, we are only the only planning to fight one war at a time. Even if we werent worried about korea, we still have to worry about iran, russia, china unexpected. If you said to me, the korea commitment is no longer there, the south koreans have asked us to leave. Lets make a clean and simple departure. I would say, okay, lets debate whether that 30,000 contention we have in south korea could perhaps be demobilized, but otherwise, i do not think that the hundreds of thousands of troops we would use to reinforce in korea, i dont think those forces could be demobilized, because they still might be needed for any other contingencies and we are already doing defense planning on the cheap of a one war standard. The complicated question even to quantify the answer, but you wind up asking, how much could you save if you fundamentally eliminated this or that ally, it usually winds up being pretty small. Vinyl point, if however you went to a fortress america approach, and what you said at the end, defending our homeland alone, yes, we could do that on the chief, until or unless eurasia again decides to fight it self, and somebody wins and has the capability to fight us, the way hitler would have liked to have in world war ii, for example. If you think it is interesting what happens in eurasia, strategically, and only protect ourselves, you could probably do that with a 25 as much money, two to 300 billion per year robustly, the problem is, you dont know when or if something from eurasia will come and strike at you. That is the question i think is under mental. If you answered that one differently than we have since world war ii, you could have a much smaller Defense Budget, i do think you would have a much more dangerous world. On that cheery note, join me in thanking mike travis. Good answer. [ applause ] i think this video will be on our website, so you can watch it over and over again. I am sure mike would be happy to talk with anybody about the specifics in his paper, also on the website. If i could ask you on your way out to take the coffee cups at your feet and put them in the receptacles, our staff would appreciate it. Thanks again. Thank you. The director of National Intelligence joints at us discussion about cybersecurity and competing in the private sector for recruitment and talent. It was part of an annual summit in wa