Compared u. S. National security threats from china to russias invasion of ukraine during a conversation with punch bowl news. He also talks of the risks of Artificial Intelligence, misinformation and the 2024 election and the temporary government funding bill with. The please welcome punch bowl news foundera and ceo anna palmer. [applause] good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all forin joining us n person and on a live stage. Im anna palmer, ceo and one of the founders of punch bowl news. I amo thrilled to be here for this popup conversation with senator mark warner, the democrat from virginia. Were going to be focusing on National Security, a bit of the news of the day in shortage of that and whats happening in congress right now. Andrew, our senior congressional reporter, is going to join me on stage to comoderate that conversation. A big thank you to rtx for partnering with us to make this conversation possible. Afterward im going to be joined by henry brooks who is president of power and controls at collins aeroprospace. As always, you can find punch bowl news on all social media punch bowl news. We encourage you to share the conversation there. And with that, lets welcome the senator and andrew to the stage. [applause] thank you so much. All right. Well, we have plenty to get to. We appreciate your coming this morning on a busy, busy time on capitol hill. Andrew, im going to turn it over to you. So, senator warner, over the weekend, as you know, Congress Passed a bill to fund the government for 45 days. It did not include any aid for ukraine in it. I knoww you were outspoken on that about that on saturday. But the reasoning among you and your with colleagues was that this outcome was much better than a Government Shutdown, especially foror someone like yu who represents so many federal workers in the state e of virginia. Right now there are accelerated conversations on capitol hill about trying to get a larger scale ukraine package through. What arere your expectations for that . How confident areon you that tht can actually get done here e over the next couple months . Ha well, thank you, andrew. Thank a you, anna. Yep. Saturday was about as bizarre a day [laughter] as ive i had. You know, i said down the rabbit hole, up is down and down is up was kind of the description. And, you a know, if you step bak for a moment and look, you know, three d days earlier over 75 of the house, 330 votes, had voted to the basically keep the ukraine aid. At least on public, on the senate bill only 6 senators now, that might have gone up, but only 6 had signed the bill. So the notion that 75, 80 of both bodies wanted ukraine aid so badly, wanted it and that the opponents were so posed that they t were so to opposed thy were willing to go above the democrats request for spending at more than double the disaster aid was kind of a telling current, number one. There was a problem. I think the administration, and i said this to the chairman of the intelligence committee, i still dont have 100 clarity of the 113 billion that weve already appropriated, 62 billion on the defense side, how much of that was left are. There was a journal story left of about 5 billion,. [inaudible] theres still, i think, lack of clarity. And that made the case, head the case harder made the case harder for how immediate e the needs were. I do believe the 45 days is going to be shaky. It was a little weird coming on sunday traveling around virginia andir getting, you know, atta boys. Somehow an that an at that boy for keeping the government open means the baseline has fallen a little bit too much. But on ukraine its crazy. Youre thinking from a National Security standpoint that we would take this m moment and potentially walk away. Three things. One, and theres a great ad out that aut you probably have seen, republicans forai ukraine, that makes clear the point that the Ukrainian Military has done what we and nato, america and nato were p planning to do for 60 years. They have basically eliminated 50 of russias militaries capacity. Military capacity. Theyve taken the second most powerful military in the world and maybe made it the second powerful military in ukraine and eliminated 50 of the capacity without the cost of a single American Life or nato. Secondly, in ahe moment when we have to reaffirm our alliances and we see an expanded nato to somehow send the signal that were not going to be there, slovakian elections on saturday and the polish elections coming up, it makes no sense at all. And the part that i just, i scratch my head because i hear more house guys than senate guys saying, well, we we dont really care about putin and ukraine, but were terrified about president xi in china. And to not understand the connection that if putin is successful in ukraine, that is a total green light for xi in china. If you dont get that, you flunked geopolitics 101. Is i think it is absolutely critical that we step up. I still, as chair of the intelligence chief, though that china is our ultimate, longterm potential adversary. And in a terms of Technology Competition and National Security in 2023 is more than tanks and guns, it is a. I. And 5gnd and synthetic biography and quantum computing. But it also is traditional military. And i think we will find the dollars. I think there was enormous bipartisan interest in getting that done. And the good, the big question will become and ill, i know youre quickly looking, this is punch bowl, youre quickly looking at the 47 other questions, you know . The question will be is it one more, is it the whole year slug or is it going to be in pieces. Many of the republicans feel like we ought to go for the full oneyear slug in the next battle. Kind of the republican a argument weve heard from Senate Minority leader Mitch Mcconnell is that the majority of the money is being spent right here in the u. S. Actually. Its not just going over as foreign aid. The argument here that were not cutting checks to ukraine and saying, to here here, have it, figure it out, but this could actually help the industrial base. Could you talk about that, and do you think that resonates to either with your fellow democrats or republicans many . Leader mcconnells been as strong a defender for aid to ukraine as any of us. And i want to, you know, give him appropriate credit for that. And hes actually right. Of the 62 billion plus that are on the security side, the vast majority of it is going to American Companies for increasing our production lines. Some of these areas like artillery shells, you know, we needed to increase capacity, domesticea capacity. I dont have the number, but the overwhelming majority of this was going to, frankly, the American Defense industry, and the administration about making sure that these were all out of our reserves, not out of our current stock. Now, we were bleeding into a little of that by category, but i think senator mcconnells statement is right. I do think the one thing we do need more is clarity. Obviously, some of the things that were in this package fall on my side of the budget, on the intel side, so it cant be spelled out. But i think making clear accounting will be helpful as we go into this next battle. Want to shift gears real quick to innovation at the department of defense. Can you talk about how the dod can use commercial innovation to make sure they have the most uptodate taj and, perhaps just as importantly, help lower the cost for taxpayers . Great question, andrew. And let me talk first two examples. One example is e on overhead, ad i think about this as well from the intel side s as well as the dod side. When i first got on the intelligence committee, people at the, this ro may have had nro may have had a picture of m [inaudible] because i kept trying to say, you know, on satellites, lets go commercial. Lets in the simply have the large described as big, fat if floating cows in the sky. Like nobody had ever seen a james bond movie. These big, massive satellites, and wed not thought that through. And wed made that to a point where weve got now, you know, space item x, and we need spacex, and we need some competitors there as well. I think on the kind of military traditional dod side theres still a lot of room for improvement. I remember early on in this job and hadnt been a business guy, hadnt been a governor, but im going to fix procurement, and somebody came in with, like, 12 volumes of things, and i relatively quickly gave up. One of the things where i am spending time is i how we put together and, again, i dont want toe nerd out here but al of the funders on the private sector side and the capitol staff from early stage to middle stage because we still have the classic valley of death, a great new, Innovative Company trying to break into d dod. How do you get through that dip. One of the things that is fundamental change, i said this to a former guy is that there used to be a very small universe of funders. But as we think about, again, national a security not just beg tanks, guns, ships and planes but being a. I. , quantum, sensors, overhead, you know, frankly, im on Synthetic Technology in areases we have to compete we china, its a much broader portfolio. And there are a lot more companies who are potentially funders. They can help those innovative companies. We still needss a process, and were looking at, you know, could each security sector, each part of the ic pick four or five designated entities each year. Its still up opportunity, great. Challenge is how you get through the breuer rock city is still great as well. Is there a commission to examine that e model . Whatat do you hope to get out of it . Like you said, changing this kind of process is arduouses and difficult weve9 got to listen, im very interested in this because a lot of those companies are in northern virginia. And others are moving tear headquarters their headquarters to northerner virginia. I think its not been, its not been lack of innovation, its beens lack of having a procurement process that moves away from the traditional primes and the willingness, frankly, of the department to take some risks. And i keep thinking, well, can we use the ic, the intel community, as the point of the spear, roughly onetenth of the balance of the dod budget to help push that innovation. And this study is a good one. I was more interested in seeing if we could actually have the secretaries identify champions. But for all the identification true the procurement process, if we dont have a Capital Stack that can have the different funding sources, and it is much more robust than it was a few we have moved light years from where we were, you know, what, five years ago when google said, well, maybe we dont want to work with the dod. I quickly reminded the google leadership they didnt have any problem working with the ccp in china on the same kind of a. I. Related activities. Everybody across the traditional Tech Community though the is anxious to be in this. So thats all a good sign. We want to talk about a. I. And china, but before we do, i want to just also were going to do all of this in 25 minuteses . We are moving fast. And i promise you with, im going too help be the guide. Ive got a 7point plan for all of these. [laughter] i want to talk about technology and sustainability a little bit. Theres been a lot of talk around the Defense Department updating that technology, maybe commercial innovation can be helpful there. Like the hybrid cars for the air force. How important do you think this is in terms of finding sustainable technologies . The government has maybe incentivizing dod to move in that direction. I know our next speakers going to speaksp to that, and i think theyve done a very good job. Its absolutely critical. I was down at nasa yesterday with a pair of guys who were aghast at the thought of a potential Government Shutdown and the continuing absurdity of c. R. S which also croup up your budget. Screw up the your budget. If you finished repairing a ship last year and youre in a c. R. , you cant start the next, you guys are maybe the only group with of americans who understand what a c. R. Is. [laughter] i think there are ways we can push, and dod can be helpful. We literally spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year every year in virginia to raise the dock level where our ships dock because of sea level rise. So the colleagues i have who say is, you know, we want to protect National Security can, but were beginning to ignore Climate Change or ignore sea level rise, i wish theyd talk to the navy. So how do we do this on a sustainability basis . Im actually, and ive been talking a hot with dod on this a lot with dod on this, im a huge advocate for small modular nukes, smrs. China that and russia a are trying to promote these dramatically, and one of the reasons why we need to, we have three or four in process in this country, dod is looking strongly at this because what im seeing as we move towards sustainability, we are seeing some of the areas that we thought might be, might never have thought theyd be one size fits all, but weve seen the offshore wind industry gogo through a dramatic decline. Weve still got our project going off the coast of virginia, but the administration has acknowledged youre not going to get 30 megawatts off the east coast. We cant make it with the current financing. Or if you look at solar, ive got a number of communities in virginia where agricultural communities and others are pushing back about these massive solar fields. Smrs, which i think are both safe and clean, are one of the things i thought was hypocritical of some folks in the Environmental Community as, you know, we dont want to do nuclear, but they never question concerns about what about our sailors being on aircraft carriers and submarines that have got nukes. So this is an area where i hope dod and we from the if ic can push thiss. Because, again, it s a competition with china and russia. Artificial intelligence, big topic on capitol hill, especially in the senate. Majority leader schumer is leading a push on this trying to getth legislation time next yea. You guys recently held a closed door forum with tech executives and industry stakeholders. We just rolled out a product at punch bowl news call called the future of cybersecurity where w its as a if youre talking to the chair of the cyber caucus as well as the chair of the intel t committee. You were actually quoted this morning as saying that you wore arely that Artificial Intelligence could make 2016 look like c childs play. You were talking in terms of malign foreign interference in our elections. Could you talk about what you mean by that and what the prospects you think are for congress to actually get something done do i get a full 10 minutes on this one . [laughter] okay. Well, first of all, i think ive spent as much time on Artificial Intelligence as any member of the senate, and i give credit for leader schumer, hes trying to bring everybody along. I had a dozen plus sessions, all bipartisan, and bringing in kind of the whos who as well. Secondly, ive never been involved in a subject where the more time i spend on it doesnt equate to the smarter i think im getting. [laughter] youu know, everything has been two steps forward, one ten back. Step back. And if you think about, and this has been confirm, if you just think about the basic economics, ive never seen something with a premise as radically changed. If wero go way, way back in time to last november, you know, sam altman and all the other folks coming in, the operating premise i think was the winner in a. I. Will be who has the most scale, who has the most data, who has the most compute, gpus, who can test that day the most. So from a geopolitical stand point, china, obviously, huge amounts of data, huge amounts of compute, all the right things. We thought openai microsoft and google, amazon, they would dominate the field on language models. Starting in march, that kind of changes as meta released llama into the wild and suddenly you have an llm coming out of uae for pennies on the dollar. And the whole premise that you had to build everything around a large language model and meant attach specific industry applications fundamentally changed. And the economics, i dont think theres been near enough of punch bowl ought to do something about how the economics have changed, number one. Number two two, the whole question of how you build security, whether you bill it in, and i do think these guys have been moving so quickly on the arms race that they may not be building enough security. So that brings us to where do you go on legislation. I am very much skeptical having seen congress 0100 record on doing anything on social media, and weve been blown away on everything. I remember when i was so naive last march with this bipartisan, well, we ought to have a framework with how we deal with Foreign Technology thator coulde threatening, you know . Tiktok was simply one example, but coming on the a basises of huawei, and i thought, oh, my gosh, this is going to be so easily. We merlely merrily roll along until bytedance drops 100 billion, and its hard to push back. And for those of you who say i told you so, well, look at the recent story where tiktok employs because bytedance is [inaudible] theres still security risks. I am going to answer your with question. What does this look like on legislation . I dont think, i think those who are optimistic think we can have holistic legislation probably too much, too quick, although there is huge bipartisan concern that we dont want to do what we did with social media and say you guys figure it out and well put in guardrails later. So where would i start . Where could a. I. Have the most dramatic Effect Tomorrow in terms m of exponentially greater disruption and greater undermining of institutions. I would argue the two domains that are most vulnerable at this moment,t one, elections and 2016 would be childs play compared to what 2024 both in terms of the amounts of not just deep fakes, but the time and scale with a which you can create thee tools is exponentially higher. But as weve seen, a democracy alone legislative approach probably wont have enough juice to getet through. What is the other area that yo