And, what i plan to do today is have dr. Griffin give opening remarks about his priorities and things that may or may not have changed since the last time we spoke and had a conversation. He and i will engage in backandforth and talk about what he mentioned in his opening remarks, and it is my hope to allow time for questions. Without further ado, dr. Griffin. Dr. Griffin it is a pleasure to be here. The last time i was here was in april of 2018. After i was two months was confirmed as the undersecretary, and it was still three months before i was the head of an actual Legal Organization within the department of defense. We were still working on establishing a charter and all of the bureaucratic things one does to convert legislation into executive branch institutions. Months since i have been here, we have been busy. We have filled out the senior bank levels of our organ senior levels of our organization. Porter you know dr. Lisa as well as our directors for Defense Research and engineering. Of course, we also have under us Missile Defense agency, which has not changed. The director has changed, you now have vice admiral john hill running the organization. Lieutenant general greaves was in terminal countdown mode when andover, and i am now vice admiral hill is on station for the next several years. Steve walker is the director of darpa and we will expect he will continue. Our senior team in place. We have had a number of tests and test and demonstrations, and more to come. For some of our mutual interests, we had ftg 11 this past march, if i called recall correctly, a very successful test, one of our real highlights, and many other things as well. Inhave implemented, or are the middle of implementing some organizational standups, the Space Development agency, as well as organizational changes. We are currently working on moving the Strategic Capabilities Office underneath darpa to better align our management team. And, we have added a lot of corroborative initiatives in science and technology. Spoke,ar, when i hypersonics was possibly in fact i stated right out that it was my single highest priority. Over the last 15 or so months, i would say that we have made an awful lot of progress in getting that in the forefront of our Nations National security priorities. I have actually elevated other things that are may be less flashy. But even more important, such as and 5g to ourcs priority stack, and of course, space. Without space we cannot do anything. Incorporated an assistant director for instructor structure with our organization. For each of our key priorities we have an assistant director to be responsible for the strategic shaping of that priority. For example, we will shortly be bringing on board and assistant director for 5g, which i just mentioned, and similarly for our other things. Lots of work yet to do. Ill and will be for a while trying to get our arms around the overall orchestration of the dod technical portfolio and priorities. We are trying to rationalize all of that with how we do engineering prototyping in a world in which it is recognized that we have to do ething different and different than dod 5000. We are working those issues. Broadly speaking, our focus is on doing the right things, and doing things right. That is kind of our motto. Let me stop there. I want to give you as much time as you want for your questions and for the audience. Rebeccah the first one is a general one since the last time we spoke. Against a defense hypersonic threat was your priority, and it still is very important to you and what you are doing. But, 5g is also a priority. My first question is, how do you come up with your priorities and what informs your priorities. What are you looking at and how are those decisions made . As secretary mattis emphasized when he was on station as secretary as acting secretary, and as our new secretary has emphasized, the National Defense strategy that was released year and a half ago is our guideline. With regard to modernization, which is that is what research and engineering is all about. That really is our touchdown. So, that really is our touchstone. Everything that we are doing can trace its roots back to that. That said, if everything is equally important, then nothing is important. And also, it is fair to say, i am not czar. , ithings like hypersonics came into office and intending to make a big deal out of that, not just defense or coping with chinas offensives, and russias offensives, but i want to be the offense. We want to hold others hostage. That behavior to be something with which we can deal. And, hypersonic capability is a key to that. Ame here wanting to push that. At the other end, issues like microelectronics and 5g, to i am i was i would say, well less sensitive and less educated. The department has taken that on , taken on 5g as a major initiative. And so, our research and engineering was handed that priority and said, go do. Also ournd i mentioned deputy undersecretary a few minutes ago, dr. Porter, he was assigned as the dod lead for 5g. Now we are developing initiatives, we have a program plan, we have put that before congress and those before the omd this coming year. We are hiring an assistant director. Others outsidere ourselves thought that this was sufficiently important, that it be that it has become a big deal. Rebeccah can you explain what it is when you are doing a new initiative for 5g 5g. What are you most concerned about an flesh that out. Broadly speaking, we are aware that commercial initiatives and telecommunications far outstrip anything that we can do and would want to do in dod. We are struggling to become the flea on the tail of the telecoms dog. This is a trillion dollar worldwide industry. That said we have National Security needs, and to the extent that we can help seed the competitive environment or encourage it to grow in directions relevant to us, we want to do that. So, how can we help . We have use cases. Aboutk about 5g we talk greatly increased download speeds, we talk about an enormously expanded number of touch points, the socalled internet of things, where everything is connected to the net in one way or another. That dod has use cases for that just abound, smart ports, smart airports. , smart factories, those thingsall of have commercial applications but they absolutely have National Security applications. If we can make available our infrastructure for experimenting environmentsng, which different competitors can work in different areas and be assured that their apartheid their proprietary information is protected. If we can provide venues where local, regional, eunice a pull state permitting is not required municipal state permitting is not required operate and really speed progress, which the development will not be led by dod. Goodll be looking to be customers, but if we can enable that involvement, and we want to do that. Sko,cah you mentioned there was a news article saying that you had done away with the spending justification for some of these big ticket items. Do you want to comment on that . Dr. Griffin i saw that this morning. The folks who like to send me bad news lost no opportunity to send that over to me. I you know. I talked with our acting director there on that point, i should say corresponded, topped by email, and from my own knowledge, that article is incorrect. The essence of the article is i am now asking our dod budgeteers for a billiondollar blank check to do what i want to do. That was the core of the article. And no, not likely. Myt is stupid since i was in i have not been that stupid since i was in my teens. Some might think that is a good strategy, but i guess you could always ask. I gave up on stupid requests like that a long time ago. That is not what we are doing. We are scrubbing every program we have carefully, very carefully for the coming budget year, and we will request money for those programs we deem worthy, but we are not asking for a blank check. Back to the prioritization question, and hypersonic defense. This was an interest that you said. It still is a priority, and we still have not developed a hypersonic defense, especially from the chinese allied vehicles and cruise missiles which are vehicles andide cruise missiles that are Holding Assets in defense. The key to building that you mentioned and beat the taper the table hard about this is having a missile tracking layer in space that can track the hypersonic missiles from birth to death. President trump missed mentioned this that we would go and have a space we would go to space. Can you talk about it still . The degree that we are still going through, the need to have this, and how the tracking sensor layer needed to this will fit into the larger architecture that you have planned. Well, i tend to be longwinded and this is going to be even worse with that question. It is a broad question. Let me try to take it from the top. Since my said for confirmation hearing, a couple of key points. NotUnited States developed all, but almost all, certainly the significant body of Underlying Research and hypersonic flight. It is a very difficult domain. We chose not to weaponize it. From a policy perspective, he did not inc. The world needed a new class of weapons. It was not there was not a threat out there which we should defend ourselves, and we did not a new offense of capability. Now you are seeing articles that United States for over a decade progressed with hypersonic systems development. That is true. That was a deliberate choice. Again, youries, and will find me saying that the United States ever never declares anyone to be an adversary, they declare themselves, which is frustrating. Then, we have to respond. Our adversaries are developing and have developed these systems, and they are quite capable. Ae advantage offered by hypersonic offense is that it over flies air defenses as we understand them and under flies Missile Defenses. It goes into the gap between air and Missile Defense. It is a new class of defensive system. It is required to deal with it. It is also extremely high speed. By definition, that is hypersonic threat. That means that he can fly fast that, by thenough time we can see it on defensive Radar Systems it is nearly too late to close the kill chain. It would be difficult to close it for one threat, in a raid scenario, you cannot get there from here. You have to see them coming from further out. Alwaysgrange radar is already about as good as it will get. If the hypersonic threat, as it does, out runs our longrange radar, what is your next step . Exclusively a land conflict, one option would be to forward the poor radars, all Forward Deployed radars, although they themselves become targets. Iswe look to the future, it a maritime conflict. And, there are not enough islands and we do not have enough ships to populate the earth with radars, even if we thought that was a viable strategy. What else is available . You have to go to space. We can see what we need, but because these threats are 10 to dimmer than Strategic Missile threats, we need to be closer to the action, which means lower down, which implies that we need a proliferated layer of sensors, because we cannot see these things from a few spacecraft and geostationary orbit. The requirement leads you to a proliferated sensor layer. That is how we get to that point. You are completely correct in your question, or your opening comment that, at this years Missile Defense review, President Trump quite correctly enunciated the need for a second layer, and yet our budget did not show it. They can take a little bit of time for the bureaucracy to catch up with the elected leadership, and i think this year we are going to be making a stronger try at getting the funding for that layer into the budget. A long answer, i hope i captured all of your questions. Rebeccah the one little peice, we talked a little bit in the green room about the Space Development agency as a whole, that the space central layer is one part of it. You kind of have to think about what it is that you want from the totality of what you are trying to do in space before you get to the missile drag tracking part of it. Dr. Griffin for the Space Development agency, which was chartered by the acree by acting secretary shanahan to basically oversee the architecture that we will deploy, and to expedite its deployment, the first task that the Space Development agency was asked to take on was the communications transport layer, that is the slaying for a resilient, highly proliferated Network Communication system in ,ow earth hobart orbit similar to what you see commercial talking commercial companies talking about, but having different requirements for National Security purposes rather than moneymaking purposes. Layer the the coms first thing . Well, the sensor layer is critical. What if it cannot talk among itself but if it cannot talk among itself will not be effective. Communicate, if you will forgive the term, underlays every other layer that we wish to deploy whether it was first Space Situational Awareness or hypersonic threat protection and tracking, or maritime domain awareness. Whatever other functions that we want, they are enabled first by the ability to communicate, in a resilient fashion that we do not have today. That is why that is first. , there isthe hbtss still money for that and we will be developing it in parallel. Dr. Griffin there absolutely is money in the budget for it. Seeuld not be surprised to us try to get additional funding for that. Draft the rfp was sent out a wild back and we have had respond a while back and we have had responses. We are proceeding in parallel. The sensor layer has to match with the architecture mesh the architecture. Rebeccah if we need this, if there is a great sense of urgency to develop these things and to get at the missile threat in the indo pacific in particular, if we wanted to go faster and do it immediately we would keep it within mda because there is an agency there. What is the wisdom to moving its over to its own agency . Not know that do anything is being moved over to the Space Development agency. The Missile Defense agency was not charged or chartered to build a coms layer. If in the interest of Management Efficiency that we later developmentswo into one, that is a decision for a different place and time, and not even me. Mdat now it remains under and transport developments is under sda. Rebeccah hypersonic defense is going to be space. Space,ffin it touches it touches ground stations. Andouches detection tracking algorithms, and fire control algorithms. It is dealing with the hypothesis dealing with the hypersonic threat is even more a an multi spent quite a number of years after leaving nasa after i was involved, i got to the point where i regarded the ground Missile Defense system as being more complex than the that wasttle during saying something. Theproblem of dealing with hypersonic threat is even more than dealing with gmd. Because of the requirement for persistent, timely global awareness. The hypersonic threat proposes. Ms. Heinrichs that is a great segue. That is the home defense against the icbm threats from north korea and as iran develops as well. And the mdr said we will defend the homeland homeland against these rogue states. We were developing a new kill vehicle for the system to increase its writer liability to handle the threats that continue to progress when we have stopped, there is a stop order. Do you want to speak to that and comment on the plan for an improving gmd, especially the kill vehicle component and whether there is something before we get to the mokb which dr. Griffin i need to be careful. We never want to get into classified topics in public environment. Youre right. We had a reason a redesigned Kill Vehicle Program to follow on our successful kill vehicle, the ekv that is deployed today. Today in alaska and california. We had a followon program to deploy as you know 20 more. That was in development program. Sometimes develop meant program encounter problems. So we found some results in testing that were not what we would have wanted them to be. After a certain amount of due diligence, we decided we were not going down a path that was going to be fruitful. So we issued a stop work on the kill vehicle and spent, i say i, i and the team because i have been involved regularly. I and the team have spent the last three months studying alternatives. We are close to the end of that and when we get to the end of that we will tell you what we can tell you in a classified mode. Pursuing a program and there will be a followon kill vehicle development. We did have to drop back and punt in order to get forward progress because we were going down the path that was not going to bear fruit. We are fixing that. Ms. Heinrichs every time we talk about what we are doing to improve the system it seems like there is this narrative that develops and in mainstream information that gmd is not reliable and it is not up to where it needs to be to handle what our policy dictates. Against the north Korean Missile threat. What is your confidence in the technical ability . Dr. Griffin the last two, we dont want to use of our spare rounds to doing testing. The last highspeed intercept tests that we have done using the deployed system were extraordinarily successful. They were hit to kill and very aggressive scenarios with the deployed hardware. I dont want to go beyond that. Ms. Heinrichs that is great. Dr. Griffin they were successful, i have a great deal of confidence in the capabilities of that system. If we want more rounds, as i like to say with all the systems you get to the point where you cannot buy the parts anymore. You have parts obsolescence issues. If we want more rounds we will have to have a redesigned kill vehicle and we are pursuing that. But the system we have in the ground today is obviously quite capable. Ms. Heinrichs once we do have a space tracking layer, that is not just for the hypersonic. Dr. Griffin not at all. That can track anything. Ms. Heinrichs that would qualitatively improve love but reliability. Utilize that tracking layer. Dr. Griffin our existing detention and tracking capabilities are quite exquisite. As i said, they were not designed to address the hypersonic threat. What we are trying to do is develop in additional set of capabilities. Not to replace but to add on. When we add on the new capabilities, i am 100 sure it will have a lot more customers than just hypersonic defense. Ms. Heinrichs while we are talking about gmd, the Missile Defense review policy document dr. Griffin i dont do policy. My second fondest hope in life is never to do policy. [laughter] ms. Heinrichs a lot of what you said is [inaudible] policy. It is still the policy of the u. S. To provide a defense of the homeland against threats and the Missile Defense review said we are going to primarily rely on Nuclear Deterrence to handle the strategic threats against china and russia. We are not able to provide a robust defense against china and russia or is it not a technical problem, is it a policy issue . Dr. Griffin i dont want this to come out sounding like we are our policy is not together because we are. We get along famously. We are well aligned. I think he would have to say that well beyond the department of defense policy, it has been National Policy that we are not trying to defend against china and russia. That that level of threat is a step up. But it is not a technical step up. We know how to do it. With existing technology. It would require buying systems that we do not have today that would require buying more of the systems we do have. It becomes a budgetary priority. He would be spending money on Missile Defense systems that we are spending on other things. That is a Budget Priority discussion and it is a deterrence policy discussion within which i dont engage. It is not a technical issue. How to do it. Dr. Griffin that includes capabilities that already exist today and we talked about directed energy and other technologies we are working on. You are talking about the hit to kill technologies. Dr. Griffin if the u. S. Wanted to do it, we could deploy a much wider span of hit to kill technologies that we have today. Todays systems are designed to counter rogue states. If you want more, you can buy more. We have not chosen to do that. Ms. Heinrichs my last question is on the north Korean Missile problem still exists. Even as this administration coming up with a peaceful conclusion to the north Korean Missile problem. From a technology aspect, either things that you perceive that we should be pursuing with a greater sense of urgency that would close some gaps that are there against the north korea missile problem because again, the mdr said Missile Defenses, we understand the measurement of policy and power diplomacy. They are not in conflict. They are not destabilizing. The u. S. Should be pursuing with a greater sense of urgency even as we pursue negotiations. Dr. Griffin i dont want to offer a comment beyond what the Missile Defense review has offered. And beyond the president s speech when it was rolled out. I think it was a superlative speech. It was a great review. I think we will have to let the system catch up with the leader from a Technology Point of view. We are ready to support. Ms. Heinrichs fair enough. I will take some questions from the audience. When i call on you just say your name and affiliation before you ask your question. That would be helpful good [inaudible] a few years ago during the department of the f35 lockheed lost a terabyte of data to china. Government spelled billions of dollars trying to resolve the issue and make changes. We are putting a lot of money into research into bellmen and new technologies. What is the government doing to ensure that technology is delivered on compromise uncompromised and the taxpayer does not have to keep paying for things that are compromised. I am research and engineering, i am not the cio. I dont know anything about any of that so i will not comment. Ms. Heinrichs over here in the yellow tie. As you consider the 5g rollout for the dod and the proliferation of hyper microwave weapons, are you considering protection against those devices in your specifications as you move forward . Dr. Griffin with that is part of a broader question. The simple answer is yes, of course, let but let me elaborate a little bit. The advantage of 5g 60 please stated is everything is part of the network to my right . It is a bit hyperbolic, only a little bit when you talk about the internet of things. The disadvantage of 5g is that if everything is part of the system, everything is part of the attack surface. With all aspects of cyber security, everything electromagnetic now becomes a potential threat. As well as a potential promise. You cant put your iphone in front of a radar and expect it to survive. A highpowered microwave attack will kill would it seeks to kill. For other forms of electronic attacks because of electronic warfare, cyber warfare, cyberattack and there is a word line between those, we are going to have to learn how to do with it. In brief, we are going to learn how to have trusted medications in trusted networks. We will never be able to certify perfect hardware. Moreover, the National Security communicator community is to go places where people dont want us and they have to do is we have to do things they dont want us to do and we will not be able to bring our own networks. The National Security community has to accept as a starting proposition that we have to be able to operate in an environment where it is not that we suspect it is not trustworthy. We know it is not trustworthy. That is one of our ground rules. Some of this is a math problem. How do you assure yourself of trusted communications broadly speaking in an trusted not trusted hardware. We are working on it. Ms. Heinrichs the lady here in the sweater. I know that the assistant directors are working on individual or combined roadmaps. Can you talk about the status of those roadmaps and how they will be publicly articulated . Dr. Griffin probably not. Ms. Heinrichs in any form. Dr. Griffin were working on modernization roadmaps in different technologies and they are related to one another. It is impossible to think about developing a communications transport layer without the people who are working on what the design of the network cq should be, just to pick an example. But no, in this environment, i am not able to go in any more detail on that. Thank you. Im a journalist with a russian news agency. [inaudible] President Trump tweeted lot. Rday, but he tweaked a one of the tweets was related to a recent incident in russia during the test of a Nuclear Powered missile. According to trump, the u. S. Has [inaudible] but more vast. Does it mean the u. S. Is developing the same technology . Thank you. Dr. Griffin i dont have any comment on that. Ms. Heinrichs over here, right there. Yeah. Travis tritt with bloomberg government. It wanted to ask about the space to bellmen agency. You touched on some of this during your comments. It does seem Like Congress has been reluctant to back the agency, house appropriators want to see more plans. You have also recently lost your director. I wonder if you feel that the organization is stumbling out of the gate and can you comment on the status and the health of the sda . Thank you. Dr. Griffin the sda is busy. We had a large auditorium, standing room only. The press was there. I think you are aware of that. We are pursuing both with internal resources and through the network of government and university laboratories. We are pursuing architectural design. Pursuing sensor requirements, communications requirements, all of those things. So we are quite busy. They the sda was chartered in march by the acting secretary. And has met so far with a mixed reception on the hill. I have four oversight committees broadly speaking. The views of those oversight committees range from full support to as you said, lets see more plans. That is neither uncommon nor unexpected when you are rolling out a new approach. Let me hit rewind for a moment. In january of 2018, skip january. In 2018, we got a law from congress, the National Defense authorization act directing i name the deputy secretary of defense to provide a plan to congress as to how we were going to manage space with the new department of defense subtext of that, you dont get asked to specify such a thing if everybody is happy with you. The subtext is we are not happy. That is not a surprise because in prior several years, a variety of senators and congress, mike rogers has to mind that comes to mind that we want to see a different approach to managing space. The deputy secretary took that seriously. I worked and others worked very closely with him and later that summer, we rolled out a plan central to which was the creation of space to bellmen agencies which would have expedited hiring and acquisition authorities and would be threat driven. The key to that is we need to move quicker. We are executing on 15 year timelines. So i need to do something different. If we do everything the same way you should not expect a different outcome. Also in the course of last summer as you know President Trump called for [inaudible]. I am a huge fan of that idea. I could not be any more of a cheerleader. And so in our submission to congress, the socalled 1601 report addressing section 1601 of the neaa, if the congress it chooses to approve space force and the space to bellmen agency should be realigned under it. If the congress and it is a congressional option, we understand that. If congress does not choose to approve the creation of the space force and the sda will remain aligned under r e. So the Space Development agency is our approach to getting a move on with the Space Architecture development that we need to supplement our existing capabilities. I ought to ask for a show of hands for people who think you can stand up a new agency to do new things get done, never been done before in the history of humans, if you think he will stand up that agency with turmoil and commotion. I cant execute a shopping trip to home depot without turmoil and commotion for a home project. We are going to stand up a new agency without a certain amount of churn. We would not do it if we did not think it was necessary. We think it is critical and so i am going to continue to use and others will continue to use every bit of our persuasive power to convince the congress this is an agency worth standing up and worth funding. Acting secretary of the air force donovan and i could not be more closely aligned on the need for sta. If congress chooses to create a space force he will inherit it. This is not an example. This is not an example of power struggles within the dod. We are getting along very well and i think all the key decisionmakers are completely lined up on the need for why the sda and what it is trying to do. I cant say it any better. Ms. Heinrichs the lady over here. Dr. Griffin i will finish off by saying dont expect us to stand up a new capability with no management churn. If that is your expectation, go somewhere else because it cant deliver it. I am reporter with voice of america. I was wondering what your Current Assessment is on north koreas missile capabilities especially after they launched 10 projectiles over the last weeks. Dr. Griffin i have no Public Comment to make about north koreas missile capability. That would assessment would belong to our Intelligence Community and that is not my job. Ms. Heinrichs i just hosted the director of Defense Intelligence agency here we talked a lot about missiles and that is on our website. We have time for one last question. We will go here in the back. You can ask it briefly. One question on iran. Last Year Congress was told that he said the assessment of the pentagon for iran to acquire hypersonic missiles was extremely high. I want to know what the assessment is today and has iran intensified [indiscernible] dr. Griffin i am sorry you wasted your question. One more time, i am not in the intelligence or assessment business. If i were, i probably could not comment. But since i dont know anything, it is easy to say i will not comment. Ms. Heinrichs i hosted the special envoy to iran and we discussed about how irans Missile Program has not has continued to improve since the jcpoa. It did not slow the program and that transcript is on the website as well. With that, please join me in thanking dr. Griffin for his time. [applause] [indistinct conversations] while congress is out for summer break, a look at what Congress Members are doing in their state. Stopped by a manufacturing facility to see how its multipurpose multivehicle works. Lisa murkowski was also on tour at the renewal of independent Power Producers credit it focuses on solar farms in alaska. She met as they discussed the challenges they are facing. Heldst virginia, a senator a metal replacements or money for the family of a late member who was a prisoner for in world war ii. Was an honor to places military awards for his family. The senate and house continue for legislative work on september 9. Retired ball for retired law essor allender so its dershowtiz dershowitz. Of my vast majority clients are guilty. Would anyone want to live in the innocent . Ere they are criminal defense lawyers dont make it easy for prosecutors. We press them, we attacked them, challenge them and tell them unless you have the goods, we are going to be you and in that way, they only go after people who they believe are guilty. Clients. Ike most of my not people say they reserve deserve representation. I was a tenured professor and and if i did not defend newspaper, then the government would go after other people. People say that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. A libertarian is someone whose kids have been busted for pot. Once you are united, suddenly you fall in love with criminal attorneys. He spoke in colorado at a policy conference with leaders in government, business, military and the media. He also talked about the Mueller Investigation and freedom of each. You can watch this entire presentation on cspan. The u. S. Session comes back. Nd antigun violence before senators return, get a behindthescenes look. It was created in a spirit of compromise. The framers established the senate to protect people from their