Secretary, good to see you sir. Its an honor to be here. Thank you very much to aits kind of interesting being vice chairman. I dont know how you described it until youve experienced it is really hard to imagine all the things that happen when you are vice chairman but theres an interesting dynamic that happens because on 18 november i changed command that u. S. Strategic command and when i changed command at u. S. Strategic command i was in command of 150,000 americans. They went to work every day to do the ab150,000 americans is an interesting element in command structure. Then on 21 november i swore in as vice chairman of joint chiefs of staff and went to a staff of five. Because im actually not in command of anything anymore. I have no command responsibilities, and will command anything. [laughter] when we drove out to omaha on the way over here and we were in a little bit of a hurry because the chairman had been out of vice chairman a little while he wanted me there quick. We were moving pretty fast across the country and my wife looked over at me somewhere in kentucky and said, this feels quite different, doesnt it . I said, what do you mean . She said, its like a huge burden is lifted off your shoulders. Even when you swear in as vice chairman that burden is not can be there because as a Commander Strategic command have the direct responsibility for not just 150,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and the command that the Nuclear Weapons of the United States of america. Each and every day. The movement of every one of those weapons and the readiness of every one of those weapons and when i started there was a Space CapabilitiesCyber Capabilities and all the pieces that came across and all of a sudden there i am in the middle of the kentucky and its all gone. Then i swear in as vice chairman and now im an advisor. Thats what my job is, im an advisor. The second highest ranking person that was introduced thats true but im just an advisor and im not in the chain of command. The chain of command goes for the president , secretary defense to the combat commanders. Im not in the chain of command anymore but i very critical position where my advice is very important. My advice on as a member of the joint chiefs of staff and statutory responsibility there i take very seriously my advice on the fourth design of the future capabilities of the United States, my advice on our partnerships with our allies and how to reach allies and im about to take our first trip overseas to europe in a couple weeks, actually i went to romania very briefly last week probably uso got called back because some things were going on in the world and the chairman said leave and i got on a plane and came back right away. Im involved in almost everything. But its a very different role. I meet with the joint chief of staff, i meet with the secretary of defense, i meet with the president of the United States frequently but its a different function. When i think about my priorities, when i thought long and hard about the priorities i need to have their very different than the priorities of a commander. My priorities i have three priorities, its a good way to start the discussion. My three priorities are pretty straightforward, number one as a member of the joint chief of staff and vice chairman most important word in that duty title is vice my job is to make sure that i do my job as a member of the joint chief of staff that i support the chairman and being successful in his responsibilities, i support the secretary of defense and give honest best military device to the presence of the United States when i am asked. Thus the number one priority. That takes up most of my time. Its seven or eight weeks in the job it taken up most of my time because its been a very busy world since 21 november. The second priority, that kind of gets into things i can control a little bit. Things i can control a little bit is that one of my responsibilities as im the head of the joint requirements oversight council. The council such requirements for the future force capabilities of United States of america. Im also on a number of Different Councils and committees in the pentagon that look at budget i look at acquisition i look at force design and force development, all of those structures and i work those issues very seriously and the one thing i noticed about all those processes when i look at even the j rock is that the one element that is not in those processes is speed. It is not a rapid process anywhere in the department of defense. I will talk about some of our competitors here shortly but when you look at our competitors large and small, one of the things you find that they have in common is they are moving very fast. Very very fast. We are not. My second priority is to do everything i can to insert speed into the processes inside the pentagon. Thats going to be a difficult challenge because we have built processes over the years but by design are not built for speed. By design they are built to remove risk. And if you have a process designed to remove all risk it becomes very deliberate. Very structured, very bureaucratic, step overture step after step and you basically relate authorities from the field and move them into the pentagon so you can make sure that we dont take risk. And that means you go slow. If you have an adversary, competitor thats going fast and you are going slow, that doesnt matter how far ahead you are, at some point that adversary will catch and pass you. Thats the nature of any competition. If we are in competition in the United States and i dont shy away from competition i like competition but the goal of the competition is to win. Not to finish second and in our business finishing second is bad, there is no such thing as second place in our business, which means we have to put speed back in the process we have to understand how to take risk how to properly manage risk how to delegate risk down to the people that can actually move fast and move on from there. Thats gonna be a significant challenge and while in vice chairman and going to work hard at every element of the pentagon im involved in to try to put speed back into that. We will come back to that in a second. A third party, third priority is to basically make sure we dont forget that we are nothing without our people and their families. When i look at the structure of the joint staff, and i testified in front of Congress Many times a look at the structure when i look at all the people and family programs we have in a look at the way we actually testify in front of congress the way we tell our stories realize that basically whoever is going to testify the staff is working that particular problem whatever problem it happens to be comes running to you and says heres your talking point, say this, you go to the hell you say this and move on and go back to the rest of your job. If you look at all the issues we have across our People Programs and family programs, i think you will see that in many cases we are not succeeding. In many cases, things are getting worse. If you look at our housing problems, the housing problem is not an overnight sensation. Somehow the Privatized Housing issue has come to the forefront after the last few months, last year but that issue has been around for a long time. Ive lived in Privatized Housing i work with Privatized Housing contractors i see good contracts and by bad contracts that i see the problems there somehow we just kept going down that path and things kept getting worse and worse and it became a crisis. He looked at the numbers for Suicide Prevention you look at the numbers suicides in the military they are not getting better. Some people like to say, thats a societal problem the numbers are no different than society, from my perspective thats hogwash and acceptable. When the mothers and fathers of our nation give their most precious item in the world, their sons and daughters come into the United States military, they expect a better environment and better world and they expect us the leaders of the military to take them. Which means, and ive had to deal with it multiple times, suicides in the military i walk up and look at the mother and we failed, we absolutely will be a single suicide thats acceptable. We will probably never get to zero but it has to be the goal for look at the numbers, theyre not going the right direction. Which means that everything weve been doing, everything weve been doing is not working. We have to take a fresh look at that. You look at our healthcare in the military healthcare is actually quite good. Unless you have a very unique capabilities, a lot of those revolve around what we call accepting family members. Usually kids with very special needs. It is very difficult to figure out how to get the special needs kids into the right treatment to our very bureaucratic healthcare system. It got to figure out how to do better because a family that comes in a has a special needs child has to be taken care of it has to be work because we want the member to know their family is being taken care of. You look at Sexual Assault the numbers there are going the wrong way as well. We have to make sure we take a look across the board and weve had many programs in that area to look after it is not getting better. I so im going to hire a special assistant to the people in our families shes going to start work next tuesday and report directly to me report required and will get after all these people and family programs to make sure we are taking part of our most precious resource. Those are my three priorities. Make sure i support the chairman, support the president , act as a member of the joint chief insert speed into everything we do and take care of our people and families three priorities. Pretty straightforward but very hard to do given the challenge we have. Willing to spend a little time now talking about our competitors and relating it into the priorities to the issues but i want you to take a step back and think about a couple of things that have been going on in the world over the last few decades in last few years. Im going to use china and north korea as examples of what consisted strategies mean and what the ability to go fast means. Lets look at china. Take a look at china, im looking around i see different ages of people and different audiences some of you are under 40 some over 40, some of you are way over 40. [laughter] edited point fingers anywhere. A little over 40 years ago, 1979, china came up with a new strategy the strategy of allowing Foreign Investment the strategy of free market. That was 1979. When they did that, their country, if you look at the numbers, 88 percent of the chinese population lived in poverty in 1979. 88 percent. Today, six percent of the nation lives in poverty. Thats in 40 years. Thats an unbelievable transformation. It shows you the power of free market the power of it shows you the power of integrating into the world economy. At the same time, they realized they needed a different Security Strategy and started going down a different path. Its interesting to me when we look at china and many of the readings you do, china was our friend until just a few years ago. China was our friend until a few years ago. Their strategy, their military strategies dates back to the mid1990s, and their military strategy in the mid1990s you can go read it because its in public documentation was focused on countering the United States of america and our allies. It started in 1990s. The interesting thing about their economic power and structure that came from that decision in 1979, is tied very tightly to the military because everything that happens in china, every technology in china is available for military use. There is not the separation like you see in the west, the separation you see in the United States, its very tied together all the economic power can be brought to bear for military use at the same time. When that happens, if you end up with this competition going on. This is not an overnight thing. When i look at what china has done in space they now froze those initiatives back in the 1990s. I read them in the 1990s. But it wasnt until a few years ago people started looking and saying, this is new no its not, they have an Economic Strategy that dates back to the 1989. They been on a consistent approach to dealing with those pieces and if we dont wake up the world is good to be different and in many cases, thats not good. Some cases it is good but in many cases its not and we have to deal that. That consistent strategy is hugely powerful in terms of achieving the objectives they stated as long as 41 years ago. China is a powerful economy. Lets look at another powerful economy. I put that in big quotes. North korea, north korea is 115th most powerful economy in the world. 115 out 192, one of the poorest countries in the world. Somehow over the last few years north korea has developed a Ballistic Missile program that can threaten its neighbors and threaten the United States and Nuclear Program that can threaten its neighbors and the United States and theyve done that and change the entire structure of the world with 115th most powerful economy in the world. Whats been different about north korea . They learn how to go fast. If you look back at kim jongun, look at his father and his grandfather, it there are some significant differences. When his father and grandfather abhis grandfather launched i think nine, his father launched i think 22 during their entire tenure. Kim jongun has lost 67. Hes lost over a dozen in 2016, 2017, 2019, didnt want anything in 2018. His father and grandfather, when they were failures in the Missile Program, lets just say the engineers and scientists that failed were not treated well. Kim jongun realized that was not the way to go fast. The way to go fast in the Missile Program and ive been around rockets and missiles my entire life, my dad worked on a saturn five is been about around rockets and missiles my entire life, i know how they work, i know how they test. Ive been working in the business since the beginning of time, if you want to go fast in the missile business, you need to test fast, fly fast, learn fast. Look at spacex in this country. There are some pretty spectacular failures. Did they stop . No. They had instrumented the heck out of their capabilities, they learn from failures, launched rapidly again and change systems and changed subsystems, they go in a completely different direction, thats what north korea has been doing and north korea has been building new missiles new capabilities new weapons as fast as anybody on the planet with 115th most powerful economy in the world. Speed itself is efficiency. Speed builds capability and savings into your programs. But you have to be able to accept failure. If the dictator of north korea has learned how to accept failure, why cant the United States learn how to accept failure . We need to understand what failure is and learn from those failures, learn from the mistakes we make. Move quickly from these mistakes. I look back at hypersonics, we are in a significant competition with a number of competitors around the world, we were ahead in hypersonics a decade ago. We had two programs, two flights, they didnt quite work. What did we do after they failed . We instituted multiyear studies into the failure process and then canceled the programs. Thats not how you go fast. Every time we have a failure in a large business, i been in there and its not a good thing. We stopped for years at a time to recover. If theres human life involved thats essential like if you have the tragedy of the challenge or columbia you have to because you cant risk human life but if you dont have human life involved, you have to figure out how to go fast. Thats why we need speed back in our processes. We have to learn how to take risks. When you look at our nation today and he looked at our stature in the world in terms of a competitive environment, there are so many places where our country is the leading Technology Engine of the world. In the Information Technology area, in the Information Application area, we are the leading . Why is that . Because we go faster than everybody. We turn faster than others can get started. The Defense Sector thats not the case. But it has to be the case. Which means we have to do something. Back in the 1980s when i started in the Space Business, and thats kind of my background, the Space Business was really a government only business. There was really no commercial sector to leverage. We decided we would leverage everything into the commercial side and everything would be good and it didnt happen. He said we have to do everything ourselves and we went and put everything back ourselves and went back to these long structured risk adverse programs and while that was going on marshall sector did develop in the commercial sector now is starting to lead the world in many areas. We are starting to embrace that but we havent fully embraced yet. Weve got to embrace the elements of this country that are going fast but know how to do things. Have you watched how the United States america build software . Its amazing. When you go to the commercial sector and watch how we build software is so fast. Look at google or facebook or Amazon Web Services or any of the small startups in cambridge and Silicon Valley and seattle and here in washington its amazing. ab the United States doesnt know how to build software . We are