Brose is a former staff director for the Armed ServicesCommittee Prior to that is a senior policy advisor for senator john mccain and previously held other positions in the government. Right now he is the chief Strategy Officer build capability for the military and the department of Homeland Security i believe. We can talk about that as we go to the interview. But welcome chris thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you brian its great to be here. To start off with what led you to do this book. And ive been thinking about these issues for a while at something youve encountered a lot several years on the Armed Services committee and. [inaudible] guest i would say it basically was two things. Both of these are a product of the many years i spent working on these issues when i was in the senate and just kind of thinking about the stuff on a daily basis. Its a growing realization in the years but the fundamental problem i felt was underappreciated. Not the people didnt appreciate we were losing competitive advantage we were or we needed to be from a technological standpoint and from an operational standpoint. It was mostly the sense that i didnt think there is an issue to get after that considering how fast that fact was closing on that and how far behind that problem we actually are. The second was again thinking i had been doing about what we do about this . On the one hand there is a lot of talk about the operational problems presented by a competitor like china theres a lot of talk about technology the importance of emerging Technology LikeArtificial Intelligence to really being essential to enhancing americas competitive advantage in the military standpoint. It did not feel to me that they were concrete answers coming together. So what do i do with this new technology . How does it allow me to it think differently . Operate in different ways that are extra going to create competitive advantage for the United States military . There is sort of the sense that we were talking about these technologies is were going to layer them on top of the things weve always had in the way we have always operated. Well just be able to do it better. So for my standpoint i sort of was living at the nexus of these worlds. From the technological standpoint that really i think on the hill looking at the emergence of these technologies, tested development with the department of defense. My view was is there a way to help bridge this divide or gap between what it is we think we might be able to do with new technologies and wonder things are going to need to do from an operational standpoint . In sort of in a broader strategic contrast of what is is next youre going to look like . That was more of a attempt for me to it get my own head around these problems and say heres my contribution to what i think the answers look like. Sue and i totally agree we are at a juncture where we need to make the decision as a nation and department of defense on how we are going to deal with especially china or any high tech competitor will pose because we are still lugging around a legacy military thats not quite changed how it is postured to take advantage or exploit any new technologies that are available. I think one thing thats really focused on its not just about building the new technologies because they have been around for a few years its about changing the way we are going to fight that we were going to use technologies and operational concept. You talk a little bit about human command and machine control that is describing the department characterizes as manned and unmanned teaming. An sky like are on par with each other and act as a team. If they get separated they can act independently or if they come together they can Work Together again. That might not be the correct way. How do you think of that new way of operating we are going to need to embrace with the Autonomous System . Then maybe we can talk about ai is an added element to that. Guest first have to give credit where credit is due, human command teaming with your phrase which i give credit to both of you in the book four. And it encapsulated the way i thought about it very nicely which is why i gave it a place. The reason i dont like manned unmanned teaming as you have the manned and unmanned system equal. They are somewhere and somehow on equal footing. Which i dislike. I think the other piece of it is, there is this tendency to believe these new technologies are so fundamentally new and different the way we have always thought about the control of military operations, all of the law of policies and norms and procedures from the past that are going to be thrown out the window my own view is it just isnt. Its much more of a movement along a continuum from where we have been than some brandnew era. And ultimately i think it does come back to this question of commandandcontrol is a very familiar military concept. Its important to pace the system out of it and get to the question of what we are ultimately talking about is the performance of military tasks. Those tasks are going to continue to be performed. The question is who or what will be performing. He still have superior actors who are controlling subordinate actors. Traditionally that is been human superiors commanding human subordinates. I think with the system becomes more intelligent and a thomas, some of those lower more technical tasks, more mundane tasks that take and a norman amount of human time in the u. S. Military right now. They take tens of thousands of humans during processing exploitation throughout the nation to censure information is one example. Increasingly, more of those tasks could be performed by more intelligent more autonomous machines. That does not mean theyre going to be off doing it on their own. It is still going to be the same Architecture Framework where humans set very clear parameters for the control of military tasks. Youre going to train significantly with the subordinate actors were going to perform those tasks. In the process of training and testing youre going to build trust that you are giving them responsibility to do. We talk about a thomas systems if there is such a thing. Reality is a ptolemy describes the relationship between a human who is delegating tasks to someone or something other than that. In that respect its more around what are the standards were going to be able to come to trust machines to perform tasks that currently or previously only humans could perform . I dont think the way in which we are going to do that is going to be any different is how we evaluate humans in that respect or less Intelligent Machines we have been relying on for very hard time. We have processes in place to do this. I think that is actually going to be something we should spend more time thinking to how we govern the new technologies in the future. Host absolutely. In terms of the atomic systems are some that have control over some of their own actions as a couple of different flavors in your talk about a little bit in the book about essentially hired sophisticated systems, systems that are very expensive. Their relatively small numbers of them they can operate independently to some of their own Mission Planning and respond to the stimuli in the environment. Theyve got cheap systems that are somewhat expendable, maybe even disposable. And they operate independently but they are very constrained. Obviously theres a role for both of those. What i am curious about, we think of new ways of operating that exploit Autonomous Systems, Unmanned Systems, how do you see that relationship or both of those families are being used . In trying to more of a war of attrition you overwhelm them . Do you see that as a component the rest is having more of a maneuverable action and expended robots are an element of that. How would you see the different types of Unmanned Systems being deployed in military operations as opposed to just throw a bunch of robot waves . Guest its a great question. Perhaps the point that unifies the two in the present sense whether its something smaller and cheaper we talk about them as Unmanned Systems but they are manned when he looked beneath the hood and see all the different particular tasks that are being used remotely. To make them operationally useful, the big change is going to be rather than having one on an system or one manned system that has an exquisite amount of human beings behind it to make it operationally useful. Its the inversion of that relationship have a single human being in command. So to get at your question, the real opportunity is getting back on our side. For many, many years we made the choice around in qualitative superior, even in the face of a quantitative superior adversary. We have been able to do that because we have had exquisite technological to laos to hide in enemy spaces, fire a limited number of times but exquisitely accurately. So to me i think the opportunity of flipping this back to say from an operational standpoint, is going to become harder. I am going to have to confront larger waves of systems coming at me. I think a ptolemy really opens up to put that back on her side into your point some of these wars of attrition smarter and cheaper then maybe we had been expecting too. In terms of how that allows us to fight differently than other them are just going to grind each other down the last person standing wins, i do think the ability to operate faster is going to be another trickle component of this. Ultimately why i concentrated with the kill chain in the book. Its not particular platforms or pieces of the system that are interesting, its ultimately the ability to understand whats going on, to rapidly make decisions and take relevant actions. Increasing the quantity and quality by which you can operate. Where again you create so many different dilemmas for the adversary that fractures their ability to make decision. I do think that is something a thomas systems will provide us a real capability advantage, separate and apart from we are just going to grind each other down and at the end of the day we will have more systems on the battlefield than our competitor. That is something to scoff at. Host we found in the work we did looking at these concept was the players, they like being able to do the attrition attack and throw a bunch at the adversary and overwhelm their defenses. But they like having the ability to do that as well do some exclusive attacks of the adversarys busy dealing with the attrition battle thats happening elsewhere, they can focus a smaller number of platforms it still might be a thomas, but they will do the pinpoint strikes against the long range sensors, those capabilities that are the Game Changers in terms of the way the vow to will proceed. Getting that advantage youre taking care of his eyes will keeping his hands busy is something in the wargames we found very helpful. Host just to build on that. Guest the points on the book is putting the focus on the outcomes are trying to achieve rather than getting overly consumed with what type of system is actually going to be most relevant. Because again i am prepared to believe the best answers to these problems is how do you build the effective Battle Network to solve these operational problems. He could be all legacy systems being used in new ways to be a mixture of old technology, new technology, at the end of the day it could be all brandnew things. But at the end of the day it really should not matter how you combine these things. But again, the point youve made so well, you have to be able to combine them in a more elegant and dynamic way so that you can have a different Battle Networks that are entirely brandnew things or exquisite pointtopoint old things. But really be able to get the interesting synergies of 40, 50yearold platform and some new brandnew Autonomous System that was developed yesterday. Host exactly. Lets talk a little bit about where the u. S. Has an advantage here. We could talk a little bit about how you would implement this and leverage the base. But also, where you see the fundamental advantages where the u. S. Would better exploit the emerging technology that an adversary like a china . Guest and a lot of these technologies, as a nation we have considerable advantages and considerable capability. I think the challenge is aligning the challenging capability with the actual military problem were facing. This is a familiar conundrum of how do you get companies and founders and others who are working in these technologies that are really focused on commercial applications and not interested or actively opposed to work on military problems. I think one of the biggest advantages the United States has his operational expertise and excellence that we have in the United States military. Separate and apart from the Technology Areas its hard for a place, the amount of time dealing with these types of challenges with combat and its not we should be overly reliant upon. A lot of these will be new and different. From the standpoint of how to solve operational problems, how do you bring it together to do that we have a lot of ability there. But at the same time we need to be realistic that there are aspects of how china will use the technologies and very much could get a leg up over us. When it comes to data collection, certainly when it comes to being shall we say less interested in some of the ethical concerns that we spend a lot of time rightly focused on. When you have a government that founded on distrust of its own people, my sense is they will be a lot more willing to delegate these types of decisions to autonomous machines in the United States is. I think its going to be a long term competition for we will have to look for areas of advantage. I dont of that wish could be the leader in these advantages how quickly can we bring these in and make them operationally relevant . I think that is something weve done quite wellin recent years. This is a very different type of challenge. We need to be mindful of the fact that much is what weve learned of the past 20 years may not all be transferable to this Great Power Competition era. Host one interesting thing that comes out of how you were describing manned systems or Autonomous Systems might get used and what we did played out, is if you are going to use your Unmanned Systems to try to gain decision advantage that means youre going to use them to operate faster in time and giving the adversary more things to look at. If you can speed up your decision cycle and improve quality like that. Hopefully you are creating a perception and confusion on the adversary side he slowing his own decision cycle. One thing to rely on his Mission Command. Its been trained in such a way theyre willing to improvise, use their own initiative when communications are lost they are willing to accept tactics that might not ordinarily be returned to. It seems like the willingness of u. S. Leaders to take advantage of their own initiative might be an advantage if youre looking for a Decision Center site if you are using your own unmanned system to come up with that tactic in the absence for prior direction. Guest that could be a form of competitive example is welford. Denied six militarys going to have to learn a lot about Mission Control as well. But to your point we are much better position to do that in an adversary thats very topdown kind of an inherent distrust. I think that is one 100 in advantage we have. Thats also something that we certainly practice a lot of Mission Command and it was not necessarily the way a lot of these were structured. Host thats right so it brings me to it a point that a lot of people will ask is how do we actually make the transition . You discussed, we have discussed you dont have to transition to the robot force of a thomas system right away. This could be an element this builds up over time and even a 10 contribution of on demand systems or Autonomous Systems makes a difference in your operational outcome. Other than going back to the defense contractors and building a bunch of Unmanned Systems, other other ways dot could take advantage of this enormous Tech Industry base to field on manned systems and management tools the regular pipeline . Guest that is a 64 milliondollar question is certainly one thing to talk about all of this much harder challenges how to do it. Something that really hit home for me and was eyeopening in the course of doing the book. How so many of the things we are now saying or things weve said over the past 20 to 30 years. That metric center warfare it all rings true and very similar to i think many of the things being said and written down you have to go back and asked so many the things we said were important for so many years. The main emphasis for the book from a big believer and incentives. We got exactly what we paid for. The way you begin to change that is to focus on the actual things are trying to buy. I am a big baseball fan. A big metric where we are measuring Team Outcomes rather than player inputs. I think in much the same way getting into a position where we are competing out the things we are trying to do, measured on the outcomes we are trying to achieve. There is an actual process, a repetitive process every year they certain amount of money held in reserve at the beginning of the year by the Senior Leaders of the department of defense, they will say we are trying to reduce the time to close killed chains. We are trying to enhance the decisionmaking of u. S. Forces. We need measured against specific operational problems those forces will have to confront we have to get away from the broader buzzwords as soon form debate about what that means i have to boil the