Center for defense concepts, with me is the adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute. We welcome the cochairs of the task force from the house. Congressman jim banks from indiana. Congressman moulton has been in 2014, a marine veteran. Also focus on defense in the past, serves on the budget, seapower and strategic forces. In the 2017, indianas third district, from the labor committees. He is a major reserve list, continues to serve even today. Thank you for being with us today. Honor to be here. I was afraid to mess that up. The task force, a yearlong study, what the United States is going forward, a strategic environment, a rise in china, that is a potential opportunity to improve the ability to protect us interests going forward. We both found a great job of capturing the strategic environment and opportunities available to us as a recommendation we thought did a great job addressing new concepts and new technologies and how the defense department. What do you find are the most important finds you want people to take away . In many ways the findings are not entirely revolutionary. China represent the greatest National Security challenge, and the need to invest new technologies like biotech, other things, what is remarkable about this report is it is fully bipartisan. Losing this race to china or starting to fall behind. It says we are behind and we will lose, to the department of defense, prioritization of resources, investing in new technologies, not necessarily how to get rid of old technologies to make room for new investments. I couldnt agree more. There is nothing here that is necessarily groundbreaking, but it is a wakeup call not just to congress but the administration and the american people. We have to change the attitude especially at the pentagon. And attitude geared more toward welcoming innovation and to develop the innovation to compete now and in the future. Key take aways from the report i would focus on, we need an Artificial Intelligence revolution and impact how to change the mindset at the pentagon, and we need to do a better job protecting our Critical Technologies and lay out a number of recommendations on how we do that as well. The third key take away, partnering both with Silicon Valley and University Partnerships throughout the country. As part of this task force, travel to Silicon Valley and heard stories from a number of innovators, entrepreneurs and investors, and working with the pentagon. Developing our workforce, stem skills within the workforce, we have unique ideas on how to do that. With several remote this is an entirely bipartisan effort. Many are surprised, if you contentious issues, as we travel the world, with democrats recognizing the severity of the situation, where we stand, how far we lagged behind in the report serves as a wakeup call. You both identified china as the competitor, the major power we are contending with and harnessing new technology is going to be potentially a challenging effort in a budget environment that will be more constrained. Do we need to allocate more resources towards National Security, or it has to be affordable. The country depends on it. The reality of the budgetary environment, there isnt as much money to spend on defense no matter how you look at it but the beauty of the recommendation is if done correctly a lot of these new technologies are less expensive than the big old system is we need to get rid of to make room for them. The challenge is the last part of the statement getting rid of the big old legacy system. President eisenhower and senator mccain said it best when they talked about the militaryindustrial complex, the militaryindustrial congressional complex but likes to keep the systems around. What Everyone Needs to recognize, National Security is on the line if we dont make some changes, that means divesting the old so we can make room for the new. Reporter the efficiencies and cost savings can all hours to do more with less at the pentagon. Next year, no matter who wins the election on tuesday, who is in control we will have a debate over defense spending but our Task Force Report paves the way for either administration or either party to find ways to change the mindset at the pentagon. Congress has granted the pentagon that are being taken advantage of to spur innovation and take advantage of innovation already occurring in places like Silicon Valley and elsewhere but these emerging technologies will allow us to replace antiquated systems that we talk about too. Great point. Do you want to address that . We have done some research in terms of redistributing from large monolithic platforms towards more distributed smaller platforms. When you think about retiring the platforms or nimble Information Age technologies and ai, we think about smaller systems how do you think we have to grapple with the mindset from thinking about capability to thinking about operational concepts . One of the things we stress is the pentagon has not been forward thinking and aggressive enough that it operating operational concepts. You should be choosing technologies that fit the new operational concepts. That is what we should be doing. We have these big legacy systems and try to figure out ways to use them in the new environment. We need to much more aggressively develop operational concepts for 21stcentury warfare, and test new technologies against those operational concepts. That should ultimately guide our decisionmaking in terms of investments. If every member of Congress Took advantage of the briefings we received in this Task Force Effort this would be easy. If all of our colleagues, some classified briefings, what the future of war looks like especially visavis china with the findings of this report very quickly and support more autonomy in the air, at sea, undersea, this would be a very easy endeavor. Most of our colleagues will never receive those briefings. Many colleagues on the Armed Services committee have never received those briefings. This is about a new attitude. This report is a wakeup call. This is a new attitude that needs to inflict congress but also a wakeup call for the highest levels of leadership in the pentagon. I am a conservative republican, the current president tremendously, it has been since carter, we had someone at the highest levels of the pentagon who has been shaking it up and developing programs and i had the pleasure of visiting kessel run air force unit involved in coding and his hometown and his home state, massachusetts, that kind of mindset we have to have in place each branch of the pentagon and congress to Work Together to spur what we need. Not every member of congress let alone every american is privy to the information that we see, certainly not the travel we are able to do to allies around the globe. We cant discuss classified formation but when you go into classified briefings come one of two things happen, you come out newly confident there is a problem we read about in public news but have a handle on it, or thinking this is more urgent or dire situation than people realize. I felt the majority of briefings we receive came out and say this is incredibly important we are doing this work. You raise the idea of technology, bringing it to the defense department. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, Hypersonic Weapons and bioengineering. In the Technology Portfolio which ones were the most important ones we need to start harvesting for defense purposes and which ones do you find in your work with commercial industry might be the best opportunities to partner with industry . Some of these technologies may not be available. What did you find in terms of priority and opportunity with commercial innovation . Number one recommendation is Manhattan Project effort to win the race on ai. Pretty obvious to many people but again not so obvious to our colleagues in congress. The impact on National Security in the future, biotech, in the midst of a pandemic, it is not traditional bio weapons or whatnot but the ability of biotechnology to manufacture things. It is predicted to be a very binary result. We will when the biotech race or china will. We wont be competitors. It is essential for the future a National Security as well as our Economic Security that we win this race without devoting the resources china is right now. What were your surprises . The race to ai is a race we are losing. It is why the first recommendation is to require every Major Defense Acquisition Program to evaluate at least one ai or autonomous alternative prior to funding, the most significant recommendation in the entire court. The reason we focus on the acquisitions process, the only place, the structure of National Security apparatus, forcing the revolution to occur, in congress to force a new mindset keeping in mind, authorizations that are largely ignored. If they are going to ignore it we force the acquisition process to work differently. As far as other technologies go, Silicon Valley, we were exposed new innovations, Cloud Computing which is critical to our ability to speed up the race to advancing ourselves in the ai arena. That is an area we can do a better job leveraging and partnering with the commercial sector too. You brought up the Manhattan Project, talk about incorporating ai to more acquisition programs via the acquisition process, the Major Defense Acquisition Programs to have an autonomous alternative. Driving it to acquisition programs, in the future, on the horizon, the question is how do we adapt it to defense applications. Seems like a Manhattan Project generating something new, not the right model, a broader effort to ensure you get ai in more programs. And adaptation a great analogy but Nuclear Technology is new to most people, they knew they needed to figure out a way to beat the germans, very much where we are, we also recognize like the Manhattan Project a lot of this research and development is not just going to be an existing dod program, the university of chicago, a whole of nation approach to National Security. If we take existing ai technology, theres a lot of it out there already and the current defense use going backwards. We need to develop the operational concepts that will employ ai, and make sure we have technology or developing technology to meet the needs but it is important, the legacy of the Manhattan Project, all those scientists who worked on this incredibly awful technology devoted their lives to ensuring it wouldnt be used, ensuring peaceful use of Nuclear Technology. We need to lead the world on developing the protocols governing the use of ai. Weve barely scratched the surface of that. We dont need china setting the rules of the road, the conclusion of the report too brings up some analogies, a Game ChangingTechnology Using nuclear weapons. The idea, you brought this up, with these new technologies, to drive innovation. How do we employ it operationally, where the value comes in. How do you think dod is merging new operational concepts like ai, a lot of offices, working technologies, fewer, the use case alongside technology. The bottom line is pentagon is doing poorly at making this top priority. It has been years since we heard the top leadership, as a priority for any a efforts, that is the leadership we call for, a new attitude focused on that, that we havent seen in many years. Jim brought up kessel run, this office where they are attracting top talent, they are putting these young smart kids to work, solving a lot of it problems, toward the air force. One of the projects we saw them working on was the supply system which has been very problematic. What they develop is brilliant, simple, inexpensive and they developed it much more quickly than the prime defense contractor that failed to improve the system. Our first question was how to make sure other services beyond the air force that have 35s get the system. I am a marine veteran. Why does the marine corps not have its own version of kessel run. It is a long way to go here. Jim is right, not just a few new technologies here and there but fundamental changes, different attitude at the pentagon. What we talked about before. Ai alternatives, i struggle with how we inject concept a. The performance parameters. What can the department do better to develop new concepts . We budget weapons systems, major weapons programs, the developers of new concepts that is exploratory, what is the mechanism to think about budgeting, capturing the learning, being more adaptable, how do we think about those things . A really good point. As far as the first recommendation requiring an ai alternatives at every program that is just the start, if the pentagon is not already doing that, additionally it is a good point, the first hearing we had at the task force. Senator jim talent and Michelle Flournoy testified about creating an environment, far less riskaverse. Why do they take far too few risks in their investments and new and emerging technologies and beats up on them every time they do and they fail. It is our job on our end of the capital to prop them up to fail more, fail fast as senator talent put it, granting more authorizations, take those risks, report after the first recommendation makes recommendations. I would point to the example of what the marine corps, and the operational concepts that have driven marine corps acquisitions, as i said to him personally i am not convinced yet all of his theories are correct, but doing what we need to do in questioning these assumptions and the way he is approaching it, developing operational concepts first, his vision of how the marine corps should be employed, integrated with this. The acquisitions we need to make. What investments do we have to make. The commandant encountering some resistance. A lot of us have a way of doing that. They also a lot of people inside the marine corps and the pentagon and outside as well who are questioning some of these changes. Change is hard. We worked on the future of the structure study on the force design. We brought the challenge up in terms of the best legacy systems. With operational concepts that would move you away from that, what are the criteria we should be establishing with these systems, aside from an operational concept as indicative of something left by the wayside as we think about, trying to think about how to articulate systems that outlived their usefulness or structures that are unsustainable. If you leave this decision up to congress it will never happen. Talking about the defense, congressional complex. The parochial interests we deal with, section 4 will make recommendations, would empower gao, others, the recommendations on what legacy systems outlived their usefulness and where we can cut the emerging technologies we need. What part of the criteria was part of the cost, the budgetary environment we are facing. It is easy to sit in congress and say i will always spend more on National Security, the reality, every country in the world has finite resources. We must make the tough decisions to spend those resources as widely as we can to support our troops and National Security. We recommended the congress not do it ourselves. I am sorry we dont have more confidence in ourselves for the congressional body but we have to take a hard look at this and ask tough questions and not everybody will as we cut legacy systems, installations and even certain companies, we are also investing a lot more in new technology that just as in the past will move the country forward and have impact beyond our National Security and this should be exciting for every american. The nature of the task force comes into play. The most controversial part of the report but four republicans and four democrats readily agree without any debate about this section 4 Task Force Report recommendations, on the Rand Corporation involved in this process and layout the parameters, dig into to evaluate legacy system, the elimination of programs that are painted. It includes thought in this conversation. On the outset, what many friends are worried about, naming names or calling out programs. We knew it wasnt our job, to create a framework of how we do this in the most substantive and productive way. Friends on the committee, their programs and systems to be taken away. It is a small but significant point that the most controversial recommendation that gets the most consternation to congress itself is one where there is no debate, four democrats, four republicans, we need to make some tough choices. And jim and i represent the interests of our district, so do all the other six members of the committee. Some of this might be painful to us personally but it is the right thing to do for our country. Thank you for having done that and it does fall in on an effort by all the services to rebalance forces into the future. Every Service Going through this, move away from legacy platforms. Reconciling themselves to funding modernization priorities that they went to in the last five years. It is pivotal, lets talk about supply chains, the highlight of the report. Supply chains and chemical infrastructure, that are very important, you had a series of recommendations and get to this potential in