Those of you. My names frank cilluffo, and i directed the mccreary institute for cyber and Critical Infrastructure at auburn university, our eagle. For those of us who follow our work, you know, this is not a new theme for us. But what is new is weve collaborated with wonderful partners at that Cyber Solarium Commission to point out or csc to point out, as well as the foundation for the defense of democracies. Were also going to be releasing a paper more on that soon. And later. But but at the outset, i did want to thank the amazing work i share and card ash on my staff, l. C. Shields on my staff of course, my coauthor, mark montgomery, who will be hearing from soon and the amazing staff at ftd, led by the one and only annie bixler. So without further ado, i want to jump into the conversation to kick us off. Were going to have mike rogers framing a number of the a number, the pressing issues facing our country right now. And as everyone, i think ewing knows, mike was not only a former congressman, but he was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on intelligence. He is a true leader on National Security issues. I think we first got to interact around the early, early weiwei discussions and in the words of mark twain, whereas history may not repeat itself, tends awry. And i think we have a lot of similar challenges where were grappling with today. Mike came to congress as a former army officer and an fbi agent and really thrilled to have you join us today, mike and in your voice, i think is so important for iraq, for our country to hear. So what i thought id do is rather than jump right into the discussion, id love to have you frame the issues. Obviously, where the communist party of china is in some of these issues. And more broadly, why are we where we are and what do we need to do to get to where we ought to be . So pretty broad question there. Well, thanks, frank, and thanks for the great work that youre doing there at auburn. Its incredible. I think there may be a rogers wing in auburn, mainly because my brother put all four of his children through auburn university. I told them, you should at least have a wing named after you for that that amazing feat. They all got great educations. Were all going out doing great things. Most of them are engineers of one sort or another, you know, space. Lets talk about it for a minute. You know, the first real wakeup call when when i was part of that National Security structure in congress, in the United States, 2000, roughly about 2007, when the Chinese Communist party fired a missile and hit a satellite, happened to be theirs. Just to prove that they had this anti satellite capability and we all started saying this is a bit of a game changer. Remember, prior to really those early 2000 years, the United States was dominant in space. No other really competitor, no near competitor prior to that. So we did what we wanted to do in space and built those markets in space based on the fact that we were unthreatened and undeterred. And that allowed us some immense capability in our warfighting capabilities in a smart, plain, smart ship. Smart soldier, smart bombs, all of that space based. And so the Chinese Communist party for several decades now has been saying, hey, were going to compete with the United States militarily. Were going to create a blue water navy, were going to do all of these things. And they look that, okay, what are their strengths, the United States and what are their weaknesses . And they came to a conclusion that space was both a strength and a weakness. So they invested a lot of money early on, developing capabilities for antisatellite technology, both ground based missiles, lasers and anti satellites themselves. And i dont get again, not to stir up a vision that this is about, you know, a star wars type fight in the in space. Its more of a more of a bulldozer pushing a satellite off its course or sapping its fuel or destroying its sensors in a small but effective way is what youre going to see in the near term. And china has stated in that nearterm theyd like to control space between earth and the moon. Lots of strategic reasons to have that happen. And so when we started looking at this, it was hard to get peoples attention even in the u. S. Government about, hey, we have this big and growing problem. And im not talking about the folks who are doing the work every day who can see this happening, something about the investment that it was going to take in a couple of things in the United States. One, we needed to make an investment that that also protects the very expensive things that we are firing up on rockets into space really expensive operations. Are we doing enough to protect those assets in space . How do we protect those assets . How do we protect assets that are already up there that dont have new technology that allows them to do two, to protect themselves . In the case of someone trying to get that satellite out of the out of orbit in any way, are we resilient enough . Can we fire up an architecture and lowearth orbit fast and quick . So that if somebody wants to take out some of our capability in low earth orbit, we would have the capability to very quickly create a new architecture, fire up a new satellite, get things to happen at almost real time speed. Are we ready for that . Have we developed that . And now you have commercial space integrating with our military and security infrastructure in a way that i think is very positive, but it also has some challenges and some hurdles that were going to have to get over, mainly because weve inherited this legacy system of space. That said, hey, were, you know, unchallenged and undeterred. This seems crazy to me that we may have to have body guard satellites, which some people are calling them, which may be a very real possibility, very real and very soon to make sure that we can can maintain capabilities. And then you just go right down the list from that. Frank, the cybersecurity threat isnt necessarily just disruption, and certainly thats a concern. But what happens if the information that is coming down is been corrupted in some way and so your positioning system has you in one place and the folks who are making battlefield decisions or seaborne decisions are getting information that has that battle group or that ship or that submarine in a very different place, because theyve been able to, through cyber attack, been able to disrupt the information flow and insert packets in there that lead to bad decisions on both the sea and land in other places. A real possibility, unfortunately. And so trusting information becomes now a huge issue. So disruption, we have plans. We understood the ability to lose assets and other things. Now what do you do when it comes to distrusting the information youre getting because you had a successful cyber penetration of your network somewhere . And so you start thinking the next layer down, okay, okay. This goes we know the chinese and the russians have a have designs on trying to take out a lot of our satellite capable i. T. Early on in any kind of a conflict, do we have the supply chain to sustain Rapid Deployment and resiliency of of the architecture that we have deployed . You know, theres a pretty thats a very hard question for the United States and one i dont believe we have gotten right exactly yet. So if you take those issues just in that order, you can see where were going to have to act faster. Were going to have to deploy faster. Were going to have to have robust Cyber Defense upfront, enduring and any conflict and were also going to have to have a supply chain that does not rely on a single other country. If we believe that when that balloon goes up or hopefully not, but if it went up, wed have the ability to sustain our space advantage. All of those things are hard. I dont believe the government today is configured for a fast paced, rapid or interoperability between commercial and space. And theres a lot of reasons that that legacy kind of keeps nipping this in the backside, if you will. And i dont believe that we have taken seriously enough what happens when we lose key pieces of our satellite architecture. How do we make up for that . So its not just defending it, but what do you do if it goes out . And so those are the kinds of things i think hopefully well get a chance to talk about today. Im not saying its over and we havent done things that the u. S. Government hasnt done things they have china moves at a very different pace when they show up. The whole families there right in the u. S. , we dont quite do that. Right. So when they show up, they have the diplomacy arm, the economic arm, the military arm, the intelligence arms. All shows up with a hand in hand. They skip down the street together. Here in the United States, we have to have meetings across different sectors and we have to have some kind of a group hug meeting to get to where we need to go for Rapid Deployment of anything. We have to change that and not saying we should adopt the communist system. What i am saying is we should adopt an American Innovation system that allows us to act quicker and faster because the chinese are moving out. They know that they have a slight advantage in the fact that they can rapidly deploy and innovate after some theft of intellectual property. I guess what we need to be able to move equally as fast to counter that growing threat in space. Thank you, mike. Very sobering thoughts as well as very. Yeah. I mean, you covered death covered this space. You covered the waterfront in in an incredible way. In a short amount of time. And im glad that you brought up its not when most i think most americans are not aware of just how dependent our way of life obviously from a military standpoint economically from an assured positioning, navigation, timing, i dont want to sound geeky here, but clocks to run the world if you can mess with that, you can be ahead of anyone. And and we need to invest accordingly. Now our report does touch on some of the streamlining process, which i think is im glad you brought up as well as sort of harnessing innovation in the commercial sector rather than treating them as as the stepchild, having them as a genuine partner in all of this. And thats where i think we can we frog anyone when we put our heart to it in our and our minds to it. But but i but i would be curious in terms that i see behind you your chip warhead, the bulk. And when we look at semiconductors and we look at the dependance that the whole world has on taiwan in terms of production and obviously the potential implications asians have of whats going on in the south and in the in the south sea and the like. What what should we be doing more around supply chain . And then im going to ask you a very pointed question. If you were commander in chief today, what are the three things you would like to see done . Medium well, writ large or related to our topic . Thats a very big topic related to our topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think three things in just about everything as my wife would tell you i would and im going to eternal optimist. She also says that may be a genetic defect in me, but i do believe we can do this if we unleash American Innovation. I a we the three most important things that we really are. You know, weve had some fits and starts on the way that government handles cyber risk across the entire Us Government enterprise. And we just have not gotten it right yet. And i know theres been some small and important steps. We just have not gotten it right yet. I dont think we can wait too much longer to have a cancel sedated effort on things like Cyber Defense. And remember why this is important because the private sector is playing an Important Role in space. Defense is, you know, they can protect their networks. The Defense Department does a pretty good job of protecting their networks, not perfect. But imagine now you multiply your your threat vector here by adding all of these suppliers and everybody in the chain that helps build the satellite. And now youre dependent on their Cyber Protection and resiliency to keep you safe, to avoid getting into your Networks Later on. That is a huge challenge we have. I dont believe weve gotten it right yet. We have to do that. Secondly, i would make sure it very quickly that we create an architecture using our private sector and commercial enterprise to get these low earth orbit architecture. So that makes it very on appeal for the chinese or the russians to start taking out these low earth satellites. They know you can get one, but you wont get it for long. And we need to build that kind of resiliency in the last part of that is the supply chain piece. I would say early. We need to friend. Sure. And we need to build capability, not capacity necessarily, but capability in the United States. We have atrophied ourselves in a way thats very, very hurtful to the ongoing National Security protection of the United States in many ways, chips being a part of that. A big part of that. And you think those microprocessors, how important it is, again, there are certain types of microprocessor lasers, even the ones that arent very boutique and and specialized. But those microprocessors need we need to have the best and latest capacity and ability in the United States. Remember, if this goes up, its going to disrupt commerce and transportation and all kinds of things. And we should always plan for the worst, for the best imperfect work, for the best, and i hope for the best and so in that process, we need to make sure that we have that that capacity and again, in cyber, we dont have a Cyber Workforce that is going to meet the demand today. And i argue we need to change that as a part of this. So its a very complicated and multilevel layered effort that we have to go through. And i believe we can do all at once. The u. S. Government has done Amazing Things when we have a threat on the horizon. I cant think of a bigger strategic threat to the economic and National Security prosperity of the United States than what china faces to us today. And theyre telling us that we probably ought to listen to them. Mike, thank you for your sobering comments. Keep working for the best as you said, keep fighting the good fight. And and id be remiss if i didnt mention auburn is represent by the great mike rogers of alabama is well and on my board is Admiral Mike Rogers so weve got a lot of weve got a lot of rogers is but i cant help mike rogers frank you cant have enough mike rogers in National Security i think. Well, our next event is going to be mike rogers, too. So its going to be the three of you talking and says all authority are incredibly informed. So thank you, mike. And and keep fighting the good fight. Were going to go into a little more depth of discussion, unpacking some of mikes excellent preview here and and well start with sue gordon, who i will very quickly introduce sue, as i think everyone knows, is the consummate Intelligence Officer. Shes led shes been in leadership positions at the National Space intelligence agency, Central Intelligence agency, and also served in the highest civilian Intelligence Officer role as Principal Deputy national pd, Principal DeputyNational Intelligence director. So its almost like npd in is at what does now say bye bye to i mean ive had the privilege of learning from sue for a number of years and and and quite honestly the country is better off with the role that you played here. So i, id like for you to unpack back a little bit of what mike discussed here and and maybe specifically sort hone in on how does this all evolve and and what are some of the wildcards . I know youve done some amazing work in to tell where you look, the different ways that the Intelligence Community can work with the private sector to to to drive solutions and and rather than me leading the witness. Sue why dont you jump on in. Well one thanks, frank for having me clearly, i need to pay you more so i dont have to follow chairman rogers. Next time, lets see if i can give a little context. I love that. That mike talked about advantage it it it actually is my favorite way to think about National Security because it forces you into a temporal context. And if you take this concept of advantage and play it through the history of space that neatly enough is is my personal history. So ive seen it all. You kind of go early on. You have the United States and russia nation states using space for National Security advantage. The United States was super dominant in the capabilities that we were able to put in space. That gave us ability not only to see beyond the horizon, but to project power, to for the point of purpose, of deterrence, but also enablement of mission activities. It was one or two of us for almost the whole of the history were talking about until really in the late nineties, when you start seeing china, japan and others coming on the scene, but they were not big actors, so it was two countries playing out the game of advantage and i think it was disproportionately on the american side simultaneously you see the bleed through of techn