Course, budgetary challenges. At the center of all this, is admiral john reich ardson richardson who, since september, has served in the capacity as the 31st chief of Naval Operations. He is a 1982 graduate of the u. S. Naval academy and a Career Navy Submarine officer. He served on several boats, and he commanded the uss honolulu. He served as commodore of submarine Development Squadron submarine group eight as commander of the submarine allied naval forces south, as commander of Naval Submarine forces and as director of naval reactors. Admiral richardson will discuss the u. S. Navys role in this Global Maritime environment. He will lay out his strategic guidance to the fleet and how the u. S. And its partners can maintain maritime superiority. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm National Press club welcome to admiral john richardson. [applause] well, thank you for that very kind introduction, mr. Hughes, and id also like to just pay my respects to our distinguished members of the head table. Senator warner, i know im in good company. Weve all been schooled by you in so many ways, and i appreciate everything youve taught me. Senator dalton, thank you so much. And, john, thank you for that kind introduction again and also for your tenure here as the president of the press club which comes to an end on friday after a year of distinguished service. So i think we all owe mr. Hughes a round of applause here. [applause] and id like to thank everybody for just having me here. Its a real honor and a privilege to be in these halls for the very first time. You know, it has been i took over as the chief of Naval Operations in september, as has been mentioned, and so were past 100 days now, so certainly the honeymoon is over. But i will tell you that i still remember very vividly the moment that secretary of defense carter called me and said, hey, john, i just want to tell you that the president is going to nominate you to be the chief of Naval Operations. And i will tell you that my mind flashed back in an instant to my very first, you know, assignment, reporting aboard to my very First Submarine in california in 1983. And i just remember, you know, theres ensign richardson reporting aboard his very first boat, and, you know, who could have thought at that time that it would have led to this . Who could have looked forward, you know, 33 years and thought that i would ever be getting this call to be nominated to be the chief of Naval Operations. And my Commanding Officer on that submarine who was just an absolutely fantastic guy, he certainly was surprised, right . [laughter] i mean, he, in fact, hes been calling me up surprised for every promotion ive had since lieutenant commander, right . [laughter] are you kidding me be, you know . And i found out today that this is captain pete graff who i am still in very close touch with, was a shipmate of secretary dalton on the blueback, right. And so, you know, its just a commentary on what a small world we live in. But, you know, as i thought about back, and its shaped my thinking Going Forward as the chief of Naval Operations, when i entered the service a mere 33 years ago, we truly did at that time live in a different world, didnt we . I mean, it was different in so many ways. Our enemy, the enemy at that time we were focused on was the soviet union, right . It was a bipolar world in so many respects. We loved e. T. , the extraterrestrial, at that time, and we listened to michael jackson, you know, starting to really become the pop star that he was, and we listened to him on those cassette tapes in our walkmans. And, boy, ill tell you, you know, when you were underway, you know, that thing was a cadillac. If you had a walkman, you were styling, right . Because you could listen to your tapes, and, you know, not disturb everybody else, particularly on a submarine. The commercial internet did not even exist at that time, right . And, in fact, the inventor of facebook, mr. Zuckerberg, had not even been born. He was still a twinkle in his mothers eye, as they say, having been born in 1984. And so, you know, the world has changed in so many ways. One way that i like to talk about how things have changed, you know, maybe from a technological standpoint and its timely, because were sort of getting into playoff season and the super bowl. As a navy guy, as a submariner, how we enjoyed the super bowl. A lot of times we talk about, hey, how many christmases are you away, holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, you know . Thats all true but, you know, Everybody Knows how many super bowls they were away for. [laughter] and, you know, my first super bowl in 12983 1983, the entire game would go on, you know, i had no awareness of it at all. And at some point later on down, you know, after the game had finished, ld get a oneline message in the next sort of news broadcast, and it would just give you the score. And that score was, you know, Washington Redskins 27, Miami Dolphins 17. And so it truly was a different era, wasnt it . [laughter] and so, so thats kind of, you know, my first super bowl underway in 1983. Fast forward to another pivotal time in my career, was, you know, the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s. At that point the soviet union had collapsed, the wall had come down. And about that time i was xo on a submarine in 1994. And what we would do is we still couldnt get, you know, the live feed for the game. We just didnt but we had sega genesis, right . And we had madden nfl on sega genesis, and we would just get the two teams and put it in auto mode, and we would just watch the two teams on a big screen as much as we could. And ill tell you, it was like it was real, right . There was no hint that there was any pretend, and people were cheering for their teams, and people would make good plays. It had nothing to do with the game, but that was pretty real for us. And, you know, you would get all the whole smack talking and scuffles and Everything Else that would go on. So we watched the cowboys and the bills duke it out in complete simulated cyberspace. And then, you know, later on down we would get the score. You know, it was by the time i had command and to this day, if youre in the right place you can, you know, put an antenna above the water, you can now watch the super bowl play out in realtime. I mean, it is just like youre there in your living room. So, you know, just sort of one kind of vignette in terms of how things have changed over time. You know, and that world that we grew up in has changed so dramatically and not just from technology. You know, i would say i like sports analogies, and its very timely. You know, weve got the game tonight. You know, not only have the teams changed on the field, but i would say just like in the nfl, you know, the character of the entire game has changed. And thats the thing that captures my attention as i began my tenure as the chief of Naval Operations. And in particular, you know, the pace of things has become so accelerated from even a time in the early 80s that if we do not respond to those changes, if we do not recognize and anticipate to the changing character of the adapt to the changing character of the game, we are at risk of falling behind our competitors. Now, id like to just sort of set the stage if i could a little bit, knowing that, you know, im fully mindful of the crowd that i am addressing. You know, National Security professionals speak very plainly and often about the teams and the competition. And we will know them. And i will say a few words about them, russia, china, theyve already been mentioned, north korea, iran, isis. But theres much more to the story, as i said. The character of the game has changed, and im focused on three forces that for the navy are, you know, sort of defining our way forward. Three forces that are causing our world to be more used, you know, more trafficked, more stressed, more important and, you know, perhaps most interest ingly, more competed than ever. And ill lay out, you know, these three forces. One is the maritime system itself, which is becoming increasingly important and contested. The second one is this Information System, a Global Information system. Also, you know, just exponentially more used and contested. And then the third force is the introduction of technology, the pace at which it is being introduced and adopted. And so, you know, when i was an ensign back in 1982 when i graduated and through my first tour, certainly the maritime system, the physical system of oceans and seas much looks it looked then like it does today, right . The oceans are still in the same place. There are still the same geographic chokepoints which define our sea lines of communication. There are, you know, there were the same resources that were available on the seabed, and, you know, there was plenty of shipping that transited on those sea lanes through those chokepoints. And today the physical part of that is about the same. Nothing has dramatically changed, except that, you know, the use of this system has changed in spectacular ways. Increasingly used. In 1992, sort of the middle point, the cold war had just ended, as i said, soviet union had dissolved. Since 1992 maritime traffic has increased by a factor of four. You know, leading up to today, okay . This far outpaces, by the way, the change in global gdp which is just, you know, shy of doubling. Its increased by about 80 . And so it gives you a sense of how much this maritime system is being used, how accessible it is. And its becoming more accessible, right . For a number of reasons. We are seeing new trade routes open as the arctic, Climate Change affects the arctic. This past september, for instance, the extent of the sea ice in the arctic was 30, almost 30 less than the average over most of my career, over those 33 years, okay . And it was the fourth lowest it has ever been since we started keeping those records. Today the maritime route north of europe, north of russia is open to water about two weeks a year. And by 2025 climatologists predict its going to be open three times as much, six weeks a year. So you know that is going to be exploited. This is going to be something to which we must pay attention. That route shapes the transit from Northern Europe to asia in half. So this is going to be something of great interest to commercial partners throughout the world. And its not just accessibility due to Climate Change, right . Technology is also making previously unreachable parts of the ocean floor now accessible. So for undersea resources like minerals, oil and gas, these Deepwater Oil production, for instance, oil and Gas Production is expected to grow by 50 in the next 15 years as Technology Just makes it more and more easy to access those resources. You know, as those resources present an alternative to landbased resources and the technology matures, the idea of offshore exploration becomes more and more feasible. And its not just the natural resources, right . As we go into that part of the world, as we explore the ocean floor, then there is a result in infrastructure on the seabed that arises. And so you can think of, you know, the piping and the structures that are going to be necessary to get at those oil and gas mineral resources. And then there is a growing network of undersea cables that connect us, you know, from continent to continent. Part of this oceanic internet. This is the Information System. And its a nice way to sort of transition or segway into talking about the next system which is this Global Information system. Before i leave that, you know, there is, as i said, there is infrastructure to this system. When we log on to your computer, its all there, you know . At your fingertips. But the truth of the matter is that there is an infrastructure to this. There are chokepoints, there are nodes even in this Global Information system which must be acknowledged because they can be exploited. And on those undersea cables roads 99 of the rides 99 of the transoceanic internet traffic. And so something that weve got to pay very close attention to. So this Information System now is comprised, you know, not of the technology and the hardware so much as the data and the information that rides on all those servers, undersea cables, sat heats and satellites and the Wireless Networks that increasingly envelope and connect the globe. And it is pervasive, and it is changing fast. All right . According to ibm, 2. 5 quinn quintillion bites of data occur every day, and 90 in the world today was created in the last two years. So you get a sense of the acceleration. You can almost sort of, you can feel yourself, you know, being thrown back in your seat when you hear data like that. And the cost of entry is getting lower and lower and lower. Back in the early 90s again when i was a lieutenant commander, just finishing my tour as executive officer, in that year, 1995, a gigabyte of memory cost 625, all right . And if you wanted to buy a hard drive, that was about as big as you could buy at that time. Okay . Now in 2014, lets say, a gigabyte of data costs five cents, and you can get a hard drive thats six terabytes, you can just buy them on amazon off the internet. The cell phones, as you all know, carry a tremendous amount more Computing Power than the entire system that landed on the moon in 1939. And the link 1969. And the links between the different nodes on this system have multiplied as well. The first server came online in 1993. You can see what a rich time that was, when the wall came down, right . So much of this had its origins at that time. And in just a First Quarter of last year, 2. 7 million servers were shipped worldwide. Satellites now envelope the globe. There are more than 1300 satellites in orbit today monitoring everything fromwet, communications from weather, communications, sensors, space exploration, really kind of, you know, covering the globe. But if you look at a picture of, you know, the satellites as they orbit the earth, again there, you know, it is not homogeneous. There is structure, there is form there. And, again, just like the cables, just like the physical system of the season oceans, you know, that structure provides opportunities and vulnerabilities. The third force that i think is very important for us to consider is technology itself, the introduction and the rate at which technology is being introduced and the rate, even more importantly, at which it is being adopted. And this goes far beyond moores law in information technologies. Things are changing stunningly fast in that domain, for sure. But as you all know, im also talking about Rapid Advances in material science, in robotics, in genetic science, in artificial intelligence. It is coming at us faster and faster. And they are being adopted by society just as fast. So when the original telephone was introduced, this was Alexander Graham bells telephone, it took 46 years before 25 of americans had a telephone. Okay . For the smartphone, that was seven years. And for facebook, within three years 25 of america was on facebook. And so not only are these tools coming at us faster and faster, but it seems, you know, the usability and the rate at which theyre being adopted is also accelerating as well. So you get more people in the game using those tools faster and faster. So those are the three forces that have captured my attention. Certainly, the physical maritime system. No surprise there, i think, to anyone whos, you know, in the navy, right . Be a navy guy talking about the seasoned ocean should not be surprised. This Information System, certainly not exclusive to the navy, changes everything that we do. Im speaking, you know, im preaching to the converted here in the National Press club. But it does change things for us as well. And then this increasing rate of technological creation and adoption. These forces, i think, are fundamentally important to being effective as a navy and, as i said, i think change the character of the competition. All right . But as i mentioned, the teams have changed as well, right . Back in 1982, 83 we were at the height of the cold war, the chips were down, and it was that bipolar world, right . How easy i mean, how easy is that, right . To appreciate. Today i really, its much more multipolar, as you know. And i think of our challenges, our competitors really in terms of three groups. In one group you have russia and china, in another group you have competitors, threats just like iran and north korea, and then there is this pervasive threat of international terrorism. For the first time in what i would say is roughly 25 years, the United States is back to an era of great power competition. When i was deployed in 1983 in support of the soviet union, it was a different world. But when the soviet union dissolved, cold war ended, we really entered a period where we were not very, you know, we were not challenged at sea, okay . Not in a very meaningful way. That era is over. Today both russia and china have advanced their military capabilities to be able to act as global powers again. Their goals are backed by a growing arsenal of highend warfighting capability, many of which are exploiting those three forces that i mentioned and are focused specifically on our vulnerabilities. And so this is a competition where every competitor, every team is learning and adapting. And they are increasingly designed from the ground up to exploit the advantages, the opportunities of those three systems, of the maritime system, the Information System, and for incorporating n