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00:00I think the United States, you know, we're a global power. We have interests, very real interests in many parts of the world. So if we get engaged in, say, deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan or deterring Russian aggression beyond Ukraine and tornado, we have to also be able to still have presence and deterrence ability elsewhere so that the Middle East doesn't also erupt. So you never want to be in a situation where your engagement in one region basically provokes or encourages another adversary elsewhere to start to take advantage of that and start something else. And so you really do need to have the ability to look across multiple theaters at a time and to be fully engaged in one while deterring in the others. You mentioned some of the relations with our allies. Obviously, we have NAITO when it comes to Europe and now there's more and more development in Asia, including these talks among South Korea, Japan and the United States, which just happened. How much can that relieve some of the pressure on the United States itself? First, it's extremely important politically and in terms of demonstrating resolve. So if you're trying to affect Xi Jinping's calculus about whether to use force in the region, knowing that he won't just have to deal with a U.S. response, but a Japanese response, a Korean response, an Australian response and others in the region who, you know, coming together in coalition to try to protect the rules based order in Asia. And then these allies, increasingly, particularly Japan, Korea, Australia, they have real capability to contribute to any sort of crisis situations. There are a lot of fiscal pressures in the United States right now at the same time. Many people think we're going to have to commit more resources actually to defense, given some of the things you've just talked about. Larry Summers has said that repeatedly on this program. We're looking forward. We're going to spend more on defense. Are we spending enough? Do we need to spend more? And if so, how much more? Well, I do think that given the way the world is evolving and our interests, we probably do need to increase our investment. But just throwing money at the problem is not going to be enough. At the same time, we really have to take a fresh look at what we're spending on and where we're investing, because in a lot of these situations, you know, buying more of the same thing that has served us well, you know, in a force that was optimized for the Middle East. And counterterrorism is not necessarily what we need to deal in a maritime and air theater predominantly in in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere. Plus, you have this profound period of technological disruption. And so you really have to look at, you know, how do we adopt innovation integrated into the force to enable the legacy forces. We have to be able to operate differently and get different outcomes. So it's innovation, adoption and it's new operational concepts. We have to think much more asymmetrically than we have in the past if we're going to keep our edge in the future. How should we think about the role of technological innovation as we make defense plans going forward? On the one hand, it may increase our capability because we can use some of this new technology and it's very strong technology. On the other hand, we watch adversaries potentially having access to things without nearly the same lead time or investment, because some of the stuff is a lot less expensive than some of the big weapons systems. Right. I think the U.S. is hands down the leader globally in technical innovation, and that includes in the defense domain. But we are not all that good at innovation adoption actually taking, particularly if something's coming out of the commercial sector, like take, for example, small, cheap, charitable, you know, drones. We are seeing how that is impacting the war between Russia and Ukraine. We are starting to see Iran use them against Israel. You know, in an Asia Asian theater where China will always have a quantitative advantage because they have their whole force right there. It's their backyard where we have to project power from the United States and other regions. How do we buy back mass? How do we sort of leverage things like drones undersea on the sea, in the air controlled by human operators? How do we leverage that to to really create new problems for an adversary and how do we use them to contribute to deterrence? So the technological piece is absolutely key to keeping our edge in the future. Financial markets right now are really almost obsessed with artificial intelligence. How does that apply in defense area? Do we adopt it? Should we adapt it? How do we anticipate our adversaries maybe adopting artificial intelligence? It is being adapted already. I think the Department of Defense gets credit and this administration gets credit for setting out a framework for responsible AI. How do we keep it safe? How do we make sure it behaves appropriately? How do we make sure, you know, it's transparent, that we're following data, rules and so forth? We're not so sure as whether our adversaries will be so responsible in how they develop it. But we see it coming in to in the intelligence field, helping analysts sort through the massive amounts of information to focus on what's important for insight. We see it in the area of maintenance, preventative maintenance. So getting data that suggests you need to repair something before it breaks, which takes less time and is cheaper. And then we'll eventually seeing applying it to this human machine teaming I talked about where you have a single human being operating very large, large numbers of unmanned systems. So you still have the human in the loop, but you have you've brought back a lot of mass for your forces. Ultimately, I also think it's going to be important to give us an edge in decision making. If we can process information faster, get insight faster, t up options faster for the human decision maker. We will have, you know, an edge in any future crisis. I am of an age that I remember the arms race between United States and Soviet union when it came to nuclear weapons. Should we be anticipating an arms race in general? I, I think we're already seeing it. It is certainly a race we see, particularly China investing. It's a race even among our own our own companies. And again, so the important thing is putting some guardrails on there to make sure that we have some norms about what we will and will not use this very powerful technology for. I think, again, the U.S. is taking the lead. We've gone out and gotten dozens and dozens of countries to sign on to a responsible AI normative framework. China has not signed yet. Russia has not signed yet. Iran has not signed yet. If they use AI in a way that's immoral or or not responsible, the answer is not for us to do the same. The answer is for us. For us to find smart counters to make that use ineffective. Can we learn from the private sector? I'll give you an example. Maybe there are others as well. A SpaceX and Elon Musk. Now, that was not military, but he was not afraid to fail. He failed quite a few times and learned from every failure. It was part of his strategy. Can we take some of that at least and apply it when it comes to defense? We absolutely need to. And in fact, back, you know, in the previous administration, the former acquisition executive for the Navy, a fellow named Hondo Gertz, he wanted to send that message. And so he created an acquisition officer of the Year award, and he gave it to a guy who was working with an emerging technology. And the first instantiation failed. And then they learned from the failure and the next instantiation worked. And he made that guy, the Navy's acquisition officer of the Year, trying to send a message, which is great, but it's part of the answer. But again, you've got to create incentive. Like how do people do people get rewarded? Do they get promoted? Do they get recognized? Is there a career path? And right now, that is not in place and we need to put it in place with some urgency.

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Arms Race in AI

WestExec Advisors co-founder Michèle Flournoy talks about rethinking defense policy for a new age of conflicts and says that an arms race in AI is already underway. (Source: Bloomberg)

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