 Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the arrival of our Distinguished Military Writers Panel. Thank you. Please be seated. Good evening and welcome to the 2023 Military Writer Symposium. It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Travis Morris, the Executive Director of MWS and the Peace and War Center Director. Colors go without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in the jungle and mountain range without counting. And who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship without complaints is still what they have always been. From imperial realm, deceptive Britain, to democratic America, they are the stuff of which legions are made. Their pride is their colors and their regiment. Their training hard and thorough and coldly realistic to fit them for what they must face and their obedience is to their orders. As a legionnaire, they held the gates of civilization from the classical world. Special operation forces play a crucial role in modern military operations, making them a paramount importance. These highly trained and skilled units are designed to operate in unconventional warfare scenarios where adaptability and agility are critical. Special operations forces possess a unique set of capabilities that allow them to conduct missions with extraordinary precision such as counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, intelligence gathering and unconventional warfare. Their expertise in small-unit tactics, specialized equipment and cross-cultural awareness makes them invaluable assets in combating asymmetric and hybrid threats to overcome and win. By operating in high-risk environments and executing missions that require extreme precision and discretion, special operation forces serve as a force multiplier and a potent deterrent against both state and non-state actors. Their contributions often remain unseen and unrecognized in the public domain, but their impact on national security and global stability cannot be overstated. So welcome to the 29th season of Norwich University's Military Rider Symposium. It is an absolute pleasure to see all of you here, especially our esteemed guest. So we have an engaging evening planned for you tonight. It's also my hope that you've been able to attend some of the sessions over today's topics. They were amazing. And fortunately for you, we have another day of programming, so if you weren't able to attend some of today's sessions, I encourage you to attend tomorrow that would take place in Mack Hall. So before I introduce this year's moderator, I'd like to recognize and thank several people who make this event very special and make it possible for us to happen each year. So when I call your name, if you could just please stand and remain standing until all the names are called. President Anarumo, I see, is here and he is in the back, sir. Thank you. Our Commodot of Cadets and Vice President of Student Affairs, Bill McCullough, if you could please stand, sir. Our Colby Award winner, Chuck Stanley, our distinguished guests, Don Bentley, General Inbum Chun, Colonel Dave Maxwell, Jim Stechle, former Ambassador Wanda Nisbet, Pierce Reed, and Tahina Montoya. Let's give them a round of applause. So this event, like so many others, it happens because of a team. And we're here because alumni and supporters make this possible both financially and connecting us to some of the excellent speakers that have been joining us for this event. It's also our deepest gratitude goes to the Pritzker Military Museum and Library in Chicago. They make this event possible and they have just been great partners for us, not only for this event, but across Norwich's campus. So I'd also like to welcome those that are joining us via livestream. We know that we have viewers from all over the world and so we welcome you and thank you for joining us as well. So just a few housekeeping rules. If you have a cell phone, make sure you turn it off, put it on vibrate. You'll notice that there are going to be, at the end of the panel, there are going to be two microphones here. So our moderator is going to let you know when the last question is being asked. So if you have questions, please start to line up and I just have to say this. We know that there are some of you that are interested in going into special operation forces. You have a unique opportunity to ask questions here, so please take advantage of that. So the Military Writers Symposium, it's a signature event at Norwich and it's led by the Peace and War Center. And for those of you that don't know, it's the only program of its kind in the United States. The Military Writers Symposium has brought some of the most prominent military intelligence and international affairs writers to Central Vermont. This program is designed to enlighten, to challenge, and to inspire, and to design to be relevant. This topic is relevant for you and some of you are going to graduate this year. You have no idea what's going to happen to you after you commission or go serve the government in some other capacities. This isn't just another classroom. You're going to be able to learn from those that have gone before you. And some of the members on the stage sat in the very seats in which you did and you'll hear more about that later on. It's designed to be relevant and never to avoid the hard questions to understand today's critical security issues and landscape. History and context is important. So back in 1996, W. Griffith and Carlo Deste, class of 1959 under the support of Major General Russell Todd, they brought influential writers to Norwich University and it's continued for 29 years. We focused on cyber warfare, PTSD, the impact of World War I, autonomous weapons in AI, environmental security, the Arctic. All these issues are relevant to you. This year we devoted our attention to the topic to train and fight to win in exploration of global special operation forces. I want to focus your attention to a key word there, to win, not just to train and fight, but to train and fight to win. You have some of the globes leading at parties on the subject sitting before you here and also right in front of us. You have a chance to engage them tonight and then also tomorrow and encourage you to do so. We are very fortunate to have a special moderator for us, Command Sergeant Major Dennis Matt Kitchen. As every panelist has an incredibly extensive bio, the one that I'm going to read for Command Sergeant Major Kitchen is abbreviated. So currently he's the commandant for the Joint Special Operations University at U.S. Special Operations Command. And if you don't know what that means, that means that SEALs, Special Forces, Marines, they all fall underneath the Special Operations Command. He's also a native of Vermont. He started out enlisting in the United States Navy, transferred to the United States Army as an M1A1 Abrams tank mechanic. He attended the Special Forces Assessment Selection in 2001 and he graduated the course as an 18th Charlie, Special Forces Engineer. And in 2003 he was assigned to the 10th Special Forces Group. He's held positions as an operational detachment alpha and an operation sergeant, first sergeant, company sergeant, battalion sergeant major, served as the first battalion sergeant, command sergeant major. He served in NATO headquarters. He served in Belgium. He served in Stugart, Germany. So from 2008 to 2011 he served at the Military Freefall School at Yuma, Arizona. And I predict that a select few of you will get to go through that school. And his basic course instructor assisted in establishing of the Advanced Tactical Infant Racing Course in 2009. The deployments that I have are not comprehensive. But he's deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Atlantic Resolve. As you can imagine, his awards and decoration are numerous. They include the Defense Materia Service Medal, Purple Hearts, Plurals, Bronze Star, Army Commodation Medal, and various unit and campaign awards. He's earned the Combat Infantry Badge, the Special Forces Tab, Master Parachute badge, Military Freefall Parachute badge, and a Jump Master badge with the Combat Star, and I've abbreviated those. He's a graduate of the Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Enlisted Academy, and it is our honor to welcome you to Norwich University, and thank you for being here. Let's give him a round of applause. Good evening, everyone. It is an honor and a privilege to be here, especially this time of year in Vermont. I grew up here. I forgot what the foliage can really bring to include some crazy drivers out there on the roads. Super excited to be here tonight, and you know, this year's topic for this symposium, train a fight to win, and a deep dive and a look into special operations, you know, I think right now is more relevant than it's ever been. Spending 27-plus years in the military and 22 of that in Special Forces, I've had the privilege to be able to see almost two sides of that pendulum, and I know I've got some folks here as well that can share that. If you look back at September 11, 2001, where SOF was at, there were a lot of terms that some of that you've heard today. GWOT, so that global war on terror, CT for counter-terrorism, DA for direct action, FID for internal foreign defense, working with partners. That was a focus, and that pendulum was in that direction at that time, and we did that for a lot of years. It was 20-plus years that we found ourselves in that fight. And that pendulum started to shift. I feel like it started to shift on or about 2014-15, when we started looking at this thing called Operation Atlantic Resolve. Believe it or not, at that time, there was a thought that this country called Russia might invade another country. Here we are. And that pendulum started to shift to the other side, to where now you're starting to hear and you're starting to hear great power competition, space, technology, irregular warfare. I think last year's symposium was AI, right, artificial intelligence. These are all things that have started to shift as that pendulum goes to the other side. And one of the words that comes, you can attach a lot of words to SOF, but consistency or consistent is one that I find is really true. SOF is consistently sought out by geographic combatant commanders. SOF is leveraged by decision-makers in DC. General Nagata talked about it earlier today, that SOF is consistently looked at to solve problems, oftentimes that other people can't solve, other units can't solve. And that pendulum shift, there's one thing that is consistent. And if I had a crystal ball or I could predict the future, I feel like that pendulum is going to go back at some point. And it's not to say that we're not still doing CT, DA, but the focus, as you can see, has been put towards that great power competition. And we're going to talk about that change and that pendulum swing tonight as we start getting into the panel. The other thing that I like to look at is the SOF what. What's the SO what that we want you to pull from this symposium? The hope is that you will walk away from this symposium with a better understanding of what special operations is. The capabilities that are brought to the battlefield, a better sight picture of what special operations can do, because at the end of the day, whether you choose a path in the military, or a government job, or even as a civilian if that's the path that you take, having a better understanding and knowing his power and having that knowledge is going to make you a better leader no matter where you go. So we hope that you're able to take that tonight and tomorrow and have a better understanding. And then at some point, if I can catch up with you guys, I'm going to throw my recruiter hat on because I will tell you, special forces, before I turn over to the panel, I just want to make sure that, because Dr. Morris hit on a little bit, SOF is a term that's an umbrella. So each service has their own SOF entity. If you've ever heard, I don't think you probably have, but the Navy has Navy SEALs. I know it's crazy. Army has special forces, Rangers. Air Force has PJs, STS. Marine Corps has Marsoch, used to be force recon. And all of that comes under that SOF umbrella. And that's what we're looking at, because at the end of the day, we may be in different services, but we're all on the same team. We have the same mission set, and where I work now, especially in that joint environment, is it's powerful. Having all of those entities come together under a joint umbrella and a joint command, a special operations command, is extremely powerful. We have an amazing panel for you all tonight. I'm not going to read their bios, that would take the whole hour and a half. So I encourage you to dig in. The bios are out there online. You can read those. I'm going to pass it down the line and allow each panel member to introduce themselves. They'll kick it back over to me. We're going to go for about 45 minutes, and then I'm going to turn it over to you all for questions. So we'll start closest to me. We'll work our way down. Thank you all. My name is Allison MacDonald, formerly Allison Lands. I was the regimental commander in 2010. As Dr. Moore said, I have sat where all of you are sitting for four years, never asked any questions, and I regret it. So please ask the questions at the end. After I graduated from Norwich, I was a military intelligence officer with the U.S. Army. From there, in 2011, I was selected to be a member of the cultural support team program. So it was a group of females that were selected to deploy with a male special forces unit in Afghanistan. So did that deployment, lots of lessons learned, as I'm sure we'll dig into. As we go on in this panel, after that, I became a counterintelligence officer and then separated from the Army in 2016. I'm now currently a threat manager with JPMorgan Chase's workplace violence prevention team. So a very investigation heavy, just trying to mitigate violence in the workplace. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Mike Nagata. It's a great pleasure to be amongst all of you this evening. Today I'm a strategic advisor for a defense technology company up in Washington, D.C., called CACI, but more relevant to our purpose today. I spent 38 years in the U.S. Army. I retired four years ago. Out of those 38 years, I spent 34 years in special operations forces. That basically breaks down into three chunks. My first 10 years was as an Army Green Beret serving in the first special forces group doing all my training and exercises and work out in the Pacific region somewhere. Unsurprisingly, the next 20-plus years I was just like the Sergeant Major and many other old colleagues in the middle of the fight for the last 20-plus years somewhere in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, or South Asia. My final two assignments, my last operational assignment, I was the commander of a special operations command, Central, so I had the privilege for almost three years of commanding all U.S. special operations forces in the Middle East. And then my last assignment before I retired, I was the director of strategy at the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, D.C. Good evening. It's an honor to be part of this panel. My name is Joan Johnson-Freeze. I'm a career academic. I've spent the past 30 years teaching at the Air War College, the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, and the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where I was a department chair for National Security Affairs and a university professor. I've also been teaching at Harvard University for the past 20 years, teaching courses on grand strategy, leadership in war and peace, and women, peace, and security. The work that I do focuses the research that I've done and the work that I do. I've spent a long career and written seven books and testified before Congress on multiple occasions on space security with a small niche on the Chinese space program. I later began working on women, peace, and security, where I still teach courses both at Harvard and in different security cooperation programs and have recently written the last two books I wrote were on women, peace, and security as a textbook and one called women versus women, the case for cooperation. Like Allison, I'm an alumni. My name is Chris Cattigan and I sat where you sit and I'll join Allison afterwards answering any questions you might have. I'm currently teaching as a professor of practice inside of the U.S. government, mostly with Department of Defense and the interagency. I teach operational art, strategy, campaign planning, and development for a regular warfare. I took a Norwich education and I parlayed it into a career as an infantryman, a signal officer, and special operations units, and finally as a special forces officer. I took my education from this university, the nation's oldest private military college, and I helped build what became village stability operations. I helped link the ground with tribes and local governments to the central government in Kabul and I helped them route the Taliban. I then did that again in Iraq and then I did it again in Columbia. I took the education that I got here abroad to help define and lead men and women in a foreign language from a different culture and help them free themselves from oppression. And it's something that I helped do for our forces today. I feel very proud of the fact that I was educated here and I can tell you that for those of you thinking about doing this, you've already started. Thanks. Great. Thank you all and thanks for being here tonight. So without further ado, we'll kick this off. General Nagata, sir, this question I'm going to start with you. Sir, one of the things that you have said is that one of the most fundamental struggles in the U.S. is involved in global contest over and against America's strategic influence. Sir, please provide us with your diagnosis of this challenge and how you view the useful role of SOF, how SOF can and should be playing in this strategic influence. Thank you for the question. For those of you that are wondering, yes, that is a planted question. So I'm fulfilling my special forces lineage of pre-cooking the game before the game starts. That's one of the ways you win, by the way. A little honest cheating can go a long way. More seriously, one of the most common debates that I saw emerge in Washington, D.C. over the last several years, actually the last several administrations, has been a struggle over defining what is the nature of the contest the United States now finds itself in, above and beyond something which we had come to understand reasonably well, which was the struggle against international terrorism. But the rise of these great, what we are now styling, great power competitors, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc., they're serious threats to the United States. But what is the nature of the struggle we are in today? There is neither original thought nor is there unanimity in what I'm about to say. There are some people in Washington, D.C. who think I'm totally wrong about what I'm going to tell you, but I'm convinced I'm right and they're not here, so I'm going to tell you what I think. In my personal view, and I made this, I wrote about this, I spoke about this publicly, sometimes to approval and sometimes to scorn, but here's my answer to that question. The nature of the struggle the United States is in today is a global struggle over America's influence around the world. There are other aspects to the struggle, but my personal opinion is that is the core of what the United States is now confronts, whether we know it or not. In my personal view, ever since the end of World War II, America found itself to be the single most influential nation on earth. In some ways we still are today, but that influence has taken a significant downturn in the last decade. Why? In my view it is for a number of reasons, but there is one that is the most important reason. America over the years seems to have forgotten how powerful it influence was so long as we were the most generous nation on earth. At the end of World War II, with most of the world in ruins, the United States decided to do something it did not have to do. And that was help rebuild much of the world and then help secure much of the world so that commerce, education, both governmental and private enterprise forms of exchange could flourish once again. And America used its military might to secure all of that. I think any examination of the benefits that the United States derived from being generous are almost too numerous to count. Ask yourself this question, who for decades spoke with the loudest voice in setting international scientific standards? It was the United States. Who spoke with the loudest voice in terms of establishing financial and commercial monetary practices? It was the United States. The list is quite long. I could go on, but I don't want to go on endlessly here. Not every nation on earth, but most nations on earth were willing to agree with American leadership because they saw the benefits of doing so because we were the most generous nation on earth. But starting about 10 to 15 years ago, we started to hear American leaders, both military and civilian, both political and otherwise, start moving away the idea that generosity was in our own interest. And instead we started hearing different words. One very vivid example that some of my colleagues in the front wrote I know can remember well. We started hearing words like, we really need to stop helping peoples and nations that can't clean up the mess in their own backyard. What they didn't realize is that was the road to becoming not a generous actor, but to becoming a transactional actor. Where somebody only gives something if they get something in return. That is a transaction. So gradually America has become more and more transactional. As a result we have lost more and more of our influence. And since nature abhors a vacuum these countries, these governments, these actors that we style as great power competitors, what have they done? They have eagerly filled the influence void we exposed to be vulnerable to them. And I'll close with just one very vivid example. I'm sure some of you have studied this. I may get this number wrong. I think there's something like 27, 28 countries in Latin America. This is our own hemisphere. This is our own backyard. 21 of those countries are signatories to China's Belt and Road Initiative. If that's not a loss of strategic influence and in our own damn hemisphere, I don't know what is. So that is the nature of the struggle we are in. A war over America's influence. Thank you for that, sir. Dr. Johnson-Freeze, ma'am, this question is going to be over to you. You have a vast background in teaching Big Picture National Security Affairs, especially with WPS. Ma'am, please share your thoughts on how GPC today is different given the smaller margins and capabilities between countries and what that means overall and to SOF specifically. Well, thank you for that question, which I wrote. In 2020, Modern Warfare Institute published an article on great power competition that raised what I think is a great point to pile on to what General Nakata just said, and I couldn't agree more that we've moved away from exceptionalism to entitlement to our detriment. But the article that they published talked about, they used to actually have a sports analogy, saying it used to be there was one team that could really afford to outspend everybody else and so they were the best and everybody else were kind of also ran. And the article pointed out that that was the case with the United States, that we could outspend everybody else. We were better at science. We could go to the moon. We could do all these exceptional things that other countries couldn't. But the problem is, physics is physics, whether you're in California or Beijing or Moscow or wherever it is. And so not surprisingly, in terms of technology, in terms of capabilities, there has been a decline in the gap between the United States and other countries. At the Naval War College, we would start our classes in the fall with the very provocative question to the students of, is America in decline? And the answer was multiple. There were multiple answers. If you're looking just at technology, the answer is inevitably yes. Relatively speaking, other countries have caught up in terms of influence. You can look at that question as well. But what this article pointed out was because of the rise in parity. It's not actually a decline in U.S. capabilities, but it's a rise in parity among competitors. Winds will be by a much smaller margin. So the challenge to us is to look for where will these winds, where will these advantages come from? And a lot of the work that I've done recently focuses on workforce and capabilities. And one of the advantages that the United States has, and we have to really keep focused on, is the diversity of our workforce and the capabilities that are added through diversity. And I include in that not just day-to-day workforce, but in terms of assessment and analysis. I just returned from the Middle East. I've still got the henna on my hand to prove it. I was in Morocco, but I spend a lot of time working with women in the military, in the Middle East, in Latin America, in other countries. And women are now being recruited, not just accepted or tolerated in the militaries of the Middle East, but recruited, including in SOF, for what they can add. The recognition that they can do things that are needed, that can't be done by others, and so they are being actively sought. In terms of capabilities, Allison can certainly talk to that far better than I can, but we need to acknowledge also it's not just in operations, but in preparations and in things like cyber and AI. There's a Canadian woman researcher, Joy Bulemsky at MIT, who was working in cyber. A black woman, a woman of color, and she noticed that AI could not recognize her face, because who programs matters. Without diversity, we would be missing an entire part of the AI facial recognition spectrum. So the inclusion, the diversity can give the United States these small advantages, which will become critical in great power competition. Within SOF, I think part of the challenge will be a problem or an issue laid out by a colleague of mine, James Minich, a retired Army colonel, who's now the Women, Peace and Security Chair at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. He writes about the difference between incorporation of women into SOF and other areas of the military and inclusivity, that we've gotten very good at incorporation, including women as enablers. But until we have full inclusivity, we're going to be missing part of the advantages that they can give that will make a difference in this rise in parity situation where we face ourselves now. And that that can make the difference in great power, small margin wins. So I'll stop with that. Thank you, man, for that. Mr. Cattigan, this one's going to be over to you. So though the mission of SOF consistently changes, the environment changes, some things do remain the same. Sir, if you don't mind, please share your thoughts on some of the complexities and challenges of SOF, and then share some insight from your perspective, how rewarding a career in SOF can be. I didn't get to write my own question. When I retired in 2018, I went to work for private industry. I went through three different startups until I was asked to come back and do what I'm doing now. And when I walked through the door, I asked, so what's new? And in terms of the environment, really not a lot had changed. I had worked on strategies focused on Iran. I had worked on strategies focused on countering Russian unconventional warfare and malign influence. I had worked on strategies and policy focused on China and their influence inside of what the Russians would call our near abroad. And even though the news was different, not a lot had significantly changed in terms of the environment. Information was fast. People had access to information. And I think they started to confuse the access to information with knowledge. Because they could put their fingertips on it, they thought they would understand it more deeply. I would argue that may not necessarily be the case. The complexity of our environment haven't shifted so significantly that with a little bit of study and with discerning eye, we can't pick up changes in our environment. One of the things that changed, I think, in terms of the environment might be our connectivity to people and our ability to be on the ground in a way that is impactful. Over time, soft forces have built relationships in places that have had pretty significant impact. It is arguably no small feat to take an indigenous population and through the influence of their non-commissioned officers and officers start to do things like shift their focus on recruiting women into their military into roles that they're very, very good at. In almost every country we've operated in, our non-commissioned officers and officers have had a significant impact and built things like non-commissioned officer education programs. Education programs that impact the civilian population, that professionalize not just the military but the police first responders, government officials, the way that ministers of defense pay attention to the information that's coming to them. And the way they allocate resources. That's a significantly reassuring look back over my 29 years to see the way in which my non-commissioned officers and subordinate officers and the officers who led me and non-commissioned officers who led me impacted the way in which all of those governments focus their resources, which impact the way they can do things like respond to national emergencies, whether it's an earthquake, a tsunami, building collapse, shelling, interwar years, which are significant. So the education process that we have had in developing our non-commissioned officers, our officers, has impacted significantly the governments that we've worked with. So the environment has shifted in that regard. And for me that's been the single most rewarding aspect, watching America's sons and daughters go forward and have great impact around the world. Great. Thanks a lot for that, sir. So, Ms. McDonald, this one is over to you. I guess kind of keeping in that same vein of women and soft. If you could share some lessons learned from your soft experience in Iraq and Afghanistan regarding CSTs and FET teams and maybe just kind of explain what those are, it'd be great. Absolutely. So I'll set the stage. So in 2011, which really wasn't that long ago, I recognize some faces, Dr. Sotagren, Bill Pasalaco, that wasn't that long ago, right? No, I know. But it was, and you think about it, really a lifetime ago when it comes to how far we've come as a military as far as training goes, training and education. So in 2011, I think it actually may have been 2010, and Sergeant Major you may be able to correct me. It was Admiral McRaven was the SOCOM commander. I think he was SOCOM commander. A lot of our special forces units were coming back from specifically Afghanistan at that time and saying, we have a problem. There's a whole part of the population, 50% of the population being females that we can't even talk to because we're males. We know they have intelligence. We know that they generally don't like their husbands very much, so we could probably use some help getting that information from them. Came up with the idea of getting females trained up to deploy with special forces, specifically SEALs, special forces and rangers in Afghanistan. So there was a group before me of females in 2010 that was CST-1 who were just volunteer to do it. They were told by their commanders, hey listen, you're physically fit, can you go do this mission? By the way, it's not can you, go do this mission, which obviously just ended up these people for failure. They thought that was a pretty bad idea. Second time around, that was May 2011. They said, all right, let's try this again except we'll get some volunteers. We'll put them through a smaller kind of qualification course at Camp McCall outside of Fort Bragg, which I was lucky enough to get chosen to do. Trained us up generally on how to deal with kind of combat situations, patrols, really put you through that whole rigmarole, took our watches, did stuff that we do as cadets. Stuff that I was kind of used to as far as the mind games go, so it wasn't too hard there. But when we got down-ranged, and this is where I go with the two lessons learned, was we didn't have the training. So at that time, women still were not even allowed to go to ranger school, which might seem kind of odd to you folks sitting here today, but it wasn't even on the radar. So here we are getting put into literally combat. I'm doing combat patrols. Our Special Forces team is they're developing missions for us because there's some really bad Taliban guys who have women, like I said before, that really didn't like their husbands, and they really wanted us to get that intel from them about their husbands. So we were able to do that. They would set up missions for us. We ended up, at one point, there was a ransom out for me and my partner because of the influence we were having in that area. But once again, we didn't have that training. Thank goodness we had a great team that was willing to help us with that, but here I am doing combat patrols without any of that. Not just no training, but I didn't even have the opportunity to do the training. So I know we've come a long way in that aspect, but so that's one would be training, of course. The second one goes along lines of education. So not necessarily education for the cultural support team and then the female engagement teams, but more for the teams that were receiving the cultural support team program or the FET program. They weren't trained, a lot of them, on the capability that these females could bring to the table. And like I said before, I was very grateful to be partnered with a team who really wanted that capability, understood that capability. By the way, I was part of MCW and had my black hat, and so they were like, you can go to the bill in nowhere and go have fun with that team. So that was an interesting opportunity. But that aside, a lot of those special forces teams weren't educated on what the females could bring to just really their capability. And we talk about that gathering of the intelligence from that female population, what they could bring to education for the females in the country. All these small things you don't think about. And when you put, especially a new program, force it down someone's throat, force it down these special forces teams through, it just sets people up for failure. So those are the two. Go back to the training and then the education. Great. Thanks for that. Excuse me. So I learned something this morning from General Nagata. And sir, you correct me if I got this wrong, but I think something that you had said was that Congress has mandated that GOs have to tell a war story. Is that right? That's right. All general officers are required to tell war stories. Okay, Roger that sir. Well, I looked and I looked down on the fine print and it says that CSMs are as well. So I think I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and take an opportunity. By way of example, I kind of want to dovetail into what this McDonald was just talking about. So the way I kind of want to do this is I want to paint a picture because I think if you really understand the picture of what of what is being talked about, you'll better understand. And the examples that I'll give you as two examples, one without that capability and the other way. So, regardless of what you see on TV, there is a lot of work behind getting someone like General Nagata to say yes, go hit that target. There's a lot of Intel being pulled. There's a lot of pattern of life being built. There's a lot of information being pulled in. The Special Forces team is usually working with by with and through an indigenous force. So I want to give you a snapshot of 2012 when I was a team start on an ODA in a province in Afghanistan. We were working with a special police unit. We were training them up to do CQB. All of the work going behind to get to yes, we had to learn how to write con ops in the right font, active verse passive voice, all this craziness to be able to get to yes. We finally get to yes, two helicopters CH-47 show up to the team house. We load our NATO partners, my ODA, our police force onto those helicopters and we leave under the cover of darkness because we own the night. When we fly out to an HLZ, helicopter landing zone offset, we exfil the helicopters, we take a knee, the helicopters leave. We're nice and dirty and it's quiet. And we start moving on a route with checkpoints. We have the eye in the sky. We've got a QRF waiting, quick reaction force. And we're moving up to a last covered and concealed where we push out our outer security, our inner security, our sniper teams. The assault force goes up to the breach, execute. We breach, we go into the target, we take it as we see it and the individuals that we were going after aren't there. We conduct sensitive site exploitation. We do our job. We gather everything up. We exfil to an exfil HLZ and we go back to the team house. Now I want to fast forward 18 months with that same ODA, that same police force, that same scenario. We get to, yes, same infill, same security, same assault, and those same targets are not on the objective. But what we have now is we now have a female engagement team. We pull security, the female engagement team, oh by the way, spoke Dari, Postun, went in and drank some chai. And within 15 minutes, I get a call over the radio, Zulu, this is X-ray one. HBTs are two houses over hiding. I as a male, I cannot go talk to the females. Culturally cannot do that. We shift two houses over, we hit that target and we get jackpot. That's the difference of having a capability and getting mission success and understanding how to evolve and how to grow and how to get better as a team and as a unit. That's how you train and you fight to win. I really, really appreciate the fact that we as a soft element are starting to see the bigger picture. This is going to be the last question that we're going to offer up to the panel. So I encourage you all to fall in behind the microphones and then once this one is done, we'll turn it over for your questions. General Nagata, I'm coming at you again, sir, if you don't mind. Sir, dovetailing on your original question, please share thoughts on how soft can most strategically affect and help the global struggle on that influence that you were talking about. And the part of this is whether it involves armed conflict or far less violent, but possibly, as you say, much more complex contests for the global, winning the global hearts and minds. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to tell a story. I'm supposed to. But this is a story that actually, I believe, applies to everything that I will say following the story I'm about to tell you. This is something that happened to First Lieutenant Mike Nagata, who was a brand new team leader in the First Special Forces Group. Still wet behind the ears, still trying to figure out what my job was. And there was this amazing veteran Special Forces Sergeant Major in my company who one day while I was in the orderly room, I think he just decided he needed to school me a little bit and he said, you know, Nagata, we in Special Forces, we can do anything. You name it, jump out of an airplane, swim through the ocean, climb over a mountain to get to the target. We can do it all. And then he said, but you know, there's one thing we can't do. And of course, me being the ignorant, innocent team leader, I don't even know which way is up at that point. I say, really, Sergeant Major, what's the one thing we can't do? And he looked at me and he said, well, Green Berets can't all get across the same street at the same time in the same uniform, but everything else we can do. Okay, more seriously. I'm going to use a specific example to answer the Sergeant Major's question. You've already heard my song and dance about the nature of the conflict, I think. I believe we're in a war over American influence around the world. This specific place that I predict is going to be a major aspect of that global contest, which I believe will endure for at least a generation. This is not going to be over quick. I have taken to calling this an arc of instability that runs today all the way from at least Eastern Europe through the Caucasus and the Middle East across Central Asia, all the way to China and the South China Sea. There is more instability, political instability, governmental instability, military instability, you name it, it's here in this enormous arc across the Eurasian land mass. There are enormous American interests in all of these places. Some more than others, but the United States has enormous interests across this enormous piece of geography. There are things we want our competitors and adversaries to stop doing. There are things we believe we have to thwart them from doing, and there are things that we want other actors to do that are beneficial to us. But how do we do that? Well, in this arc from Eastern Europe through the Caucasus and the Middle East across Central Asia to all the way to the Pacific, nobody is going to accept ascending the 18th Airborne Corps into this arena, not unless we want to start a war. We can't get a carrier strike group into this land mass. I'm not trying to denigrate these major conventional capabilities of the U.S. military, but they're not suitable in large measure. There are some aspects of conventional forces that are suitable, but by and large, they're not suitable for taking advantage of this arc of instability. Because this arc of instability is bad news for China and it's bad news for Russia. It's even bad news for Iran. So ideally, we would find a way to capitalize on this instability at the same time, creating gratitude for America coming in and in times and at places of our choosing, reducing the instability that is a direct threat to the populations, not the governments, but the populations of this region. But we shouldn't just let this opportunity go glimmering. So what kind of entity, what kind of force is most suitable for operating in a highly complex, deeply contested, sometimes quite violent, enormous geography, where most of these countries who typically, for generations, have looked to either China or Russia as their great power masters, but they all now have significant doubts about both China and Russia. What kind of element, what kind of capability is most suitable to operate in that environment? Here's my point of view. It's a little biased because I am a soft operator, but I get to inflict my opinion on you. Well, whatever we send there is going to have to be small. It's going to have to be capable of understanding the local language, understanding the local customs, understanding the local history. It's going to have to be capable of something that we pride of ourselves in special operations forces when we are doing things properly, our ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome whatever problem is in front of us. And we can do it with a very light footprint. We can do it with a culturally compatible, linguistically compatible footprint. And we can do it in ways that demonstrate the benefits of having a relationship with the United States that is more reliable, more beneficial, and more long lasting than the great power masters that they previously had to completely rely on. Now, that's a theory. We are starting to do what I'm describing. Guess who's in the lead of doing what I'm describing? Special operations forces. It's early yet. We don't yet know if this is going to work as well as we wanted to, but it is a golden opportunity not only to prove what we can do in an arena that's not a counterterrorism arena, but also more importantly than our own reputation is we can actually do some strategic good or going back to what I started with, solve problems that nobody else can solve. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Okay. So this time we're going to turn it over to you and see what your questions are. So we're going to start over here. Go ahead. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is recruit Sprague. My question for the panel at large is how does psychological operations tie into special forces and this new need for small, culturally relevant impacts on these influential struggles that is going on in modern day? How can we expect the psychological operations parts of the military to have an impact in the world theater in the future and how it has affected the world theater in the past? Okay. I'll go ahead and start, but I don't want to monopolize this, so I'm going to be brief. I think, well, the term of art that most people use these days, probably are aware, is not psychological operations. There is a kind of a bad taint for some people, manipulating people's psychology. Typically what we now say is information operations, but it's really the same thing. It's just a new name on an old formula. But whether it's psychological operations or information operations, I personally believe, and many of my special operations colleagues and nurses fervently believe that if there was ever a time for not just special operations forces, not even just the U.S. military, for the entire U.S. government to demonstrate genuine skill, genuine proficiency, genuine strength in information operations that all of our adversaries are engaging in with abandon, it is now. I'm sure many of you have either wanted to or been compelled to read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. If you have, I'm sure you remember the one line that most professors always point out, because I think it's right to point it out. The acme of skill is to win without fighting. If there was ever an era in human civilization where anyone in the world has the ability to win without fighting, it is now because of the emergence of digital technologies that allow you to influence what somebody believes and what somebody to choose to do literally on the other side of the planet and someone you'll never be face to face with, it is now. But for all that promise, there is one, this is one of the most troubling parts of great power competition, at least for me, that I can name. Despite the fact, arguably, the United States invented the Internet, and we are certainly at the forefront, of creating new digital technologies. We are one of the most risk-averse actors on the planet when it comes to using effective information operations. The enemy is not our biggest problem. It's our own fear of a tweet, an email, a TikTok video that we believe might have a beneficial, tactical, operational, or strategic effect, and we talk ourselves out of doing it. Mostly at the policy level. At the practitioner level, people are eager to do it, because they know it works. But at the policy level, there are too many senior officials in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere who are so afraid that it might go wrong that they won't authorize it. So I'll end with a famous line that many of my soft veterans in the room have either experienced or heard or both. It was easier to kill a terrorist leader than it was to send him an email. And that's ridiculous. And this is a problem. This is a strategic disability for the United States. And my generation has demonstrated it is unable to fix ourselves in this regard. Ladies and gentlemen, it is up to you to fix it. My generation has failed at this. Great insight, sir. Thanks. Kick it over to this side, please. Good evening. My name is recruits Bikowski. I'm a mechanical engineer in a hotel company. General Nogata, I have a question for you and, well, for the panel at large, if anybody else wants to add. You spoke of the importance of generosity as a cornerstone of the influence of America and how we affect the world. And I wanted to know what your personal, what everyone's personal outlook is on how we're dealing with the situation in Ukraine and in the new developing situation in Israel. Well, of course, both are incomplete stories. We don't know what the end is going to be yet regarding Ukraine. We certainly don't know what the end is going to look like regarding what's happened in Gaza. So I can only speculate. So this may not be worth very much, but here goes. My personal opinion is that the United States has a choice to make on both of these counts. One choice is to demonstrate that however imperfect our allies may be, and they are definitely imperfect, but what the hell, so are we, that we're going to stick with them and we're not going to disappoint them because otherwise, why should they care what we think? We need to demonstrate that we are reliable and trustworthy to the people we claim to be our allies. That's what I hope we do. But as I'm sure many of you can see on the news, political support for supporting, the political enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine is visibly weakening in Washington, D.C. I think that will continue. I think it will continue to deteriorate. There are already political actors in Washington, D.C. and certain factions in the United States that are already saying it's a mistake to support Israel. Now, I'm really not trying to take a political stance here. What I'm trying to point out is if we're going to call people our allies, we have to treat them like they're our allies. And when the chips are down for them, it's supposed to be there for them. The whole world is watching what the United States does regarding either Ukraine or Israel. And whether they like Israel, whether they like Ukraine is irrelevant. What they're watching is not them, they're watching us. And the litmus test that most people are applying to us is America calls Ukraine an ally. America calls Israel an ally. Are they going to treat them like allies? Or when the chips are down and things become inconvenient, are they going to walk away? Are they going to throw their allies under the bus? And this gets back to what I just said. Do we want to be an influential country or not? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you. This is a question from Miss McDonald. When you were working with the engagement teams, were there ever any points where you ran into cultural differences with local populations that didn't allow you to gain information? If you do run into those situations, how do you overcome them? Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. So we first got there. It was a learning curve. And a lot of the females we were trying to talk to, they had babies starting at, you name it, they were married at 12, not even exaggerating, just not a great situation. Had babies at 15, multiple babies. And me and my partner that I was assigned with, Jen, we didn't have kids at the time. We both have kids now, but at the time we didn't. And so we're trying to build this rapport with this female population and they didn't understand how we didn't have husbands and didn't have kids yet. And so they wouldn't give us information because they just didn't understand that cultural difference of how we could possibly be at this point. It was 22, 23, how could I not have kids and not have a husband yet? Just blew their mind. And so they would focus that whole conversation on what was wrong with us physically. I mean, like, why can you not have kids? What's wrong with you? Why don't you have a husband? Nobody likes you. And so we'd spend hours on trying to get past that piece. And so what we ended up doing is, I had some of my family members would send me pictures of my cousins that were young at the time. And I'd pretend those were my kids. And Jen would pretend that she had kids so that we would go and then I'd wear a ring and pretend that I was my boyfriend at the time. But that's my husband. And so we could get past that with them so that they knew that we were quote unquote normal, right? Because at that time, we were definitely supposed to have had kids and a husband. So that's just one example of the cultural difference. Also, and this I think goes for a lot of cultures, like Italians, right? They want you to eat your food that they make or they want you to eat the food that they make. In Afghanistan, it was not, it was found upon to turn down the food. And so one of our first patrols we went on, this lovely lady came out with this homemade goat yogurt, not refrigerated ever. And me being me and trying to, I learned that it's not nice to turn down food of any kind there. I look over and I look at my teammate and I'm like, I'm going to do it. And she's looking at me like, don't do it. And I did it and I regretted it because I was sick for a while. So learned after that to just try and very politely decline the never refrigerated homemade goat yogurt. So yeah, there's a couple. Does that answer your question? Yes, ma'am. And keep Sifro in your backpack. Keep Sifro in your backpack for sure. That's what we call the Iraqi weight loss plan. It was great. I lost a ton of weight. Yeah. Been there, done that. Please. Good evening. My name is Cadet Private Robleski. My question was directed mostly to General Nagata. You spoke about the generosity that we show in our approach. While it seems with more the Russian and Chinese approach with paramilitaries and special forces with the Belt Initiative or Wagner group seems to be more transactional. Why should we keep our generous approach while it failed in Afghanistan with Taliban now keeping most of our supplies in gear while, as you said, the Chinese Belt Initiative seems to be working and so is Russia's approach. Well, first of all, rather obviously, something is better than nothing. A bad deal is usually better than no deal at all. So there are too many places, there have been too many places, particularly in the last decade, where the Chinese offer or the Russian offer or the Iranian offer is the only game in town. America is unwilling to play the game. And so, unfortunately, any particular country where the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese are offering something, even if it's a bad deal, if that country, if that population is in distress enough, they'll take a bad deal because there's no alternative. There was a time when we would rigorously and consistently compete with a better offer. But we have retreated from that because as you heard me suggest earlier, we've decided we're not going to clean up other people's messes. We're done with that. We're not realizing we were seeding the strategic field to the people we call our great power competitors. But more importantly, or just as importantly, in my personal experience, everywhere I saw either the U.S. military or the foreign service or U.S. law enforcement or almost any American entity or Western entity decide to be the generous actor, we very reliably achieved our tactical operational strategic goals. Now, the evacuation, the chaos of the evacuation from Afghanistan, in my opinion, now I'm biased here because I have skin in the game there. I spent years in South Asia. But I'll give you my opinion. My opinion is what went wrong that led to the catastrophe of the chaos of our withdrawal had absolutely nothing to do with whether we were or not effectively using the theory I'm inflicting on you, be the generous actor if you want to succeed. We decided to quit politically. It's like being the best basketball team in a tournament, but just deciding you're going to quit. We decided we were going to quit. We decided we were tired of it. We decided we have better things to do. And, you know, okay, we can make, we're entitled to make our own damn choices, but we will pay for quitting the field in Afghanistan for the rest of my natural life. If I could just add on to that. For years with the Naval War College, I spent a lot of time in Latin America. We were sitting with a group of military officers in Chile talking about a telecom cable that they were going to be getting from the Chinese. And we kept saying you understand that that is not a free gift. You understand it's likely going to be heavily wired to get information back to Beijing. And they said please give us a better offer. Give us any other offer. If it's the only offer on the table, we have to take it. And I think that's exactly, we see that in around the world. But in Latin America it's especially problematic because it is our hemisphere. And I think the general is absolutely right that this idea of we just take our ball and go home is going to have severe ramifications for years to come. And it would be okay if we would just avoid complaining when things don't go our way in that particular country. And then we start blaming the country. We start blaming whoever supplanted us. We start blaming everybody except the guy in the mirror who's actually at fault. There's another example. Again, I spent years working on space security. The Chinese are now going to enlarge their space station. They're going to the moon. They're doing all these great space activities. And I am absolutely confident the next transmission we will get from the moon will be in Mandarin, not English. And we're going to be so shocked. We are going to be absolutely shocked. What did the Chinese have in terms of space technology that we don't? Absolutely nothing. What they have is political will. Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is recruit Hall. Anyone can answer this really. Do you guys think being on the Internet is a national security threat to our military and to our people? Because I find it interesting how people are just being able to get access to documents about our satellites, our fighter jets, our cell bombers and just put them on the Internet and it cancels all deployments and everything. In the soft community, how do you guys view that and what do you guys do with that? So before I was an operator, I was a communications electronic signal operations officer for a special operations unit. And I got to participate in the advanced warfighter exercise at JRTC, where we were showcasing all of the latest technology that included wide area networks. And we had a two-star general who came through the door and asked us about this Internet thing and whether or not we thought it was a good idea and how we would keep documents from getting out. And that was in 1998. And the short answer is that our connectivity requires that we move large pieces of information as fast as we can and that we disseminate that information as fast as we can to the broadest audience. And so beyond memes, you've seen a real emphasis on ensuring that people are well educated. They're inculcated into our culture of protecting information. That's something we do, right? We protect information. We make sure that we compartmentalize. If someone's determined to do something, they'll do it, okay? And so in the area of insider threat, which I am not an expert, but we have one at the table, we have to spend a lot of time and effort and make sure that people are well educated about what they're doing and why they're doing it. And the difference between someone who's acting in the interest of, you know, inside of the chain of command, if you will, and inside the interest, the national interest versus outside the national interest in someone who's a criminal, of which there are many arguments for the nuances of someone's actions. But those shouldn't be confused with justification for action. How are you protecting your information? It's hard. I mean, the Chinese and the Russians have lots of information about me because the Office of Personnel Management decided to rent server space from the Department of the Interior. And then the Chinese and Russians were able to take that information and kind of look at different databases. So beyond my credit score and my address, you know, I've got some actual real concerns about what people might be doing with that. It's a real issue. It's something everyone should be worried about in terms of safeguarding. But at the end of the day, you know, it shouldn't stop you from doing things, right? So understanding, having an appropriate amount of focus on risk shouldn't keep you from doing the right thing. It shouldn't keep you from acting. It shouldn't keep you from disseminating information and informing your formation, your organization on what's going on. Is that helpful? Does anyone else want to add anything about social media and how you can use it? I do want to add one thing, but I'm going to take the liberty of broadening your question. Yours was focused on the Internet. I'm going to talk about digital technology, which, of course, the Internet is an enormous component of. Some of the people in the session earlier today heard me inflict this on them, so I might as well inflict it on you. I'm not a historian, but all I read is military history. I think you have to go all the way back to the period between the 10th and 12th century and the emergence of gunpowder as a weapon of war that I believe literally changed the face of human civilization, both for bad and for ill, to find a period that is comparable to what we are going through now, the application of increasingly powerful, dazzling digital technologies as instruments of war and security. It is changing the face of mankind right before our eyes, and the prize will go to the actor, whether nation, whether nation-state or otherwise, that is the most experimental, enthusiastic, and eager to grasp the rapidly growing power of digital technologies. Maybe it will be the United States. Maybe it won't. Thank you. I'm recruit Lebeckia from Delta Company. I'm a major in studies and war and peace. I'm going to direct this question to Captain McDonald and Command Sergeant Major Kitchen, because I heard you guys talk most about female engagement teams. To me, that sounds a lot like exploitation of different cultural status quotes. I was curious, can you guys hear me all right? I was curious how, moving forward, especially with potential conflicts on their eyes, like China, North Korea, India, Israel, how we can further exploit different cultural status quotes to create a stronger special operations force. Yeah, and I've been out of the game, quote-unquote, for a little while, but we were talking with this earlier, that I think we always have to have that capability. I don't think, and you might know this, Sergeant Major, if the CST FET program is even still going on, a little bit, right? A little bit, yeah. Not as much as it was, and I think that we do need to keep that capability, and a way to do that would be to continuously have that happening in the background, like continuously have, maybe there's an MOS, that's a cultural support team or a FET MOS, and it's always happening in the background, because when you need it, you need it, and it's often times it's too late. I mean, we could have been using CSTs, FETs, I mean, all the way, since we were in the Middle East, right? Gulf War, about, and we didn't have it until really Afghanistan, so I think having that capability, ongoing training is important. Yeah, I think what I'll add to that is, you know, we now only speak for Army Special Forces, so we have female Green Berets in our organization, and, you know, that capability is priceless, you know, as we talked about before. And additionally, I think one of the biggest things that we, but I'm gonna look at you all, or if we were in the South, y'all, educate yourselves. You have to educate yourselves in the environment that you're going into, and what that environment is made up of, the culture norms, the way that that culture operates and thinks, you have to understand the environment that you're going into, and then how to utilize those capabilities. I think that'll start paving the way for going into the future for these conflicts that we're seeing today. So I'd go so far as to say, we find ourselves in sort of this inter-war period, and revolutions in military affairs normally happen in these zones. You know, General Lambert famously said, our formation should not look the same after 9-11, as it did before 9-11. I'd go so far as to say, we should stop saying the word enabler. I was a support guy before I was an operator, but just because we have niche, fun, different, weird capabilities, by the way, some of our organizations are called the weird thing, the weird, the funny platoon, the funny organization, you know, changing the names of things isn't necessarily completely helpful, but getting away from a word like enabler would be helpful. And changing the organization and adapting the organization, task organizing the organization would be more appropriate. Great. I do want to offer one thing here. I would encourage all of you to remember this phrase, because this is something I had to get schooled on by some of my superiors that had opened my eyes, particular in a world that's increasingly, where military affairs are increasingly dominated by high technology, but here's the phrase, your proximity to the sound of gunfire has nothing to do with your importance to the mission. You can be a thousand miles away and be the decisive element in a combat operation. So he's right. Enabler, no, everybody's in the fight. It's powerful. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Annalise Hughes. I'm a studies and war and peace major. My question is for General Nagata, primarily focusing on your comments with Chinese activities in Latin America. We've been able to recognize a few key objectives that China has in regards to their activities, such as targeting political and military officials and bribing them, malign influence and disinformation campaigns, as well as malicious cyber attacks. I agree with you when you say that America is generous because we wouldn't do something like that. We easily could, but we don't. But I don't agree with you when you say we've lost our understanding of the importance of our influence on the world. I believe that our competitors are using their influence in this predatory way that we can't use because of the standard that we're held to as a nation. So my question is how do we maintain and expand our influence in the world against our competitors that are using these predatory and authoritarian tactics to coax countries under their influence? Good question. This is going to sound a little overly simplistic, but it's the first thing that came to my mind is that being exhibiting predatory characteristics in your offer to have a relationship with some government, some tribal group, some entity, it is a very direct way of accomplishing what you want. It is certainly an attractive way if all you're interested in is harvesting benefit from whoever you want the relationship with without any real intent of helping them. But it's also hollow. And over time, whatever population, let's say it's the Chinese or the Russians, whatever population is they're trying to entice into an agreement, eventually they're going to have buyers remorse. They're going to find themselves saying, why did we take this deal? We're getting nothing out of this and they're getting everything out of this. But it's easy, it's simple, it's fast, and it's straightforward. It's really taxing and inconvenient to care about what the other party wants. It's much simpler to just, no, we're just going to be predators here without saying we're predators. What I'm suggesting is a lot harder. It's a lot less strategically and operationally appealing if all you're caring about is the level of effort it takes. Because what I'm suggesting is we have to work two times, three times, ten times harder than our competitor does because we have to offer more. We have to be more generous. We have to be more reliable. Even when it's inconvenient for us, they get into a crisis that's their fault, but we stick with them. Instead of criticizing them, instead of lambasting them and say, we understand that it didn't work, but we're still here with you. We're not going to leave you. No matter how bad this gets, we are going to be with you. That is a much harder thing to do. It takes a lot more time. It's more expensive. It's more inconvenient. But what I've seen over my career is if we're willing to exert ourselves in this way, which requires much more effort, much more money, much more time, much more frustration than the alternative method that our great power competitors use, in the end of the day, we come out on top. But it requires something that seems to be in very short supply in the United States these days. It's called patience. We live in this world where we want instantaneous results all the time. If I want dinner, I'm just going to get on Grubhub, and I'm going to have it in 30 minutes. What I'm talking about takes years to decades of investment. Do we have the patience to do that? Sometimes, but with decreasing frequency. There's also another consideration. Sometimes it's just in Cameroon. I was in Cameroon driving down the street. I'm making conversation because that's what I do. I said to the driver, well, that's an interesting building. What's that? And he said, that's our parliament. The Chinese built it for us. So we drove a little further and I said, well, is that your soccer stadium? He said, yes, it is. The Chinese built it for us. And I said, well, what about the United States? And he said, well, they built some outhouses for us a few years ago, but then they decided that we weren't democratic enough so they left. Can you imagine the political outcry if we were to start building soccer stadiums for countries around the world? So when you're an authoritarian government, you can do things and get away with it. The democracies can't, but that's the price of being a democratic country. Thank you. All right, we got time for one more. Go ahead. My name is Cadet Tigrut. I'm a chemistry major from Delta Company. We talked a lot about tonight the role and the invalubility of women in special forces. How would you suggest that the U.S. and their allies move forward into unilaterally integrating women into the special forces community? Can we take that one? Yeah. This is my personal opinion. I think that there's value in treating everyone as a soldier, if you will. But what that does is it takes away the value that a female or a male can bring to the table and recognizing that we are at the end of the day different or not the same. And maybe that's not a popular opinion, but it's the truth. And I think, I mean, I was chosen for my deployment specifically because I was a female. So just kind of going back to your question, it's tough. I don't know. I mean, I think that's really what it comes down to. It's just recognizing that there's a difference and using that difference for the benefit of the mission, if that makes sense. I want to add something to that. This is going to sound trite. My answer to your question is try. Just keep trying. Because the benefits have already demonstrated themselves on the battlefield. You've heard some examples already this evening. But since I'm supposed to tell war stories, I'm going to tell you a war story. I promise to be very brief about this. This is somebody that Jim Steskel and I once served with. Actually, for those of you that aren't aware, the idea of women in special operations forces is not new. It's just that years ago was only a few small organizations that actually had women operators in them. Mine was one of them. So this is a story about a young lady named Susie, who is one of the most dangerous people I have ever met in my life. I mean, she was maybe five foot tall. I don't know how much she weighed, but she didn't weigh much, but you did not want to get on the mat with her because she would rip your head off. But here's the story. We just recently celebrated the anniversary of the Battle of the Black Sea in Mogadishu. Me, Susie, and several other of my personnel were in that operation. So before the big gunfight that made the movie, there were some small gunfights. So here's the story. I'm in the hangar that we were using as a headquarters and a bunch of army rangers, all six foot tall, muscle-bound, steely-eyed killers. They came and found me and they said, hey, sir, we got to go on a patrol to this part of Mogadishu. We don't have good maps. We've never been there before. We heard you might have somebody who's actually been there. And I said, yeah, I do. Her name is Susie. They looked at me and they said, Susie? I said, yeah. She's one of my operatives. She's been to that part of town many times successfully. You want to know how to get in and out of there? Take Susie with you. And you could just see the look on their faces. What? I'm not going to take somebody named Susie. But I said, listen, you just asked me, how do you get in and out of this very dangerous part of Mogadishu? Susie can get you there and she can get you out of there. You want her or you don't? But that's the best I can do. So they kind of grudgingly says, okay, sir, could you have her link up with us in the morning? But you could just see the doubt in their faces. Well, here's how the story ends. They went into that part of town. They walked into an ambush, which was a definite possibility. And Susie was out in front of them, slinging lead, just like all those Rangers were. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. They got back. I heard the report. I said, yeah, okay. Glad Susie went because at least they got in and out without anybody getting hurt. Two days later, I'm in the hangar. Those same Rangers found me. Sir, where's Susie? We really need her. We need to take her on our next stop with her, with us. Why do I tell you that story? Because this is the right thing to do. It's just taken us decades to get there. So for all of you young people, don't be slow to make the right decision the way my generation was. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I can't speak for anybody else on the panel, but I'm going to speak to you and I. We'll stay. We'll stay and answer your questions if you have questions. I don't know why this question about female operatives is even really a question anymore. I went through basic training in 1989. There was a drill sergeant, husband-wife duo in my basic training and AIT program at Fort McClellan, Alabama. They both became operators. And Tammy was one of the most dangerous people on the planet who sucked war criminals off the street single-handedly stuffing them into the backs of cars like you see in a movie. And when I ran into her on the spine one day coming out of the chow hall, I stopped and I looked at her and I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe she's here. And somebody's like, yeah, she's like a certified badass. I was in Bravo Company here. When I left, Bravo Company was still the only all-male company in the Corps of Cadets. And one of the assistant combinats said, Chris, we're going to integrate Bravo Company. And I said to myself, over my dead body will Bravo boys forever die? Well, that was the stupidest thing I could have said. I think they integrated the company the next year. Women are incredibly capable. One of the deadliest shots on our rifle team when I was here as a cadet married the guy who was my best man in my wedding. She's still a dangerous shot. Her daughters are super dangerous shots. Leading platoons of men and women is one of the single greatest honors that you'll have coming out of this institution. And the last thing you should be worried about is whether they're a male or a female. It's the quality of the training that you've given them. Men and women do not rise to the occasion they sink to their lowest level of preparation. And if you've done your job as a leader, they'll be ready. That is your focus. Thank you. Thanks for that. Panel members, I just want to thank you for your time and your insight tonight. That was a pleasure and an honor to have you here. To all the cadets, the balls in your court, I will speak for myself for coming in from my generation. What we're seeing today is the generation that's coming into the military is much more educated, much smarter. You understand technology. You see that big picture. The balls in your court to decide what you want to do with what you have. And I challenge all of you as you continue to decide which path you want to go. Explore your path. Understand your environment. Set your sights and go for it. And I encourage you as you do that if special operations is something that you're interested in and you think it could be in your future, start doing your homework. Start asking around. Start digging in as to what it takes and go for it. Because I will tell you that whether you're in a civilian leader, working in the government as a leader, working as a military leader, our country needs you, okay? The risk is sounding like a recruiter because believe me, I am not. They would never put me out in a recruiting command and I'm too close to retirement so they can't do it. But I'm telling you our country needs good leaders that can go out and solve problems. So, I wish you all the best. Congratulations to where you are. And as we say in Special Forces, deal, press, only bear. Thanks. Thanks for coming.