 Welcome back. Thanks for our previous speakers. The next panel is what should special operations forces look like by 2040 joining us is Lieutenant Colonel Katie Kroom from Special Operations Command. Major Achille Iyer from Marine Special Operations Command Captain Shay Haver, ADCAM to the Commander Joint Task Force National Capital Region and Military District of Washington. And Commander Chief Master Sergeant Greg Smith, Special Operations Command senior industry leader. This conversation is going to be moderated by Colonel Ike Wilson, who is president of the Joint Special Operations University is also a senior fellow in the International Security Program at New America. Professor of practice at Arizona State University. And before we hear from our speakers, we're going to have a short video from Joint Special Operations University. My name is Dr. Ike Wilson, and I am the president of the Joint Special Operations University at United States Special Operations Command SOCOM. It's a great pleasure for me today personally and professionally to be with you today and to frankly be moderating what promises or at least I'll hope the promise will be a great and exciting frankly provocative 45 minute discussion. We have a very amount of a very tight amount of time before us and as moderator I'm going to make a couple of opening framing comments just to kind of warm up the living room here the virtual living room to get some provocations going and I'm going to turn it over to our great panelists today and I wanted to thank Peter Bergen for the great intro of each of them and for myself as well. And a little bit of technical difficulty here I'm seeing the chat, but I'm sure that'll work itself out you all can hear me. Our panel today, we're going to take on the question straightforward, and then I've asked each of our panelists to give us a quick type five minutes or so provocation to put some more meat on the bones of the question. Again the question before today is what should special operations forces look like by 2040. What I want what we're going to do in our comments is we're going to expand on that question and not only we're going to address what should soft look like by the year 2040, but what must soft be and become by 24 and that being and becoming starts today. And so with that as moderator, I'm going to go ahead and just give us some provocations try to frame us out a little bit. And I'm going to turn it right over to Lieutenant Colonel Katie Chrome. The US director of strategy plans and policy, the J five and military jargon of the US special operations command central command. So first, just some provocation. I would offer that soft like the nations that we serve. Let you have another threshold crossing the need to reorient the soft enterprise for this coming fourth age what we regard as the fourth age of soft is motivated by the unique challenges posed by a very major feature of the strategic and operational development that feature is a change in the character of global geopolitical competition, what we're calling what we're theorizing as a new compound security dilemma. Now striking a proper rebalancing between all of sauce past, and particularly its most recent past, the so called GWAT era requires a delicate maneuver between recognizing the nuances of the compound security dilemma. So we're going to start with the present and current and future threats and revisiting the past to learn how our future shapes the present through this critical lens we can forecast what changes are required to be more comprehensively effective in the future compound security environment. This is the most challenging all of this. I offer that it's nothing less than the classic innovators dilemma, striking the right balance between leading change and preserving and protecting the essence of who soft is who soft has been based on what soft has done for nation and the United States special operations command. This is our prime directive as soft professionals. Now this soft this compound security character of the global security environment is such that it demands a utility of soft that is equally compounded. Now what do I mean by that that's to say a comprehensive combination of all the skills techniques and operational methods of all three preceding ages taking us back as early as the World War two era, amplified all that amplified by 21st century technological advancements. I'd offer that nothing less than this comprehensive joint combined utility of soft philosophy culture and approaches required for over matching power in and under these fourth age conditions, nothing less folks than a trans everything view of an approach to special forces use utility and identity. Now with that I'm going to turn it over and to Lieutenant Colonel Katie Chrome, Katie you've got about five minutes, please provoke over to you Katie. Thanks Dr Wilson and thanks to all my fellow panelists for sharing this important conversation today. So right now I'm in the fortunate although it hasn't seemed like that lately position to be part of the theoretical future of how to employ soft in the future, and also part of the ongoing experiment. We live in every day at special operations command central as we have purview or remit over the 22 countries in the Middle East and Central and South Asia. Never a day goes by that we don't talk about the what ifs though the what next and how we can do this better in the future. The larger defense apparatus is shifting its resources and intellectual capital toward China and Russia. I think the instability that generated the trauma of terrorism over the past two decades has definitely not subsided in the Middle East. In fact, many of the root causes that contributed to this threat have multiplied and I'm now exacerbated by climate change changes the energy access and the global pandemic. These positions present opportunities for both global and regional adversaries alike pursue their goals of fomenting unrest and undermining regimes that are friendly to the US. They're attempting to break us from our alliances which as everyone knows is our center of gravity in the Department of Defense and the US government at large. So how can we in special operations stem this tide. How can we position ourselves with human capital and technological advances to create upstream approaches to this burgeoning dilemma. A big piece of this answer lies and how soft creates understanding in order to influence the regular warfare annex of the national defense strategy begins to tackle this. It states that the regular warfare is a persistent and enduring operational reality employed by non state and increasingly now state actors like Russian China. In competition with the United States, a regular warfare is defined as the struggle to influence populations and affect legitimacy. The annex goes on to talk about five more missions on conventional warfare stabilization for internal defense counterterrorism and of course counterinsurgency. And states that IW is not just a soft mission, but a core competency for the department at large. Although all the movies and books that everyone's seen for the past two decades highlight counterterrorism and direct action as our primary missions. In the past 20 years we grew in others as well and perhaps more importantly. We evolved and innovated across all of the population focused areas, including military information support operations, cyber space ops counter threat networks, really importantly counter threat financing, civil military operations and security cooperation. It's here where we will continue to serve as leaders for DoD. These aren't extracurricular or nice to have skill sets there at the core of special operations soft is not about being better or being elite special is about being different. In 2001 we became what the nation needed and we will do that again. We're designed to operate in the human environment and that is where we will continue to provide outside value. We need to be brilliant in the basics. We need to shift from a bias for action towards a bias for understanding. We must develop our enterprise, our humans to understand. We need to focus on the cognitive dimension as the key terrain and everywhere. The influence campaigns both virtually and physically around the globe. Cognitive change requires patience, a long view that's important in the execution of regular warfare. Part of this is an effective campaign that will require recognizing certain effects take longer than others. Return on investments is a really difficult thing to measure in the near term and in term. Allegedly the Chinese approach is anchored on a hundred year outlook. We could probably learn a few lessons from that. Cognitive change also requires partnerships both internal within the USG and external with partners and allies. These relationships both physical and virtual are our and will remain our keystone. While some are promoting soft machine fusion as the way forward, I would caution fully against RMA 2.0 reliance. Yes, machine learning and AI can process data at light speeds, but these platforms are not able to provide context. There is no man in the loop or woman in the loop. Each human requires a larger, more nuanced knowledge based on experience enabled by true overhead talent management system. We can't just download a language like the matrix into human brain or rely on a translation app without divorcing it from the larger cultural context that provides us meaning. Soft plus tech does not equal the solution. Relying on a small number of elite troops married to advanced sensors, communication platforms, PGMs and AI. This is not guarantee immediate victory and definitely not long term, long term consolidation of games. All these changes may drive a requirement to develop structures and think differently about how we are organized. To do this, we have to institutionalize adaptation, especially regarding the understanding that is necessary to prevail against a regular activities or regular adversaries. Adaptation is more than just technological advances. You may finally have to get rid of some of the sacred cows we've been holding onto for so long. So from big to small, just some food for thought for the panel. Within our own service, we can look at career management and promotion structure, not just things like battalion and brigade command, but things like soft as its own service or as a profession. Next, looking at deployment and readiness cycles, not to be the full drivers of a forward presence. Soft must be present forward to build relationships, access and truly understand. It's not full T Lawrence, but there's a bit of that here. We need a better way to under to ensure readiness that counts for human centric aspects of a regular warfare and keeping people forward. And last, we need to look at the UCP and GCC structure, perhaps look at replacing it with a structure that allows saw to thrive as a true integrator between the interagency and intelligence community via force. The sect of recent integrative currents initiative really builds on this and begins to address the importance of bringing all these tools from different organizations together. I think we can maybe use that as a forcing function to look at something like a Goldwater nickels 2.0. Thank you. Thanks Katie that was excellent. Hey, major Achille Iyer of the United States Marine Corps Special Operations Command. Achille over to you. Five minutes for focus. Sounds great. Thanks so much, Dr Wilson and no cron. Thanks so much for setting the stage. You know, I'll take the perspective here less so as major Achille Iyer and just Achille Iyer the individual who transitioned in 2019 to a business school program and try and put a little bit of a business lens on what arguably is one of our nation's most successful startups going back to its roots and I'll I'll offer three comments as I think about that. The first is, I don't think we're the only ones as many organizations experience at a contextual environmental inflection point. We're not the only ones trying to refine and stress test our core competencies and our competitive advantage going forward. I remember in a recent naval war college discussion a quote that I wrote down was, if you are uncomfortable if I'm sorry if you are comfortable in the community right now, it's probably because you are irrelevant. I think that strikes me as something that you know we're not the only service or service like component dealing with this. It reminds me of my my old hat as a conventional infantry man as a lieutenant on muse and I would argue actually that this inflection point geopolitically creates some opportunities to figure out how soft can act as a connector to not just a broader force but even new members of the force like we heard from today that being the space force. And I think this relationship of soft being as a connector, I think might be an inflection in terms of how we think about the supported supporting relationship something that might be a little different than how many of us have experienced over the past 20 years. I don't think this connection ecosystem needs to be a zero sum game of whether it's soft or whether it's a conventional force but rather, I think a much more integrated set of solutions and capabilities whose holistic value is greater than the sum of the ports. The second point I'll bring up and Dr Wilson I think you hit on it very well was this idea of the innovators dilemma. You know traditionally in the business world innovators dilemma is used to describe an incumbent who has succeeded very well created a sustainable business model, but only provides marginal improvements to its existing customers. But that's it it's only marginal improvements it's not a radically new value proposition or capability applied to some new customer problem set. Now how does this apply to solve the late Professor Clay Christensen, you know who really wrote the innovators dilemma I think captured it best in one of his articles and I think it relates well here. Incumbent companies should not overreact to disruption by dismantling a still profitable business. Instead, they should strengthen relationships with core customers, while also creating a new division focused on the growth and opportunities that arise from this disruption. And that leads to my third point which ma'am you highlighted very well and that's how do we incentivize and organize soft from the bottom up to fit the form to the function of what soft can and will be asked to do in the future. And how do we want to create the incentives to ensure that culture that culture as you know many often to quote it is culture eating strategy for breakfast and I would argue and many would argue that, you know it's also the incentives that influence the culture. Are we tangibly and intangibly influencing the incentives when it comes to our selection, our recruitment, our training and our career pipelines, ones that emphasize the right skill development or the right types of experiences we want as we think about the great power competition arena. The last point I'll make in regards to this this idea of incentives and and and or an organization I think this is for me coming from business school one of the biggest mental shifts I made from active duty is how do you combine incentives with an a true ability to have organizational experimentation. And I think finding some ways to instill enterprise level agility, despite the fact that so come is no longer that small startup from the 1980s but is rather an established incumbent, I think and still be achieved, but we need to find adequate ways to enable that experimentation, which may be including task organize units or unique cross functional experimentation with technologies, but ultimately be able to incubate that and scale it where appropriate. So looking forward to discussion day and thanks again for joining. Thanks for that. Thanks very much. Captain Shay Haver, aid the camp to the commander joint task force national capital region and military district of Washington and Army Ranger Shay over to you. Thank you Dr Wilson and thanks everybody on the panel today really looking forward to being part of the conversation constantly learning and growing from everybody's perspective so first I just kind of want to hit on both Colonel Crom and major air are already kind of took a little bit of a glimpse into this but as we move towards more of a technological idealism and moving to solve problems in that way that my my provocation here is that we'll never be able to completely eliminate the humanity out of it. And that that that the human aspect is going to be something that we will have to continue to focus on. I think what's going to be unique and interesting is that moving forward. We're going to have the same amount of jobs, if not more, and we're going to have to recruit the right people to fit those jobs. And in this generation maybe even motivating people to either stay in or to continue to contribute to this conversation, moving it forward what the competition will look like. We're going to be working with a generation that more than likely doesn't have the same experiences that the total force may have had over the 20 years of experience where we have been so not only are we are we kind of trying to shift culture right we're also trying to create something in a different way kind of new, we're going to have to rely on that bottom up refinement that major areas talked about. So really really interested in how you know we're going to tie that into our conversation today with some of the soft truths and keeping keeping in mind that overcoming a generation of more you know individualism and isolationism how we do that how do we maintain a culture for the military in general but for soft moving forward in these very specific ideas as we kind of culminate in that but really looking forward to the conversation and thank you so much. Shea thanks so much and great army Ranger form you came in well under the five minutes I appreciate that you've given us some time back. Folks before I introduce our final quick profit provocateur. I just want to make sure that I want to give the audience or our living room audience. Some time, some information on how to submit questions, folks will be using a Slido SLI dot do to submit questions Slido is the box located to the right of the video. If you encounter issues in attempting to load up your questions using Slido, please contact events at new America.org. Okay, and without further ado, I want to turn it over to to our command chief master Sergeant Greg a Smith command chief Smith is the 10th senior enlisted leader of the US special operations command. He's our senior leader so I could not think of a better way of rounding out the provocations other than turning it over to command chief Smith Greg over to you. Thanks Dr Wilson and as always, it's always a big struggle to back clean up behind three eloquent leaders that make me feel very confident in the future of our force from a person that's really the past of our force. It's somebody with more than 26 years in special operations of my 31 plus years of service. I've watched the second third and now the fourth age of soft as Dr Wilson coins it. And as the last enlisted airman in our United States Air Force and activity who came in before Desert Shield. It's also an important inflection point as we look at the evolution of the military and special operations in in general as we look at how we got here where we're going, I will tell you as we struggle and I say that because on behalf of General Clark and the leadership team here we spend an enormous and inordinate amount of time, questioning those truths, not our soft truth but those truths that we've known for these last 20 years of how relevant they will be going forward. And in that questioning and through significant inflection, we've come up with kind of four key areas that soft will continue and into the future for seeable future. And that first as evidenced by the recent events in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world in places like Haiti in support of Hurricane Ida and other crises is this is this concept of crisis response soft innate ability to get from point A to point B in a rapid fashion to the sounds of the guns or the sounds of the cries is the significant single most important value proposition we can offer our nation as it offers the nation's decision makers time and space to make decisions. We can we can question those decisions and we have the luxury of doing that, but we do not have the question. We do not have the luxury of questioning response time. So special operations forces in crisis response will always be the nation's key advantage. The second is this continuing counter violent extremist operations, although we see the events in Afghanistan and other places around the world, a more sustainable approach. Counter terrorism counter terrorism and those who ideologically seek to destroy or you serve everything this creation great nation stands for will continue to be present. Those things require unique solutions and as Colonel Crom brought up this irregular warfare concept and by within through our allies and partners will continue to be our key strength as we go forward. Another kind of important hinge point here is in state on state conflict, as we prepare for the nation to avoid war, we prepare for war as a military special operations has been the supported force, the majority of the last 20 years, reconnecting our services and integrating into the joint force as a supporting, enabling portion of this element of that will be important for our decision makers. And then finally this continuous continuum of competition, everything from cooperation to conflict on both ends of both at state near peer and middle peer conflicts or disagreements will continue. When we talk about China use China as a quick example and we look at things. China is not necessarily a military threat, but it has military capabilities that threaten United States capabilities. China's economic growth and when we look at it through four lenses, and that's the Silk Road economic belt, the 21st century maritime Silk Road, the Polar Silk Road, and the digital Silk Road. These threatened to underpin the economic engine that is the United States that gives us that access and placement. So special operations forces ability to characterize the nature of this by within through friendly countries and understand dual use facilities and potential threats is a key and important enabling function for our decision makers. These things through the next 20 to 40 years will continue to be truths that we see in the operational environment, and those things require uniquely assessment selected individuals to use major iris point, do we have the right individuals today to do these things These are the inflection points that we face today to make sure that we are inclusive in the entire problem set to make sure that we are getting after and addressing the nation's key challenges with that I yield my time back to you Dr Wilson. Command Chief Greg that was that was excellent. What I'd like to do we have we already have some great questions forming up from the virtual living room audience. Before I do before I go to that we've got a I want to take a couple of minutes and kind of come back to what was a harmonizing theme across all of your comments but I thought who put it best was a Lieutenant Colonel chrome. Katie you said, you said, we have to be brilliant in the basics, we have to remain brilliant. I would say exquisitely so brilliant in the basics, while also remaining human right and again Shay Captain Captain Haver emphasize this as well you all did. I'm haunted by the fact that part of the American way of peace and warfare is a heavy reliance on technology. But when we're talking about a fourth age of soft, it really comes into coincidence and increasingly is going to come in collision with the fourth technological revolution as well and again major ire spoke to this a bit as well. So the natural proclivity to at times of strategic ambiguity and unknown strategic inflection points to tilt towards more of the reliance on hopeful solutions through the hyper enablement through tech solutions of the leader operator. While we certainly have to do that, how do we, how do we do that at the same time of getting maintaining that equipoise that balance that healthy balance between becoming hyper enabled at vanguard on these technological changes. While also remaining soft truth number one human over all things much less hardware. I'd like to put that before you and give you guys maybe you know 30 seconds or so to kind of, you know, give some thoughts on it. And it's open to whoever wants to start it out. So real quick and just say the hyper enabled operators really about three key concepts it's about power, right how do I power, and how do I do those things it's about projection how do I leverage data, satellite, all these other capabilities across multiple multiple domains to project capability and protection. How do I synthesize and rework industry plates carrier transport to make sure I'm protecting the operator but the end of all of it. It's about the human that is enabled by this rapid influx of technology. Outstanding. Hey major I'm going to pick on you because you and I had a conversation about this a little bit last week. I know you have something to say on this. I think we were joking last time. You know Shane I even though we're the youngest on this panel I think we ourselves are old in the sense that we're not digitally native. We have a generation of young, you know, aspiring special operations personnel who did grow up in that environment and I would argue they are part and parcel of that solution. The technology you know I in my, you know, I'm in the reserves and so my my full time work is dealing with technology investments to include artificial intelligence. And the end of the day I think it reinforces chief Smith's point and that it's it's about the people and the ability of those individuals to understand the capabilities and limitation. We're going into those types of systems and then how we use it and to leverage the capability of our young soldiers sailors airmen Marines who grew up in that digitally native environment who have been tooling with the Raspberry Pi since the age of seven and can bring some of those competencies I think are critical outstanding and I would just add our new new members to the team to the soft team our space guardians who we're we're beginning the early work now try to figure out what that looks like from a soft component. So even more so in terms of that challenge of maintaining and preserving that perfect equipoise again the innovators dilemma, you know, preserving who we are as human beings a human at the heart of what we do the human essence of what we do, while leveraging to the hilt advanced technology. Okay, I'll turn it over to you see if you have any thoughts at Yeah, the one the one comment that I was going to make is that I think that we are going to have a challenge for ourselves to appeal to that generation who did grow up you know essentially you know that the iPhone in their hand right like how does that translate to how they can serve and how they can be recruited into these these positions so those skills might not necessarily translate for them, and they're going to see, you know, probably what they think that soft is from a historical standpoint and not necessarily what it is being projected to be. And so, us finding a way, and us meeting you know that the active military now, and how do we recruit the right people for some jobs that maybe don't even exist yet, getting people to think because they're going to be the ones that are going to solve, you know, some of these, these future problems so we might be doing the NUG work of coming out with the orders and you know doing the late night, you know background planning sessions but really what is it that is going to be coming out to the rest of the population to be able to recruit these individuals, and to meet them where they are, so that they're not intimidated by the fact that like hey I don't have, you know the experience of being you know finding this past you know 20 year war under my belt, how do I you know how do I contribute and very necessarily they might be the solution so so getting them to see that I think is a challenge and something that we need to start doing now. Okay, Katie I'm gonna sit you since I used your provocation to for this question. I'm going to ask you to maybe take this in the opposite direction that that major iron and shade took it. I talked about the challenge of you all as the as, from my perspective, the young, the young youngsters in trying to communicate downstream to those gen gen Z years, the did the true digital natives. What's your all challenge and their challenge even more so in translating that up echelon to old soldier sailors airmen, once in young, but no longer. Command Chief Greg Smith is always forever young. So I won't put him in that in my category I'll just pick on myself representing, you know the old folks that are far from being digital natives. And, but still in positions where you've got to convince us as the executives of what all this means and how it means for change going forward any thoughts on that. Sure, actually, I was watching the video at the beginning and I kind of went back to what we feel about the posters and the stamps or the branding of special operations and it's, you know, the night vision goggles and the operator with all of the gear, you know, going into a building. And I thought, you know, that's that's not what we need to be advertising fully right now of course it's a huge part of it. And I know it does help recruit some people that we need but you know if we all agree that the future is different the people in the mindset and the creativity that we're trying to recruit right now is much different than that and I think it comes down to things like words do matter, you know hyper enabled operator right the last word is operator. All ms's professions within special operations need to be hyper enabled, you know and that goes back to this understand function. But I think it's difficult for the more senior generations. I mean we have super forward thinkers like chief Smith and you and it's bright and you know our people that really do want to change but I think it is difficult for them to promote and bring up talent. And that looks different than them and I'm not talking in physical appearance but has a different resume than them, it just, it doesn't compute somehow in these boards, right. And so people often asked, I mean, we talked about this last week, if you said 10 years ago what is a panel for special operations 2040 look like, you know they all it was chief Smith time spy, right. And if you look at his handsome as you, but if you look at, you know, Dr. Wilson, major higher cat and haver me, you know, we, we are definitely not the recruiting poster for special operations. Um, but I would say that we are at the forefront of a lot of thought within the community. And with the expertise above us, we all come together we are, you know, we're pitching some creative solutions that are being latched on to, you know around the globe with the National Security Council and things like that but it's, it will become increasingly difficult to hold on to people like Shay and I mean look, major higher is already out in the Harvard Business School, you know, I mean, they will be recruited outside if they aren't properly talent managed. And I think that's, you know what I spend a lot of time translating up above, you know, trying to bring people underneath me that don't look, you know, I don't look soft. And some of my most talented guys and gals that work for me, they do not look the part, but they're an absolute requirement to make special operations command successful going forward. And it's just about reminding these guys on a daily basis that that's true and usually they do listen. And I'll just say that from my seat, Colonel Chrome is more soft than most people that I know, just so you know I mean in the sense of her thought and what she does for these commands. And there's a reason why she's, she's handpicked to be one of our preeminent war and peace planners, not set on that. You know, Katie to your point about you know how do you keep folks like yourselves and we'll pick on a keel specifically how do you keep how do you keep them in how do you keep the talent inside the force. And I think even thinking beyond what constitutes inside and outside the force. Right, it's something we've got to, we've got to rethink, right, and the ability to actually leverage opportunities for folks to view all the rotate in and out, if you will, of the of the active formations, and just think of the integrated kind of statecraft solutions that we can get when we start thinking about those, those kind of things what is likewise what is a 21st century equivalent of a old 1819th century approach to brevity. Right to where we're putting we're putting rank in accoutrements to mission sets not to individuals, right we had it in some respects, really right in the past, how do you, how do you go back to our futures and those respects is just some of the things that your comments really inspired. Let me open this up to to our audience we've got some great questions here that are all in line with, with what we're what we're talking about so far. Let me start right at the top of the list here. I'm just going to make this open from everyone. Bad strategy often comes from flawed assumptions, what are the wrong assumptions about what we need from soft that would lead to bad strategy for the for the future. And I'm going to just make this open jump ball whoever wants to jump and get it first go for it. I can just jump in really quick because you know falling from I appreciate your comments because 100% I think that's one of the, getting to this question to one of the things is like what what wrong with these assuming that we just keep doing the same thing and everybody has to look the same. We're going to end up having to put people probably that look different or may not even have the right experiences into positions of change and positions of responsibility or authority to make decisions surrounded by a team to progress the team forward that that are going to fail. And we're going to have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And I think that that's probably the biggest and first takeaway. It's got it's going to look different than probably a lot of people are comfortable with and we're going to have to be uncomfortable moving forward. The goodness in that is that it's a team effort and that the individual, you know, the, if we're playing if we're doing it right because we're thinking about it and talking about it and planning it now. But that one individual will be surrounded by the right team so it'll be the right person but the right team as well to continue to perpetuate that on. But I think that that's just one, you know one aspect or one facet to kind of get after that question and also to highlight what Carl was talking about there. General Chrome, major iron any any comments. Anything to add anything to add. Okay, nothing heard. All right, next question. By 2040, the people so calm are recruiting today will be leaving the enterprise. What new different attributes should we be screening for and those future leaders today. I think that one first, I mean, you know, as a woman and soft without the, the opportunity to, you know, go to ranger school everything that shaded not saying I would have passed this by any means but it wasn't allowed. And then you always feel like a second class citizen without the tabs and the accoutrements and everything that comes with that. And so I think that when we do look to recruit and assess, we need to put things like, you know, writing reading speaking problem almost ahead, not ahead all the way but equal at least as as the physical testing, you know, I think that it's always an afterthought and it probably needs to be on the same playing field. It's very rare that people get dropped, you know, we all have friends relatives that have been through the series of schools across the services, you know, from buds to Delta training and all of that. I never hear about people getting, you know, dropped for intellectual shortfalls, it's the mountain phase or, you know, frostbite or something like that. And I think that when it comes to the challenges that we're facing right now a strategic competition. And it's the problem solving and creative solutions that paralyze senior leaders on, and, you know, that that's time and progress right now. And so those are the things that I think we really need to be testing in the future to make sure we're recruiting. I think the problem is not a pretty good point here of was we've re looked at assessment as part of our comprehensive review of looking where we're at is really about critical and creative thinking thinking in time, ethical thinking, and then design thinking Dr. Wilson, as you know, kind of the five elements of thinking if you want that all falls under cognitive agility, which should weigh significantly more we still need the physical standards, because of what we physically demand of of our force. Sometimes we've overemphasized certain things in it to the detriment of cognitive agility, which is where we're at where we physically demand of our force. However, as we've overemphasized certain things in that to the detriment of cognitive agility, which is where we're inflecting. Absolutely. We've got time probably for a quick lightning round of two more questions. First next question. 911 was a catalyst for military recruiting. As United States Special Operations Command continues to shift its focus away from direct action is soft experiencing challenges in retention or recruiting. You start with a keel and maybe Katie I know you're you've done a lot of background work on on the on human resource side talent management side, maybe give you a chance to comment as well but go ahead, I kill any thoughts on that. Thanks Dr. Wilson I'm probably coming with an outside perspective so don't have the numbers here on this. I think, and maybe this goes a little bit. What I will offers in conjunction with the last question. I don't think we need to see it as a I'm in active duty or I'm out of active duty. I think there's a lot of relationships that we can have I look at the National Guard model. I mean talk about an amazing capability that the US Army has developed where I have people working in all sorts of incredible industries on the outside, but can also come back and leverage when the nation requires. And I would like to think as you know as the question was posed earlier that that we can question what that relationship looks like. So your second point I think in terms of retention. My argument is, I think in many ways that the desire to serve is still very very strong actually in many ways. I think the desire to do something where the mission matters and may not be necessarily creating the next dare I say Facebook filter, or something like that. I do think we're seeing a generation that wants to work on problems that matter and special operations and the broader not even special operations the broader national security enterprises is still going forward on that. Yeah, really quick the only thing that I would add and I think that Chief Smith probably have a great perspective on this is, we might have overcorrected on the kind of deployed it well type of ratio that we were getting I mean people were deployed too much for many years. Now there are many people feeling kind of underused after 20 years of continuous deployments and really feeling like they were part of something bigger. So I think that there's probably a happy medium in there that we can get people out in the field overseas feeling that they're contributing to the bigger picture while also maintaining you know family readiness back home. And we do not have a recruiting issue at present we have a retention issue, potentially that we're working through the analysis is early but we want to make sure there's meaningful employment to Colonel Croms point of making sure that that that the force feels properly employed in some Folks, I promise one more question I was told we've got an extra minute because we got started a little slightly a little bit late so I'm going to steal a little bit more time just ask one more. I just want to ask you all, each of you. You know, and this is this is coming from left field for you. You know, as we think about what soft looks like and needs to be become next 20 years 2040. What key trends. Do you think about what you know maybe name one each of key trends to be on the outlook for maybe something that keeps you up at night. Either from fright or or from peril or promise something that excites you about the trends that we're seeing today we have made where it may be leading us forward. How about we start with Shay. I would say not necessarily frightening but says just something that last key point that was made is like making people feel like you know value members of the team being able to contribute so very very specifically you know having having a and in state having something that we're working towards that being very specifically you know communicated so people can attach to it and contribute to it. Thank you. I think the key attribute is a willingness to take risks and experiment. We're not going to develop a more optimized force if we don't have a culture in which we create the opportunity to do so. Many of those will fail. We're not going to get the right M to or formation or technology integrated off the first that that's what the innovators dilemmas all about, but to enable that culture of risk taking and see that in an individual level I think is key. Yeah, along those lines it really goes back to my main point of understanding I think what really keeps me up at night is kind of the climate change mass migration weaponization of refugees around the world issue. And to chief Smith's point at the beginning, it's going to be more Hades and less Afghanistan's you know coming up and we need to be prepared with the type of people that a want to tackle that type of mission and be understand the context and the culture around it when they get there. Outstanding command chief over to you. This reminds atrophy what keeps me up at night is readiness atrophy. So on the 10th of September 2011, we had done 1000 exercises for that one up as somebody who was seven days after 911 deployed forward standing up and the second US guy into Pakistan to kind of start working those pieces seven years of my life. Forward Iraq Afghanistan Somalia North Africa working across there. I never worried about readiness right now with policy and where we're at in the world. I get worried or what concerns me is maintaining a state of crisis response readiness for whatever our nation requires. Whatever our nation requires. Thanks so much for that command chief Smith and right along with you that's what would tend to keep me up late at night from a from a what worries me but from a what excites me and the great promise ahead. I mean, I got to tell you the perfect answer to this question of what should soft look like for the outwards to 2040 before the first word was said, as soon as we all popped up visual on screen I think we've got our answer to that and with that these are the things that help me sleep very well and comfortably tonight amid all this ambiguity knowing we've got these great these great leaders today that are going to be leading the force into that next 20203040 years plus going going forward. I want to thank you all for what I think we kept our promise for a very informative and provocative conversation and with that I'm going to turn it over to our great host Peter Bergen Peter. Thank you very much over you sir.