 Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today for this Defense Innovation Board public meeting. My name is Dr. Marina Theotu and I'm the Executive Director and the Designated Federal Officer for the Defense Innovation Board. Today's meeting is being live streamed and recorded to allow members of the public to attend the meeting virtually now or watch later. Meetings like this require a lot of work behind the scenes so I'd like to thank the Defense Media Agency for providing their expert support today and everyone that was involved including the Defense Innovation Board staff team to make this happen. The board will now convene in its public session and I'd like to share with you a few procedural remarks. The board is discretionary, independent advisory board operated under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and Government Sunshine Act. Today's meeting was announced in the Federal Register Notice and posted on April 3, 2024. There have been no significant changes to the meeting's agenda as posted in the Federal Register Notice. The public was invited to submit written comments for the board members to consider. We received a handful of comments in advance of today's meeting and we will reference those towards the end of the meeting. As a reminder, these are comments for the board's consideration rather than a question and answer session or exercise. These comments are also posted on the DIB website, HTTPSinnovation.Defense.gov. So with that, I'd like to welcome the board and turn it over to our Defense Innovation Board Chair, Mr. Mike Bloomberg. Mike, over to you. Marina, thank you and good afternoon to everyone and to the members of the public watching online. Thank you for joining us. We are joined by a few members of the board, Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, president of MGM Consulting and a Bloomberg Philanthropies Board member, Charles Phillips, a partner and co-founder of Recognize and a member of the board of Bloomberg, Inc., Mac Thornberry, former Texas Congressman, chairman of the House Armed Service Committee back then, and a great American who's been phenomenally helpful here and his service is great appreciated. Gilda Barobino, she is president of Olin College of Engineering and always has some great insights for us and Will Roper, CEO and founder of Istari. I speak for all the members when I say that we're honored to help you to help do our part through the Defense Innovation Board. Our job is to conduct independent research and interviews and then provide recommendations for change to the department's senior leaders. The United States, you should know, has the strongest best prepared military in the world and as events over the weekend underscored the urgent work to keep it that way cannot stop and has to move even faster. And we think that the public meeting will continue conversations that we started last month and that that would be useful to you. So, as we mentioned then, our focus is on the two current studies that Secretary Austin and Under Secretary Hsu directed us to take. And our job is to do conducting independent research and interviews and then provide recommendations for change to the department's senior leaders. First, we'll resume our look at how the US can work in closer partnership with our global allies with the help of two special guests. But before we hear from them, I'll ask board member Charles Phillips to say a few words about where we stand. He's coordinating the studies that Charles will start with you before is yours. Thank you, Mike. This project is about leveraging our relationship with other countries to make us collectively stronger. We want to expand our industrial base through partners. We have limited scale on what we built over the last couple of decades, but one way to address that is to help partners in different countries with similar systems become part of our defense industrial base. I think the quality of US weaponry is now clear. More people want to cooperate with us, given the events of the last year or so. But we also help partners who help break through technologies that we want to leverage. So instead of us just helping other countries, this is a mutual benefit. We discover technologies and a lot of our allies that we weren't aware of and we want to figure out a way to kind of scale that and make it more systematic. There are barriers we need to overcome to do that. We have regulations that are put in place in time where we didn't collaborate as much like the International Traffic and Arms Regulations, ITAR, so there are things that have to be modified and changed so we can speed up collaborations. But generally people do want to do that. We also have something called the Buy American Act. So some of the equipment that we purchase requires certain specific components to be made in America, even though they're deployed in far away places and we can't sustain them that way. So we need to take the stuff back to look at that as well. So as part of this process, we've been interviewing lots of different agencies, the Defense Security Corporation agency just last week, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, US Special Operations Command and so on. Literally it does, it does the agencies because they all have different relationships with different countries on specific projects. And so we're looking for best practices, what's common among them, what is work, which countries are the best allies, where is the innovation and how did it surface. And so we'll be documenting all of that. We're also taking advantage of some conferences that are designed to bring out some of this information like the Conference for National Arborments Directors that took place earlier this year. That was led by the US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment and we've also been talking to the NATO Support Procurement Agency. So with that, I'll stop there, but that's kind of the tone and the tenor of the research so far. Thank you. Let us turn to our guest speakers in a few minutes. We'll hear from Chief Master Sergeant Ron Lurch. He is the Senior Enlisted Leader of the Intelligent Directorate at Space Systems Command in Los Angeles, which gives him one of the longest titles of anybody I have ever introduced. But Sergeant, thank you. Ron oversees the Space Forces Acquisition Intelligence Programs and he is focused on instilling a culture of innovation. So we look forward to hearing from him, but first let us welcome a friend from the Netherlands who has extensive experience working in his country's defense ministry. Throughout his career, he has worked closely with international partners and allies, and that includes his current role at the Dutch Embassy in Washington, D.C. And as chair of the Defense MOU Attaché's Group, which is an association of 25 foreign ministries. Sander, thanks for being here and we're looking forward to hearing from your perspective. Would you please say a few words? Good afternoon, Mr. Bloomberg. Good afternoon audience and it's a great honor to be invited to speak with the Defense Innovation Board as chair of the Defense MOU Attaché Group. And as I understand you would like me now to hold my brief, sir. Exactly. Well, I can assure you, sir, and also the board and the audience that your future report optimizing innovation with allies and partners will be read with great interest by the 27 nations represented in our group. As we believe allies and partners do remain the most important strategic asset to the United States. But please allow me to first introduce the Defense MOU Attaché Group briefly to your board and the audience online. The DMACC represents 27 of the 28 nations with a reciprocal defense procurement MOU. So our purpose is to promote standardization, interchangeability and interoperability of defense equipment between the US and the qualifying country. So the principle mechanism using the RDP MOUs is a mutual commitment between both nations, not to discriminate against the supplier of the other country. Later research, development and or production of defense equipment. And the so-called 28 qualifying countries with an RDP MOU are exempt from the Buy American Act that was just mentioned by the previous speaker. And the domestic content threshold to be considered domestic and products in the Defense Federal Acquisition Rules supplements. So these RDP MOUs provide incentives to provide crucial components and material shortfalls that decrease, nurture and risk and mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities and severely can have impact on both deterrence and warfighting. In other words, securities enhanced by leveraging our collective resources and capabilities through these RDP MOUs. And some countries like the Netherlands and Norway have an RDP MOU since 1978. Other nations joined later over the last 10 years, the three Baltic states signed the RDP MOUs. Japan signed their RDP MOUs in 2021. And the Republic of South Korea actually is negotiating RDP as we speak. And countries in the global south like Brazil and India are on the brink of starting conversations with the US on future agreements. So as you can see, sir, and the board, RDP MOUs are not a relic of the past or extremely relevant in a time when production is deterrence, as is often quoted. The US and its allies have made great progress in innovation collaboration with the recent examples of NATO, Diana and the trilateral partnership of AUKUS as pathways for further integration and collaboration. And we innovate better to provide the warfighter the capability it needs for the fight of today and the fight of tomorrow. In other words, what are the barriers to US and partner innovation and how can they be lowered and please allow me to share three issues with you. I would argue that the first barrier is US export control systems system. The system was developed in the 70s at the time the US responsible for the vast majority of global research and development spending worldwide. However, ever since other countries including US allies and partners have recognized the importance of R&D to the industrial innovation and competitiveness. The vast increases in the investments by other governments and industries since the 70s has eroded the US technological dominance. And at the same time, the commercial marketplace is leading in innovation in many areas of relevance to our national security. So I would argue that the US export control and technological security and foreign disclosure processes undermine the ability to collaborate effectively with allies and partners at the speed and at the scale needed today. The barriers to technology sharing from the US export control mean that the United States runs the risk of losing access to allied and partner innovation and production capability. The recent national defense and industrial strategy does acknowledge the challenges posed by US export control regimes, such as the international traffic in arms regulations and the export administration regulations. However, its acknowledgement is not enough to neutralize the impact on cooperation with allies and partners. And therefore I would argue that there needs to be more than just a call for action. The US should expedite the modification of the regulatory framework to make it easier to share technology and information with selected US allies and partners. For example, basal no great work that has already been done regarding August pillar two. And the executive and legislative branch should prioritize specific areas of cooperation. It seeks to prioritize with partners. And the second barrier is by American and more specific a lack of knowledge and awareness regarding the full exempt for the 28 qualifying countries with an RDP MEU. The full exception of the by American Act has been recognized in the NDA of last year fiscal year 2024. And an important clarification has also been made in the Defense Federal Acquisition Rules supplement earlier this year. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge about the reciprocal value of these RDP MEUs and no risk compliance culture, for example, within the acquisition community to often dictates the classification no foreign. This cuts out access to innovative and sometimes allied and partner capability for the US warfighter that is required, given the current threat environment and also global competition. So by reducing no foreign restrictions us can foster better information sharing and joint developments. And the NDIS are the national defense and industrial strategy references us allied and partnerships and deliver such a firm call to action. And I quote, leveraging existing bilateral multilateral relationships such as NATO, August and the entity, the national technological and industrial base, but the NDIS does not mention RDP MEUs. And this means that the DUD should enhance the knowledge of RDP MEUs within the acquisition community at all levels through training, for example, based on the recent text in the DFARS amendment and incorporate allied and partners within the RDP MEU in the beginning of development and production phases. And this will bring me to my last and final point. The US national technological and industrial base and August partnerships have created vehicles for cooperation between the US and some of its closest historical allies. However, these partnerships only tap into a small group of countries, excluding the advanced capabilities platforms and expertise in other RDP countries in Europe and the Pacific. Bringing new partners into the US orbit by an August pillar to plus framework or extending the end tip to other close allies with cutting edge expertise and capabilities would open up new acquisition pathways. It could facilitate the enhanced corporation developments, experimentation and the industrial corporation needed for the United States to outpace competitors in today's threat environments. And expanding the existing framework such as the end tip, August and Diana, or using them as a template to reform and evolve other bilateral moves or lateral frameworks will provide the US the necessary technological advancements. And in addition, it provides new perspectives, attitudes and concepts for technological innovation and industrial production in order to prevail on the future battlefields. And that will conclude my my brief and I'm happy to take it to take your questions. Are there any questions from the from the board. Let me ask you a question then from the perspective of our allies. What are the biggest challenges to working with the Defense Department. I think one of the most difficult part I think is the is that is the lack of is my second point I think is that is mainly within the acquisition community, I think it's the lack of knowledge about the importance and the relevance and the reciprocal importance of the art of PMA use. So, having within the acquisition by default, too often, I think, no foreign classification and having enough, I think enough access to to to the market, I think that would that would be one of the the most important issues, even though we I think as allies and partners work closely and very fruitfully I think with the United States. But to be able to work on production is deterrence and as Dr La Planta says to work on I think co development co production and co statements. I think that is a crucial crucial point that I would I would like to share with you sir and and the board. What can private sector companies do to help government work together with them in very different cultures a private sector from the government sector and they approach problems I would think from different perspectives but they have to work together and how do they do that. I think it would be very important to an a very early on stage, I think government to government understand what what what the requirements are and what the US needs and the platforms needs in terms of for example their supply chain vulnerabilities and make sure that their governments gets the industries and the markets outside of the US or more as soon as possible to make sure that we address those I think address those those vulnerabilities. And I think among other important industries, I think there is a clear realization after the after the invasion of Ukraine by by Russia that that that things needs to be done and things needs needs needs to be set stepped up. Thank you very much if there's no other questions. I'm sorry, I go ahead. Yeah, just, I really appreciate. I really appreciate the presentation just quickly. I mean one of the challenges in my experience working with allies and partners NATO in particular is one of scale. And do you have any insights in terms of how you view where we are now, particularly with respect to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the demand on capabilities certainly inside NATO on how we might scale capabilities better. Usually we're the one the US is the one that ends up scaling and I find partners allies and partners, particularly in the European theater. Certainly can participate but the scale issue seems to always come up if anything is sustained over time. Any thoughts on that. Yes, sir. I think there is a clear incentive from and the government and also from industry to to scale up and to provide the Ukraine but also the warfighter and I think the respective country with with the capabilities that that they need. And I think it's it requires a good discussion government to government, but also I think with us primes to to to work on co production, also overseas, where we could also produce outside of the United States and I don't think also only Europe. But I think also in the in the Indo Indo Pacific, I think that's I think that's where where we should be where we should be looking at. Thank you. One question from me, Mike. Is there any of the 27 nations that are under the MOUs that have a classification system that the US ought to look at, meaning having systems be classified for release to partners by default, as opposed to being classified as as no foreign and then going through a release process. Secondarily, that that I would that I would have to go back to the specific countries I couldn't specifically unfortunately I couldn't I couldn't speak for the for the specific countries. But for example, the three, the two countries that are working together with the United States in the in the office framework they are part of this they are part of this this group. And they also have an over the PM, but that I think there's something that I would have to go back to the individual countries to give you there, give you a right answer on that one. And that we've talked about the, the classifying things similarly to the intelligence community where you have things that are releasable to partners by default as a model to follow but if any of the nations have have cracked the code on this for acquisition and be good to talk with them. I will I will take that as an action sure. Okay. Anybody else. Not decided you want to introduce Ron you want me to. I'll go ahead. Go ahead. Ron Lurch is the as we said before chief master sergeant. He is the senior enlisted leader of the intelligence directorate at the space systems command in Los Angeles. And we're going to hear from him now Ron floors yours. Good afternoon sir board thanks for the opportunity to speak today. Over the next few minutes I'm just going to briefly discuss a couple challenges. One information sharing and to the need for government standards. And as I briefly go over these items I think that will sort of pull the thread on a couple of the questions that I just heard here in the past few minutes so. The first challenge I'm going to discuss today's information sharing. This is an example recently in December of last year space systems command international affairs office hosted the commander of German space command. General Trump. We as the intelligence director were tasked to provide a briefing at the secret releaseable to Germany level. And what I can tell you now is that researching secret releaseable to Germany is essentially unproductive. Finding intelligence reporting especially that space domain related and is releaseable to Germany is few and far between. So much so that over 90% of the briefing that we provided was actually gathered from publicly available information. And this is a similar limitation that we as a command are facing when engaging with any of the 28 nations who reached out to space systems command as they view the U.S. as their partner of choice. And this challenge exists beyond just the intelligence community products even though there are efforts to make them more releaseable. As sort of referenced earlier internally within DOD the security classification guides for space programs almost automatically enter the classified no foreign level as the more detailed specifics of those programs become. Discussed or at least mentioned in those documents over classification is a significant challenge on its own and on the industry side and we've reached out and talked to our partners. What we've heard from them is that the smaller non IPOs out there also have a increasingly more difficult time to get clear to these programs in the larger primes because of the pre established relationships and existing large programs of record. While they got less capital to access you know these smaller companies do believe they can innovate faster due to the absence of the shareholder dilemma that's evident with some of the larger primes they can move out quicker on some of the decision making that they need to do. And this issue is unfortunately further compounded when they try to engage with any of our allies. Ideally they would like to know who they should be engaging with and more importantly who they should not be engaging with to navigate these challenges. We should consider an action of formulating or advocating for a space allies and partner engagement strategy that also details and intelligence community efforts to support information sharing. Strategy like this could preemptively address the classification issues and create demand signal to the intelligence community the IC for products that are releasable to essentially space allies of choice. Such strategy would not only benefit industry but it also could enhance ongoing joint efforts such as the international J rock or the joint requirements oversight council. Moving on to the second issue sort of the big rock is the need for government standards. This is a challenge that's routinely communicated to us. This is rooted in the fact that we have the industrial base that's ready and willing to innovate in areas such as spacecraft refueling. But the lack of standards from the government is creating a void that can potentially be exposed by our competitors leaving the US to essentially play catch up. One of the companies I recently had talked with we're discussing how they had developed a concept for a refueling satellite but the lack of government standard free from intellectual property was a significant barrier for them. Their concern was if they commit the possibility exists the government will later create a different standard. And if they wait a separate commercial standard could emerge that was later than backed by the government thereby walking it in as intellectual property removing balanced and fair competition. Our allies are affected by this challenge as well. A common theme they've communicated when they've engaged with space systems command is that the lack of US standards stymies their ability to build their own national systems that are meant to be allied by design. And thus they have no clear road ahead for interoperability. And also as referenced earlier in terms of sort of the specific impact that this can have on our allies. One of the things that's been noted is that they are opting to go for more specific systems that are focused on just their area of operations as opposed to going all in on sort of helping develop these proliferated low earth orbit networks and systems. Certainly the lack of government standard is views of the contributor to the Valley of Death in the US but this is also something that's been communicated and as an issue with our allies as well. And so as for actions for this especially on each area such as I mentioned earlier for spacecraft refueling where the government could essentially be the only customer the government really needs to consider developing fully intellectual property free standards and release them as soon as possible. I'm having these in place will be able to help us innovate domestically and in turn it's going to enhance our allies ability to do so as well. So to summarize big rocks that I wanted to address today we're just the information sharing piece and the need for government standards. This is essentially what stood out as a top challenges as we've talked and engaged with not just our partners in the industry with our allies out here in LA. So advocacy and dealing with these is undoubtedly going to put us on track to remain the premier space power for the foreseeable future and pending any questions. Thanks for your time. And again I'm happy to address any questions from you or the board. Ron, thank you. Any questions from anybody run the issue that you brought. Oh, yes. About the government standards like from your point of view what is the appetite for that or the outlook positive or negative for really getting to the point where we realize having better government standards. Yeah, so one that is very, very near and dear to our heart is just the fact that without government standards, you know, I've been to several conferences across the US where we hear our leadership for CEOs you name it from the different industry partners out there. And the common theme that they communicate is they are ready to get after the most difficult challenges that we have especially in the space domain. But the problem is, and I sort of alluded to this earlier with the shareholder dilemma, it is very difficult for them to commit to something that could be that costly, especially if a different standard arises down the road. And then essentially it becomes out of their own IRAT or just their own funding that they basically have to cut their losses because a completely different standard shows up. And so they're hesitant to move forward and actually achieving some true innovation and some critical areas that we need this innovation in. And the allies are seeing this and they're just sort of, it's, you know, it's this domino effect and they're just seeing this discussion happen they're seeing sort of this log jam. And they're very, very hesitant to sort of weigh in because in their minds they want to see the US figure this out domestically first before we start letting the international partners know sort of how to abide by it. Thank you. One of the issues you mentioned before was the private sector and the public sector working together where they have different standards and particularly on security. And you have it in a different dimension as well across 35 odd allies around the world. And so there's no easy answers to any of the stuff. If you want to be perfectly secure you don't tell anybody anything and that's not a good solution. But thank you for your service, Ron, and thank you, Sander. We'll go to the next topic at the second study will is the study focuses on different timelines and incentives of innovators, both inside and outside the Defense Department. We think with a better understanding of these incentives, our goal is to help Pentagon speed up its adoption of promising new technologies. And your Admiral Mike Mullen is coordinating this study so I'll turn it over to him now Admiral. You might be muted. Can you hear us. Yeah, I was muted. Sorry. That's okay. This study, this is an incentive study is really foundational to direct what we believe driving faster tech adoption and aligning with the secretary's priorities of modernizing the department. To us to assess the discrepancies between existing existing incentive structures of the Department of Defense. And those that are prevalent in industry. So we're looking internally and externally at incentives and and the baseline assumption here is that many incentives are misaligned. We're also trying to extract and refine key elements and practices from industry that could enhance do these incentive framework. We're also looking at a way to formulate a comprehensive plan as a result of this study to effectively communicate and implement a realigned incentive structure. And finally, to look at quantifiable metrics come up with quantifiable metrics to monitor and evaluate the success of aligning incentives among the various stakeholders and there are lots of them. We're currently where we are currently in the study is synthesizing information from academia industry. The Department of Defense to develop a comprehensive viewpoint and distill relevant actionable recommendations. The study has facilitated us for study group engagements. We've actually reviewed 43 different reports conducted over 15 key stakeholder engagements with more than 30 stakeholders from various sectors, including the DoD venture capitalist small businesses academia and the acquisition community, among others. Participants in the study include program executive officers requirement officers and members of innovation. Cubs and cells encompassing both uniform personnel and civilian employees all at various levels. The next steps we expect to that and when do we expect to publish the results the next steps are really for the remainder of this month will will persist in our engagements and gather further information and from mid made early June really intensify the analysis. Associate with what we have collected and then starting in June will be basically writing the report, which will be published on July 17. So again we're just looking at what the incentives are across the department and industry where they're aligned where they're misaligned everything that's associated with that and making recommendations to the secretary hopefully he can implement to to move tech adoption through the system much more quickly. Without Mike, I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you. Any questions for the Admiral. If not, let me introduce two more experts. They are the former commander of the US cyber command. Retired Army general Paul Nakasone, who will speak in a moment, but first let us bring in Colonel Kristen sailing. With the past seven years she has been using data and analytics to help the Army improve his decision making in human resources so Colonel. Thank you for joining us and please go ahead. Thank you very much sir and thank you to these game members of the Defense Innovation Board for an opportunity to talk about incentivizing innovation and new technology adoption across the Department of Defense. The angle I'm going to take, not surprisingly given my background is people looking at our talent management and the type of talent development. We need to be able to do in order to get people who are capable of utilizing implementing and adopting the new technologies that we're talking about and integrating them into our Army into our defense business processes. I'm not just focused on Army. So looking at our different initiatives, the primary challenge we have within our talent incentive structure is the alignment or the misalignment with contemporary career expectations and the evolving skill sets required in modern defense. This isn't uniform across the services. I will acknowledge that there are some areas were better at this and others, but we do have some pervasive problems. Despite the authorities that we were given in the 2019 NDA our approach to talent management is still heavily reliant on rank and tenure based rewards and we have a single entry point system. We're looking at different ways of bringing in alternate types of talents moving more permeability across our components bringing across our reservists and our guard members who have expertise in these areas and direct commissioning. But those have largely just been piloted and limited capacity, but we're not anywhere close to mimicking the fast paced skills driven job markets that we have out in the commercial sector. We are creating tools to make for more flexibility within our services for assignments and developmental opportunities but largely this is seen as a detractor for our primary incentive which is promotion and advancement. We are promoting people who go out and get diverse skills who have other non traditional opportunities in spite of these opportunities rather than because of them. And this results in difficulty attracting and retaining top talent these areas, particularly when we're looking at critical technology areas such as cybersecurity data science, artificial intelligence, and as we're talking about here in innovation. We don't treat it. We don't adequately recognize or cultivate non traditional career paths and skills which are becoming more and more are essential as warfare and defense technologies evolve. We're seeing this every day. We need to be able to leverage and reward unique contributions of our technologists particularly looking again at our civilian experts in our reservists whose expertise can be absolutely pivotal on these times. We come up against the traditional approach right right and tenure we don't necessarily know how to integrate folks coming in from outside of our system. And instead we tend to look and lean towards seniority the folks who have been there longer who understand the business processes without figuring out a way to merge these two to address these challenges. We're looking at a number of different things that we need to support to implement. The first is looking at additional skills based pay systems. We've been talking in army compensation for a long time about figuring out more ways to uncoupled grade and skill and moving to a model that better emphasizes skills and contributions. We don't have the freedom to align pay with market standards for specific skill sets, but we have to be able to prioritize aligning incentives to those we can in these very high demand areas. We're also examining the impact of non monetary incentives, such as choosing different methods of development, other additional skills training with industry, post of choice, other types of things that we can offer without looking at the premium for for dollars which can strain us heavily. In looking at flexible career pathways as an entity we need to be able to create multiple career tracks that allow for lateral movement between disciplines and recognizing reward cross functional skills and expertise. This lets us not just, you know, reward the capability of our individuals but lets us increase readiness by not having to stick strictly along cohort and career boundaries. It will let us attract and incentivize talents with increased variety and diversity of experience, finding better fit for new emerging requirements as they as they show up. We want to enhance our professional development opportunities investing in continuous learning and upscaling programs, especially in emerging technologies and credentialing. We want to end to the same problem that the private sector is turning into the demand signal for some of these keys technologists is greater than anybody can keep up with so we have to find creative ways of cultivating these types of talents and skill sets within our own formations. We want to introduce project based and performance based bonuses for roles that contribute to critical projects, particularly in innovation and technology developments, introducing these type of bonuses that reflect impact and success of these initiatives, which is something we haven't previously done. The last piece, we want to be able to continually modernize people and the way we think about people. I've dabbled around this, at least on the Army side and I've seen it in the other services with the Army Talent Management Task Force, the Army People First Task Force, Army Recruiting Task Force and Recruiting Enterprise Transformation Initiative and I could go on. We have a lot of these temporary entities that we have brought in to modernize people without fully instantiating the same type of capability modernization that we use in the material space. What I'm proposing at least on the Army side and I'm hoping that we get adopted across the other services is that we establish centers of excellence for people and talent that look at modernizing the capability of our individuals the same way that we modernize our systems. We're definitely going to need this coming up. We've seen the proliferation of generative AI and other capabilities and the emergence of skills like prompt engineering. So we started thinking about what we need to have in order to assess develop and even just identify the attributes that make someone a good partner with a machine partner. How do we optimize our capabilities and our attributes for human machine teaming of various types, looking just, you know, looking at generative AI all the way to autonomous vehicles. So, looking at this by offering competitive skills based compensation, flexible career pathways, moving away from seniority and cohort based management, deemphasizing the traditional career path and figuring out ways to emphasize those different career paths that we very much need people to take in order to develop their skills. We're more likely to be attractive as a hiring entity to people with this type of intellectual curiosity and creativity and with the cutting edge skills that we need. We're also enabling ourselves as an entity to get greater readiness because we can move more flexibly between career paths and address putting talent into critical capabilities as those requirements emerge. We want to be able to move outside a one-size-fits-all definition of best talent and identify the right talent as that emerged. So with that, I'll wrap that up. I want to thank you very much for your time to talk about this and I greatly support or I greatly appreciate the board's support to defense talent management and innovation. Anybody have any questions for the colonel. It's not thank you colonel and now we have the US. Yes. Is it okay? I have one question for the colonel if that's okay. How are you thinking about roles for the guard and the reserve for accessing the high skill talent that you need and any thoughts about creating the ability to have people in temporary positions so that you're not competing with the private sector but can cooperate with it or maybe even the civilian equivalent of the garden reserve any thoughts on that in your in your talent plan. We've done a number of different experiments in that space. Looking all the way to some of the work that's been done on the gig eagle kind of freelance type market for reservists to come in and do job based work versus time based work. We also have the 75th innovation command in the army, which is made up primarily of technologists where we are looking at them not to pursue their traditional kind of army roles that they have in the reserve, but to use their day job skills. I leverage heavily the Silicon Valley Detachment of the innovation command. Most of the folks who make up that particular organization are fairly junior officers and NCOs, but in their day jobs, they're doing AI integration into customer experience for Autodesk for Airbnb for a number of different commercial entities. And they can bring that expertise over into the army with also the business practice expertise that we need. So what I think we need to do as far as this goes, this is obviously my opinion and not necessarily the opinion writ large is really think about how we want to leverage our reservists. We have people with these tremendous skills and we try to integrate them into, you know, what we think they should be doing using just two data points grade and branch, rather than looking at the whole person skill set and figuring out ways to use temporary job assignments, use temporary hires, use a gig and freelance type economy practices to bring them in to work on critical projects where we need their entire skill set. Hey Mike, I've got one. Thanks for the presentation. And, and I'm also delighted and this is not a question, but an observation I'm just delighted to not hear the phrase human capital anymore, which I always thought was pretty inhuman and focusing on talent management because that's really what it is. Although I still do hear it on occasion. I want to pick on one specific area you talked about project bonuses if you do you have any read on how well that's received in the army in particular in the HR world is how do you, how do you shape bonuses for, you know, I'm very familiar with bonuses. How do you shape bonuses for something like this, which has never been on anybody's plate. Is there any receptivity with respect to that at at army HR or somewhere else. So, there, there's a lot of receptors to the idea, but when we start talking about it in practice, you realize that the are forces have interesting set notions of what fair is and they have a lot of distrust for a new definition of what fair is. What we do is based on, well, if we do this for one group of people, we have to do it for all people under a certain definition and until we can really define those standards in a way that can be clearly communicated and people understand and trust them as fair. We're going to have difficulty. So we're talking about this a lot, but when we start getting into the implementation side of things. There's a lot of cultural pushback. Thank you. If not, then let me introduce our other speaker general Paul Nakasino and Nakasone. And general the floor is yours. Mayor Admiral Mullen, Dr. Roper. It's good to see all of you again. I would just share with you that life after military service is good. And I'm certainly enjoying myself and I appreciate the opportunity data to say just a few words. I think Christine really had a good job in terms of as Kristen was talking about the, the, you know, the bolts of, you know, trying to get compensation. Let me attack it from a different perspective and in a light. And this is from my both my roles as the commander of US cyber command and the director of the National Security Agency. First of all, the supply lacks in terms of what we need. We need a much bigger supply in terms of the talent that needs to work so many of our projects. The other piece that I would say with the supply is the fact that the supply is out there. In fact, it's really interesting to see on my role as the director of the National Security Agency. We were able to bring in every summer well over 500 different scholars from different organizations and different schools to be part of a director summer program. As I think about what the department needs. However, it's really a set and a skill set that is much different than what we've recruited before. And so one of the things that has led me to really consider is how do we attract the Gen Zers of the world. And one of the ways that they are looking to contribute is to contribute to high profile programs. It's interesting that one of the things that most people told me is that they wanted to be part of the director summer program. And so as I thought about it, why don't we have a secretary summer program or achieve naval operations summer program or achieve a staff of the army summer program. The big piece of this is not only generating the supply, but also being able to fill the demand that's out there. Let me give you a statistic of the 500 people that normally took place in the director summer program at the National Security Agency. We hired 70% of them 70% that's 350 new hires every single year. And what the exit surveys told us was the fact that they were interested in learning about our mission. They were interested in learning about where we work. They were interested in learning about being part of something that was larger than themselves. And part of that was also being able to expose them to what our agency did. As I think about what our department needs to do across hypersonics and big data and cloud computing and networked analysis. Why don't we have some type of program such as this department wide that will allow us to have a greater supply and then be able to fill our demand. One of the challenges I had as commander US cyber commanders as one of 11 different combat and commands. We had to have the infrastructure upon which we would actually go out and recruit these people we would have to have the infrastructure upon which to apply. We'd have to have the infrastructure in which we interviewed all these people as opposed to a central pool perhaps you know maybe even a chairman summer program or chairman's internship. Being able to you know apply the both the you know the infrastructure that exists at the department and the stature of the nation's top military leader to those that might come and work our hardest problems. This is our moment in terms of being able to look at this differently. And I think that one of the things that I saw is that Congress was very very anxious to give us the monies that we needed. Back they gave us a number of different hiring and bonus monies that we needed a cyber command. What we didn't have again was the supply and the ability to fill our demand. Let me break there for your questions or comments. Any questions from anybody. Hey Paul. Is this college kids high school kids. They mainly in the summer program and how long was it. So the summer program lasted 10 weeks it was designed for college students. And with the idea of you know we take them in an application by October we would clear them to a T.S. clearance by the time the springtime rolled around and then they'd start with us the following summer. Now a couple thoughts about that one is normally when you're 19 or 20 years old it's much easier to clear someone. Maybe not sometimes but for the most part it was easier for us to clear them. So we had their clearance. You know there was an incentive for them obviously to think not only about working for us or the intelligence committee but also D.O.D. writ large. But it allowed us to really attract a really promising group of folks. Yeah it's just terrific terrific. Anybody else. And then I think this is maybe working for you as part of the reason you got such good retention when you moved from interning to being hired as you certainly were a breath of fresh air and the positions you served in. I when you stepped away from that program and looked at your broader attempt to hire the talent that you need through USA jobs and other outlets. And did you find those wholly inadequate and did you see any ability any any ways to make those more relevant so that you don't have to work around the hiring system and you can work through it over. Yeah so well first of all it's great to see you again and great to see you not in the tank. What I would share with you is the fact that we got away from USA jobs because it was just not very conducive for us to be able to do this rapidly. Secondly was the fact that we had to relook our hiring program. So you know when you're going out to Carnegie Mellon sending someone that's come from Carnegie Mellon within the past five years it's working at your which are command your agency. That's normally not something that is second nature to us in the department. And it should be. And so we have to do those type of activities. Here's the other thing. And I would I would offer that one of my great challenges is that people don't want to stay for three decades. Whether or not it's in the department or whether or not it's in the intelligence community. And so we should make it as easy as possible after they've been away for three five years to come back. And we are the greatest. You know we're the greatest enemies of that because our our processes are so bureaucratic particularly on the security side. Yeah I don't have a question but a really quick comment and endorsement for that approach of having a high prof high profile program with the ability to work on a very serious problem as a way of attracting and retaining my experience in engineering and engineering education and research in particular is that that is a winning strategy. So just want to echo and endorse that strategy. You know that I might just follow up a comment on that. You know one of the things that I thought about is as we're trying to look at big data. Why don't we have a big data focus for the department right and we say hey they're going to work the cutting edge issues for the department on big data that is going to allow us a leap ahead in terms of what we have to do to secure our nation. And go you know go across the nation say hey we need the top 20 the top 20 scholars that want to come and work at the apartment for a period of 10 weeks or 12 weeks or whatever it is. Give them a very very high profile sponsor and be able to look at that differently in terms of this is what we need you to do. Absolutely the right way to go. The clearance working has always been a big issue that's wonderful that the program that you ran started working the clearances and. Aside from getting people in and getting them clear there's also the tyranny of once someone leaves to your point they don't want to be there for 30 years. The clock starts ticking on their clearance and if they don't do something for a clear defense contractor within two years and their clearance expires so I think. I think the hurdle of clearances as part of the thing that makes it too big of a hurdle to get talent unless they come through a special program that's high profile that works those details for them. I was just thinking of my clearance expired I worked for the same company for 43 years with the exception of 12 years in City Hall. I still have my clearance. Maria Marina checked us to make sure. Thank you general. Our guests for taking the time today. Before we close are there any public comments that have come in or any other updates. Thank you. Thank you Mike. Yeah so we received as always we are listening the defense innovation board is listening and we welcome comments throughout the year on our website innovation dot defense dot gov. We received a couple of comments about general national security readiness on for protection and software engineering. We've shared those with with the board. And with that I know what additional updates Mr chair I'll turn it over back to you. Well if that's place we have our work cut out for us before our next public meeting that meeting will be on Wednesday July 17. Put it on your calendar Wednesday July 17 and we're looking forward to it and everybody who participated thank you so much for your time and all the work that you do and the board members who couldn't be with us today who have done Yeoman's work and see you all then and all the best. Thank you everyone and this board meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.