 Okay, moderating our panel this morning is our very own Professor Jim Holmes from our strategy department. Jim? Thanks, Mike, and welcome everybody to Newport. If you don't feel sufficiently welcomed already. The organizers in their wisdom asked me to say a few words of my own about fleet design before determining, before turning to our distinguished panel that will come afterwards. I guess my chief recommendation would be a common one around here. Look back in order to look ahead. What would the masters of strategy say about future challenges and the way ahead in fleet design? I think they would remind us of timeless precepts of naval warfare. In particular this, you cannot exercise command of the sea without winning it. Strategy is about setting and enforcing priorities. If forced to choose strategy, or excuse me, combat must come first. Peace time presence must yield to it. So we should structure our fleet to win maritime command and only then worry about platforms and capabilities that exist mainly to harvest the fruits of command. Think about it. The purpose of any fleet design is to give political and military leaders the implements they need to win in wartime and persuade in peacetime. Winning in wartime is simple. We design build and configure forces to overpower enemies where it matters and when it matters. Although I should add that Klausowitz reminds us that the simplest thing is difficult amid the impassioned hot house climate of war where the best made plans often come to ruin. So Julian Corbett, one of our standard theorists here at the War College, charts perhaps the best of a pathway to winning in wartime. He spells out three sequential phases of naval warfare. First, if we are the weaker combatant, we can dispute command. We can mount an active defense, denying our antagonist his goals and enfeebling him while at the same time making ourselves strong enough to seize the offensive and prevail. If we're the stronger contender, we can skip that first phase. We can go on the offense immediately. We can vanquish the enemy fleet through battle or bottle it up in port through a blockade. Only after we control vital waters can we land troops, bombard foreign shores or regulate shipping through vital sea routes. In other words, only then can we reap the blessings of command. Now Corbett does allow that circumstances might compel us to deviate from this pattern, but he thinks that such cases are rare. As a rule, you can't get to that third phase without going through the hard work of fighting for and winning command. Even when he seems to deprecate the importance of capital ships in fleet design, as he does, he nonetheless reaffirms that capital ships are the protectors of lighter vessels, the cruisers and flotilla craft that fan out in large numbers across the sea to patrol important sea lanes. No protector, no maritime command. Hence the primacy of combat platforms in fleet design and hence the primary primacy of arming as many ships as heavily as possible. Distributing lethality is a must to use the common slogan for this concept. But peacetime diplomacy also hinges on combat. In order to persuade in peacetime, we must feel the fleet able to win in wartime and we must also convince important audiences that we have the resolve to use that fleet to uphold our security commitments to allies and friends overseas. As he so often does, Henry Kissinger explains in pithy fashion how we can deter, coerce and reassure in times of uneasy peace. Capability and the willpower to use it constitute the sinews of strength as Klausowitz teaches us. It's the job of statesmen and commanders to convince key audiences we will use that strength to keep our foreign commitments. So we have to make believers out of adversaries in order to deter or coerce and out of allies and friends in order to reassure. Our maritime strategy and the larger policy it serves will fall short if we fail to dishearten those who need disheartening and to comfort those who need comforting. Bottom line, if budgetary or other constraints compel fleet designers to choose between ships, planes and assets that exist mainly to fight for command and capabilities that exist mainly to exploit command, they must opt for the former. There is no projecting power onto foreign shores, policing the sea lanes or doing other things that we deem worthwhile unless we can seize control of waters and skies from which we can project power or that we want to police. Everything else must come on a not to interfere basis with this elemental function. Otherwise, we may neither persuade in peacetime nor win in wartime, and thus we might find ourselves in a very bad place. Now with that, I want to turn to our distinguished panel. I am thrilled to have these three panelists with us. To my immediate right is somebody who needs no introduction to students here at the War College or to our graduates, Professor Jeff Till, who's booked Seapower. Now in its third edition going on, a fourth edition Jeff tells me is one of our standard books that we reach for in order to answer pressing questions about Seapower. To Jeff's right is Ronald Rourke, a very long time analyst for the Congressional Research Service, much decorated and I would commend his bio in the conference pamphlet to you. And he will undoubtedly leave us his reports, his reports about Seapower and about China and so forth or must reads for anybody who does this sort of thing. To his right is that Professor Allison Russell of Merrimack College of just north of Boston, an expert on cyber warfare. I certainly just on a personal note, I hope that she is correct about cyber things because I know everything I know about cyber I get from her. So I hope that she will, I hope and I expect that she will contribute a lot to this talk about fleet design. With that, Jeff, please take it away. Thank you very much. It's a great honor and a real pleasure for me to be here again and to all the students sitting at the back of the hall, I apologize. My theme is, what it will be when the, yeah, my theme is set by E. M. Forster, 1910, who said, I'm going to go back to it actually. Only connect, live in the fragments no longer. He wasn't talking about force development, but it applies to force development. It needs to be seen within the context that sets its objectives and shapes its responses. And I think the big advantage of doing that is fundamentally that it encourages us to think about force development as simply another form of strategy. A strategy of means, if you like. Now, we all know what the basic problem of force development, fleet design, military acquisition is. It's all, as Jane Austen also famously said, the truth universally acknowledged that the acquisition of military material is the most demanding form of human activity. The reasons for that are basically speaking that we're preparing for an unpredictable future. We're looking through a glass darkly. We simply don't know what to expect. Typically, also, there are very long lead times, like Britain's carriers, for example, starting in 93. It won't be ready for another four or five years yet. That encourages iterative tinkering by everybody, politicians, naval staffs, builders, and so on. The result is that the project costs more, comes later, and can do less than originally hoped for. There's always a result's commitments gap. I don't know a single navy anywhere that hasn't got one. It's one of those things. A lot of these problems derive essentially from that wider context. Effectively, it's the whole maritime scene. I think of navies in every aspect of them as simply part of a maritime environment and then a national environment. Many of the problems and many of the approaches have to follow on from that recognition, if you like. I think, basically, in purely logical terms as it were, the decisional system for producing what we need when we need it is something like this. You have kind of four tiers of decision, if you like. The first one sets the objectives at the high national level. The second one decides priorities, allocates resources. The third one, which is typically the Defense Department or Ministry of Defense, if you like, decides the military objectives. And right at the bottom, the fourth one, the Navy Department identifies what the naval contribution to this is going to be. At every stage, the relevant decision makers have to reconcile ends, objectives, ways, methods and courses of action and means, resources, tools and procedures. And major problems at any level can cascade downwards. But there's also a feedback system as well. It's a very poor strategist who, at least to some extent, doesn't define his objectives with some sense of what his resources are. So at the very top of the hierarchy, if you like, the key decision is to identify national objectives. And this has to be done that people lower in the hierarchy can address the strategic issues of deciding how those objectives should be met. Policy at the top, strategy thereafter. And perhaps the first step is to develop and publicly articulate a maritime vision for the country rather than the way that President Joukawi in Indonesia and even more remarkably President Xi in China has actually done. Here he is, looking around the place with himself, as I think he's due. You've probably all seen this very long quote about China's maritime dream. I know it's a long quotation, but it's worth knowing because this is a very rounded view effectively of what the maritime future should be and sets an admirable context for development. And what we've seen since, of course, is a build-up of the Navy, the Coast Guard, amphibious forces. It's a package that includes industry, in every sense of the word. Maritime diplomacy, if you like, using all of this as a key part of China's foreign policy, particularly with the One Belt One Road project, which is simply dual-dropping in its level of ambition. And backing it all up with dramatic actions. This is actually President Joukawi bolstering public support by blowing up foreign fishing vessels in Indonesian waters. China doesn't do that quite, but it's maybe something I'm thinking about. So fundamentally, what's required at this kind of level? Well, I would argue top-down clarity. Otherwise, you get rather bland statements about what the objectives are in defence of national interests, when and where. Options are maintained, not prioritised. There's talk of balanced approaches towards the future, which in practical terms offers very little real guidance to decision-makers lower down in the hierarchy. And when this happens, people lower down in the hierarchy wherever they are, either follow the same line and preserve options rather than determine priorities, or more insidiously, they decide their own way forward in the light of decisions that they think the policy-makers above them should have made, but didn't. Amongst the consequences of this are political, economic or military decisions at the operational, rather than the strategic level, and that they are made largely for sectoral reasons. Instead, it has to be thought of as a national enterprise, as Australia's Chief of Navy recently emphasised. Of course, it's bound to be competitive, because the maritime case in all of its aspects is up against everything else, every other element of national policy. And it may well be heavily influenced by contextual issues, like the argument about whether the state should intervene in or take a big role in the national economy, defence industry and so on and so forth. So to sum up the task of the top two tiers is to decide policy and set strategy at the national level, so that those lower down know what they're supposed to do and the resources they have at their disposal. So let's slide down to tier three, which is the Defence Department. Well, I suppose the UK approach is pretty commonplace. Basically, have a national security strategy, decide what it is every now and again, have a five-yearly defence review, and then produce an annual defence white paper of some sort. That kind of pattern is fairly common. But what it throws up, as anybody looking at this process would very rapidly discover, is a huge tension between whether this process should be strategy-led or resources-led. It's always said to be strategy-led, but it's very often not. Looking at it, it's really clear, in the British case at any rate, that fundamentally this is a question of accepting that security is widened, and that means involving other departments, other government departments, and so on and so forth, which means a different kind of approach to thinking about forced development. It's also, of course, going to be joint. It's a question of balancing hard and soft responses. This means the ability to strike a balance between the hard and soft uses of naval power, or military power, and to make sufficient preparations for a latter as well as for the former. Great power competition is not the only game in town. We should worry about low-level threats too. They have a nasty habit of turning into high-level threats later. This may involve engaging meaningfully with allies and partners, partly because it has the advantage of narrowing the gap between resources and commitments. The next phase, Dan deciding and delivering naval support, the N's Ways and Means approach applies just as much here as anywhere else, and the Navy will have its own institutions for how it delivers it, whatever which ever Navy we're talking about. I'd like to remind you of something that Admiral Mullen said not that long ago, which I think is just the point I'm trying to make. Effectively, we need to address this business of forced development as seriously as we address war fighting. It really is a strategy of means. It really is just as important. And it's a question, of course, of identifying what you need and why, not simply basing one's aspirations on the number of submarines or whatever it is that somebody else has got, knowing why that's the case and constantly saying why that's the case. Otherwise, you tend to relegate strategic thinking relative to the operational and tactical. I think it needs to be explicitly promulgated to constantly all the time. It doesn't need to be ambient. I think one of the problems that the Royal Navy's had over the last 50 years or so is the assumption that everybody knows why we need a Navy, and it's manifestly clear that they don't. What this needs, of course, in terms of people, and I absolutely emphasise the point made by Harlan down there, is the people aspect of all of this. What we need are smart political advocates, political operators and smart customers for industry. Hence the importance of rigorous PME. And I'm not just saying this because I'm in Newport. I think it's very significant that the Chinese, for example, are engaging in a massive PME reform as we speak. So what does force development actually involve? It's basically speaking fleet design and fleet operation. The aim is to provide government with choice when facing an uncertain future. Maybe big ships are particularly good at that. I think this is an archival point that we might want to discuss. But clearly it needs to be effect-based, not platform-based. And I don't have any problems really with the principles that Frank Hoffman came up with recently about what those principles should be for both fleet design and fleet operation. It needs to embrace uncertainty. It needs to be strategically driven. It needs to be risk-informed. It needs to emphasise versatility over adaptability. And it needs to maintain balance. Balance also, I would argue, between long-term conceptual and shorter-term nuts and bolts delivery of capability. Always remember what the strategic plan is and don't be so dominated by programmeatics, if you like, that you actually forget why you're doing it in the first place. So one of my conclusions, broadly speaking, it needs top-down leadership. And I mean at the national level and every other form and every tier. You need to have a coherent maritime ends-ways-means package where it all hangs together. It clearly requires a holistic approach with every other aspect of relevant government activity within the state and within the world. It needs constant articulation and checking because things will always change. The decision you made last year is already last year's decision and it constantly needs refinement, if you like. It also requires strategic patience. There are no quick and easy fixes in this business and anybody who says there is is mistaken. But basically, I suppose the bottom line of all of this is really taking the strategy of means seriously and preparing for it. Treating force development, fleet design, fleet operation, seriously as a strategy of means by devoting significant human resources to the task, alongside those committed to the generation of war-fighting skills. Skimping on the tail to save the teeth just means fewer teeth in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Admiral. Thank you to the Naval War College Foundation. I'm delighted to be here. I think this has been a great day and a half so far. And I have the task today of discussing cyber. And cyber has come up quite a bit since we started yesterday. In fact, almost every presentation or panel has mentioned cyber in some way, shape, or form. Starting off yesterday, Admiral Richardson talked about networked fleet in terms of increasing capabilities. You can increase the number of ships you have to increase capabilities. You can increase the capabilities on those ships and those platforms. But you get the exponential curve when you network them. And I think that is absolutely that I'm in full support and full agreement with that. That is a way to dramatically increase capabilities. But then we heard General Neller talk about operating in environments with complex terrain, contested environments, the battle of signatures, the proliferation of technology. All of these are cyber issues. They're issues beyond cyberspace, but they're also issues within cyberspace. It is a very complex terrain. It is an ever-changing man-made domain that is very complex and can change on a day-to-day basis. It is a contested environment, and we do have to plan to operate within cyberspace as a contested environment. And the proliferation of technology on our end is fabulous, but it's also happening for our adversaries, and so that poses additional challenges. So whether we're talking about more ships, whether we're talking about big ships or smaller ships or older ships or newer ships or competition with China or a peer competitor or bifurcated fleet, the cyberspace aspect and those questions still matter about how are we networking these ships and sensors and platforms together. And as we move forward in that direction, I would like to ask the question of what if we do that and we move forward and network everything together in this seamless integrated system that we can fight with and deploy with. But what if we lose the ability, the access to cyberspace on which we depend? So what if someone else, an adversary, has the ability to cut off our access to cyberspace within the region in order to deny our ability to operate or to enter or operate effectively within cyberspace in order for an adversary to achieve political or military objectives? Are we planning for that? That is what I define as strategic anti-access area denial operations in cyberspace, similar to blockades in cyberspace. This can be done, but what are the implications? In networking our fleets and networking all of our systems are our refrigerators or our cars. Cars have been, you can hack into cars, it's been possible since the mid-90s to hack into cars and to manipulate them while someone is driving them. Refrigerators have been reported to be involved in cyber warfare. So as we go forward with the Internet of Things and connect everything to everything, we should also be thinking about what does that do to our capabilities if we suddenly lose access? We've created in cyberspace a modern, a new center of gravity. And as Thomas Schelling points out, the ability to hold that at risk, the threat of pain against that center of gravity provides a strategic advantage for an adversary and the ability to leverage that to achieve political or military gains. So that's an issue I think is important to discuss as we move forward with the robust connectivity and the resilience. How are we protecting ourselves from losing access altogether? Because if you think of the implications of this to deny operators, ships, craft, the fleet, the ability to use cyberspace, particularly when deployed, how would that impact operations and warfighting capabilities? That's the scenario we must plan against even as we move forward to greater connectivity because this is possible. Access to cyberspace can be disrupted, it can be denied, it can be cut off. There are a variety of ways in which it can be done. The first is by attacking the physical layer of cyberspace which is where satellites are, where fiber optic cables, undersea cables are, where servers are. That's the hardware that makes cyberspace possible. That's the physical elements that make wireless technology possible. Those can be disrupted, they can be dismantled, they can be destroyed, mitigating or destroying your ability to use cyberspace until they're repaired. It's also possible to disrupt access to cyberspace at the logic layer. So using root servers, internet exchange points, border gateway protocols, where the functionality of cyberspace is, where the rules are, where the bits and bytes are. Through cyber attacks like distributed denial of service attacks can overcome those systems, can make it temporarily impossible for the system to function as it's intended. Then there's the threat of EMPs, electromagnetic pulses. That's a truly terrifying scenario because of the broad implications that it could have. This is something that if we can think about it here and we can talk about it here, I would absolutely guarantee that the Chinese have thought about it and they're thinking about it and they're planning for it, and probably the Russians as well. If they're doing that, we need to be doing it as well. It's important because cyberspace is a center of gravity and although it enables so many wonderful things, in terms of operability, we need to make sure that we can protect that from not just small intrusions or that could have big consequences or failure of a particular operating system, but rather failure to access the entire domain of cyberspace. So that's what I think is incredibly important for us to think about and for the purposes of the Navy and our discussion today. I think that there's two different ways to think about using this concept of strategic A2AD and cyberspace. The first is for coercion and compelence. It's more cost effective to coerce than to fight and it's a useful tool to have. It requires investment in the requisite physical and technological capabilities and plans to make strategic A2AD and cyberspace a viable option. There's a variety of different ways in which you could implement this and a lot of it depends upon your target. Whether it's China or North Korea or Iran, those would all be very different scenarios that might require different capabilities, but they can be planned for. But as you move forward with planning to use strategic A2AD and cyberspace as a coercive tool, there are three things that I think we also have to keep in mind and make part of the planning process. The first is we have to consider ways to mitigate or control the impact beyond the intended target because the funny thing about cyber attacks is often they have unintended consequences that can be just as important as the intended consequences. So we must plan for that, including scenarios in which using this as a coercive tool might affect our allies or our partners in ways that we don't want. So consider ways to mitigate the impact beyond the intended target. Secondly, consider reversible methods to facilitate post-crisis stability operations and that might seem a little counterintuitive, as I'm saying, go forward, make plans to coerce using this tool but then figure out how to reverse it. But we have this luxury in cyberspace where sometimes some things are reversible. So after you achieve your desired political or military goals, you're able then to help reestablish connectivity in a faster way to help get the country back on track, to help rehabilitate it so that it can become stable and functioning sooner and reduce the reconstruction time overall. So that's the second and the third point is to consider the U.S. vulnerabilities that are inherent in a globally distributed force. If this is a tool that the United States decides to use for coercion or the threat of using it, we must remember the implications that might have for particularly the Navy as it's forward deployed in far-flung corners of the globe and what the ramifications might be. If we threaten to use this, what might happen to our globally distributed force? How are they vulnerable, where they are and what does their defense system look like to prevent it against being a backlash for this? So that is the first part about compelence and coercion. And now I think that is a good way to move forward to think about that, but I think it's absolutely essential that we look at deterrence as well. Because as I said, if we're thinking about this, potential adversaries are too. So deterrence has the triad, the denial, punishment and cooperation. And for the denial aspect, we need robust, redundant and resilient systems in cyberspace, just like everywhere else. We need to improve the technological and computer systems continuously through self-healing systems, active cyber defenses, and even in some cases, creating an analog gap, making systems a little bit dumber sometimes in order to make them more robust. So as we move forward with robust connectivity and high-tech fixes, we also have to take a step back and say, are there places where in order to make a more robust comprehensive system, we might want to make something a little bit dumber so we can ensure we have that capability should everything else be in jeopardy. So we want to think about that as a cohesive package. We also want to think about satellites. They're incredibly important to military operations. Is there the ability to launch satellites as needed to re-establish communications? If a satellite, if there's an anti-satellite missile that takes down a satellite or something else that takes it down, that dramatically affects connectivity and comms. What does that ability to re-establish connectivity and launch a new satellite look like? How can that be done in the midst of conflict situation? Where can it be done from? What type of communication is needed in order to send the message that you need a new satellite and then launch the satellite? So taking a look at the satellite piece is really important. Third, we can also diversify cyber-connectivity whenever possible. So different systems using different programs, perhaps different logic systems, of options might help to mitigate the effects of a cyber attack and provide for a more redundant and robust system. I think we need a war game for conflict in which we don't have connectivity. So you start a war game and what happens if you're suddenly without connectivity? How do you proceed? What happens next? I think that's an essential part of the planning. I think for the Navy in particular, there's a real opportunity to invest in Navy-specific innovation. The Navy's demands are unusual. You operate in remote locations with a very long lifespan for platforms with multiple sensor systems that are networked together. What do you need in terms of cyberspace and technology that can support that? And maybe it's not so... that market is not necessarily readily noticeable to other services or in the private sector. But there's an opportunity there for Navy-specific innovation to support the Navy-specific needs. So that's all for denial. For punishment, I think that the U.S. needs to adopt a cyber strategy and policy, a comprehensive one, and particularly one that includes a response to a strategic A2AD attack in cyberspace. I think the U.S. needs to decide what it would do. Would it consider that an act of war? Cyber blockades are a real thing. They've happened against Estonia and against Georgia by Russia both times. In any other domain, blockade is considered an act of war. There were cyber blockades conducted against those two countries where they acts of war... they can be considered acts of war. They clearly align with blockade operations in every other domain. In the case of Georgia in 2008, they were already at war, so it was sort of a moot point. In the case of Estonia, a NATO ally, the President of Estonia said this is an act of war. This is a blockade in cyberspace. So we need to have a policy about how the U.S. views cyber blockades as well as how does it view something like a strategic A2AD attack in cyberspace. It is hard to make policy on cyber security, but I fully agree with what Harlan said earlier. It is not too hard. That is not an excuse for not doing it. It needs to be done, or to address emergent technologies. That is fine, but we need to have a policy. We need to establish what is acceptable behavior and what is not acceptable behavior in cyberspace. Lastly, with regards to the cooperation leg of the triad, we need to develop a common framework internationally for agreement regarding access to cyberspace. We need something like a UN treaty on access to cyberspace. We have it for other domains. We have it for nuclear weapons. We need to decide collectively the international community whether this is something that we are going to fight over actual access to cyberspace or we are just going to fight within cyberspace and over capabilities within cyberspace. So that is an area that also needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. So my big takeaways on cyber security and fleet design and particularly this question of strategic A2AD in cyberspace is we need to anticipate these strategic attacks on cyberspace. We absolutely need to plan for it. We need to be pessimistic and expect the unexpected. Cyber is what Rumsfeld would have called a known unknown vulnerability. We know it is a vulnerability, but we don't know how it is going to manifest itself. And so as we protect against specific intrusions and certain network attacks, we also need to be protecting our access to the domain as a whole because it is so fundamental to operations. And lastly, given Moore's law, how can we predict fleet cyber needs 20 to 50 years out? We have no idea what the cyber landscape is going to look like in 10 years, let alone 20 to 50 years. So as we move forward, we need to be flexible, we need to be adaptable, we need to be innovative, and we need to be secure. But the cyber question will not be solved once and for all. It is going to be something we have to keep coming back to and we have to plan to keep coming back to it in order to stay on top of it. Thank you. Thank you, Allison. Let me take just a minute and restate some of the cross-cutting themes that I heard that I think are perhaps worth restating. First of all, there's a strategic point, and then you heard this in particular in Jeff's presentation, but really in all of them. And the first one is that maritime strategy is grand strategy. As we know, Mahan defines sea power in a word as commerce, bases, and merchant-enabled shipping. That right there is a grand strategic concept bringing in much more than military implements. He says that the purpose of sea power is to obtain and maintain commercial, political, and military access in that order. He's very specific about that. So right there again, you hear the economic dimension, you hear the diplomatic dimension, and then obviously the military-enabled dimension. This came through in particular when Jeff was talking about China. China is a truly maritime nation in the sense that it sees any implement that can influence events at sea as an implement of sea power, whether that's a Navy gray hull, whether it's an Air Force aircraft, or even more tellingly in the South China Sea in places like that, whether it's a China Coast Guard cutter, or whether it's even a fishing craft man by a militiamen. I think that's a difference in mentality between China and ourselves that is worth bearing in mind because it does create asymmetries. Second point that you also heard a lot out of all the speakers is the resource aspect. If you look around the periphery of Eurasia, Nicholas Speigman, but writing during the Second World War, told us that the Royal Navy during its era of maritime supremacy was a supreme at sea because it controlled what he called the marginal seas around the periphery of Eurasia, whether it's the Black Sea, Baltic Sea, South China Sea, or whatever the case may be. And I think that we heard that the United States, as it tries to maintain its maritime mastery, is under stress in many of those seas today, and thus we are stretched then. And it's easy for us to hear in the auditorium to talk about doing what Clausewitz says and cutting loose secondary theaters, but that's really not a very easy thing to do if you're a decision maker in Washington or an ally to friendly capitals. So I think that's something to ponder as we move ahead. Third, and I thought this was really fascinating, you particularly heard this in Ron's presentation where he talked about magical thinking and fudge factors and so on and so forth, although I think that was my turn, fudge factors, but you do hear a lot of that sort of thing. Corbett tells us that when we think about ships, he says that ships are manifestations in steel of the ideas that are currently in vogue in a particular strategic community. And I think that's an important point. Jeff, 10 years ago commenting on the release of the 2007 maritime strategy, which came right here on this stage in October of 2007, he posited that western navies live in a different world than Asian navies. And when he was talking about western navies, he said we now live in a post-Mahanian world, by which he meant that we live in a world in which western navies think more about how to exploit command of the sea than how to win it. We basically thought there was no one to fight for command who could stand up to us and therefore we could think about projecting power, doing humanitarian aid, police functions and all that sorts of things. At the same time that Asian fleets were moving into a Mahanian realm, which was very much bloody minded and thinking about how to defeat a stronger adversary in their own backyard. And I think that's what, I heard that again in the different comments this morning, and I think it's something that I actually, I believe is true. And lastly, before I turn it over to Q&A, all of the panelists, in particular Allison, in particular Allison and Ron, reminded us of a very basic point, which is that the weak can win. The strong do not automatically win simply because they have huge defense budgets, large numbers of ships and so on and so forth. If I am a weak power defending my own turf against a far away adversary, I have a lot of options at my disposal, regardless of what genes fighting ships or defense budgets or things like that might say. So I would leave that with you and I hope that that will feed into the Q&A. With that, I will shut up and I will look forward to all of your questions. Thanks. Good morning, Commander Guerrero from Chilean Navy. I would like to address my question to Professor Till. Morning, sir. In your book, Sea Power, you developed the concept of the navies in contemporary world to put a lot of effort in maintaining the good order and sea. I would like to see your comments on how you match that concept. Presently times, with the fleet design, considering that not a navy, even like a U.S. navy, can be the exclusive guarantor of the good order and sea and partnerships, coalitions and interoperability are key aspects of that matter. Thank you very much for the question, but I think the way that you phrased it, you already know what the answer is. Which is basically to say that the maritime security task, and by this I mean dealing with what we would normally regard as low level threats, maritime crime in its various forms, terrorism, drug smuggling, people smuggling and that sort of thing, is a really, first of all, it's a really serious issue. It's something that no navy in the world can possibly hope to avoid. And I made the point in my brief talk that some of these low level threats can easily escalate into something much more serious, unless they're controlled, unless they're managed. The problem with it is two-fold. The first is the sheer requirements of doing the task are both extensive and diverse. It means that piracy of Somalia takes a different form in piracy of West Africa, for example, or in the states of Malacca. And the responses aren't the same, but they could well be different from the requirements of war fighting. And so that poses this fundamental issue of where are you going to put your money, where are you going to put your resources, and that is something that every navy faces. The second problem that it poses is that the task is simply enormous. It's continuous. We will never win this battle. It's always a question of managing it to survivable proportions, if you like. And that means that there's no victory in all of this. This is simply a question of maintenance. And that is extremely demanding in terms of resources. And as the US Navy has frequently said, you can't do it on your own. You need cooperation. You need partnership. You need engagement. You need a forward presence and all of that. And so does all the other navies that have maritime maintenance of good order at sea as a high priority. So it kind of underlines the point I was trying to make that great power competition, of course, is critical. And of course, there's now rather more emphasis on it than maybe 10 years ago for very understandable reasons. And I wouldn't deny that for one moment, but it really isn't the only game in town. And this means that force development, fleet design and all of that is always going to be a question of balance between the kind of forces that you prepare for great power competition and the kind of forces that you prepare for everything else. And you simply cannot afford to ignore everything else. So basically, I think my answer to your question is that this is something that all navies have to take extremely seriously, almost irrespective of their strategic position. But I would say that there is a great recognition of this fact almost everywhere you go. And let's not forget that this is fairly new. If you looked at naval relations before the First World War, for example, you wouldn't see any of this, or not much of this sort of thing. But these days, we can almost take it for granted. And when you start to take something like that for granted, you sometimes forget how novel and how new and how important it actually is. Hello, I'm John Hanley, and I first want to thank you all for a very stimulating discussion. I have any number of questions, but I decided to drop the bomb anyway. Every time you do a transaction these days, you leave a digital footprint. And we have become exceedingly good in this country at going after some people that are very hard to find and try to minimize their digital footprint. But IS came out not long ago and published lists of U.S. military folks saying go after them. Here are some targets. Now, what if all this warfare starts to evolve? Right now, people around the country, there's lots of money going into tracking every time any of us does any electronic transaction on knowing who we are, how we likely vote, what type of messages we want to hear, et cetera. And suppose we get into a world where I'll call it unrestricted deterrence, going back to our PLA, our Forest Colonel friends, on unrestricted warfare, where it's as much about calling up Xi Jinping or his fellow on folks and saying, I know where your daughter goes and buys her clothes at the University of Michigan. And I know how you live, what your bank accounts are, and so we've had movies in the state, et cetera, to sort of project this type of world. And so just thinking of, if we take the type of thing that's going on commercially and project this in the compelence and deterrence, any thoughts on where this is going to take us and what this means for naval forces if we can get into a naval force architecture? Thank you for that question. I think that's a very interesting thing to think about. I think that we could go down that path. I think that that is definitely within the realm of possibility, that that can happen. But I think there are a couple things that we could do to try to avert going down that path. One of it is agreements about what we will and will not do with data, state-to-state agreements. There needs to be all sorts of agreements with cyberspace, there's private sector agreements, there's state-to-state agreements, international organizations, but this is something that states can say sort of like international law and Geneva conventions that certain things are off limits. Now that won't prevent everybody from doing those things, but it does establish some rules of the road essentially for what states are going to do in cyberspace and try to hold each other accountable so that certain targets, certain actions are off limits going after someone's daughter where they are and how they're shopping or away at school or something like that. That is a known illegitimate target in a sense because if we don't do things like that then there's nothing really stopping anybody from using that as leverage and that can be scary. The only other thing that might hold someone back from doing that is the knowledge that everybody can do that. So someone could do that to the US, the US can do that to that country. There is this proliferation of information about everybody everywhere, whether it's information we put out there publicly on Facebook or wherever in our emails or if it's more private information that's somehow stolen by foreign government and now they have that access to everything in your personal history, that's all out there basically or that is all gettable in a sense. And so if rules are not established then I think there might be a natural counterbalance, counterbalancing that happens. Well if you do that to our people we'll do that to your people. And eventually that might become a bit ineffective or just too much of a hassle for states to really want to deal with and that might force them towards common agreements a bit more. But I agree that that is a troubling scenario where there's so much information about everybody. Whether they want it out there or not it's there, whether they are involved in the military or in defense or in government or not there's still information about them out there that can be used as leverage. So I think it's important to establish some boundaries. There is a difference on the same bearing but a much greater range all the way in the back there. Thank you, Lieutenant Commander Ian Starr, U.S. Coast Guard. Also a cyber question. I've been reading a lot lately recently about so-called left of launch cyber warfare as a way to deal with nuclear states. So kind of a two-part question. As the world returns to great power competition between nuclear states one is left of launch warfare an actual viable tool or is it more of a magic bullet? And the second part would be is U.S. cybercom and the various supporting cyber elements adequately positioned and structured to deal with the four plus one threat of nuclear states and cyber savvy extremists? Thank you. Thank you. Those are two great questions. To take them in order for the left of launch capability I think it's, is it a magic bullet? Maybe, but it might not work every time. It might be a magic bullet that works once or twice. The ability to impede the launch of a nuclear weapon I think that's fabulous. I think better to not have it launched than to have to shoot it down midair for sure but I think the best scenario is to not have it on the launching pad in the first place. So while I think it's an important capability to have and absolutely one to keep improving and working on I would prefer to see more diplomacy involved so we don't get to that point. I think if we could make more investments in other types of deterrence then that might keep us from having to use that type of cyber tool. But if it comes to it, I think it is important to have those types of capabilities ready to go but there is a question, once you use anything in cyberspace it's out there for everybody else to see. It's out there for everybody else to use to try to copy or to plan against for the future and so sometimes you can get away with using the same tool in cyberspace multiple times but you lose the element of surprise and that is a huge advantage in cyberspace to have that surprise that someone doesn't think they have a vulnerability. They don't think that their system can be compromised and then they find out at the most inconvenient time possible for them that in fact there was a vulnerability and somebody has exploited it. That's a wonderful strategic advantage to have if you're the one using it. But I think it has its limitations and so we're better off trying to go for diplomatic solutions so we can reserve those tools for when we absolutely need it. And to the second part of your question is cybercom adequately staffed, prepared, or organized for that? I don't really know. I could hazard a guess. I think that there is some restructuring that could be done. I think this is one of the challenges inherent in cyberspace is the fact that we're still getting our arms around it in a sense. It's a long time at this point, but I think as a society, as a general public, we're still figuring out which direction it's evolving in and what we want to do about it. And I think cybercom is doing a great job of addressing it. Is there a more optimal way to go about it? I'm not entirely sure. Got time for just one more. Sir, please. We talk about smart this and smart that, but yesterday Sarah Seawall talked about maybe dumb this and dumb that, you know, dumbing down, having redundancy. And to me, that's not one of the many issues that could be the core issue. And this is the response from anybody about fleet design or cyber. And it goes like this. About five years ago, when I was talking to a scat of technology companies and looking at where to invest and what to analyze, I wondered why the cyber security companies that are public weren't bigger and weren't making more money. So I quickly found out that because they sell their programs to small companies, but the companies that spend the most money have their own people. So then I went to the companies that have their own people and I found out how they do it, how they protect themselves, how virtually everybody's getting hacked, but there are a few people that don't get hacked. Then I asked the Navy, and I found out that the Navy and the military can't afford to have 10 or 15 or 20,000 cyber software developers. They can't afford it. So if they can afford, you know, this kind of hardware and fleet, but they can't afford to have cyber men in house to protect it, and they're put in the position where everything could be handcuffed and turned into a pile of junk. My question is, in terms of affordability and overall strategy, should we go in the way that... You know, I just came from a big national tech conference and, you know, the joke is two kinds of companies out there, those that have been hacked and know it and those that have been hacked and don't know it, but essentially there are companies to protect themselves. I know how they do it. I know how they portray it, but I don't know the innards because that's secret. But if we're going to have fleet design, should it all be smart or should some of it be dumb? And what are we going to do about the fact that we can afford these ships but we can't afford the cyber tools in the... And by the way, the Navy and the military have no culture to support those kind of software developers anyway. Isn't it time to start thinking about redoing the tech culture of the military? That is a great question. Just to start... I'm trying to remember all the pieces of it. To start with the end, is it time to... How does the Navy protect itself compared to... Yeah, and I think that... I think that... You don't go one way or the other. I think you probably go both. I think the biggest thing is to make sure your systems are redundant, are robust, redundant and resilient and include a mix of smart and dumb. I think you have to go smart. I think that that gives you the best competitive advantage, the best edge, but I don't think you have to go smart in the same way for everything. I think some things can be smart in a different way so that you have more resilience or more redundants. But maybe in order to have those robust and redundant systems, you also need to go dumb in a few select areas. I don't think everything, but I think it needs to be a mix. I think it needs to be a hybrid approach in order to assure the most comprehensive system. Yes, I would. I think the question is the false one, if I may say so. I think you have to be dumb and smart. And that's part of the question of having a balance. We all remember from the Cold War days that a lot of the stuff that Soviets had was really, really high-tech. A lot of it was agricultural, frankly. Both were useful in that circumstance, so you have to have both. Please join me in thanking the panelists for a very stimulating panel. So another brilliant panel, and thank you so much, Professor. Hey, so we're going to do 20 minutes. That would be 11.05, right here.