 Well, sir, we're here to talk about the cyber warfighting. I know it's a new cutting edge for us. Why is it important for sailors on the fleet to know what the Navy is doing in the cyber domain? Well, first of all, the Navy exists in the cyber domain. So much of what we do. We have radars. We have communications. We use a lot of things in the electromagnetic spectrum. As I said, our radars, our seekers, and all of our weapons are in there. But I would say more importantly, I'd like our sailors to understand some of them on occasion get their email account hacked into or hijacked. Multiply that by a thousand. You know, it happened to you twice. Two thousand, okay? Every day, our networks are attempted to be hacked into by transnational, that means no nation, just criminals, or by nations to steal our information, our classified, our unclassified information. And really, to just disrupt our ability to do our job. There are cyber sailors, cyber warriors who are out there every day preventing that, monitoring that, and also going out as sentinels, if you will, and finding out who are these potential culprits to do that. This is a noble venture going on all around us at all of our NIOCs, our Navy Information Operational Commands. And then they're doing a good job. So this is, it's not a cold war, and it's not a hot war. It's a warm war, I guess, every day. Now, sir, you mentioned the electromagnetic spectrum. Why is the EM spectrum a concern, and what does cyber have to do with that? Well, the electromagnetic spectrum, it sounds geek-speak to some people, but it's actually kind of simple. You go to open your garage, you push the button, and electromagnetic radiation goes off and triggers the circuit to electrical circuit. You go to start your car, open your car door. Everybody's got a smart phone, and you're using the electromagnetic spectrum. Our radars use it. We communicate by it. As I said earlier, our weapon seekers. So we are embedded in it in so many ways. We have to understand that and we have to control it because our enemies and our potential enemies are monitoring all of it. So when we go out on our ships at sea and we have all the radars going, and we're communicating at home, we're on Wi-Fi and all that, that is all being monitored. So we need to do that in a deliberate manner. We need to turn it off and be good at turning it off when we need to, and we need to listen to others who are doing the same. So what I like to say is we need to be able to maneuver in that electromagnetic spectrum. All the different frequencies from infrared to ultraviolet across there, it's something we haven't really thought about before because we haven't been challenged in it, number one. And number two, we haven't used it so much. It's very convenient to do the things that I just discussed to use all this portable equipment. It's small, it's easy, it's low energy, but it's everywhere and people have figured that out. Why is the Navy specifically able to combat a cyber threat? Do you see a correlation from what we do at sea to, for our organization, what we're able to do within cyberspace? Yeah, I do. The reason the Navy is so involved in this is by virtue of how we live, we've been in the cyber domain. I mean, when I say live how we do our business, we were fortunate enough, and actually people before us were smart enough to realize, hey, we need to understand this cyber thing, this electromagnetic spectrum. We need to develop cyber warriors. And so we stood up the Fleet Cyber Command a number of years ago, 2009. We stood up our own fleet, which is in charge of all of our networks. So we have a number, it's called 10th Fleet. We have numbered fleets around the globe that are responsible for our aircraft and our ships and our submarines. Well, we also, and they're geographically located. So the 7th Fleet out in the Western Pacific, the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, the 5th Fleet in the Arabian Gulf. We have the 10th Fleet responsible for all of our networks around the world. It's a little unique, but it's also very smart to bring all of your networks and organize, train, and equip your people to operate and understand, defend your networks and how to use them most efficiently. So we were smart enough to do that early on and develop it, and it's proper for the Navy to understand how to do that because we go to sea and we use radars all the time. We communicate so much, again, using an electromagnetic network, satellite bouncing, et cetera. It's just inherent in the way we do business. So you talked about manning training and equipping and you've talked about the importance of cyber. As Navy cyber forces transitions to the ID forces TICOM, we're going to be doing some of that manning training and equipping. You were discussing, but it's broader than just cyber. What do you think our sailors need to know about what the rest of the IDC community can bring to the fleet? Sure. As I mentioned before, we took a kind of a hesitation in 2009 and we said, you know, if you can control information in the future, you can kind of control at least the pace of battle in the future and you can probably control the outcome. So we said, all right, who controls information? Well, oceanographers are weather people. That's called the METOC people. We have information professionals to operate our networks. We have information warriors, cryptologists, and people that bring those programs in. And we have, of course, intelligence specialists. Why not bring all of the people that deal in information together and coordinate our efforts in that regard? That's the information dominance core. So the idea is to dominate information, you know. And so we brought that core together. I keep repeating the words, but it is simple and concept. So now you're bringing sort of disparate organizations and saying, hey, we need you all to come together in a coordinated effort and work to do the things we talked about before and make sure we are cyber safe, that we can get out into other networks, control our networks, know the difference between information and intelligence, just babble versus things that are really, really important to know, and prioritize that because if you control information, you control the pace and the future and probably the outcome of conflict. Our folks need to grasp and understand that. So we have surface warriors, and we have a surface force type command that organizes, trains, and equips them. The same in aviation, the same in submarines, the same in expeditionary warfare. It just makes sense we do the same for information. We have a command that organizes, trains, and equips. And that's the information dominance force. So what about the enlisted ratings in the information dominance community? Well, I'll tell you what. If I was a kid coming out of high school or college and you come in and you say, you know, I'm really interested in something high tech moving ahead. We've got a lot of ratings, but the information dominance ratings, you know, the intelligence specialists, the cryptologists, those that work on the networks, those are all solid, good ratings. Nobody's going to stay in the Navy forever. We want people to stay as long as it accelerates their life, and I hope for a career. But it is a relevant, good way to serve. It's also a relevant, good way to develop a skill set that is good for a long time. We teach our folks down at Corey Station, which is down in Pensacola, Florida. It is a, like I said, it's a growing institution, if you will. And by the way, we've frequently talked about budget on this program. One budget cut we have never made in the last three or four years when things have been tight is in cyber. We've, even through sequestration, remember, every budget went down. That was exempted. We continue to invest in cyber. Sir, again, as we stand at this TICOM on October 1st, we want to just get the message out to the fleet on what we're going to be able to provide for them, those different areas that we'll be able to provide. You touched on a little bit with parallel to the other TICOMs for surface. But our service, our war fighting area is across all of those different fields. So we wanted to tie in how sailors interact with our community specifically and how the TICOM will be able to help them. Sure. That's a good point and it's a good question. A lot of folks think, okay, we're standing up information dominance force for the sake of the cyber people, if you will. Actually, that's kind of true. That's partially true. We are aligning the information dominance force so it looks, kind of, speaks and is shaped like other type commanders. So if you're in the submarine force and you have equipment on board and you're saying, is this cyber safe, if you will? In other words, is it no viruses? How do I get it certified? How do I train on this? Who do I talk to? I don't have enough ITs on my submarine. I mean, who do you call? Well, you would call the type commander. If it was a surface issue, you would call surfor. So it's aligning the rest of the Navy and having them understand this information dominance core is not all that different. It actually has networks instead of platforms. It deals in information instead of maybe bullets, but it's still a part of warfare. And as I've been saying over and over and over again, if you control the information, you're going to control the outcome. So really the bottom line is, Cleo, it's for the other type commanders to align ourselves up and understand the readiness of the IDC core like we understand the readiness of the other forces and platforms. Sir, thank you so much. Is there anything else that you would like to add? Well, I want to say good luck to the IDC, if you will, to the core as they bring the ID force in and they stand up here this coming week and thank them for what they're doing. As we open this program, as we're speaking, I'm telling you, every time I go out there to a NIOC, there are sailors who are doing real-world operations. As we speak, our forces are over in the Middle East dealing with ISIL and doing operations in Iraq. If you don't think our kids aren't involved in that, you're wrong. People think, oh, it's just bombs coming off airplanes or Tomahawk missiles and others, a whole other aspect of that. We can't talk about it because it's classified. I want to thank them for what they're doing. They are truly making us safe and keeping our networks safe. All right, thank you so much, sir. We want to thank you for joining us for another edition of Conversation with the Shipmates. Stay on top of the rest of the editions at the Navy's C&O leadership page on Navy.mil and the Navy's official YouTube channel. Thank you for tuning in. I'm MC2 Chelsea Mandello with another Conversation with the Shipmate.