 So good morning and welcome to the 28th military writer symposium My name is dr. Travis Morris and I have the honor and privilege of being the executive director for the symposium And also the director for the peace and more center So for those in the room welcome, thank you so much for being here and for those that are joining us virtually We also welcome you wherever you are tending from and we're glad that you are with us So this is day two yesterday we had an absolute fantastic day and a heartfelt thanks to our esteemed guests that Spoken the panel last night which many of you attended but also sessions throughout the day and Much thanks to also our moderators and and students that participated yesterday So why are we here the symposium? exists Over the past 28 years to discuss security challenges that we face in the 21st century But the students in the room Like I said many of you attended last night But the difference between Sometimes myself and some of the other faculty or staff or alumni in the room You're going to be the ones that are going to be leading us through some of these challenges over the course of your career Whether it's in the military or in law enforcement Maybe in the political arena working for an NGO what we're talking about all these next two days or today and yesterday this is your world and Some of the applications we're talking about our military in focus or security in focus But but AI is something that's already shaping our lives and it's something that's happening Incredibly quick and when things happen rapidly sometimes that takes detours down pathways that we don't know we don't expect Are we underestimate? So that's why we've been doing this for 28 years is we want to take some time just to pause Bring in people from around the globe that has spent some time thinking about these particular areas And as you can see from the program Over the past two days we're talking about artificial intelligence and the nexus between robotics But last year we looked at what was going on in the Arctic we before that we looked at what the weaponization of water and how water Serves as a is a catalyst between conflict sometimes violent extremist organizations and and governments and This year we want to just pause and align the symposium with the president's vision Looking at artificial intelligence and what that means for us in the future so you can see on the screen that Dr. Law Goldstein is going to be talking about incredibly important topic and I I must say that we are thrilled that he's back with us He was here for our Russian summit and we're glad that he's back Also, just want to say that when we're talking about artificial intelligence and robotics We're having this conversation here in English in the United States That's important, but it's also important to know that this isn't just a English centric conversation I've said yesterday in some of the sessions that these same conversations are being had in Chinese in Arabic in Russian in Korean in German we're talking about a subject that is being discussed by some of the sharpest minds around the globe I Have no idea Your familiarity with this topic. I have no idea if you've thought about the intersection of AI and robotics in your own life And what that means for the future But if you're thinking about serving in the military in any branch, this is something that's part of your life That's already existing and moving ahead. I Mention the international component because one of the things we do here at Norwich is one we want to internationalize in every area That includes cyber But we also want to bring our students into every aspect of the events that we do and give them a voice So before I introduce dr. Law Goldstein, we'd like to have a student come forward Yo combo want to say from Ghana and he is gonna give us a short reflection both in his native language and then in English about his thoughts about technology artificial intelligence and and security so York why don't you come on front and the floor is is yours, okay? Thank you very much for this opportunity and My topic is technology in the dimension of warfare So first I'm going to read in my native language, and I'm going to move on to English So here it is If you do my digital one effect a common one If you do my and I could be a crown one day. Did you mark no other wedding P. Say it's a missus Oh, come on one day It's what Europe or for the digital my work could do what did see Africa night America for At um, I took fire what did he do my will be asked to come in Hey, you know, yes, and yeah, I'll come with me. I mean if I'm a co-owner if you do my home They are a crown one in Sheswa. Oh, I'm a customer. Then it is a astrophobia to me. Do you money? No, I'm a fool. I come on. I could even I'm fast. Okay, so chain won't be fun I'm Nye ebi ima eda. In kaboom nui naan koso wo ahohura her kese, mundi main wo informasi shere wa chere kese. Na e mawunti mii nioma wo di sii e, wo eni so intentem no ae juma ii e. Wasain kunin biya hui i nei echi. Na o kuni echi fa huro nos ye aba sentun. In su su huya huro ahohu di ko apam nui shi shere, no hon be dae di se e nye no kre. Wo fa so ni urako fo no be mawunti a koaba, se ahohu fe di fo, ne won, no wo di won yungusu wo di echi no asain echi chewon aba no. Na so na e ii nye sa, echi e ti ebi shere, brea apam no, no affa chere ti ebi, ne ma o kuno chere na e ma e nipam pen pen pi i shere wo onkwa. Ne infidu juma abua apam no ma wadji rak, na so entimi yungu ne asetre no affa wo kuta. Echi nye biya e ni wo se, infidu juma hun imde ne ma o kuno ye kese. E si se a kwan chere fo ni asa afon pen yu fo, di hun in shi chere, ne won a kwan huro, na so ne fa so huro ahohu, da e kwan ye wa fa so e de mo bre, na wo yifi o kwan ye wa fa so ye di hun sem, na wo bune se adi ti tira, e ma wo dim kuno yungu no mukumu. Senie wadane e di aba kwa se minu, nye hiya se wo pe shi chere wa fa soa, e fidu juma wo so, o kwan ye wa fa so ye yungu no. Na mo e di yungu no wo akwa a kwan chenu e ti po. Senie yungu wa aba kwa se minu na yungu no, wo yungu fidu juma hu, ne mde fo fo biara, e ne anman and a sea vehicles, o china wuhumu asa fo in shi chere ahohu roa e kwan ye mo. Senie yungu se a kwan ye ya, e se si e bu se yungu se, o kwan ye wa na o kwan ye ben e yungu me, de se yungu fidu juma ye ase yungu de mo, a mai e di yungu ne mo. So now I'm going to read it in English. Technology plays a vital role in the outcome of war. The use of superior technology over points has proved repeatedly in its ability to shape the combat dynamic. The use of rifles by the Europeans in the wars against both African and American natives. The use of atomic bomb in World War II. All of these are examples of how a war can be one sided when there's a presence of superior technology. Hishi has shown that armies that could integrate innovative technology into their warfare have had a significant advantage over their counterparts. However, technology is not the only determining factor for victory. War is complex and multidimensional and using one dimension to generalize the outcome is ill-informed. Technology is only informed or effective when supported by robust organizational structures and doctrine and when the threat is war-defined and a working strategy established. We'll look at some historical examples to prove these points. Let us take a look at Germany in World War II. At the start of World War II, the Allies were miles ahead of Germany in terms of number and quality of tanks and air power. They were ahead of Germany technology-wise. However, in 1940, Germany won one of the most expensive victories in modern warfare. This victory was achieved by the revolutionary tactics that the generals of Hitler adopted. Most of the Allied forces had slow-moving infantry and no divisions. The Germans, however, created armor divisions before the war. They created organized tactical teams as combined arms teams with air supports and tanks which gave them speed and the ability to surprise the enemy with overwhelming force. The Allies, however, scattered their tanks with the support of infantry with no proper division into tank units or divisions. The inability of the Allies to effectively integrate their technology in their infantry proved to be their undoing. Even though in the end, the grand strategy of the German people led them to their defeat. In the start, it was a very good plan. The Allies took a defensive stance and could not draft a strategy that would ensure they manifested their power of the technology at the start of the war. This is a classic example of how technology might not be effective when unsupported by a strategy. In irregular or hybrid warfare, such as the Iraq war, technological superiority does not always guarantee victory if the Allies do not have a war strategy, including moral, sociological aspects against enemies. The strategic objectives of the war falter, when the grand strategy does not consider the economic situation, the morale, and the sociological states of diverse race population. In 2003, the United States and its Allies invaded Iraq in what is known as the Iraq war today. The main objective was to overthrow the Sadak Homsain government and liberate the people of Iraq. The combat phase of the war was unprecedented. The coalition advanced at a high speed with the help of their guided air systems. They had technology that drastically reduced their sensors to shoot a cycle, allowing them to take out targets swiftly and efficiently. Despite these successes, the post-conflict phases were disappointing. The assumptions integrated into the strategy of the coalition turned out to be inaccurate. They assumed the Iraqi people would work on them as liberators and robber their governments using their oil reserves. However, this was not the case. An insurgency occurred shortly after the occupation by the coalition and protracted the war, leading to the loss of thousands of lives. Technology has helped the coalition take over Iraq, but it could not account for the social dimension of warfare. There is no doubt that technology increases force on the battlefield exponentially. Strategists and military commanders need to involve them in their plans and strategies as much as possible. However, impaired efforts lie at a tactical level. And when it is taken from the context of strategy and regarded as the main reason for victory in war, as shown in history, it is almost never a good idea. As shown in history, what is needed is to analyze the strategic advantages of technology and use it in the world's direction and purpose. After your central history, new technologies are being developed daily. Today, unmanned and received vehicles in China, tomorrow advanced space military systems. When we develop these weapons, we must ask ourselves, what is the best way or method we can use them? And how can we integrate it into our battle strategy to ensure victory? Thank you. Thank you very much, York. So it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Lyle Goldstein and for his bio, you can read that in the program, but I just want to highlight something that we're very proud of. You can see his affiliations. He's the Director of Asia Engagement Defense Priorities, visiting Professor Brown University, but this one we're very proud of, that he's a senior research fellow at Norwich University. So Dr. Goldstein, welcome back to Norwich. Thank you for being here. Well, thanks, everyone. It's a thrill to be back in Norwich. I've come to realize that Norwich is one of the foremost places to discuss strategy. So I'm glad to be here again. And this is a tremendous conference I'm learning. So much appreciate the remarks from our student from Ghana that I had a best friend in college who spent a year in Ghana and swore that these were the nicest people on earth. And so I'm taking that under advisement still and planning to get there. This may strike you as a bit of a strange topic. Maybe, you know, I know that Norwich has a very close tie with the U.S. Army as it should. And I do appreciate the chance to discuss some kind of rather esoteric points in naval strategy. But I do think that these are worth thinking about very carefully. It's essential that people in the Army have some understanding of naval strategy, just as people in the Navy need to absolutely have some understanding of land combat. So I think this is well proven in the Ukraine war. I'll mention a few things about that conflict. But we can imagine that a lot of what's going on in Ukraine has powerfully impacted what's going on in the Black Sea and vice versa. So thank you for your attention to this topic today. Let me say that some of the issues that are just to follow up on last night's conversation that strike me as very important. One is that while drones have absolutely proven themselves in the air, we all know that unmanned aircraft quadcopters and the like are incredibly powerful tools. We don't really know that that's the case for undersea vehicles. So the question is out there. And this effort at research is a start on trying to understand that issue where this might be going. But let me say at the outset that if we may have a question mark over this. I would also say just reflecting on what I heard yesterday that I think Sharon Weinberger raised the absolutely pivotal point that this technology is not really new, although it feels very new. But a lot of these technologies even were people started to work seriously on them during the Vietnam War. And I recalled a moment from travels in China when I was in Beijing at the newly modernized Chinese Military Museum in Beijing. And I urge you all to go there when you get a chance. It's quite enlightening. But in there, you will see an American drone from the Vietnam era. And it's quite striking to see that, to understand that China got hold of this and has studied it thoroughly. And I think that may, when you begin to understand that China started this work decades and decades ago, we will not be so surprised by how far they're progressing. So let me make just a few more introductory remarks here if you'll permit. I was here for the Russia conference, which was fantastic in March. And I do read Russian. And I am very concerned about this. But Russia is an undersea power, absolutely. And that will impact how China goes about becoming an undersea power. So we better keep our eye on that. Here, I've got a little pointer here, but you can see this picture showed up on the Russian internet recently, a Western drone off the coast of Crimea. Here's some discussion of the new American drone that they're taking seriously. An article written by a Russian military strategist about the pipeline sabotage. So that will come up again in my remarks, but we haven't talked about that much. But that's maybe an interesting use of AI. But last time I was here, I was talking about Russia, China relations, and I'll be down at Naval Academy in a couple of weeks talking about that same topic. It's an absolutely crucial topic. What are the lessons that China is drawing from the Ukraine war? And here I just want to highlight that there are a lot of lessons that China is learning pertaining to ground combat. And I am putting a lot of this material together. I have a big pile on my desk, and I would love to come back to Norwich and share the results of some of that research, if there's an opportunity for that. Now, China is already absolutely a drone superpower. They control, I think, something like 90% of the commercial market. Think about that, folks. So we shouldn't be too surprised when we see vehicles like this. This is a Chinese Navy drone, which is quite interesting. It's clearly not going off the deck of a ship. So what's it doing? I see a lot of ordinance. Looks like some kind of ground attack vehicle. Looks, let's face it, this is likely to play a premier role in a Taiwan scenario, delivering some of that firepower to the beach. And yes, China has amphibious combat on the brain, and none of you are surprised by that. This was just the other day. They were talking about some amphibious exercises. So we shouldn't be at all surprised that China is thinking very hard how to drone support amphibious operations. For example, blowing through obstacles. In fact, sorry, my scan is not very good here, but here's an unmanned vehicle, not an undersea vehicle, but what we call a USV, an unmanned surface vehicle. That would be primarily for the purpose of blowing through obstacles on a beach. And while I'm focusing on undersea vehicles, I do want to highlight that China's prowess on both UAVs and USVs, that is the unmanned surface vehicles, could be incredibly important. So I'm not, I don't want to downplay that at all. We'll come back to that. And here's just another bit of evidence here. This is just, I tweeted this out just the other day, an article on a sea trials for a 100 ton catamaran USV that looks to be definitely more than a surveillance vehicle. This is a combat vehicle for sure. Now why is China obsessed with naval unmanned systems? It's not too hard to figure this out, and I'll give some more detailed explanations later. But as a summary here, look at these nice capital ships here. This is just from the other day on Chinese military news, Type 075. You want to protect these things. You're going to go all out to protect these things. They're expensive. Here's a nice cruiser that I was mentioning yesterday in the panel, Type 055. But beyond that, China is very worried about our submarine force, and here's an article from their Navy magazine discussing, you can see just how closely this is talking about the launch of a new US Navy nuclear submarine. This is definitely up there on their chief concerns about the US military. So they are going to use drones to defeat these. That's what they're going to try to do. But also, I'm amazed how much attention you'll find on Chinese news about the sabotage of the Baltic pipeline. And maybe that's not surprising. China is building infrastructure all over the world. So they're very disturbed at the destruction of this kind of infrastructure. And one can imagine that drones will be a key part of protecting undersea infrastructure. China's effort in developing ocean technology is stunning in its scope. I must say, I think it's at least as broad and deep as our own effort. And I'm very well acquainted. Naval War College is next to the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, so I know how much brain power we put at it. I think China is trying to equal that. You know, you can see a lot of just what we'd expect here. But you'll see, often the word in Chinese, mu biao, means targeting. And you can bet that undersea targeting is very high up on their list. I'll walk through more methodically what I think they're sort of evolving doctrine for these undersea vehicles might be. But let's look at the discussion of Captain Ligia retired. I got to spend a day with this Chinese naval theorist in Beijing not too long ago, well before the pandemic. But he had some interesting ideas in this article that he put out. You can see he views this as a game changer kind of capability, a focus on minds here. I think we better be attuned to that. That has been highlighted as a major vulnerability of the US Navy and a big intelligence role. In fact, the words he used, or the editors anyway, used in this title is shashou jian. That means like an assassin's mace weapon. In English, we would say like a silver bullet kind of capability. We know that this has gotten high level attention. This is a 2018 picture from Hainan. That's a big thing in China when Xi Jinping comes to look over your technology. But I want to say, China does come from rather humble origins in this respect. And I would say, prior to 1990, China probably had close to zero capability on this. Well, how did they go from zero to 60 so fast? It's a bit of a mystery. But this is partially explained by this photograph, actually, and some description I read in this interesting book on UVs. And the explanation, CR, what does CR stand for? I think is a good case we made. It stands for China Russia. And actually, this is a Russian vehicle that went out basically on a Chinese expedition. And basically, China, from what I understand from this series of expeditions, the Chinese basically downloaded decades of Russian expertise on undersea vehicles. Now, the good news is Russia was not as advanced as the US on undersea vehicles. So that's the good news. The bad news is China did succeed in going from zero to 60, or at least zero to 55. And that explains a lot of how they have gotten so good in this area so fast. And indeed, we're seeing some really cutting edge developments. Here you see, this is a drone that works by using buoyancy. So it doesn't have any other kind of propulsion, but it is able to travel with almost unlimited range, which is extraordinary. But there are other extraordinary things about this. It's called a glider. We have them too. But gliders are, this one is from Tianjin University, not too far from Beijing. But these gliders, one of their features is because they have no propulsion other than buoyancy, well, they go slowly, but they're also almost silent, which is, as you know, acoustics are everything in undersea warfare. So this actually becomes a potent system. And the fact that this particular glider has gone down to 8,000 meters is quite incredible. And actually means that this kind of system, which may seem a little bit primitive, but it has, I understand from researchers at Woods Hole, one of the premier oceanographic institutions in the United States, that this kind of technology has great potential for anti-submarine warfare. So in other words, for tracking our submarines. And here you see some more evidence just how widely this is a different kind of glider. But you can see China's expeditions, and this shows actually tracks of these gliders. But you can see they wielding whole fleets of gliders on some of these scientific expeditions. And I'll come back to the import of some of these gliders. But I also want to highlight, I noted your last year's symposium was about the Arctic and I'm really sorry I missed that because I have a very deep interest in the Arctic. In fact, if all goes well, I'll be in China discussing Arctic policy about two months from now. But look at this, you have, this should look familiar. This is American territory, right? There's the Bering Strait. Here's Chinese operation of gliders right in that area. I wonder if we even knew about this. I credit my colleague from Naval War College, Ryan Martinson, who discovered this. But that's pretty amazing that they were operating research gliders right in the Bering Strait. But China has moved methodically on this technology. And like I said last night where the US Navy has also deployed drones to find mines. It's an exceedingly important, that is mine warfare. Just as mine warfare and ground combat is essential to understand and prepare diligently for the same with ocean combat. And indeed for China, especially as we talk about Taiwan scenarios, this is an incredibly important mission, so the fact that they're building up their capabilities here should be no surprise. And indeed there have been a number of new mine sweepers, mine hunters, and they will be wielding UUVs for sure. I can just click through a series of other UUVs. I mean, one of the amazing things about this topic, and this is one thing you'll find with China, that China is quite open. If you go on the websites of Chinese universities, you can learn about these systems. They're often bragging about their capabilities. Why? Well, it's partly because China is a commercial superpower and a lot of this has major commercial applications. You can probably buy one of these if you wanted to. Maybe we should. But they have major ocean trade fairs where this stuff is marketed. But you can see that at least for the small size UUVs, this is becoming rather commonplace. Now when we get to somewhat larger UUVs, this is one you can notice it looks a heck of a lot like a torpedo. There's no, you know, ours do too often because that is kind of an optimized design. But also one can imagine that these deploy very easily out of torpedo tubes. And indeed, one of the major uses of UUVs is to operate together in tandem with submarines. For example, going in and navigating through a minefield, you can imagine that's pretty important work. But it's not just, they don't just look like torpedoes, right? Look at this one, it looks pretty, in a way, this is, you know, it looks almost, give you a good laugh. But I think this is quite for real. We don't want to downplay the seriousness of this. This is a trend actually in Chinese weapons design, also in U.S. weapons design, to go toward bionic. That is to kind of copy from the natural world, from the animal kingdom. This shouldn't be surprising at all. But I mean, you know, I read this article very carefully and if these capabilities have anything to do with reality, and I think they do, then we should be quite worried about this in terms of the speed parameters. And this article outlines how this will have small, medium, and large, each of them with differentiated functions. You can imagine the large one is sort of the, call it the headquarters unit that commands the smaller ones, some of which are surveillance and some of which are attack units. But we have begun to see some of these platforms, you know, these look more kind of research oriented. They could be also useful as targets to practice on, for sure. This one very large, 10 meters or so. I don't even have the name of this vehicle, so some of these are harder to divine. And you know, I discovered about 100 discreet prototypes in my research on this subject. I don't pretend that's nearly the whole universe. I would say that's just the tip of the iceberg. And of course, a lot of Chinese work on this is secret. Here's another hint of coming attractions. This one is about 20 meters. It seems to have torpedo tubes, so it seems to be a combat UUV. The periscope is not telescoping. It's just sort of folding. But that's one of the virtues of this technology, is that it's not, in effect, it's not rocket science, which makes it quite realizable. And there is good evidence now that China is on the cusp of wielding a force of robot submarines. Now, I would say we are also on the cusp of that. So, you know, that should make, scratch your head and see, think about where this rivalry is going. But I do recommend this article, I think, is incredibly important. And my study suggests that the claims made in this article, chiefly by scientists at the Shenyang Institute of Automation, are very credible. And so, if you're interested in this topic, please Google this from the South China Morning Post. There's quite a lot of good information in English, which is great. But let's talk in a little more detail about how does China see using these things? Oceanography, well, that should be plain. But here, I would say that you've got to realize China has been at disadvantage in oceanography for a long time, right? We've been doing this for decades, our oceanographic ships going out, often from universities, University of Washington, University of Rhode Island, University of New Hampshire, going out and collecting huge amounts of data in the world's oceans. China has not, so they're playing catch up to some respect, that's true. ISR, everybody knows what that means. These characters are important though. Xu Xia, Cheng Cheng, this means like the undersea great wall. And this is a true project that I think Xi Jinping has taken direct interest in. And we have good evidence, I'll show it in a second, that to suggest that they are literally trying to build an undersea great wall, which would be a system of systems under the sea that would allow a very good detection of foreign submarines, you know, proximate to China. That's not an easy task. Those waters are very difficult. They're also though quite shallow, which you know, does have some advantages in many ways. So will, you know, this to me is a massive project, largely dependent on UVs, although not entirely. I mean, you can also have a buoy, for example. It doesn't move, but it also has incredibly important sensors and plays a vital role. You know, some of these other goals you can think are, you could surmise yourself are very important. You know, communications relay a, this is incredibly important too. Port security, China, I'll get into this more in a second. And I've talked about undersea warfare for sure. But also it's not just kind of in a defensive way. It could also be, you know, an adjunct to submarine warfare. Mine warfare don't neglect it. We constantly have neglected this at our peril. That is the U.S. Navy. I mean, let's face it, mine warfare is not sexy. I don't think in land warfare either. You know, who wants to be a sapper? It's incredibly important. And we've seen that in Ukraine, of course. And by the way, sea mines have also played a role in Ukraine. If you haven't realized it, there may be a good reason why Odessa has not yet been invaded. We can get into that in Q and A, if you're interested, because it's a very important aspect of the war there. But, and I talked about support for amphibious operations. I don't want to over-stress this nuclear delivery. You know, we don't have any concrete evidence that China is pursuing this, but Russia is pursuing it. I mentioned it last night. I'll show you a slide that shows you that China has quite, has an interest as well. Yeah, I mentioned the undersea gray wall. So you can, here's some evidence for that. And indeed, in fact, I think August Cole left, but I've used some of his colleagues' work. Peter Singer here, good work to show that this is, in fact, something that is very real. And here's some additional evidence for it. I've found evidence for three discrete tests. And I think, you know, of all the slides I'm showing, this may be, to my estimate, one of the most fascinating, because what are these things? Look at these things. They've got three different tests. And by the way, China has learned from us that you need to compete these tests. What are these? Well, you plugged in your cell phone last night, right? So did I. That's what these are. These are plug-in stations for UUVs. And if you're building an undersea gray wall, you better have a lot of those out there, okay? Because you want them on station and ready, constantly monitoring China's waters for adversary submarine. Or by the way, you know, in the, you know, even out to the, beyond the first island chain. So this, I think, is very critical benchmark in showing how China is advancing its effort in building that undersea gray wall. But they're going beyond just, you know, kind of simple detection technologies. Look at this UUV. And I read this article carefully. It shows that this is an operational program. Okay, this is a UUV that doesn't just go under the water. It starts above the water. It then goes under the water. It then comes back out and maybe attacks a radar. Think about that, folks. That's a whole different way of thinking about cross-domain combat. And we may, our guys may, you know, our people out there may face this. It's a concern. I did mention the nuclear issue. And I just wanted to highlight that this is not the only article I found whether Chinese are hotly discussing this. Again, we don't want to exaggerate the threat here. Obviously, if Russia were to use this, Russia would be destroyed by our nuclear arsenal, which remains strong. But I bring it up, though, because this does have an important operational rationale. That is, if you're, all you think about all day is how to defeat American missile defenses, boy, this looks like a pretty useful system. And China is very worried about US missile defenses. Okay, but, you know, even as we talk about these more complicated platforms, let's not neglect the simple. The most simplest use of these UUVs may be just patrolling like a fish outside of a American base and noting that a submarine just went by. You know, that could be a huge, a huge tactical and operational value. And I just want to highlight, before I close up here, that undersea combat is much more than just UUVs. This involves all these domains, and I am quite concerned that China putting a full-front effort at anti-submarine warfare that our submarines will be threatened by Chinese unmanned aerial vehicles as well. And that technology is definitely in development. There is a major commercial side to what China is doing. They are very interested in undersea mining. This is for real, this is not just a cover. By the way, they've been doing this near Hawaii, which is interesting. But, you know, I think they could be ahead of us in this area, that could be a concern, but they aim to wreak immense profits by mining the seabed. Okay, just in my, just last few minutes here, let me talk about a couple of scenarios that concern me. This, you know, when we talk about the gray zone, that kind of non-combat or pre-combat area drones could play a big role. You know, you can snatch a drone and I'll get into that in a minute. In fact, that's already happened. But you can also brandish drones in a crisis. Say, by the way, you didn't know we have drones off your ports, let's show you. You know, they could do that and that could suddenly have to change our tactics. You know, what if a Chinese drone shows up in the Atlantic, you know, off of Norfolk suddenly? I mean, that would radically change how the US Navy does business. It hasn't happened yet, but it might happen. We've talked a little bit about this one. I am concerned about that. I mean, drones are getting ever more complex and we're working on combat drones. They're working on combat drones. I think one of the speakers at the panel last night said probably we'll stop right at the edge before we get these ready for true, as true combat platforms. I don't know and I don't know that China will stop. We'll come back to that. When we consider China, we also have to think in terms of geo-economics. This is a geopolitical power. They're interested in strategy, of course, but as one of the good students last night who approached me said, look, China's really interested in making money. Well, there's a lot to that. And a lot of what I'm showing here, they can be explained by that, that China is a, you know, they may not aim to conquer the world but to simply buy the world and a lot of this technology. And by the way, a huge boost to US technology development in the undersea and just globally was the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf where you had dozens of drones working constantly to shut off that oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. So the commercial and military overlap here is simply huge and that's true in the Chinese case as well. I am concerned that preemption, you know, if we're talking about US-China rivalry, talking about two nuclear powers going to war, I mean, you know, I don't want to be too extreme but in the darkest scenario, we have Chinese drones off of, you know, King's Bay where our, or off of Puget Sound where some of our nuclear armed submarines are, you know, is this the future we want? This, we may be hurling toward this future. And then we may have to radically change how we do business and this enhanced bastion scenario I've been thinking about is a more defensive use of drones here and we can imagine that China, you know, as it builds its undersea great wall and so forth, that really is kind of thinking in terms of these rings of geostrategic power and that most of this is, and there is a geographic component to drones that I don't think we've really discussed enough. But as for transparent oceans, more cheap sensors out in the ocean are going to make the oceans more transparent. This could be a major problem for the US Navy because we rely so heavily on our submarine strength, that really is the, I would say the sharpest spear in the US Navy's toolbox. So this is quite a dark future if the incredible value and advantage we possess in nuclear submarines starts to go away because they can now be more easily revealed. And finally, this leapfrog scenario, you can guess what that is, but there's evidence that I've revealed where Chinese strategists say, hey, China does not have the same prowess in submarines. They haven't been doing it the way we have for 100 years, but can China leapfrog over that capability with unmanned systems? I mentioned that gray zone scenario, this did occur in January 2016, oh sorry, December 2016, you had this incident where they took one of our, it was a glider. They did give it back, so that's encouraging. But I don't doubt for a minute that Beijing had looked at its, this was right after the phone call between Tsai Ing-wen and candidate elect Trump. And this is what they elected to do. That's very interesting that they decided to employ a drone snatch in that way. So it's something we might wanna talk about how drones can play and that can be part of the crisis there. And it's not the only crisis, right? There was another crisis where Iran shot down one of our drones. Well, just a few parting shots here. I think this picture is quite interesting, but this has become very fashionable in China to hold these competitions where students gather at a pool and start playing around. But we do a lot of this too, they learned it from us. But yes, a new generation of Chinese strategists and engineers is putting a lot of effort at this. And also wanted to just highlight this article in Tangdai, Haijun, which I think really points at something very disturbing here that they may use drones to get at the very deep ocean. Most military operations, there's my timer saying I better wind up. So most military operations take place in the, not in the really deep depths of the ocean, but China is kind of saying they can have an advantage by going deep, which is quite interesting. And really, if you read some of these quotes, quite unnerving here. You see, talking about deep sea robot squadrons and this ability to achieve surprise and to use the hydrographic terrain of the ocean floor. I mean, this could get really problematic. This is a kind of whole new approach to thinking about naval warfare. So, you know, we better keep this in mind, folks. And this is something that AI, a way that AI can transform a naval warfare. You know, here was the graphic actually, that was part of that article. And of course, this seems like a complete stretch, but actually China has, in fact, Xi Jinping has put his own imprint on a project to build a undersea base, they called it, below something like crazy, like 8,000 meters or something, if you can imagine that. So this is, you know, this should not be dismissed. And just the final thought is, I just published this article in Nike Asia about this drone competition. I do think there are some avenues for, still for cooperation, for considering crisis management arms control. So I think that has to be on the agenda. We need smart people like you folks to help charge some of this out lest we caught in that robot war that we have been talking about a lot. But thank you so much for your time and attention and happy to take some questions. And you see my contact info. I am tweeting almost every day on this kind of stuff and not just on China, but also on Russia. And if you email me, I will try my best to answer questions and like to stay in touch with you. I hope to see you again at Norwich. Thank you. Let's give a round of applause. So Dr. Goldstein, thank you for your very illuminating, I must say, I assume is for you a presentation. Now it's time for a Q and A. I can open us up with a question if someone doesn't have one that's pressing right now. But if you do have a question, you can come down on this side and come down this side. And I expect that there should be quite a few questions from the audience, but I'll start us off. So one of the slides that you had looked at the cooperation between China and Russia. And I would argue right now that when we're looking at the war in Ukraine and Russia, this eclipsed a lot of our attention. And we're focused on sort of the kinetic exchange between Russia and Ukrainian forces and our proxy equipment that's being sent there. A concern would be the relationship between China and Russia, particularly in this area, and this is not something that unless you go digging for it, it's covered in the media. It's something that's almost absolute blacked out. It's not something that's discussed, but a presentation illuminates something that we should be thinking about. But also knowing that you're fluent in what's going on with Russia, would you be able to speak about any information that you found about China and Russian cooperation to this day? And do you think that what's going on in Ukraine even pushes more cooperation, more emphasis on China and Russia going further in research, maybe collaboration or training and testing in this particular area? Yeah, thanks so much. As you know, Russia-China relations are something that I spend a lot of time on. I'm writing a book on the subject and indeed the military aspect of it, which I've written about in Norwich's very fine journal, is absolutely essential. And yeah, I mean, the quick answer is yes, yes, yes. And it's not, there's a lot of things that go on between Russia-China that we have no window into. I mean, for example, just if you looked, you could find online an enormous amount of space cooperation, which against a mention very occasionally, but Russia and China are planning to go to the moon together, folks. I mean, it's a moon shot, right? That's not a small thing at all. And China will repuge gains from the experience of Russia's space program by doing that kind of very intensive work. Well, I would argue that you are seeing almost something close to that elaborate on the undersea side. That is, China knows very well that Russia has had its issues undersea, right? I mean, just already, even in 2019, China, Russia had a pretty serious submarine accident, Lasharek up in the barren. So I mean, it's, they know that Russia is not your, how to put it, your model undersea power. On the other hand, they also know that Russia has done some extraordinary things, including inventing what's a key platform for our Navy today, which is the SSBN, the nuclear armed submarine, which, you know, this is a submarine that can destroy countries. That was a Russian idea originally. So we copied it and we did it better than they did, but it was their idea. So this kind of, you know, I would call it design engineering prowess that Russia has. If we marry that with a lot of strengths that China has, particularly in kind of, that China is very good at big programs and kind of the manufacturing side and kind of tweaking systems to get them right. Russia is not good at that. So when you put these together, I mean, just to give you another example where this could be a major breakthrough technology for China, they look at our F-35B, maybe you're familiar, that's a very innovative fighter aircraft, vertical takeoff, right? Maybe you've seen them coming off the decks. Well, does China want that? Sure, sure it does. And I understand they already have a Yak-141, which was the Russia's vertical takeoff jet. And indeed, F-35 itself, F-35B, borrows actually from that aircraft, that original Soviet-era aircraft. So I don't think it's outlandish at all to expect that we will see China put forward probably several prototypes of vertical takeoff aircraft and those will have deep, deep Russian origins as a lot of Chinese equipment does. So I mean, I'm very concerned about this. And the last thing I'll say here is, China, look, China I think has used a reasonable amount of restraint in reacting to the Ukraine crisis. That is, although they have rhetorically supported Russia, we have not seen legions of Chinese tanks. We haven't seen a Chinese airborne division in Donbass. I don't expect to see any of that and I don't want to see any of that, but it's not crazy to think that that could be in the cars. If things get much worse between the US and China, then China could throw its lot deeper in with Russia. I think there's a lot going on behind closed doors. I've hinted at a lot we don't know about, but let's hope that it doesn't come to that level. That would be a kind of, I call that sort of back to the 1950s kind of very tight relationship, but I'm concerned about it. Thank you. Hi, so my name is Isabel. I'm majoring computer science. My question is, how will these underwater vehicles affect regular people and ecosystems? Because we've seen how drone strikes, although targeted, have a lot of collateral damage in the civilian area. Well, it's a fantastic question and I'm so glad to see students that are really attuned to environmental issues because I do think that's a chief, it should be really foremost in all of our minds. And I would urge you to look at a recent New York Times article that talks a lot about this undersea mining and what might be some of the environmental consequences. When I said China, has a huge economy, I would argue it's, in my view, it is larger than the US economy, really. But that comes with it, a lot of environmental issues, let's say, and we're well aware, we had a speaker from Ghana, might be able to tell us that in Africa, for example, there's been environmental problems with Chinese activities. So I think one of the most important things, there was actually another big article about Chinese activities in terms of fishing and across the globe's oceans, they're not in other countries' waters, they're in international waters, so it's all legal and it's unregulated, but yet the environmental consequence are very considerable. So I guess the biggest thing I would say with regard to unmanned undersea vehicles is, I mean, I think they have played somewhat of a positive role, right? I mean, think of the BP spill in 2010, that was an environmental disaster, we have to give these little robots credit for they were absolutely critical in shutting off that spill, so I think we should all be, as Americans, quite thankful for the role they've been playing. They also play a huge role in oceanography and understanding the oceans and some of the damage the oceans is critical to, and UUVs are playing a very important role there too, but I think you're probably right that we, maybe this is a great issue for a student paper, but I mean, let's also think about the consequences, whether UUVs have been found in fishing nets, but if we're using the oceans much more intensively, putting down undersea networks, for example, that's going to create environmental problems, but I think the biggest issue by far, and I won't even mention, a nuclear armed nuclear powered UUV, which is what Russia is doing should disturb all of us. I mean, and this is a doomsday weapon that is created to develop a tsunami-like impact, which if you think of what a tsunami hitting the Eastern seaboard of the United States, that's what Russia has in mind, and I mean, it goes without saying that that should be condemned by all people and environmentalists also. But the thing I worry most about is this undersea mining, and we better keep a real watch on that because that could have a major impact. It also holds great promise for electric vehicles and so forth, lithium and so forth, but we need to watch that really carefully. Great question. Thank you. So we have time for one more question, but this is what we're going to do. We're going to ask everybody, no, you can stay there, stay there. We're going to ask everyone that's lined up here and over there to ask your question and you can choose which question you'd like to answer just so that we can hear all the questions that people have. So go ahead, what's your name? You're leaving. We wanted to hear your question. So go ahead, Alex, and then we'll just hand the mic up and then you can choose which question you'd like to answer, but I think it's important, just the audience here, what questions that we have before you. As a somewhat reluctant optimist, can I ask you about the issue of detente? How can we avoid these Doomsday scenarios best? How can we invest energy and time into avoiding this seemingly inevitable global superpower conflict? What can we do right now to limit this escalation? So you were saying, you know, sometimes, you know, the Chinese are developing this technology sort of out of sight, and sometimes the unintended consequence of an arms race is discovery in other areas. If they are going to deep-sea places that we've not looked at before, do you think that any science or marine biology studies that the Chinese might be producing could tell us if they are in unexplored areas of the ocean and give us a view into sort of what they're developing? Hi, so I was wondering about how you talked about how like Russia and China share technology and how China has been able to progress really quickly with UVVs. I was wondering how, as America, how we should defend our technology from espionage, from other adversaries, and how we should conduct researching in the future? Good morning. I wanted to ask you about what you would think the development of arms control regime to prevent a escalatory arms race between China and the US, for example, would look like in the future decade or multi-decade sphere? So that's a nice flavor of questions for you. So your choice. Yeah, boy, all excellent questions. So I hope I'll discuss with the questioners afterward because I would like to answer them all. But let me focus on the first and last one, if you don't mind, on the arms control. I think it's, I mean, just one simple, it seems to me this is a completely basic proposal, but has not been, to my knowledge, has never been seriously discussed. But I mean, as we're, like I said, the most worrisome scenario is that both sides will develop drones that now hunt down the most important part of our nuclear deterrent, which is, I'll say with little pride, the Navy part of it. Don't believe those Air Force guys. The Navy, the naval part of our nuclear deterrent is the most robust, the most secure, and we need to maintain that. And because that supports strategic stability, we could talk for a long time about why that's the case. But to me, if we have these drones patrolling outside, like I said, outside of Puget Sound, out off of Kings Bay in Georgia, we're in a whole new ballgame. Suddenly, those submarines become much more vulnerable. We don't wanna go there, so of course we're not gonna trust the other side. We have to do our due diligence, and that's up to a lot of you students to make sure. But we also have to, it seems to me we could come into an agreement with both Russia and China that we are not gonna make those very destabilizing deployments. And finally, the question about the Taun, it seems to me, is very fundamental and hopefully people are keeping this in mind. I wrote a 2015 book advocating for, you know, kind of explaining how a U.S., China, the Taun would look like. But I must say, I think it starts with a decent amount of, you see this word up here, restraint. That's something defense priorities is dedicated to realism and restraint. But I think that word needs to be kind of up foremost in our vocabulary as we think about strategy with China. I mean, the truth is, the United States is in an incredibly strong position, right? I mean, you know, robust society and economy, allies all over the world, you know, nobody is talking seriously about a, you know, Chinese invasion of the United States or something like that. So let's keep that in mind. We're an incredibly strong and secure country and we can afford to act with restraint and as I put it in my book in 2015, we can take some risks for peace. The natural instinct of great powers is to compete in a massive way and to, you know, this naturally can become destabilizing but thoughtful people, enlightened strategists, will realize that we have to take some measures to act with restraint. We want to see some Chinese restraint but I think we can, in that way, we can move forward and reach that detente which is absolutely critical and by the way, I will note, I don't think it's been said at the forum but this is the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Read that history folks and reflect on John Kennedy's restraint which prevented the probably the most dangerous moment in world history from destroying us all. Thank you. Excellent. Let's give him a round of applause. Thank you. And also, you'll notice the program. We have a gap between now and the next session and Dr. Holstein will be around so if you do have questions or you would just like to speak with him or discuss matters further, he'll be around and would welcome your engagement. Thank you very much. You've been a great audience.