[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                  
                          [H.A.S.C. No. 118-5]

                   THE FUTURE OF WAR: IS THE PENTAGON

                      PREPARED TO DETER AND DEFEAT

                         AMERICA'S ADVERSARIES?

                               __________

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                    SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION 
                        TECHNOLOGIES, AND INNOVATION

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                              HEARING HELD

                            FEBRUARY 9, 2023


[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


                               __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
52-380                      WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------     

    SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, AND INNOVATION

                  MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin, Chairman

MATT GAETZ, Florida                  RO KHANNA, California
LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan            SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
PAT FALLON, Texas                    WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts
DALE W. STRONG, Alabama              ANDY KIM, New Jersey
MORGAN LUTTRELL, Texas               ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan
JENNIFER A. KIGGANS, Virginia        JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine
NICK LaLOTA, New York                PATRICK RYAN, New York
RICHARD McCORMICK, Georgia           CHRISTOPHER R. DELUZIO, 
                                         Pennsylvania

                Sarah Moxley, Professional Staff Member
               Michael Hermann, Professional Staff Member
                    Payson Ruhl, Research Assistant
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

              STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Gallagher, Hon. Mike, a Representative from Wisconsin, Chairman, 
  Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation     1
Moulton, Hon. Seth, a Representative from Massachusetts, 
  Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation     2

                               WITNESSES

Brose, Christian, Chief Strategy Officer of Anduril Industries; 
  Author; Former Senior Policy Advisor to Senator John McCain; 
  and Former Staff Director, Senate Armed Services Committee.....     3
Montgomery, RADM Mark, USN (Ret.), Senior Director, Center on 
  Cyber Technology and Innovation, Foundation for Defense of 
  Democracies....................................................     5
Singer, Peter W., Strategist, New America, and Managing Partner, 
  Useful Fiction LLC.............................................     7

                                APPENDIX

Prepared Statements:

    Brose, Christian.............................................    49
    Gallagher, Hon. Mike.........................................    45
    Khanna, Hon. Ro, a Representative from California, Ranking 
      Member, Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, 
      and Innovation.............................................    47
    Montgomery, RADM Mark........................................    58
    Singer, Peter W..............................................    72

Documents Submitted for the Record:

    USA Today Op-Ed by Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Khanna..............    93

Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

    Mr. Moulton..................................................    99

Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

    [There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
    
    THE FUTURE OF WAR: IS THE PENTAGON PREPARED TO DETER AND DEFEAT 
                         AMERICA'S ADVERSARIES?

                              ----------                              

                  House of Representatives,
                       Committee on Armed Services,
      Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and 
                                                Innovation,
                        Washington, DC, Thursday, February 9, 2023.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 8:30 a.m., in 
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mike Gallagher 
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE GALLAGHER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
    WISCONSIN, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION 
                  TECHNOLOGIES, AND INNOVATION

    Mr. Gallagher. The subcommittee will come to order. Welcome 
to the first hearing of the Cyber, Information Technology, and 
Innovation [CITI] Subcommittee in the 118th Congress. I am 
thrilled to lead this subcommittee with my friend and 
colleague, Representative Ro Khanna, who is going to be joining 
us in about 30 minutes. I believe it is his wife's birthday. 
That is more important. But I have worked very productively 
with Ro for 6 years, and I would like to enter into the record 
an op-ed that Representative Khanna and I wrote together as 
freshmen Members of Congress.
    The piece focuses on congressional reform, not defense, but 
it demonstrates that we have long been willing to work across 
party lines to modernize this institution. And while Ro is a 
progressive, and I am a conservative, we both like to think for 
ourselves. And we both believe that the Department of Defense 
can do better when it comes to innovation.
    In my opinion, the only way to truly win World War III is 
to prevent it. And if we accept the slow bureaucratic status 
quo, deterrence will fail again, as it failed in Ukraine. And 
on this subcommittee, I would like us to dedicate ourselves to 
the question of how we deter war. There are three questions in 
particular I think we need to answer.
    First, is the Pentagon prepared for an invasion of Taiwan 
that has already begun in cyberspace? Second, what technologies 
are most important for winning a future war, and what are the 
barriers to the Department rapidly adopting such technologies, 
particularly commercial technologies. And third, are the 
services and the Pentagon sensibly structured and resourced to 
recruit, train, and maintain and equip cyber warriors?
    As we work to deter war, time is not on our side. It has 
taken me 6 years to get this gavel, and I intend to wield it 
against the forces of darkness that waste our time, which is 
our most precious resource. So behind me, you see a picture of 
the clock at Lambeau Field, which is always set 15 minutes 
early to reflect--15 minutes fast to reflect Vince Lombardi's 
wisdom that if you are on time, you are 15 minutes late. This 
committee will operate with the Lombardi time principle in 
mind.
    To this end, I have developed the three CITI commandments, 
which you will see on the other side here, on this sign behind 
me.
    First, we will start on time. We passed our first test. 
Thank you to Representative Moulton for being here on time. And 
since I have to be here the whole time anyways, I may just 
yield my initial question time to punctual members like Mrs. 
McClain who was here on double Lombardi time, 30 minutes early.
    Second, 5 minutes shall be 5 minutes. I have gained a 
profound respect for former chairman, now Ranking Member Adam 
Smith's ability to enforce the 5-minute timeline. That being 
said, if you stick around until the end, I am always more than 
happy to entertain a second round of questions.
    And third, to the extent possible, let's not use acronyms 
or jargon. The Pentagon suffers from a disease called acro-
nymphomania, a fetishistic use of acronyms that clouds clear 
thinking. And on this subcommittee, let's please try to 
communicate in simple and direct language that normal Americans 
can understand.
    So in the spirit of these three commandments, and in the 
hope this is the longest speech I will ever give on this 
subcommittee, I will stop talking and yield to Representative 
Moulton, who did phenomenal work chairing the Future of Defense 
Task Force and has long been a leading voice for innovation in 
the defense enterprise.
    Mr. Moulton.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Gallagher can be found in 
the Appendix on page 45.]

     STATEMENT OF HON. SETH MOULTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
MASSACHUSETTS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, 
                         AND INNOVATION

    Mr. Moulton. Thank you, Mike.
    General C.Q. Brown, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, has 
written and said many times over the last several years: 
accelerate, change, or lose. And that really is what is at 
stake here. If we do not change more quickly to modernize our 
ability to conduct warfare, we will lose. By many measures, we 
are losing to our adversaries already who are modernizing much 
more quickly than we are. So, we have a lot of work to do to 
catch up, so that the ultimate goal, as Mr. Gallagher so well 
articulated, is achieved, which is preventing war, deterring 
war, showing our adversaries that we will beat them if they 
try. So we have a lot of work to do, and it is an honor to be 
back on this subcommittee. We have some excellent witnesses 
here today, some of the best of the best.
    So let me turn it over to all of you.
    And Mr. Gallagher, thank you very much and congratulations 
on making it here after 6 years.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. As Representative Moulton said, 
we have a phenomenal panel of witnesses joining us today. We 
have Mr. Christian Brose, Chris Brose, who is the chief 
strategy officer of Anduril Industries, and author of an 
incredible book called, ``Kill Chain: Defending America in the 
Future of High-Tech Warfare,'' which I recommend to all of you. 
Prior to his current role, Mr. Brose served as senior policy 
advisor to Senator John McCain and later staff director of the 
Senate Armed Services Committee.
    We also have Admiral Mark Montgomery, who is the senior 
director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at 
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served in the 
U.S. Navy for 32 years, holding posts as director for 
operations at U.S. Pacific Command and commander of Carrier 
Strike Group 5. Admiral Montgomery served as the executive 
director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which I co-
chaired with Senator Angus King, and it was a pleasure to work 
with him.
    And we also have Mr. Peter Singer, who is currently a 
strategist at New America, and founder and managing partner at 
Useful Fiction, LLC. He served as a consultant for the U.S. 
military and intelligence community, was coordinator for the 
Obama campaign's defense policy task force, and is a prolific 
writer on futuristic national security issues, including having 
written one of my favorite books of all time, ``Ghost Fleet.'' 
``Burn-In'' is also exceptional. I am waiting for movie 
versions of these books, Mr. Singer, and I believe has more 
books on professional reading lists than any other author 
alive--military professional reading lists than any other 
author alive or dead.
    So with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Brose for his 
testimony.

STATEMENT OF CHRISTIAN BROSE, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER OF ANDURIL 
  INDUSTRIES; AUTHOR; FORMER SENIOR POLICY ADVISOR TO SENATOR 
 JOHN MCCAIN; AND FORMER STAFF DIRECTOR, SENATE ARMED SERVICES 
                           COMMITTEE

    Mr. Brose. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the 
subcommittee, it is an honor to have the opportunity to testify 
before you today on the future of warfare.
    Often when this topic is discussed in U.S. defense circles, 
it is treated as a future problem. Something coming in the 
2030s or 40s, something we have time to get ready for. This, I 
would contend, is dangerously wrong. The future of warfare is 
here, and America is largely being ambushed by it. The U.S. 
military and our way of war are being disrupted. Our idea of 
national defense is largely based on the ability to project 
military power across the globe using small numbers of large, 
expensive, exquisite, heavily manned, and hard-to-replace 
ships, aircraft, and other platforms. The Chinese Communist 
Party knows this, and has been working diligently and with 
regrettable competence to be able to not just degrade and 
destroy America's small number of large expensive military 
things, but to render U.S. forces deaf, dumb, and blind, and 
unable to fight.
    At the same time, our defense enterprise is also being 
disrupted by new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, 
autonomous systems, robotics, ubiquitous sensors, and low-cost 
access to space. Technologies such as these are changing the 
character of war, and this, too, is happening now. In the 
recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the continued fighting in 
the Middle East, and in the ongoing war in Ukraine, we are 
seeing how low-cost robotic vehicles, AI-enabled loitering 
munitions, digital targeting systems, cyber weapons, persistent 
communications and surveillance satellites, and other advanced 
capabilities, especially when paired with large volumes of more 
traditional weapons, are transforming warfare.
    Some lessons are emerging from this recent experience. On 
the current and future battlefield, moving and communicating is 
highly contested. Hiding is nearly impossible. And once 
detected, surviving is just as difficult. This means that a 
correctly armed and ready defender can make life hell for 
militaries that have optimized for long-distance power 
projection and offensive operations, militaries such as our 
own. These dual disruptions of threat and technology have been 
underway for years, but for many reasons having largely to do 
with our own politics and bureaucracy, the United States has 
been too slow to respond.
    As a result, we are entering what the chairman has called 
the window of maximum danger, a period over the coming years 
when the Chinese Communist Party, feeling undeterred by the 
U.S. military, may seek to remake the status quo in the Asia-
Pacific region through force, for instance by invading Taiwan. 
None of us wants that to happen, nor can we predict whether it 
will. All we can do is ensure that we are ready if, God forbid, 
deterrence fails and U.S. forces are called to maintain the 
peace.
    This responsibility falls most heavily to you and your 
colleagues in the 118th Congress. Nothing you do in this 
Congress will make larger numbers of traditional ships, 
aircraft, and other platforms materialize over the next several 
years. It is possible, however, to generate an arsenal of 
alternative military capabilities that could be delivered to 
U.S. forces in large enough quantities within the next few 
years to make a decisive difference. Those decisions could all 
be taken by this Congress.
    The goal would be to rapidly field what I have referred to 
as a money-ball military, one that is achievable, affordable, 
and capable of winning. Such a military would be composed not 
of small quantities of large, exquisite, expensive things, but 
rather by large quantities of smaller, lower cost, more 
autonomous, consumable things, and most importantly, the 
digital means of integrating them.
    These kinds of alternative capabilities exist now or could 
be rapidly matured and fielded in massive quantities within the 
window of maximum danger. You could set this in motion in the 
next 2 years. The goal would be more about defense than 
offense, more about countering power projection than projecting 
power ourselves. It would be to demonstrate that the United 
States, together with our allies and partners, could do to a 
Chinese invasion or a Chinese offensive what the Ukrainians 
with our support have thus far been able to do to their Russian 
invaders: degrade and deny the ability of a great power to 
accomplish its objectives through violence, and in so doing, to 
prevent that future war from ever happening. After all, this is 
all about deterrence.
    All of this is possible. We have sufficient money, 
technology, authorities, and we still have an enough time, if 
we are serious. If we make better decisions now, we can push 
this looming period of vulnerability further into the future, 
and this will mostly be up to you, for if these decisions are 
left even to the next Congress, they may be too late.
    Thank you very much.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Brose can be found in the 
Appendix on page 49.]
    Mr. Gallagher. Well within the 5 minutes. Thank you, Mr. 
Brose.
    Admiral Montgomery.

STATEMENT OF RADM MARK MONTGOMERY, USN (RET.), SENIOR DIRECTOR, 
   CENTER ON CYBER TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION, FOUNDATION FOR 
                     DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES

    Admiral Montgomery. Chairman Gallagher, Ranking Member 
Moulton, other members of this subcommittee, thanks for 
inviting me here today. I mean, to answer the basic question, 
are we ready, I am afraid that like Chris, I believe that 
unless we make substantive changes to how we develop and 
procure weapons and how we embrace emerging technologies, the 
United States will not be ready to deter and defeat China in 
the demanding technological environment we are going to face in 
the next 5 years.
    The U.S. relies heavily on precision-guided munitions, the 
ability to conduct large-scale mobility and sustainment ops 
[operations], and extensive intelligence collection 
capabilities to deter and defeat adversaries. But the Chinese 
have spent the last 25 years working this problem, investing in 
asymmetric weapons and sensor systems, using emerging 
technologies to neutralize America's operational superiority, 
and they have reduced the ability of U.S. forces to rapidly 
detect, track, and kill the adversary.
    The Chinese now have a military force designed to place 
U.S. air and naval forces at risk within the first island 
chain, and the Chinese may soon have the same impact on U.S. 
forces within the second island chain. While U.S. military 
leaders have talked about China as the pacing threat, the 
Chinese have procured weapons as if the United States was their 
pacing threat. So, not surprisingly, Chinese action has 
outperformed American rhetoric.
    But despite these challenges the U.S. can flip the script, 
and if we make the right investments to retain our military 
technological advantage, we can overcome Chinese asymmetric 
advantages. I would just say, outside of CITI's jurisdiction 
but inside HASC [House Armed Services Committee], there is a 
few things we could do right away. We could increase 
procurement of long-range weapons to strike Chinese ships. We 
could develop and deploy cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic 
defense capabilities throughout the Pacific. We could pre-
position munitions in Taiwan for Taiwan's use in a contingency 
because we are not going to be able to resupply them like we do 
Ukraine. And we could actually train and exercise with the 
Taiwan air and maritime forces in theater as we do with every 
ever other ally and partner.
    All of these actions will increase deterrence, and if a war 
comes, improve the chances of U.S. victory and drive down U.S. 
casualties, and we can do this only using a fraction of the 
current defense budget. Within the CITI Subcommittee, there are 
equally important steps that could be taken to ensure U.S. 
forces are ready. First, we can improve the cyber resilience of 
the military and the Nation. In the conflict with China, our 
forces need to be able maintain our ability to detect and track 
the adversaries, to communicate among units, and mobilize and 
sustain forces in the field.
    To ensure this connectivity, the U.S. military needs to 
invest in better resilience and redundancy across every node 
and operational link. And I think this effort has to extend 
into our national critical infrastructure. The resilience of 
the transportation, electrical power, water, financial systems 
that enable the mobilization and resupply of U.S. forces has to 
improve.
    The second thing this subcommittee can do is assess and 
strengthen the readiness and structure of U.S. cyber forces. 
U.S. cyber forces are really inconsistent in their 
organization, readiness, and training across the various 
military services. And the size of each military service's 
contribution to the cyber mission has not changed appreciably 
since the original agreements in 2010, despite significant 
changes in the threat from China and Russia. Really, this 
subcommittee has got to figure out if the current design of the 
cyber mission force is what we need for the 21st century, or 
should we be considering an independent cyber force, as was 
recently done with the Space Force.
    The third thing this subcommittee ought to be pushing is an 
environment to innovate. The U.S. has learned some really 
important lessons from the conflict in Ukraine. For example, 
the Ukrainians needed anti-ship cruise missiles to limit 
Russian naval operations in the Black Sea, but there was no 
program of record available for a land-based Harpoon missile 
launching system. So the Ukrainians worked with Boeing, the 
Danish Army, and the U.S. Navy to ``MacGyver'' together a 
launcher system, and they did this in 2 months.
    But Taiwan was approved for a similar land-based Harpoon 
system in 2020, and they have been told delivery of the new 
design system will be 2027 or 2028. Clearly, we could do a 
similar ``MacGyver'' approach, and we should do that with 
Boeing and the Navy to ensure that our key partner, Taiwan, has 
the weapon systems it needs to deter Chinese action sooner than 
7 or 8 years after they ordered it.
    Finally, this committee could ensure that the U.S. works 
with our allies to maintain interoperability with U.S. forces. 
You know, we have a problem when we modernize software and 
technology systems. We often create gaps that lead to 
challenges conducting coalition operations. I think we have to 
be particularly aware of this as we develop and field the--and 
I will use an acronym here--JADC2 [Joint All-Domain Command and 
Control] architecture.
    So in conclusion, what I would say is that the U.S. may not 
be on the right track today for a conflict with China, but we 
can make some smart investments now to get back on track, and 
this subcommittee can help make that so.
    [The prepared statement of Admiral Montgomery can be found 
in the Appendix on page 58.]
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. You can use an acronym. You have 
to spell it out first. Joint All-Domain Command and Control. 
But thank you.
    Mr. Singer.

  STATEMENT OF PETER W. SINGER, STRATEGIST, NEW AMERICA, AND 
              MANAGING PARTNER, USEFUL FICTION LLC

    Mr. Singer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members, for the 
opportunity to speak to this important hearing. As with the 
other witnesses, my testimony today represents my personal 
opinion, not the official position of any organization I have 
worked with.
    You asked us whether the Pentagon is prepared to deter and 
defeat America's adversaries. A valuable approach to answering 
your question is to ask a question in turn. What would a 
``yes'' look like in the future? We can then work backward and 
explore both the elements of such a potential future successful 
history and how we can build towards them today.
    One methodology for this cross of strategy and scenario is 
the deliberate blend of nonfiction research and analysis with 
narrative. Known as FICINT or useful fiction, the goal is to 
share the facts of new trends and technologies, but in a 
scenario format that the science of the brain shows is more 
likely to lead to both understanding and action. I have entered 
into the record such a scenario crafted for this committee 
entitled ``What Would Winning Look Like?'' Told from the 
perspective of an imagined PLA [People's Liberation Army] 
officer in the future, it envisions a positive outcome for the 
hearing's question and the central problem for U.S. defense 
planning, a future world in which the United States has 
successfully deterred the PLA from attacking Taiwan.
    While I hope you take the time to engage with and even 
enjoy the narrative, today I would like to share with you some 
of the policy findings of it.
    The key elements of a winning outcome for the U.S. military 
in the future of war would include that we, one, enact regular 
open-ended war games designed to truly test and learn.
    Two, avoid letting political and bureaucratic inertia and 
the mentality of sunk cost drive acquisitions.
    Three, foster a dynamic defense marketplace where the 
military can engage with and easily purchase from both big and 
small firms.
    Four, scale innovation hubs and experimental task forces 
such that every command has access to rapid means of learning 
and implementation. And we should also replicate the current 
``Shark Tank'' contests in some portions of the force across it 
to award bottom-up proposals and fixes from junior troops.
    Five, acquire a new generation of unmanned systems across 
all domains but avoid unmanned systems that simply replicate 
the expensive manned systems that they are replacing.
    Six, develop new doctrines to take advantage of robotics' 
unique attributes, allowing swarming and cheap, high-risk uses.
    Seven, prepare for certain adversary use with counter-drone 
systems of kinetic, EW [electronic warfare], and directed 
energy.
    Eight, invest in AI [artificial intelligence] and quantum 
technology to match its growing civilian importance.
    Nine, reform U.S. military networks to create a federated 
model of mesh data to take advantage of the benefits of AI.
    Ten, ensure that the U.S. military is able to retain its 
professionalism while evolving to reflect the new America that 
it both draws upon and protects.
    Eleven, scale new U.S. military units able to operate 
across multidomains, rapidly deploying networks of small teams, 
each able to operate independently yet generate 
disproportionate kinetic and non-kinetic effects against major 
systems.
    Twelve, transform special operations forces into blended 
teams of technical experts and elite soldiers, able to provide 
a more comprehensive full continuum of uses.
    Thirteen, create redundancies in scale and space through 
fleets of micro-sats [microsatellites] and cheap launch 
systems.
    Fourteen, bake security into the emerging Internet of 
Things through requirements and regulation so as to limit 
physical damage from digital threats.
    Fifteen, utilize cyber and diplomatic means to repeatedly 
out covert campaigns designed to undermine democracies.
    Sixteen, engage in persistent competition on the info 
[information], economic, political, and cyber fronts to create 
greater friction for the PLA and CCP [Chinese Communist Party].
    Seventeen, provide Taiwan distributed anti-air weapons and 
unmanned systems to take away adversary quantitative advantage, 
and most especially cheap rapidly deployable smart mines to 
block essential seaways.
    Eighteen, aid efforts to create a Taiwanese society 
prepared for resistance, especially in urban settings and by 
mirroring its digital systems outside the country.
    Nineteen, bolster multilateral ties between states that 
have worsening bilateral ties with China.
    And finally, twentieth, secure Russia's defeat in Ukraine, 
both to weaken it and its allies, as well as provide a model of 
success for other democracies under threat.
    In closing, I hope you find both the lessons and the 
approach useful as a means to stoke healthy discussion about 
the future of war through envisioning a successful outcome of 
the committee's work.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Singer can be found in the 
Appendix on page 72.]
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you.
    Before we go to questions, I ask unanimous consent to enter 
Ranking Member Khanna's opening statement and our joint op-ed 
into the record.
    I think it just happens like that. Look at that. Without 
objection, so ordered. Okay. Hey, I am learning. With great 
power comes great responsibility.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Khanna can be found in the 
Appendix on page 47.]
    [The op-ed referred to can be found in the Appendix on page 
93.]
    Mr. Gallagher. I know Mrs. McClain has to go to another 
hearing and was here earlier than anyone else, so I will 
recognize her for 5 minutes of questions.
    Mrs. McClain. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all 
for being here today. I really appreciate it.
    I come from the business sector. So this is new to me, but 
I try and apply a lot of the same concepts and principles that 
work in private sector. And I realize government isn't the same 
as the private sector, but it doesn't mean that we necessarily 
shouldn't adopt some of the same concepts.
    So with that said, obviously for the past several years we 
have seen that the United States has had significant 
shortcomings in cyber defense. From January 2020 to February 
2022, Russian state-sponsored actors hacked numerous defense 
contractors. May 2021, the Colonial Pipeline was the victim of 
ransomware. In June 2022, the FBI [Federal Bureau of 
Investigation], National Security Agency, and CISA 
[Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] announced 
that Chinese state-sponsored hackers targeted and breached 
major telecommunication companies, et cetera, et cetera. We 
could go on and on, right?
    Mr. Singer, you asked a very prudent question in your 
testimony when you talked about what would winning look like. I 
would like you to expand on that. And then the second thing is, 
you gave us 20 ideas, which are wonderful, but in all reality, 
if we can do one, that would probably be an accomplishment. So 
let's talk a minute about in your opinion, what would winning 
look like?
    Mr. Singer. Thank you for the question.
    I think to break it down in particular on the area that you 
are interested in, in terms of business practices in 
cybersecurity, let's imagine a future Internet of Things, 
because we have a core change happening from using the internet 
for communication to operating our systems. What would we like 
it to look like to be both--deliver what we need, but also 
secure. And a big problem right now is that we are repeating 
the mistakes that we made in the original design and lack of 
regulation for the internet. That is----
    Mrs. McClain. And I don't mean to keep interrupting, but I 
only have like 2 minutes, or 3 minutes, and the chairman is 
going to hold me to it.
    Mr. Singer. Yeah. Go for it. What winning would look like 
would be a secure----
    Mrs. McClain. So it is regulation?
    Mr. Singer. It would be in part regulation towards greater 
design security for Internet of Things systems, much like the 
approach that has been taken within the defense economy. We 
have parts of regulation of other aspects of critical 
infrastructure, but it is very spotty. So for example, banking 
cybersecurity is great right now. Energy, water systems, not.
    Mrs. McClain. So what is interesting to me is from the 
private sector, and I am going to tie the two together, is you 
know, we have to have a cyber defense officer. And if a 
business owner gets hacked, we pay a consequence. We are held 
accountable, right, to our own dime at our own expense.
    Can you speak to the lack of accountability or consequence? 
Do you think that plays a role?
    Mr. Singer. Very much so, yes. We have unclear 
accountability, and the result is for the most part, the costs 
fall upon the victim.
    Mrs. McClain. What would you say the accountability is? 
Because from my situation as an outsider looking in and from a 
lot of my constituents, it seems like the answer to that 
accountability is just throw more money at the problem. And 
until we get to the root cause of what these issues are, we 
can--it is like throwing mud at the wall.
    What, in your opinion, are the root causes of all of these 
failures? There might be 20 of them, but give me the one that 
if we could fix this one, it would give us the biggest bang for 
our buck?
    Mr. Singer. I think I would agree with, actually, my 
colleague, Mr. Brose. If we could get most bang for the buck 
right now in terms of future of war, it would be greater 
numbers of small unmanned systems and smart mines that would be 
able to deliver a greater defense to allies under threat like 
Taiwan.
    Mrs. McClain. And in your opinion, why don't we do that? 
Meaning, is it a priority? Is it a lack of funds? Is it 
accountability? Is it talent? Why don't we do it?
    Mr. Singer. I think it is a combination of the sunk-cost 
mentality. They aren't old programs. They would require new 
programs.
    Secondly, many of these systems, the profit margins aren't 
great unless you buy them in scale, and, bluntly, the defense 
economy right now doesn't trust the military to buy small cheap 
systems in scale.
    Finally, many of them are not, bluntly, sexy. Sea mines is 
on one hand been most lethal to U.S. Navy ships, but they are 
not the kind that you get great promotions from.
    Mrs. McClain. Thank you.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Mr. Moulton.
    Mr. Moulton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When we co-chaired, 
Mr. Banks and I, the Future of Defense Task Force, a couple of 
the interesting conclusions we came to is that essential to 
deterring and winning future conflicts, not just modernizing 
our military, that is pretty obvious. But also developing a 
next generation or a new generation of alliances and arms 
control. And I would like to focus on those for a second.
    We have seen how important the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization] alliance has been for decades of deterrence in 
Europe, and now winning the war in Ukraine. But we don't have a 
NATO alliance or a NATO-like alliance in the Pacific, which is 
of great concern as we look at the rise of China. Likewise, 
arms control has been effective at both deterring and putting 
us in a position to win future conflicts.
    The deterrence piece is probably pretty obvious. If you 
have well-balanced deterrents on both sides, a comparable 
number of nuclear capabilities between the United States and 
Russia, for example, you are less likely to get into a 
conflict. And obviously, by reducing arms overall, we try to 
reduce the likelihood of conflict to begin with.
    But we don't often think about the role that smart arms 
control can also play in setting us up to win a future 
conflict. If we limit the number of nuclear warheads that 
either side has, but ours are much more accurate, then we are 
giving ourselves an advantage.
    Can you speak for a minute to the role of arms control in 
preparing us to better deter and win a fight with AI-enabled 
systems? Because we have a lot of nuclear arms control. We 
haven't even discussed arms control when it comes to AI.
    Mr. Brose, perhaps I will start with you.
    Mr. Brose. So I think the problem is less about arms 
control at the moment. I think it is more about actual arms 
generation. I think the reason----
    Mr. Moulton. I understand that. But I would just like to 
focus on the arms control piece. Because here is my concern: If 
there are no rules for the use of AI, we are going to still 
constrain ourselves by our values but our adversaries may not, 
which gives them an inherent advantage. So how do we counter 
that?
    Mr. Brose. I think it really comes down to developing these 
types of capabilities with our values at the core of them. And 
I think a lot of times in the past where we have developed 
technologies, remotely piloted aircraft, we have made the 
mistake of being overly secretive about how we are thinking 
about them, how we are building them, how we are using them.
    I actually think in the development of these technologies 
being more transparent about the challenges, the brittleness, 
the ways in which we are building these and developing and 
fielding these technologies with our values at the core of them 
will provide us the moral high ground. It will give us greater 
leverage and greater kind of public standing to make demands of 
others, primarily countries that don't share our values.
    I guess the thing that I would just underscore is, even if 
we do all of that, I am not terribly confident that they are 
going to follow suit. I think at the end of the day, this 
becomes something where we have to have the capability such 
that there is even something to be able to discuss. I think you 
have already agreed with that.
    Mr. Moulton. Yeah. Of course.
    Admiral Montgomery, do you have any comments on this?
    Admiral Montgomery. So I think where we are looking at this 
closest now is what kind of agreement--what kind of way--how do 
we proceed with man-in-the-loop, man-on-the-loop, and man-out-
of-the-loop as you bring AI technology into our unmanned craft, 
and how do we talk to the Russians and Chinese about it. I 
think it is fine to talk to them. In cybersecurity, we looked 
at this and we found that there was just no way to verify, and 
therefore it became very hard to trust our discussions with the 
Russians that we had on this.
    And what I would say is, we operate with man-in-the-loop. 
We design systems to man-on-the-loop. We probably need to 
design systems to man-out-of-the-loop, have that capability and 
capacity. So that if we understand that our adversaries are 
operating man-out-of-the-loop, we are able the to do it. 
Because the OOTL [out-of-the-loop] loop--not to use another 
acronym--but the decision-making cycle for man-out-of-the-loop 
is so much faster than on-the-loop and in-the-loop, that if we 
have not developed those weapon systems and sensor systems, we 
will not succeed.
    Mr. Moulton. Mr. Singer--we are running out of time, but I 
would appreciate your comments for the record on this. I want 
to get to another question quickly.
    [The information referred to can be found in the Appendix 
on page 99.]
    Mr. Moulton. Admiral Montgomery brought up the idea of 
having an independent cyber command.
    Mr. Brose, do you think that that is a good idea?
    Mr. Brose. An independent cyber service, I think is 
definitely something that needs to be looked at. I think that 
the reasons that the Congress led the creation of the Space 
Force are just as prevalent, if not more, inside of the cyber 
capabilities and the cyber services. It is definitely something 
that needs to be seriously considered.
    Mr. Moulton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. And before I recognize one of our 
members for a question, I want to recognize that the ranking 
member, Mr. Khanna, has showed up. I know it was his wife's 
birthday. So I have gotten her a birthday present for you to 
open. I am sure it is exactly what she wanted. And feel free to 
open it as we ask questions.
    Mr. Khanna. I thought I was in trouble, Mr. Chair, for 
being non-punctual, but you had advance notice.
    Mr. Gallagher. No. You worked with us, and Mr. Moulton 
covered you very well. So, thank you, Mr. Moulton.
    Now, I am going to recognize one of our new members, 
Congressman LaLota from Long Island, who is a U.S. Naval 
Academy grad, a surface warfare officer [SWO] who has deployed 
to 20 countries, and most importantly, his brother is a Marine 
sniper; is that correct?
    Mr. LaLota. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Gallagher. Great. Well, we are very excited to have 
your wealth of experience on the committee. I now recognize you 
for 5 minutes.
    Mr. LaLota. Thanks, Chairman, and thanks for hosting this 
very important meeting on this topic. And to you gentlemen, we 
appreciate your insight, your expertise, but more than anything 
else, your dedication in this very important warfare area to 
help defeat and deter our Nation's adversaries. Very much 
appreciate that insight.
    Admiral, appreciate your service. I read that you were a 
SWO as well, and Mr. DeLuzio on the other side who is going to 
return to us as well, has our common background too; so it'd be 
nice to have a chat with you.
    But specifically to you, Admiral, in looking at the 
readiness of the cyber mission force, how far back does this 
issue go? Has it improved since the cyber mission forces marked 
full operational capability in 2018, Admiral?
    Admiral Montgomery. Thanks. That is a great question 
because really to the best of my knowledge, readiness has been 
and remains a problem for the cyber mission force. You know, 
before reaching FOC, full operational capability, we kind of 
all had a widespread belief that once they reached--the CMF got 
there, they would then burn down the readiness problem over the 
years. They would only get better. Well, that has not happened. 
We reached FOC almost 5 years ago, and we know that assumption 
didn't pan out.
    Readiness today is relatively the same as it was and then, 
so now, people come to us and say, well, look it is really 
about metrics. If you just understood--you know, it is hard to 
do metrics in cyberspace. The metrics are wrong. I don't agree 
with that. I think Cyber Command under Admiral Rogers and then 
General Nakasone has absolutely laid out some good cyber 
metrics. And the truth is, the services aren't meeting them.
    It is not always a priority. It is sometimes a priority, 
not always a priority. And when you don't prioritize cyber--the 
train, maintain, equip functions--it won't function. And 
really, it is unreasonable to believe that pursuing the same 
course of action for a sixth year in a row is going to get us 
healthier.
    Mr. LaLota. I appreciate that, Admiral.
    My second and last question is for Mr. Brose. Sir, in 
hearing your testimony, it reminds me of the wise words of our 
Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gilday: ``Get Real, Get 
Better.'' I especially appreciate your money-ball analogy. You 
also mention in your testimony how technologies are changing 
the characters of war, the technologies such as AI, our 
autonomous systems, and robotics.
    My question is: How would you suggest that we best 
integrate these new technologies with our current and 
traditional weapons, and if you have enough time, would you 
recommend prioritizing these new technologies over traditional 
weapon systems?
    Mr. Brose. Yeah. Thank you for the question.
    I think when it comes to the integration, much of that is 
going to be a software problem. This a solvable problem. Modern 
software is more than capable of figuring out how to pass 
information to and receive information from military systems.
    In terms of integrating from more of an operational and 
organizational perspective, I don't think we have even begun to 
scratch the surface of that, and I think the problem is because 
we don't actually have enough of these capabilities to even 
begin to wrestle with the kind of question that you are posing.
    So I guess my contention would be, first and foremost, we 
have to start fielding these types of systems that are 
absolutely available now. We are not talking about, you know, 
photon torpedos and cloaking devices. The challenge is, I think 
in the government we tend to make the easy problems so hard 
that we never actually get to the hard problems, which are the 
ones that you are asking, which is how are we actually going to 
organize ourselves and fight with these different kinds of 
capabilities, primarily autonomous systems.
    Admiral Montgomery. Can I jump in on that for 1 second?
    Mr. LaLota. Absolutely.
    Admiral Montgomery. I have to tell you, one of the issues 
is that the services do not procure munitions in the right 
levels. So as we develop a new system--I will give you one good 
example--something called the long-range antiship cruise 
missile. Every war game I play--I play about a dozen a year--as 
the Blue Force commander--we need about 1,200--let's say 1,000 
or 1,200, these are unclassified war games. The Navy and Air 
Force have 240 right now.
    We're building--the Defense Department's input every year 
has been 38 to 50. Congress has bumped it up to 75. If you do 
the math on that, the Department won't get us there until 2045. 
So this is the most critical weapon in the warfight with China, 
and we buy it at absolutely minimum production rates at the 
factory.
    And the reason we do that is we cut munitions production--
every service puts in a hundred percent of the munitions they 
need at the beginning of the budget cycle, and it is the bill 
payer every budget cycle. With China, it is the long-range 
antiship cruise missile and the SM-6 [Standard Missile 6] 
missile, and a few others. With Russia and Ukraine, we saw it 
was the Javelin and Stinger. We burned through 8 years of 
Javelin production in 9 months of combat. That is unacceptable 
at munitions production rates.
    Mr. LaLota. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. I want to recognize my first boss 
in the Marine Corps, Bert Steele, is in the audience. I just 
did a double-take. So if you need any kompromat about a young 
precocious Second Lieutenant Gallagher. He is right there. How 
are you, sir?
    I am now thrilled to recognize another new member of the 
committee with an incredible background, another New Yorker, 
Pat Ryan, who is a West Point grad, a Georgetown grad, two 
tours in Iraq, worked at Palantir, a wealth of experience.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes, Mr. Ryan.
    Mr. Ryan. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and it is an honor to be on 
the committee with all of you all. And really, really 
appreciate you taking the time and your insights.
    One question, and ask you to really try to push on this, to 
your money-ball approach, which I love, Mr. Brose, what should 
we get rid of? We always talk about what we should add. To push 
you all a little bit, can you think of one or two maybe legacy 
programs or anything that comes to your mind? I know it is a 
controversial question, but we never ask it. What--even a 
smaller thing that we could get rid of to help free up dollars 
and energy and resources for the good recommendations you are 
making.
    Mr. Brose, start with you.
    Mr. Brose. I think there is plenty of opportunities to take 
a look at. I think there is force structure we need to consider 
in terms of the number of people, how large the services are 
going to need to be, because at the end of the day, people tend 
to be the most expensive investment in the Department.
    I think there are a lot of legacy systems in terms of 
surface combatants in the Navy, sort of infantry fighting 
vehicles in the Army, fourth-generation fighter aircraft that 
don't have the legs or the signature to be able to do the kinds 
of things that we would have to do in a high-end fight.
    But here too, I think the challenge is--I would focus more 
on the things that we need to start to get into the hands of 
our operators, because unless you start to give people new 
tools, I would not be in favor of taking the tools that they 
have away from them.
    And I think that tends to be the challenge here, which is 
we focus on the things we need to cut, which is totally 
something we need to do. The problem is that the future never 
shows up. The new things never show up, so people can be 
forgiven for wanting to hold onto the things that they have.
    Admiral Montgomery. I do agree with Chris Brose that we 
have to look at troop levels. I think the Army has settled out 
around 450,000. We ought to keep them there. There was a Future 
of the Army study in 2016 where the Army said they needed to be 
450,000. They don't like to discuss that in public, but that is 
the history of it.
    The second thing I would do is adopt what Commandant Berger 
said when he first took over the Marine Corps, which is reduce 
large amphibious ships from 31 down to 21, and add in light 
amphibious warfare ships, LAWs. He has since been dragged off 
of that by former retired--by retired Marine Corps generals and 
shipbuilding interests. But the reality is amphibious ships are 
not a priority in a conflict in China.
    I wrote our war plans for 4 years. I wrote our war plans 
for Europe for 2 years. They are not a priority there. They are 
a priority for Korea. Korea is not our number one priority. So 
if you are going to have to de-prioritize something, I would 
take that down. And I would do everything else Commandant 
Berger said in his re-imagining of the Marine Corps because it 
was fantastic.
    As a Navy officer, I would say I wouldn't do anything to 
the Air Force. Honestly, the Air Force is the critical element 
in the conflict with China right now, and they are 
underresourced for the mission they have.
    Mr. Ryan. Mr. Singer, anything to add?
    Mr. Singer. I would just add I think the focus shouldn't be 
simply on which systems, but rather the design, the 
organizational structure, the wire diagram. Basically, we have 
unit designs that primarily date from between the 1940s to the 
1980s, and a Pentagon and command and control structure that 
reflects military reforms in Prussia in the 1800s.
    So if you updated those, you would actually get a lot of 
the personnel gains that would save the money that you want and 
it [would] more reflect 21st century needs.
    Mr. Ryan. Thank you. And I appreciate the nuance of 
understanding that we'd have things to add that would be more 
thoughtful. And thank you for that point, Mr. Brose.
    Second question--I know we are running low on time--but the 
idea of talent, mindset, and what we need to do, sort of, as a 
whole of Nation, particularly looking at cyber forces, but in 
general, new ways of thinking and talent, any specific--I know 
that is a broad question, but any specific thoughts, 
recommendations there?
    My district, proudly home to West Point. What can we be 
doing at our military academies, in our--even just our schools 
and community colleges to get at the cyber talent and other 
talent issues; with 27 seconds. Sorry.
    Mr. Brose. Just very briefly, I think the key talent 
challenge is going to be having the sufficient amount of 
technical talent in the government, in the Department of 
Defense or advising them, to be able to make informed and 
intelligent decisions about what is going to become--what is 
already becoming a highly technical force in terms of these 
types of emerging and advanced technologies in particular.
    You know, if you are looking at it, and you can't sort of 
call balls and strikes and differentiate what is good from what 
is not, the government is going to make a lot of bad decisions. 
So having technical people in the room who are capable of 
helping the government make those decisions or make those 
decisions themselves I think is key.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentleman's time has expired. We will 
have to come back to the question of talent in the second 
round.
    Next up, a Texan, a ``Domer'' [Notre Dame alumnus], a 
national champion, a man who has ran seven marathons on seven 
continents in 7 days; is that right?
    Mr. Fallon. When I did that, I was as skinny as Mr. Gaetz.
    Mr. Gallagher. An Air Force officer, Mr. Fallon.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the 
witnesses.
    Mr. Brose, in my opinion, the future of warfare is going to 
be defined by innovative capabilities that we possess and how 
they compete against potential adversaries' capabilities, of 
course. Under the auspices of the Under Secretary of Defense 
for Research and Engineering, there is no less than seven 
different entities generally defined that are responsible for 
innovation within the DOD [Department of Defense].
    With these entities like the defense advanced research 
agencies, there is some, you know, renowned breakthroughs. But 
still, there is a considerable amount of wasted time and effort 
and taxpayer dollars, et cetera, through the notoriously 
bureaucratic system. You know it seems like every time that the 
``good idea fairy'' visits the Pentagon, you know, a new office 
is born, and a colonel gets his wings.
    What can we do about the duplicative offices that are 
packed with bureaucrats for everything? It comes as no surprise 
to me that we struggle to bridge the ``valley of death'' in 
system designed like this. So through your experience, how do 
you think the Department can best streamline the efforts to 
capture innovation in timely manner moving forward?
    Mr. Brose. Thank you for the question.
    And I think you are spot on. I would actually turn it back 
to this subcommittee to say, I think from my experience in 
government and out of government, there is a crying need for 
greater oversight, exactly to your point. You know, we are 
spending billions of dollars on research and development, new 
types of technologies, some of which are duplicative, some of 
which the commercial industry is already 10 years ahead on. 
Some year, some have, you know, no path to making an 
operational difference.
    I think the first place that I would start is sitting down 
and actually going into real detail over, what are we spending, 
what are we actually working to develop, and using the powers 
that this committee and this Congress has, beginning to make 
some of the hard choices that, you know, perhaps the Department 
is not positioned or incentivized to make. And I think, you 
know, in so doing, you know, you can begin to start to create 
patterns of behavior on the executive branch where they may 
begin doing more of this themselves. But there is a desperate 
need to rationalize what we are spending and what we are doing 
on advanced technology and start really focusing on what are 
going to be the priorities that we need to get fielded fast.
    Admiral Montgomery. Can I jump on that?
    Mr. Fallon. Yeah. Please.
    Admiral Montgomery. First, I would bottle up whatever the 
Marine Corps has going on, because--I will give you two 
systems, and they are acronyms, I apologize because I don't 
know them. The first is MRIC [Medium-Range Intercept 
Capability], where they took an Iron Dome system, their G/ATOR 
[Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar] radar, and the existing all-
domain command and control, and created a short-range air 
defense system that has eluded the U.S. Army for over a decade.
    And then the second is they took a naval Standard Missile, 
paired it on top of a HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket 
System] launcher, and got themselves an anti-ship cruise 
missile system that can deploy all around the first island 
chain. Both of those were innovations that started down at the 
major/lieutenant colonel level and worked their way up through 
the system and succeeded. I mentioned earlier the Harpoon 
system, where the Ukrainians adapted that in 2 months.
    They also ran out of SA-6 missiles for their Buk launchers, 
and grabbed our RIM-7 Sidewinders [missiles] and installed them 
in 1 week and began shooting down Russian cruise missiles.
    Again, the Army has been working for 10 years on a system 
called IFPC, Indirect Fire Protection Capability. And it seems 
to me that we need to take this innovation that starts at the 
ground level and move that up because that is where you save 
money, and that is where you get real capability.
    Mr. Fallon. Go ahead.
    Mr. Singer. Two specific ways that you could accomplish 
that. And really what you are after is that you don't want to 
scale innovation initiatives within the Pentagon. You want to 
scale them out at the edge.
    And two very specific ways the committee could support 
this. The first is one of the most successful organizational 
efforts of this is Task Force 59, which is a naval task force 
out in the Middle East that is actually working and testing 
with unmanned systems in cooperations with the private sector 
and allies. It has been a great success in the Middle East. 
Scale it across the regions. Scale it across the services.
    The second type of organizational structure to get after 
this is some units have--they are basically copies of the Shark 
Tank model, where it is you are taking bottom-up ideas from 
junior troops and rewarding them. The 18th Airborne Corps has 
one. Replicate those across the force. That is where you want 
scale.
    Admiral Montgomery. I can give you one other one, sir.
    Mr. Fallon. Sure.
    Admiral Montgomery. We had the Strategic Capabilities 
Office--or Special Capabilities Office run by Will Roper, where 
he basically was read into all the SAP programs, the Special 
Access Programs, for every service, and all the normal 
programs. And he was able to marry up systems, take peanut 
butter and chocolate and make a Reese's Cup that we couldn't do 
with all those nine standard research and development 
organizations you mentioned. So continuing to support that is 
critical.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Next up, the man from Massachusetts 9, whose district 
includes Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod, correct?
    Mr. Keating. Yes.
    Mr. Gallagher. Not quite Green Bay, Wisconsin, but nice 
nonetheless.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you. It also includes Joint Base Cape 
Cod and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, UMass [University 
of Massachusetts] in Dartmouth that has contracts with the Navy 
Undersea [Naval Undersea Warfare Center], and a lot of things 
we are talking about, the research is going on right in my 
district. Thank you for being here.
    Just looking in the mirror first before we just look at 
you, I would like at your own fear of answering the question, 
Congress, continuing resolutions, our inability to deal with 
the regular order, appropriations, even when we do it in House 
side, it goes nowhere in the Senate. I mean, these are 
stumbling blocks too in our own [inaudible].
    Can you comment on how they are harmful? Our inability to 
do this, I mean, with the continuing resolutions for everyone 
else listening here, it locks us into what we are doing 
yesterday, and we can't go forward. And this has been going on 
for a long time. Can you comment on how that is one more 
barrier that we face?
    Mr. Brose. Thank you, sir. And you are spot on. Continuing 
resolutions and appropriations not passed on time are 
absolutely devastating for national defense. They are 
devastating for any company that is trying to actually plan and 
forecast what it is going to do. It is devastating for program 
offices that are trying to rationally spend money in efficient 
ways. But I would argue that they are absolutely worst of all 
for the kinds of nontraditional, emerging technology, the 
builders and providers of those systems, because they don't 
have an enormous amount of programs of record to fall back on. 
All of their things are new.
    So if you are locked in the past, past requirements, the 
past budget, you are de facto not moving these types of things 
forward. So while it is harmful to everyone, it is most harmful 
to exactly the kinds of technologies and capabilities and the 
people building them that I think this subcommittee is focused 
on and this hearing is focused on.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you for re-enforcing that from your 
perspective too. I think it is a direct impediment to what we 
are talking about trying to achieve here in this morning's 
hearing.
    Mr. Brose. And if I could say just very briefly, I am 
highly confident that the Chinese military is getting its money 
on time.
    Mr. Keating. That might be one great thing of--that is 
about maybe the only thing good about their system perhaps.
    We talked about Russia and Ukraine, examples of the 
learning going on. And one of them, you know, within days of 
the invasion, SpaceX provided Starlink dishes to augment the 
country's, you know, battered internet system that was in 
place. And then right after that, the Russians tried to jam the 
system. But Starlink's response was swift and efficient, even I 
think one of the DOD directors said the response was eye 
watering.
    Again, is that an example of what we are talking about this 
morning, that our ability--our need to really be more agile, 
make determinations in the defense arena the way we often see 
in the private arena?
    Admiral Montgomery. I agree.
    The important thing to look at there is what happened 
beforehand, which was the Russian--you know, people seem to 
think Russia didn't do anything effective in cyber. They had a 
fairly successful first night. They took down Viasat. They took 
down, as you said, the internet, but more importantly the 
command and control system for the Ukrainian army. If Starlink 
had not been put in there, they would have really struggled in 
that first week when you saw that lumbering line of tanks 
heading towards Kyiv without that command and control, so that 
is critical.
    But you are absolutely right. The agility in the Starlink 
system says a lot about where we need to go. And I think you 
will have the opportunity to really--to advocate for a thick 
belt of low altitude--a LEO [low Earth orbit] constellation 
that provides--that can provide that kind of persistent 
communication support to our forces in the same way that 
Starlink has to the Ukrainian forces. And I do think it is 
critical that we talk to our allies and partners about having 
those contracts ahead of time, with whichever private sector 
company, so they are ready to switch to a redundant reliable 
system after an attack.
    Mr. Keating. And I think, as we look forward to the threats 
from China and Taiwan, the lessons there that are learned are 
going to be extremely important. So thank you for this hearing. 
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this hearing. Thank the 
ranking member for having this hearing.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentleman yields.
    Next up, another new member of the committee with a wealth 
of experience. A Marine pilot, helicopter pilot, a Navy 
commander, emergency physician, and most importantly the proud 
custodian of my pullup bar, which is now in your office, Mr. 
McCormick--Dr. McCormick. Excuse me.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you, sir. And we are enjoying that 
pullup bar which frames my desk right now. Great picture taking 
availability in my office if you want to stop by some time.
    You know, I had all these great questions and the Rear 
Admiral Montgomery threw me off when he said the Air Force is 
the key, hurting my heart as a Marine and hearing that from a 
fellow naval force person. I am curious, though, when we were 
in Command and Staff [College of Naval Command and Staff], we 
always said the same thing right after World War II, that the 
Air Force was the key.
    When we are talking about this particular theater in the 
Chinese/Taiwan Straits and so forth, I would hope that most of 
us understand if we go to a full-scale war, of course, the Air 
Force is going to be central to our strategy and tactics. The 
problem is we are probably not going to be--I hope to God we 
are not a full scale war, so I don't think the Air Force will 
be as strategic--or, tactically important as maybe you are 
indicating because they won't be engaged directly.
    In other words, we will be relying on Taiwan deploying 
their own forces that we have hopefully pre-positioned, which 
gets back to my main point. Without disclosing any classified 
information, how much do we have pre-positioned in Taiwan?
    How much capability do we have out there already ready to 
deploy? I love the ideas of using the low-tech or I guess 
somewhat low-tech smart mines. I think it is brilliant.
    Once again, Command and Staff talked about that, using 
these low-tech things to take out high-tech targets. What other 
kind of opportunities do we have out there as far as weapon 
systems that we can use at a reduced cost to take out higher 
cost weapon systems that take a lot more time to produce, if 
you would comment on that.
    Admiral Montgomery. So first--to answer your first 
question, we don't have weapons stowed in Taiwan. In the last 
National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA], you approved--you 
authorized up to $300 million a year to be appropriated for 
Taiwan specific munitions. The appropriators, which happened 
about 7 days later, appropriated $0. In fact, almost all of the 
Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, which you all pushed through 
the NDAA, ended up not being appropriated in the Consolidated 
Appropriations Act that passed 8 days later.
    So the answer to the question is we have none there. We do 
have significant munitions in Guam, Japan, and elsewhere in the 
AOR [area of responsibility]. But we don't have them in Taiwan. 
I think we need to. We have been pushing for something similar 
to what we have war reserve supply Israel, where we store 
munitions jointly with the Israelis in Israel for a future 
conflict. And we are, in fact, drawing on them for Ukraine 
right now. We should be doing the same thing in Taiwan.
    Dr. McCormick. How much easier would it be for us to deploy 
that when something goes down, it doesn't seem like it would 
be--I am not optimistic we would be able to deploy things from 
Guam and Israel and other places to get to Taiwan once the 
Chinese get engaged.
    Admiral Montgomery. One hundred percent I agree with you, 
even in a blockade--which as you mentioned is probably more of 
a naval than an Air Force thing--but in a blockade or invasion 
scenario, the United States is not going to be able to resupply 
Taiwan. So Taiwan has to have the munitions they need. And if 
we are somehow able to get the 12th Marine Regiment over there 
from Okinawa, which is a great new initiative from the 
Commandant [of the Marine Corps], they are going to need to 
have--the Naval Strike Missiles will already need to be stowed 
there because we are not going to be able to resupply those 
Marines.
    Dr. McCormick. I will say you redeemed yourself, sir, with 
the 2004, 2005 Marine comment of being ingenuitive, and ahead 
of the Army, which I agree on also.
    We talked about--it is interesting Elon Musk always talks 
about I have a million ideas, it is what can be executed that 
matters. And you mentioned Starlite [Starlink]. What about the 
integration of the high-tech and the low-tech stuff? What is 
achievable as far as something, the most bang for the buck when 
we talk about our technologies. Not things that take years to 
develop, than when we have something that may happen within a 
year, maybe within 5 years, it is almost inevitable in this 
case in my opinion. I am worried about how fast we can deploy 
something, how fast we can ramp up when we start to gear up for 
that sort of thing.
    What is the best bang for the buck?
    Mr. Singer. Rapidly, first, counter-drones systems. We are 
not talking about a photon. In fact, China is working on them 
as well right now. I have an article out today on it. That 
would provide great defense for both our allies and for U.S. 
forces. Second, the naval smart mine aspect, really cheap, very 
easy to create.
    I just want to answer real quickly your prior question. The 
key issue for the committee to explore given the dilemma that 
we talked about is logistics supply in contested areas. We have 
redesigned the Marine Corps to deploy into these areas. We 
haven't figured out the logistics for it, same thing for 
Taiwan. So the more that you can invest in contested logistics, 
which is another area that doesn't require high-end solutions.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentlemen's time has expired.
    Next up, from New Jersey, a Rhodes Scholar with experience 
at USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], the 
Pentagon, [Department of] State, and a member of the Select 
Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Mr. Kim.
    Mr. Kim. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Thank you to the three of you for joining us.
    Mr. Singer, I want to start with you. I found your 
testimony, your written testimony, very interesting. I also 
like to kind of think through scenarios and try to understand 
and parse that through.
    And, I guess, when I am thinking about what is a potential 
lead-up to another conflict, I am often thinking about what is 
the will of the American people to be able to engage in this, 
what are the needs for our own protection, and how would this 
potential lead-up to a conflict or this very intense deterrence 
situation affect our own security and our own protection.
    And so cyber is one of the places that kind of keeps me up 
at night, because it feels like it is one of those places 
where, when you work through the scenarios, you can see how 
this is a place where you could see some kind of blowback 
towards our homeland or towards the American people.
    So I think about that in terms of the scenario you were 
raising, talking about the challenges that were incurred upon--
on the Chinese government, the CCP, but I worry about using 
cyber as some sort of attack to be able to create conditions 
for the American people that would be difficult, whether that 
is coming after our grid or coming after GPS [Global 
Positioning System] or other things like that.
    So I guess my question to you is, to what extent does this 
need to be sort of an equal part of this strategy, not just in 
terms of thinking through how this is something that we do, 
whether for the defense of Taiwan or some other aspect, but 
hardening it here at home?
    And I was kind of intrigued, because one of your points, if 
I remember correctly, was about creating digital literacy 
programs, for instance, that seemed like it was kind of getting 
at this point of, like, how do we raise that foundation of 
awareness for the American people about this. But it feels like 
there is more there that we need to do on top of that. So if 
you can expand on that some more.
    Mr. Singer. Thank you. It is a great question.
    Rapidly, two answers for you.
    The first is, in terms of traditional cyber attacks, much 
of the focus has been on critical infrastructure in the power 
grid area, not enough in the other parts of critical 
infrastructure, for example, water systems and the like.
    And as I wrote about and spoke about in the testimony, in 
particular, Internet of Things systems that we are currently 
not baking security in; that is, the ability to cause physical 
damage through digital means. And the more that we can do on 
that, the more secure we will make our Nation.
    Second, I was part of a project working with Northern 
Command where their experts identified top scenarios that 
concerned them in homeland threats in terms of everything from 
nuclear, bio threats, extremism, great power conflict.
    And what was interesting, in each and every scenario, it 
was not merely the nuclear threat; every single time, their 
experts and the team that we put with them identified 
information operations as making it worse.
    And, unfortunately, in the United States right now, we are 
not doing a great job of defending ourselves against 
information operations. And one of the keys that our Baltic 
allies have learned is what are known as cyber citizenship 
programs, digital literacy programs, where it is not 
censorship, it is training youth and members of the military to 
deal with the other part of the cyber threat that targets them 
every single day.
    Mr. Kim. Yeah. No, that is a really important part, and I 
think that is something that can bring out a little bit more 
holistic approach in the way we think about it, not just in 
terms of our own DODIN [Department of Defense Information 
Network] systems, and things like that.
    But this question of--deterrence requires not just 
capabilities, but it requires resolve. And I worry about just 
sort of the resolve of the American people. If we start to feel 
squeezed, if we start to feel some of this here at home, what 
does that mean for our resolve abroad?
    One last point I want to raise is you kind of mentioned how 
other countries have moved forward with other types of programs 
of this. You also mentioned, as part of your statement, about 
trying to make sure that we can align U.S. cyber rules and 
regulations with other major allies.
    I wanted to get a sense, does that include this idea of 
privacy-enhanced tech and AI? It is sort of another angle of 
how we look after the American people as we start to scale up.
    Mr. Singer. Yes. And I think it points to a larger 
mentality, which is that, just as much as we seek to aid other 
democracies, we should be learning from their best practices 
and trying to implement them here so that we can have cohesion.
    And that is an example of one area, the digital literacy, 
learning from what the Baltics have done successfully, et 
cetera, and then trying to replicate them across our allies 
like in a Taiwan or whatnot.
    Mr. Kim. Okay. Great. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentleman yields.
    Next up, from Florida's First Congressional District, a 
humble country lawyer who represents the Blue Angels, Mr. 
Gaetz.
    Mr. Gaetz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    One of the frustrations that we have had on the Armed 
Services Committee has been the gestation period from R&D 
[research and development] to actually getting these cyber 
capabilities to our cyber warriors. And one of the things that 
has been presented to us as a way to bridge that long gestation 
period is the Defense Innovation Unit, the DIU.
    I was wondering if any of you had a perspective on how we 
ought to think about resourcing that and whether or not that is 
a way to get capabilities into the hands of cyber warriors 
faster.
    Mr. Brose. Thank you, sir.
    I do have a lot of experience with the DIU, both in 
government and out of government, and I think that it does a 
terrific job for what it was established to do. And there are 
many other organizations focused on, similarly, kind of 
reducing the barriers to entry to get these kinds of more 
mature, kind of commercially developed advanced capabilities 
into the Department of Defense.
    I am all in favor of that, and I think anything that you 
can do to encourage that is good.
    What I would contend is that the bigger challenge that I 
would recommend the committee focus on is what happens after 
that.
    So when you reduce these barriers and you bring in small 
companies doing small things on small contracts for small 
amounts of money, and you have hundreds of them, that is good.
    Now we need to go through and sort of systematically 
determine, what is the best 10 percent that needs to get large-
scale production contracts to really make the kind of impact at 
scale that you are talking about.
    That apparatus or process does not exist in the Department, 
and it is something that I would say is ripe for congressional 
oversight.
    Mr. Gaetz. I also--go ahead, Admiral Montgomery, if you had 
a perspective.
    Admiral Montgomery. No, I agree. And I am disappointed that 
Mike Brown left leadership of the DIU. I think his personal 
leadership had a lot to do with its success.
    So we will have to see what happens over time with that. 
Sometimes these small organizations can be very personality-
driven.
    Mr. Gaetz. That is good feedback.
    Another concern I have in the cyber sphere is the threat 
presented by these DJI drones. I have seen report after report 
from the Department of Homeland Security about the capabilities 
of these drones to be able to collect intelligence, to transmit 
intelligence, and ultimately to impair our cyber defense 
infrastructure.
    How do you think we ought to think about these DJI drones?
    Admiral Montgomery. I will step in there. And I will tell 
you, I was sorely disappointed that the American Security Drone 
Act dropped out of the last National Defense Authorization Act.
    It makes no sense that the Department of Defense has 
recognized that these drones are unacceptable in our system and 
removed them and replaced them at some cost, yet other Federal 
agencies, intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies, 
are not being compelled to follow suit.
    We know that these systems can communicate back to the 
servers of their host company in China, and we know that those 
companies can be compelled by the Chinese intelligence agencies 
to provide information.
    If you had asked me as the J3 [Director of Operations] at 
PACOM [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] what would be my dream 
scenario when I woke up in the morning, it would be that U.S. 
drones were flying up and down all Chinese critical 
infrastructure every night and sending photos and information 
back to my team so that I could easily target.
    Well, U.S. critical infrastructure companies are buying DJI 
and other Chinese drones at about 80 percent of market share, 
and they are flying up and down our pipelines, our electrical 
power grids, our water systems, and they have the opportunity 
to transmit that information, and the Chinese intelligence has 
the opportunity to request it.
    Mr. Gaetz. And oftentimes are these DJI drones not provided 
to our local and State law enforcement agencies at incredibly 
low cost?
    Admiral Montgomery. They are. And in both Florida, as I am 
sure you have experienced, and Texas, we have seen that, and in 
Norfolk and San Diego. And I can't imagine what a Chinese drone 
would detect flying in the San Diego and Norfolk areas on a 
daily basis while doing legitimate law enforcement work, but 
also grabbing a good picture of everyone who is at every pier.
    Mr. Gaetz. Yeah. It is deeply frustrating to think that our 
own law enforcement agencies are almost being utilized, 
essentially being utilized by the Chinese Communist Party to 
engage in this activity.
    So, Mr. Chairman, I know you have got a lot of hats you 
wear on this subcommittee and also working to chair the Select 
Committee on China, and I would suggest that the National 
Defense Authorization Act would be a wonderful place to nestle 
some drone doctrine for defense against this Chinese 
capability.
    Appreciate the testimony.
    And I am still waiting to see who in Washington is 
defending these drones. I don't know why that legislation 
dropped out of the NDAA. Maybe they will perk up at some time.
    Mr. Gallagher. Well, they actually used--they had a pretty 
robust lobbying effort that used law enforcement officials, if 
memory serves, to go into Members' office and say----
    Mr. Gaetz. Now we know better.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yeah.
    Mr. Gaetz. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. I share your desire to pass the DJI ban in 
the next NDAA.
    I now recognize the--I already said a bunch of nice things 
about you when you weren't here, Ro.
    Mr. Khanna. I heard. You don't have to redo it.
    Mr. Gallagher. I drew attention to our op-ed when we were 
freshmen Members of Congress together.
    But the ranking member of the subcommittee, Mr. Khanna.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And let me just say the 
respect that I have for you, both as a leading thinker on how 
to make the Department of Defense more innovative and how to 
make sure we have a modern national security strategy, but also 
the way you have conducted this committee, reaching out to the 
wealth of knowledge we have on both sides.
    We have a really stacked committee with some of the most 
experienced and thoughtful people on both sides, and you have 
really run it in a very bipartisan way, in an idea-focused way. 
So I respect how you are doing it, and I am excited to work 
with you in these next 2 years.
    Mr. Brose, I couldn't have agreed more with one of the 
things you said, which was that we are not going to need more 
traditional ships, aircraft, and other platforms as much, 
because spending ever more money on multibillion-dollar 
capabilities that China can overwhelm with multimillion-dollar 
weapons is a losing game. And the money-ball military idea was 
certainly an interesting one to me.
    And this question is for all three of you. What can we do 
to overcome this valley of death? I mean, Michael Brown has 
talked about how now most of the innovation on the critical 
technologies is happening in the commercial space, not in the 
military space, a sort of reversal of the creation of the 
internet and GPS, where it was the Department of Defense 
innovating and then proliferating out. Now we need it adopted.
    The problem isn't the startups. It is often that the DOD 
doesn't have the budget, then, to acquire it, adopt it, 
actually use the technology.
    And in some cases--I was talking to Pat Gelsinger and 
others--the semiconductors, even though we are leading in it, 
China actually is adopting it faster in terms of some of the 
technologies.
    And so my question for you, all three of you, is do you 
think we need a different position under the acquisition and 
system DAS [Deputy Assistant Secretary]? What can we do to get 
the budgets and adoption faster?
    Mr. Brose. Thank you very much for the question, sir.
    I have thought a lot about this, worked on this in 
government and out of government, and I guess what I would tell 
you is the conclusion that I have come to is that we are wildly 
overthinking this problem.
    I think that the answer basically comes down to we need to 
buy more of the things that we say are important and that we 
say are priorities. And that is the thing that doesn't happen. 
It is not necessarily the fault of the acquisition system. It 
is the entirety of the system that is not incentivized or 
prepared to really kind of incentivize disruption.
    Mr. Khanna. Just to push you a little bit on that. The 
Pentagon budget is sort of 5 years in advance, right, or 4 or 5 
years in advance, and a lot of these technologies are 1 to 2 
years. How do we sort of structurally overcome this?
    Mr. Brose. So I would say in the next month, it seems, you 
will see a budget request from the Pentagon that, yes, was put 
into concrete somewhere between 5 and 18 months ago.
    Congress has the budget authority to determine what is 
actually going to be bought, what are actually going to be the 
funded priorities of the Department of Defense. You have the 
ability to readjust that consistent with laws and other things 
that, obviously, you need to abide by.
    I would say that the technology is there. The authorities 
exist. They don't need to be recreated or built anew. We are 
spending over $800 billion a year on defense, and billions of 
that is being reprogrammed with congressional approval in the 
year of execution.
    I think many of the capabilities that I talk about in my 
testimony, that we are talking about here today, don't actually 
cost a lot of money in the broader scheme of things. They do 
need to cost more money than we are currently spending on them. 
But they are also quite mature technologies that are ready to 
be bought at scale.
    And if we start buying them at scale they are going to get 
better faster. You are going to see the kinds of companies that 
are building them become more capable. You are going to see 
others rush in and investment behind it to do more and 
encourage more of this activity.
    My basic contention, I guess, sir, is our system, 
unfortunately, looks too much like China at its worst and not 
enough like America at its best in terms of really getting 
capitalism and market creation into this part of the Department 
where it actually can exist.
    You are not going to have markets for aircraft carriers. 
You can absolutely have them for AI-enabled weapons, ubiquitous 
sensors, and distributed space constellations.
    Mr. Khanna. Mr. Montgomery, did you have--I know my time 
is----
    Admiral Montgomery. Yeah. A quick thought is, I agree 
completely with the oversight comment. I will give you one 
quick example.
    The Air Force innovated and figured out, Hey, we need to 
put this LRASM [Long Range Anti-Ship Missile] on the B-52. It 
is a quick software change. Congress authorized it 4 years ago, 
and it hasn't taken hold.
    I don't think Congress comes back enough to the services 
and says, Hey, we innovated something. We innovated something 
together. We approved it. We paid for it--we began to pay for 
it. And we haven't seen it come out.
    And that is because it competed against what the Air Force 
really cared about, an engine remodel, an engine upgrade of the 
B-52.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentleman's time has expired.
    On your comment, Mr. Brose, Bill Greenwalt has persuasively 
written about how DOD looks too communist at times in its 
system.
    Next up, another great new member of the committee from 
Alabama. Am I sort of contractually obligated to say ``Roll 
Tide'' whenever I say that, or how does that work?
    Mr. Strong. I have got two children at Auburn University.
    Mr. Gallagher. Oh, there you go.
    Mr. Strong. So you better stay away. But we have got two 
great universities there, no doubt.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Strong, you are recognized for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And, first of all, Members, I am honored to serve on this 
committee with each of you. I believe each of us offer a skill 
set that is going to be very beneficial in the days ahead, just 
from the geographic regions that we come from.
    We have heard many times about the valley of death, drawn-
out procurement processes and contract protest that often 
delays critical technologies from getting in the hands of the 
U.S. warfighter.
    My question is, how do you believe the Department of 
Defense and military services should balance RDT&E [research, 
development, test, and evaluation] funding versus procurement?
    Mr. Brose. Thank you, sir.
    I would say that there is a time and a place for each. I 
think that a lot of the types of capabilities that we are 
talking about today can be shifted to procurement. It is 
possible to have the Department buy more of these kinds of 
capabilities and actually push the burden for research and 
development more onto private industry so that they can develop 
these technologies at the pace that they are actually capable 
of being developed at.
    RDT&E, I think, is more useful when we are talking about 
technologies that are further out, where there is not kind of 
commercial drive to really kind of put that investment in and 
develop those technologies.
    Those are the kinds of things that I would contend RDT&E 
really needs to be focused on. I would say that many of the 
things that we are talking about here we need to think about 
through a production and procurement lens, not a research and 
development or science and technology lens. Because if they are 
thought of that way, they will forever stay science projects, 
they will forever stay in the laboratory, they won't 
transition, they won't get fielded, they won't make an 
operational impact.
    Mr. Strong. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Singer.
    Mr. Singer. To build on that, and actually to answer 
Representative Khanna's question as well, the only way that you 
get change is not merely through bureaucratic reform. It is 
through successful use cases. And you get either successful use 
cases of the new in wars, like what we are learning out of 
Ukraine--that is how you push past inertia, but you don't want 
to have that experience--or you get them through your own war 
games, experiments, task forces, and field uses.
    And one of the most important things that a committee like 
this can do is to be very blunt and direct. Every year in the 
budget cycle the Pentagon comes in with a request and then, 
after the fact, Congress jams in a couple more procurement of 
some single system that is not going to win or lose a war.
    That same amount that you spend on that additional beyond 
Pentagon request single system, if it was spent on wargaming, 
task forces, some of the things that we have talked about here 
to get successful use cases, that would actually help 
potentially win a war.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    My home is Huntsville, Alabama, also known as Rocket City, 
USA. It is a hub of innovation. You think about it--satellites, 
drones, missiles, counterintelligence--we have got a little bit 
of all of it.
    What are the biggest challenges you see facing new 
companies and startups when trying to work with the Department 
of Defense?
    And what I mean by that is these new companies have some of 
the brightest ideas, the up-and-comers, very unique employees 
that may be directly out of college. And what I am trying to do 
is, how can we work that better with the Department of Defense?
    Admiral Montgomery. I will give you one quick one then turn 
it to Chris.
    One of the biggest problems they face when a startup 
company comes to this is that their runway for getting a--
beginning to get investment from a customer is 18 to 24 months. 
And the Department of Defense's runway for their laborious 
plane to take off is about 4 years.
    And somewhere in that point, from 18 to 24 months to 4 
years, they have to sell their intellectual property to a 
prime, which then begins to reimagine it into something they 
already have. And to me that destroys a lot of the innovative 
intellectual thought and entrepreneurial thought that goes on 
in our small companies. So figuring out how to shorten that 
runway to that first procurement being at 18 to 24 months.
    Mr. Brose. I would go back to many of the things that I 
have said about the need to buy at scale faster, the 
capabilities that are best and that are working. But I will 
give you one sort of very concrete example.
    A challenge for a lot of these companies that are brand new 
is they don't even have access to the problem because it is 
classified.
    And you say: Well, how am I going to be able to get access 
to the problem?
    Well, you need a classified contract.
    Well, how am I going to get a classified contract?
    Well, you need security clearances.
    Well, how do I get security clearances?
    Well, I need a classified contract.
    It is a catch-22. So when I--my last day as the staff 
director of the Senate Armed Services Committee I was a TS/SCI 
[Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information]/Q SAP super 
user. The day I left I was essentially a new emigre from 
Beijing.
    We have thousands of people who are leaving military, 
government, intelligence service every year who could be 
helping these kinds of companies understand the problem and 
create better synergies with the government, and we are just, 
like, leaving all of that value on the table.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    Thank you all for coming before us today.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentleman's time has expired.
    I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    All of you in one way or another today have made a 
compelling case that certain new technologies are changing the 
character of war, though the nature of war endures.
    What are some lessons from wars past that we would do well 
to remember, that might caution us against what I would call 
magical third offset thinking about technology, just basic 
lessons about the past of war that are still relevant today?
    Starting with Mr. Brose.
    Mr. Brose. Indulging my inner historian.
    I think there is an interesting experience that you can 
look at from sort of the middle of the 19th century to the 
onset of World War I, World War II. The types of technologies 
that showed up on the battlefields in 1914 were visible as far 
back, in some form or another, as the American Civil War, the 
Wars of German Unification, the Boer War, all of these 
conflicts of the second half of the 19th century. It is that 
people weren't paying attention to how they were actually 
changing the character of war, to your point, which is why the 
beginning of 1914 the war was so bloody, was because we were 
using new technologies with old doctrine.
    That completely changed over the 4 years of that conflict. 
It changed the nature of defense and offense, where the ability 
to kill in large numbers had grown considerably, but people, 
troops, were still walking across the battlefield the way the 
Roman legions did. So there was a sense that defense was now 
preponderant.
    The onset of the internal combustion engine 10 years later 
completely changed that.
    So I guess it is a lesson to say the things that we think 
are in the future are happening now, but the lessons that we 
derive from what is happening now can change very quickly with 
new technologies or the utilization of new technologies that we 
might not be able to see but are coming.
    So it is just to say learn the lessons of today so that we 
can be ready for tomorrow, but be ready for surprise because it 
is coming.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Montgomery. Keep in mind I only have 2 
minutes and 54 seconds.
    Admiral Montgomery. Yep, and I will keep this to 1 minute 
then.
    So you tend to think of World War II and the U.S. Navy 
that, well, we failed to understand the emergence of the 
carrier. And that is certainly an important element in our 
concentration on the battleship, that was inappropriate and 
cost us a year's worth of production, cost us 1942 in the war 
in the Pacific.
    But I also remember the most important thing we did was at 
the Naval War College we executed Plan Orange and Plan Black 
wargaming for 8 years straight, with Commander King and Captain 
Nimitz and Admiral Leahy, our future leaders, executing 
different various war plans till we understood what was likely 
to succeed in an expansive campaign with Japan in the Pacific.
    That kind of wargaming is critical. I think it is important 
for the military to do it. And I would also recommend that 
congressional committees get involved more in wargaming, go 
observe these events, so they get a better understanding of 
what the risks and consequences are of decisions they are 
making in their budgets and their NDAA authorizations.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you.
    We used to have, it is my understanding, organic wargaming 
capability in Congress that was housed at NDU [National Defense 
University], but was subject to us.
    Mr. Singer.
    Mr. Singer. Rapidly, three lessons from history,. First, as 
the blitzkrieg--and I think all of these are parallels from the 
1920s and 1930s.
    One, as the blitzkrieg showed, it is not how many of the 
new technology you have, even how good it is. It is actually 
your doctrine for bringing it all together.
    The Germans didn't have the most tanks. They arguably 
didn't have the best tanks. But they had the best doctrine for 
bringing it all together.
    I don't think we have talked about or thought about enough 
of the new doctrines for the U.S. military using these 
technologies.
    Second, there is no such thing as truly first mover 
advantage. Very parallel to us, the British, they invent the 
aircraft carrier, they invent the tank, but they lock into the 
early designs of it, they lock into the first uses of it. We as 
an innovative military need to be very, very careful not to 
lock in.
    And then, third, those war games that the U.S. Navy was 
doing in the 1930s and 1940s, the successes during the Pacific, 
all comes out of personnel reforms during the 1910s. And so, 
again, Trent Hone's book ``Learning War'' is a great example of 
that.
    So for all the discussion of changing technology, it is 
also about your human talent management. If you are not making 
any changes there, you are not going to win.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you.
    I am almost out of time, but I am the chairman, and so I am 
going to entertain a second round of questions, if you all are 
interested in a second round of questions. And so I am going to 
recognize myself for 5 more minutes. It is nice.
    Mr. Brose, in your testimony in response to various 
questions--I think you see everyone is interested in this 
valley of death problem. We have been talking about it 
endlessly. For some reason, we can't kill the valley of death. 
You said we are overthinking it. We just need to buy--the 
Pentagon needs to buy more of the things it needs, right?
    In just like the simplest terms possible, if we, as you say 
in your testimony, have given the Pentagon all the authority 
they need, all sorts of OTAs [other transaction authorities] 
and this and that, what then is the problem? Is it just a lack 
of SECDEF--maybe that is sort of an acronym--Secretary of 
Defense prioritization of certain things?
    What is standing in the way of us buying more LRASMs or 
take your pick of preferred weapon system?
    Mr. Brose. I think it is a failure of imagination. I think 
what we are talking about is disruption, and disruption is a 
cognitively challenging experience.
    When you have an organization that has been set up for a 
very long time in terms of the ideas at its core, the 
conception of military power that it has, the types of programs 
that it is fielding, obviously, all of the kind of outside 
apparatus, industrial and otherwise, that is geared to produce 
it, it is very hard to get disruption.
    When you look at disruption in the commercial sector, most 
of those stories don't end well. They end with the incumbent 
going out of business and the disrupter getting to scale and 
becoming successful.
    I think in the defense sector innovation and disruption 
doesn't just happen, because it is not rewarded, because there 
aren't incentives for it. I think those incentives need to be 
created in a way that haven't been created.
    It is going to be challenging, but I think we have to be 
capable, first and foremost, of imagining--and I think this is 
your point--what are the kinds of ways in which we are going to 
have to fight, and what are the kinds of capabilities that are 
going to enable us to do so, not in the distant future, but 
potentially in this decade? What are the things that we can 
have?
    I think we need to make this problem much clearer. So often 
innovation gets talked about in this very kind of ephemeral 
way, and we need to get brutally precise about the kinds of 
innovations we actually need to move the needle on deterrence.
    And I think the war in Ukraine is providing a lot of 
opportunity to both see what those disruptions look like, 
because they are literally on the battlefield now, and I think 
there is creating a sense of urgency about the things we need 
to do to really kind of buy that at scale.
    Mr. Gallagher. But to your point--and forgive me for being 
obtuse--if the Secretary of Defense wants to stockpile a bunch 
of Switchblades, a bunch of LRASMs, a bunch of Harpoons, and 
surge them west of the International Date Line, he could do it, 
right?
    Mr. Brose. He has the authority to do it. He has plenty of 
money. In the annual reprogramming process--so put aside the 
budget--I believe the Secretary of Defense is authorized to 
reprogram upwards of 3 or 4 percent of the defense budget, 
which it doesn't sound like a lot, but 3 percent of $800 
billion is quite a lot. It can buy a lot of loitering munitions 
or LRASMs or what have you.
    I think the challenge is you actually have to start doing 
that. As I think we have seen in the war in Ukraine, even 
things like tactical weapons don't just materialize overnight. 
You need to get the industrial base moving. You need to get 
facilitization and investment happening so that you are on a 
war footing from an industrial base perspective, both in terms 
of things that you are going to need that you have already, as 
well as things from loitering munitions or autonomous systems 
in every domain, small satellites and the like, that are 
absolutely possible to have in large numbers in the next few 
years if we make the investment.
    The Secretary has the authority. He certainly has the 
money. Congress does as well. It is a question of----
    Mr. Gallagher. The technology exists.
    Mr. Brose. Yeah. Again, we are not talking cloaking devices 
here. We are talking about things that are literally being used 
on the battlefield in Ukraine or things that could be rapidly 
matured to meet different operational needs on a quick 
timeline.
    I think we need to get--and Admiral Montgomery kind of hit 
this well--we need to dispense with the idea that the kinds of 
things that we are talking about take 15 years to get through 
the development process.
    Again, we are not talking about a nuclear submarine here. 
We are talking about things that should be viewed as, 
essentially, consumable items. We are going to buy them in 
large numbers. We are going to use them or consume them in a 
period of 18 to 24 months. And then we are going to buy new, 
better versions of them.
    And I would say that a crazy thing happens in a capitalist 
society when you buy new things often: More people want to 
build them, technology gets better.
    Mr. Gallagher. I guess what this is making me think is 
maybe we don't have a structural problem or an authorities 
problem. We have a sort of a cultural problem in DOD in the 
acquisition sort of workforce.
    We will have to come back to that because I am out of time, 
and I have to abide by my own commandments.
    Mr. Ryan is recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Ryan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate the bonus round 
here.
    And thank you, again, to our witnesses.
    I want to build, Mr. Singer, on something you said in your 
last answer about personnel reform. And going back, I would 
kind of ask us to think about the cyber force.
    Specifically broadening beyond just sort of our kind of 
conventional sense of talent development, how do we look across 
the country more creatively, looking at earlier STEM [science, 
technology, engineering, and mathematics] education and ideas 
like that? Are there any lessons, again, from history that you 
have seen with other, in other conflicts that we could apply to 
think about really broadening that base of cyber talent across 
the country?
    Mr. Singer. Thank you.
    I think a couple of tangible things that we could do beyond 
the obvious issues that America has within STEM education.
    The first is we could create a version of a cyber Reserve 
or a cyber auxiliary where there is a gap between what the 
private sector is able to provide and what the formal National 
Guard and Reserve is.
    What we are talking about here is something modeled roughly 
after the Civil Air Patrol or the Coast Guard Auxiliary, 
successful models in the air domain and in the maritime domain. 
We don't have a version of that for the cyber domain, where it 
is both able to aid in education, draw kids in, but also serve 
as an auxiliary at points of crisis.
    We did a report at New America about this, and its rough 
cost would be approximately $25 million for something that one 
major cyber incident, if it stops, would pay for itself.
    The second within the military is that we still have a 
problem of basically drawing people into cyber forces and 
actually hit some of the things that the Admiral spoke about.
    When you go to the academies, their top talent, including 
people with incredible digital expertise, and then you ask 
them, ``What are you going to go into?'' it is very rarely, 
``Oh, I am going to go into 10th Fleet,'' or, ``I am going to 
go into Cyber National Mission Force,'' et cetera, even though 
that is arguably the most active part of the U.S. military 
right now in its day-to-day contestation with our foes.
    So there is kind of an issue of and a longer conversation 
of how to get the best talent within the military to want to 
join cyber organizations.
    Admiral Montgomery. Can I jump in on that?
    Mr. Ryan. Please, yes.
    Admiral Montgomery. I will jump in on that, and I will 
differentiate one thing.
    At West Point, the Army Cyber Institute actually is leading 
in their--I go up there every year. They have between 21 and 
42, depending on what the Army numbers are that year, of 
graduates from the course going in. And they really are the 
smartest kids there on cyber and computer science engineering.
    The other services aren't near as strong. The Navy is--the 
Naval Academy is abysmal in this, historically taking about 
four students into it from the class, and, obviously, they need 
to adjust to be more--the Naval Academy needs to adjust to be 
more like West Point in this regard.
    I will give you one other one. The Scholarship for Service 
Program inside the government--nonhumbly, I will say I created 
it 23 years ago--it has about 500 graduates a year right now 
going into Federal service. It is at 82--or 92 universities and 
colleges.
    We need to expand that to about a thousand graduates a 
year. It is modeled on ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps], 
the way I was commissioned, and it pays for room, board, and 
tuition. So I would definitely continue to fund that.
    And there is a DOD version of it called Cybersecurity 
Scholarship Program that uniquely gives 100 students a year to 
the Department of Defense, and I would expand that as I look 
forward to these things.
    Mr. Ryan. Thank you.
    I want to just--I apologize, Mr. Brose--I just want to 
bring up one other quick point. And hearing West Point beating 
Navy just warms my heart. So thank you for saying that on the 
record.
    Mr. Singer, I know we don't have time, but can you point me 
towards the direction of any writing or thinking on sort of 
your idea of fictional--fiction intel around ChatGPT 
specifically and some of the newer--I know I sound like a 
Luddite--but, I mean, seeing it myself now is just really 
almost paralyzing to think about the implications.
    Anything that you have written or others that you could 
point us towards on that?
    Mr. Singer. There is one scenario that we did looking at 
potential Chinese use of it. Happy to engage with you further.
    But, more broadly, that is the only one that I am aware of, 
and it points to a larger agenda, that if we think this is a 
key new technology area, let's game out, let's envision what is 
both our potential use of it, but also adversary potential use 
of it, so it doesn't hit what both Mr. Brose, but also the 9/11 
Commission, described as a failure of imagination. It is easy 
to solve that failure of imagination.
    Mr. Ryan. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Khanna.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I have two questions, one following up on the Chair's point 
about how we overcome this adoption issue.
    Other than imagination and talking to the Secretary of 
Defense and trying to change the culture, what specifically can 
the committee do? I mean, are there any legislative 
recommendations? I mean, hard to change the culture. I mean, 
the committee can talk to people. But what specifically 
legislatively can we do.
    And then the second question is, do you think there is any 
value in having the DOD have its own venture fund, like In-Q-
Tel, where they are actually taking a stake in the company?
    And maybe just start with Mr. Singer, and as much time as 
we have, if you could keep your remarks about a minute.
    Mr. Singer. So if we look at successful cases where an 
innovation has made it across the valley of death, like, for 
example, the Predator drone, it doesn't happen merely because 
of top down. It happens because you create demand within the 
system. You give members of the services a taste of it, an 
experience with it, and then they say: We want more of this.
    So the more that you can fund--not merely creating the 
system, go out and buy it--the more you can fund programs 
designed to draw those technologies in.
    I earlier referenced, for example, we have a task force in 
the Middle East for naval drones. Why is it not across multiple 
different services, across multiple different commands?
    Same thing, we have got a couple of fleet problem exercise 
type models, but not replicated. The more that you can 
replicate that across the system, give people experience at it, 
then you are going to create that demand force within the 
military culture.
    Admiral Montgomery. I will give you two quick ideas.
    You have three posture hearings coming up next with 
Department of Defense officials. I would put them on the record 
to come back to you with ideas for how they can push specific 
initiatives that they have or are willing to do over the next 2 
years.
    The embarrassment of coming back the next year with an 
empty folder should be enough to drive some of that change.
    And to answer your other question, I do think the 
Department should have a venture capital kitty fund. Chris 
Brose and I--Chris worked on that hard when he was on the 
Senate Armed Services Committee. We didn't get it across the 
finish line. And I am a little worried. What I saw them 
announce so far sounds like a venture capital fund without 
capital, and that worries me a little bit.
    Mr. Brose. Very briefly. I would actually say, the many 
powers that Congress has, I would sort of put legislation to 
the side and I would say oversight and funding are the most 
important.
    So the Predator drone is an illustrative example. It began 
as a congressional earmark. If left to its own devices, the 
United States Air Force still would not be flying remotely 
piloted aircraft. The Congress had to force them to adopt a 
capability that was disruptive and contrary to the culture of 
the service.
    I am not saying that you guys should go wild with earmarks. 
I am saying that the power of actually funding different kinds 
of military capabilities is the power of this committee. It is 
the power of the Congress.
    That is something that I think can be exercised. And I 
think with that is the oversight to say: Why aren't you buying 
these kinds of capabilities? Why aren't you scaling these 
things that work? Getting down into those details where you can 
call balls and strikes I think is wildly important.
    Final piece on the capital. I would argue that DOD should 
not become a venture capital arm. There is plenty of money in 
private capital markets to fund worthwhile companies doing 
worthwhile defense work.
    The thing that the DOD uniquely has that it doesn't use is 
its sole power for demanding and buying disruptive capability. 
That is how it sends a signal to the market in terms of what it 
values. If it does that more and it does that at larger scale, 
that is how it is identifying what winning looks like, what 
right looks like, the kinds of things that it wants more of.
    I would argue capital will flow into the companies and the 
places that are providing those capabilities if the Department 
in this monopsonistic world of national defense does what it 
needs to do, which is demand and buy it in the first place.
    Mr. Gallagher. Great.
    I am now going to move to a third round of questions and 
recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    One thing your question, Mr. Khanna, makes me think is 
whether--and Mr. Montgomery's answer--is whether we need to 
think through like a periodic--in my head I think of it as like 
other transaction authority thunderdome, where we put the 
services on the record in terms of how and why they have or 
have not used the authorities that we have given them.
    Quickly, I want to amend slightly something I said earlier 
when Mr. Brose and I were talking.
    It seems, based on your testimony, that we don't lack 
authorities, we don't lack money, we lack leadership willing to 
take intelligent risks when it comes to buying certain things. 
Is that accurate?
    Mr. Brose. I think it is partly accurate. I think part of 
the challenge is integration doesn't just happen at the 
Department of Defense.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yeah.
    Mr. Brose. We have this incredibly fragmented 
accountability, from requirements definition, programming and 
budgeting, acquiring. That integration sort of resides at the 
senior leadership level.
    I think the challenge is not simply that those people are 
unwilling to take risk. I actually think they are incredibly 
willing to take risk. And in my conversations with all of you 
and other Members of the Congress I think there is an enormous 
appetite to take risk.
    The challenge is: How do we identify the right risks to 
take? How is timely information being surfaced such that, 
whether it is the Secretary of Defense or a Member of Congress, 
can say: I will bear the risk and be accountable for doing 
something that, if left to its own devices, the bureaucracy is 
not incentivized to do and deems too riskworthy.
    That I think is the real challenge here, which is the 
ability to gain kind of an appropriate signal or information of 
what is working, what innovations are promising, what 
capabilities are there, companies that are doing good work, and 
pull those up to real scale with the authority that the 
Congress and the senior leadership of the Department have.
    Mr. Gallagher. And, Admiral Montgomery, so let's say the 
Secretary of Defense comes to you and says: You have persuaded 
me on this LRASM issue, Long Range Anti-Ship Missile. I 
violated commandment number three. I am sorry. How do you fix 
it?
    Admiral Montgomery. Well, the good news is the very first 
step was taken by the Congress in the last National Defense 
Authorization Act. You added in extra money to specific 
targeted defense industrial base companies to increase their 
ability to produce more weapons. In other words, what had 
happened with LRASM was----
    Mr. Gallagher. But was it appropriated?
    Admiral Montgomery. Yes, it was appropriated. That is one 
of the only things that you did in this area that was 
appropriated.
    And so what we now have to do is increase--the companies 
have to put in their money too. So what we need to do is get, 
like, the maximum production capability of LRASM, to use the 
acronym, up to about 250 a year, so we can have this problem 
solved within 5 years.
    You will then have to ramp up production there. So you will 
have to put money into the procurement of it. And as I 
mentioned, you need to then kick the Air Force and the Navy in 
the backside to get the B-52 and the P-8 ready to launch the 
weapons. Because once you have more of these weapons, you need 
to have more launch vehicles for them.
    So that is a three-step process. The Congress took the 
first step. We will see on March 9 whether the Department took 
the second step and increased actual LRASM production.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Brose, maybe you can answer this. I know 
you want to say something.
    What about, I mean, the stuff in the weapon, energetics? Do 
we have an opportunity--I mean, we are using technology that 
was made in 1941. The Chinese are using our technology that was 
made in 1984, CL-20 [China Lake-20], which has like 30 percent 
more penetrating power, longer range.
    Can we leverage that to take a quantum leap in certain 
weapon systems?
    Mr. Brose. Yeah, I think everything that we are saying 
about the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile is true of many of our 
other critical munitions, all of which we are going to need 
more of, to say nothing of future things we could develop.
    The only thing I would add is we have to do this as a 
function of time. It is not enough to buy more in 1 year, 
because the signal to industry is that, if you are not going to 
continue to do this, the maker of that particular weapon 
doesn't feel the incentive to put a bunch of capital at risk to 
build more facilities, hire more workers, if the fear is that 
next year the government is going to change its mind.
    So I know there is a debate about multiyear procurement for 
weapons and other strategic capabilities. I think that is 
exactly the right kind of direction for the Congress to go.
    So you start signaling the incentive that you are going to 
do this over time. Industry will respond in terms of capacity, 
but also the kinds of innovations you are talking about.
    Admiral Montgomery. The good news is you also authorized 
that for--you were doing it already--DOD asked you to do it for 
Russia-- for Russia-based Javelins and Stingers. The Congress 
actually added in LRASM, SM-6, and others into the last 
National Defense Authorization Act, so it is authorized. We 
will see if the Department takes advantage of it in the fiscal 
year 2024 budget.
    Mr. Gallagher. There is no debate that we need multiyear 
authority for procuring munitions. It is just there are certain 
people that don't like that.
    Mr. Khanna, I am really sorry. I have to ask one more 
question.
    Mr. Khanna. Please.
    Mr. Gallagher. So I am going to entertain a fourth round.
    Mr. Khanna. You can have my fourth and third round time.
    Mr. Gallagher. You are a good man, good man.
    You can open the present while I am asking if you like. 
Your wife is going to like it.
    Mr. Khanna. It is for my wife.
    Mr. Gallagher. That is true. We should have invited her. I 
am sure this is exactly how she wants to spend her birthday, 
right.
    Mr. Singer, I really enjoyed your testimony and the way in 
which you tease this out through a fictional futuristic 
scenario. That is told from the perspective of a PLA general, 
right?
    In doing that and going through that thought process, how 
would you describe the PLA's critical vulnerability? What do 
you think its true weak points are?
    Because one of the big questions we have is: Can they 
fight? I mean, they look tough on paper, but until you actually 
fight, it is hard to know whether you can fight. And they 
haven't fought a war in a long time.
    So I am just curious what you learned in doing this 
exercise.
    Mr. Singer. Thank you.
    And this actually reflects not just that exercise, but I 
help run a series that may be of benefit to you in this 
committee and the other called ``The China Intelligence,'' 
which pulls open source intelligence on Chinese military 
technology and personnel issues.
    So a couple of issues that they have problems with, and 
they know that they have problems with.
    One is, as we have talked about, is the personnel issue. 
They have a particular issue at recruiting from their highly 
educated and retaining. And it is not just at the NCO 
[noncommissioned officer] corps part, which they lack, but it 
is also at the officer side.
    A second issue that they have is, by the very nature of 
their political system, highly centralized. And it is not yet 
clear whether that is the best model for AI and utilizing it 
across networks. And we can have a longer discussion. That is 
what I was talking about.
    And one of the things that you can help push forward 
bureaucratically is a federated data--it is called a data mesh 
model--for the Pentagon, which is what the CDAO [Chief Digital 
and Artificial Intelligence Officer] is working on. They 
probably could not do that within their system because it 
relies on trusting different parts to act.
    Another key problem for them is politicization of their 
military. It is not a national military. It is a party 
military. And so that has created different kind of tribes, so 
to speak, within their system of who is beholden to which 
political leader and the like. That is also why they have had 
sort of a recent set of purges, corruption purges.
    So those are some of the vulnerabilities.
    I think to flip your question is to ask: What are 
advantages, unique advantages that we have, and how can we 
bolster those? And so what is it that a PLA officer would say: 
Gosh, I wish I could have in my system, but I can't implement 
the way that the Americans can.
    Mr. Gallagher. Would sort of decentralized commands, 
mission tactics, be one of our unique advantages?
    Mr. Singer. Yes, yes. And that applies to both the human 
side, but also if you are thinking about with autonomy, that 
side too.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Montgomery, less than 2 minutes, maybe 
comment on that, as well as what we need to know about the 
cyber aspects of a fight over Taiwan.
    Admiral Montgomery. So thanks.
    First, on that last question, I agree completely with Mr. 
Singer's comments.
    And I would just say at PACOM, when I went to sleep at 
night, the thing I dreamed about was a weapon that would damage 
Chinese C2 [command and control] in war, whether it was cyber, 
space, or kinetic.
    We have got to optimize those weapons, because if we can 
take down their command and control system, I think when it 
comes down to our empowered pilots, ship commanders, 
noncommissioned officers versus their not empowered pilots, 
ship drivers, and noncommissioned officers, we would have a big 
advantage.
    When I think about Taiwan, I don't think we are ready--in a 
scenario with China and Taiwan, I don't think we are ready in 
cyber. And, really, the biggest blind spot for us is the cyber 
resilience of our national critical infrastructure, as I said 
earlier, the transport, electrical power, water, financial 
services.
    I think it is highly likely, that the beginning of a crisis 
or contingency, the Chinese will begin to conduct cyber 
malicious activity around the ports of Oakland, the port around 
Long Beach and Los Angeles, with the train systems that go into 
them, to send us a strong signal that you are not going to be 
able to mobilize and sustain the forces like you think you can.
    I think that they could easily--they have malware already--
we admit they have malware in our electric power systems, our 
water systems, our transport systems, our nuclear power 
generation systems. All those areas are susceptible.
    We really have to figure out how to prioritize our most 
systemically important critical infrastructure and how we work 
with those SICI assets in order to ensure that we have the 
right level of cybersecurity for a crisis or contingency with 
China.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you.
    I am out of time. I want to thank all of our witnesses for 
their time, for their testimony. This was a really thoughtful 
conversation and we hope to follow up with you on a variety of 
fronts and hope we can continue to leverage your work as we try 
and solve some of the problems we identified over the next 2 
years in a bipartisan fashion.
    So what do I say at the end of one of these? Do I, like, 
bang the gavel again?
    The hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 10:20 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
     
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              WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING

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                            February 9, 2023

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             RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. MOULTON

    Mr. Singer. Thank you for the question.
    Almost every new tech in war, whether the battleship to nuclear 
weapons, has created new questions of their use and abuse, often 
leading to arms control discussions. So we should not be surprised to 
see this happen with AI and robotics.
    Yet, this new wave of intelligent automation is different in that 
it is more than just another new tool. It is ever-improving and ever 
more autonomous, one that decides and acts more and more on its own, 
with its very value being that it is increasingly a so-called ``black 
box'' that processes and acts in manners we humans can't understand. 
Thus, there are basically are of two new types of ethical/legal issues 
that result:
    1) Machine permissibility (``What should our ever more intelligent 
and capable machines be allowed to do, including on their own?'') and
    2) Machine and human accountability (``Who should be in control of 
them and how? What should we do if things go awry?'').
    What is notable is that these issues will play out everywhere from 
the battlefield to our highways to our businesses. This also shows how 
AI/Robotics present an added challenge compared to most weapons in the 
past, in that their creators, users, and uses don't just lie in the 
military realm.
    Specific to arm control, AI could be a positive tool, such as 
helping us detect and track arms control treaty violations or illegal 
arms trade networks, as well as help unearth war crimes.
    But it also could potentially be utilized in manners that lead to 
war crimes, such as through more lethal or tailored weapons that go 
after civilian targets or even individuals. It could raise the risks of 
accidents and algorithmic bias problems that lead to the wrong results, 
such as what has played out in driverless car firms, killing at least 
three people on our streets already. It could lead to overconfidence or 
miscalculation that raises the risks of war, such as how 
misunderstanding on whether new technologies would help or hinder the 
offense led the European Powers to each try to mobilize first during a 
crisis, fueling the start of World War I. And, of course, there is the 
longterm/science fiction fear of AI somehow getting out of control.
    As with nuclear weapons, arms control of AI/robotics could happen 
via formal treaties, norms that steer behavior, and/or ``epistemic 
communities'' that shape understanding.
    Currently, the U.S. government has pushed two tracks in effect on 
arms control related to AI. One is creating its own guidelines and 
principles for use by the U.S. military. The other is efforts at the UN 
and by the State Department at global conferences to try to shape 
emerging international discussion on the topic. For example, the State 
Department sought to urge nations to keep humans in the loop of any 
nuclear weapons related use at a recent international conference in the 
Netherlands.
    The challenge for these laudable efforts at the international level 
are threefold 1) Other nations like Russia and China might not agree or 
even respect such agreements and principles, even if they sign them, 
seeking to use such limits as a way to advance their own relative 
strengths in the AI field and military use 2) Most of our principles/
efforts give us leeway to step around them in some manner if need be, 
and thus other nations might see our stance as more rhetorical than 
firm, ironclad commitments. 3) Our efforts are not in full alignment 
with even our closest allies. As an example, the U.S. military has five 
principles for the future use of AI and the British government has five 
principles . . . But they are not the same five.   [See page 11.]

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