I recently had the privilege to speak to industry leaders at Billington Cybersecurity Summit about current and emerging cybersecurity challenges at home and abroad during a fireside chat.
When considering the changing character of war, there are things that will remain constant: conflict as an extension of political will, fog and friction, and if a Nation’s military goes to war, the support of the entire nation must be behind it. What is changing is technology and what our adversaries are doing with it. We must be able to keep pace with new and emerging technology to ensure we are ready when our Nation calls.
To keep pace, we need to know what is happening outside of the Department of Defense by working closely with industry to help us solve problems from a national security perspective. The integration of new technology such as AI will come with challenges to successfully implement it in our defense efforts.
AI implementation will require attention in three areas: Foundation, Data, and Focus. We need to build the right infrastructure and architecture as a foundation, we need to get the right data to the right place to run on the foundation to inform the decision-making process, and we need to have focus to apply AI in the right places at the right time with the right resources.
We also require talent. Exposure to opportunities is needed to recruit the right people; people in uniform who can communicate with the industries that are building these new capabilities. We must also invest in that talent by providing them with the right tools and development so they can execute what we expect them to do.
Finally, we must invest in our allies and partners. As we move forward with technology, we cannot leave our partners behind. We must continue to be able to push information back and forth quickly by remaining interconnected. They are key to enhancing our capabilities and our integrated deterrence efforts to prevent us from entering into conflict. We don’t want to go into conflict, but if we do we want it to be an unfair fight.
