like j.d., and the example they set for all of us. in order to win tomorrow's war, to defend the homeland, to remain a safe and secure nuclear deterrent, to win against russia or china while deterring iran or north korea, and to maintain momentum in the veo fight, we need more airmen like them. airmen that are well trained. airmen that are well led. airmen that are agile. resilient airmen who are the masters of their fate. the captains of their soul. thank you. ♪

ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. please welcome afa's director for strategic deterrence, peter huessy. >> good afternoon, everybody. please welcome the next panel. i'm very pleased to introduce one of the air force's very important combat commanders, general hyten. global command and control of u.s. strategic forces to meet our decisive national security objectives and provide a broad range of strategic capabilities and options for the president and the secretary of defense. we also are honored today to hear from chief master sergeant patrick mcmahon, the senior enlisted first leader for the united states strategic command where he's the senior enlisted adviser to general hyten.

each speaker will provide opening remarks and open up for will begin with my dear friend, general john hyten. welcome. >> welcome. thank you. so, good afternoon, everybody. if you saw on the agenda, sitting to my left was going to be my friend, general shag oshanessy. he was diverted by a hurricane so he did not make it. i had to look around and find a combat and command representative who would be the same intellectual import. i didn't have to look far. i had to look at my office next door for chief master sergeant patrick mcmahon. we're going to talk about stotcom's multidomain areas.

i want to talk about what our priorities are and start with the most important thing in our command. my priorities are pretty straightforward. they're published in my vision and intent. you can pull them up off the internet and read them. it's pretty straightforward. i have three priorities. they've been the same since i took command. they'll be the same when i leave command. priority number one, above all else, we will provide our nation's strategic deterrent. priority number two, if deterrence fails, we'll provide a decisive response. decisive in every way that word can be defined. and priority number three, we'll do with a combat-ready force. that's who we are. there's the missions we do it with that you see on the screen. you see the model on the bottom that we brought back from strategic air command. our profession. see the dot, dot, dot at the end to remind our adversaries that if you don't want peace, we can go a different direction. with that third priority, the third priority, a combat-ready

force. trained and equipped to do the job. so that's the first thing we want to talk about today. because sometimes as we sit up here on the stage and you hear the deputy talk about all the things we have to have and you hear all the amazing capabilities we have to have, the real deterrent of our nation comes from a combat-ready force. it really comes from the 162,000 americans that serve under the umbrella of u.s. strategic command. 162,000 people that come to work every day, and every day that work, location, some places is under the sea, under the ground, operating in the air, operating in space. defending our nation, defending 300 million from the middle of alaska. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines that the do tdo the job. i want to tell you if you go out now and visit those places, you will find the greatest people in the world doing that job. and you'll find that morale is

unbelievably high. unbelievably high. you'll find the best and brightest our nation has to offer and they still love to serve in this mission. you'll see them at minot in north dakota, at barksdale, whiteman operating the bomber missions. you'll see hem at kings bay and bangor and georgia and the state of washington, operating our nuclear submarines. you'll see them at warren, malstrom, minot, peterson, buckley, vandenberg, patrick, schriever. we're all over the world. north, south, east, west, up and down. 162,000 people. but you got to realize when it comes right down to it, it's really about the one and it could be the one sailor who has spent 17 years of his life under the water. doing a strategic deterrent mission. that reminds me to respect those people at all times and also realize i made the right decision when it came to service. it's about the soldiers sitting in the middle l of alaska in all

weather sitting on top of the ground-based intercepters making sure they can combat. it's also about the maintainers at minot, the pilots, that operate the bombers. it's about the missileirs, maintainers that work in the missile fields. i was at malstrom about six months ago. great falls, montana. they're spread all over montana. each day when a missilier comes to work, they come to work, go through a morning brief and head out, sometimes it's a three-hour drive over back roads to get to their missile alert facility. they go under the ground. they spend 24 hours under the ground. they come back out, drive three hours up and they are ready to respond to the most horrible threat our nation can imagine every day. and as i sat there talking to them before they went out that morning, telling them how important they were and the nation understood, there was a second lieutenant who stood up and asked me a question. and the question she asked me was, so, sir, i'm from the

generation they call the millennials. i read all the time that millennials are lazy, always looking to move jobs, always looking to change, difficult to motivate. so when you get a question about the millennials, how do you answer it? i said, it's real easy. get on my airplane and come with me. come with me to malstrom, to warren, to minot. come with me anywhere and you will see that the current generation of americans is as great as any other generation our country has had and they're spectacular. they want to do it. they love that mission. i talk to them all. i call them on christmas. i call them on thanksgiving. every one i talk to, how long are you going to be in the air force? i'm going to be in the air force four years and get out. i'm going to be here my whole life. how do you like the business? sir, i love it. doesn't matter whether it's a

submariner, a missileeer, a bomber pilot, maintainer. they know what they're doing. it's essential to the security of our nation. if you want to see the strength of america, just go watch our airmen, our soldiers, our sailors, our marine. chief? >> thank you, sir. good afternoon. i would like to start off with a thank you. you know, it was actually something the chief said, general goldfein talked about yesterday, he talked about this event, the afa event being the premier professional development event for us as airmen, service members, united states air force. i thchi i think it's important to sit there and take the opportunity to reflect on that. we probably don't do these kinds of things often enough. clearly there's opportunity when you have opportunity to see a chief master in the air force, our chief speak to us, that's important. but these dialogues on the side are nearly as important. one of the meaningful conversations i had yesterday was at an event after the day talking to staff sergeant from air force special operations command. what just an amazing squared

away noncommission officer. so i just want to start off with a thank you. secondly, happy birthday. >> there you go. >> 71 years and a day. i'm going to offer it up. you all look great. it is important. it's important to sit there and reflect on our history. as i'm list tonging to the comb commanders, general hyten talking about our global war fighting command. there's talent from every location from the arctic circle, out to kuag and everywhere else and it's really important. you know, i tend to fall back on comma commander's intent. it's important to us all, as noncommissioned officer, it's extremely important. sometimes the question gets asked, you know, what does a senior enlisted leader do? i can offer up joint pub 3tac 33 or in the j7 focus paper on a command senior enlisted leader. i truly believe on falling back on a commander's intent. i know my commander's intent, what the boss provided me and made it really clear, he goes, chief, i expect you to have the pulse of our command, all of our

command. 162,000 professionals. 30,000 civilian teammates. almost 25,000 commission officers. almost 98,000 enlisted professionals across our first. i tell you what, i can sit there and go story after story after story on the value this talent brings us. it's actually eye-watering. general hyten talked about being in malstrom. we were there in february. we got full credit. it was a winner. it really was. we had an opportunity to go visit the missile alert facility and spend the night. and it's obviously any time you get an opportunity to battle space circulation and spend time with our service members, it's really, really important. but in that context where you actually get to come in and the boss is going down a line, talking to all these airmen, security forces, the facility manager, service professionals, and then we get to actually eat dinner with them and it was actually a briefing that the combat and commander received by

airman first class kerrington and airman first class fulwiley. at the time a combine edd 11 mos in the united states air force. it's not just the fact it was a short duration. it was actually how they codified and articulated what they did and the responsibilities they had in the missile alert facility. what they did, they showed the boss a powerpoint and said this is why we're here, sir. we're here to ensure the quality of life of our folks supporting this mission. we're here to boost the morale of these individuals, these war fighters defending our nation. to e3s with a brand total of 11 months in the united states air force as a member of the armed forces. that is the kind of talents we have across our services. you know, it was interesting, madam secretary was here yesterday and she talked about recruiting. and the path going forward and what we had to do. i would offer up this, if i can

pull if off, i'd go talk to the chief and go, sir, would you mind calling general miller and see if she can get a fleet of c-17s parked on andrews? every one of us in this auditorium could jump on it in time to run with the airmen tomorrow morning, watch them earn their coin and watch them walk a bomb run. if you really want to know where the best airmen in the united states air force are, they've graduating this week on friday. somehow we can't get air lift because a real-world op is going on, make a trip next thursday and friday. that's the next iteration of our greatest airmen. sir? >> so let's talk about the to c topic. i could sit around and talk about airmen all day. those are my best days. days with soldier, airmen, marine, those are the top days. the topic is talk about multidomain operations. it's actually a very significant discussion going on at the very senior levels of the joint staff amongst all the cocomms now about how do we do that?

so stratcomm is right in the middle of it. we talked first about the third priority. combat-ready force. so let's go back to the first priority. the first priority is actually stated in the unified command plan. for stratcomm. i hate that. i hate that with a position. stratcomm is a global war fighting command that delivers global capabilities to the world, what we are and what we do. when you look at the. ictu pictures on that chart, i e war fighter on the chart. tho that's who we are, what we do. the first mission is strategic deterrence. what's the second mission? nuclear operations. note that they're different. strategic deterrence in the 21st century is a whole lot more than nuclear operations. somehow we got to the point where we think that just because we have 1, 550 deployed nuclear weapons, the fact we're the most lethal ready command in the

world, that somehow those weapons deter everybody from everything and all you have to do is read the newspaper and know that it doesn't. here's the question for you. 2002, the current version of stratcomm was formed. by the way, we just celebrated our birthday. ben that was formed, over the next few years here's what happened. space came in. cyber came in. countering weapons of mass destruction came in. isr came in. missile defense came in. electronic warfare came in. analysis and targeting came in. we formed all these functional component commands for all these things. when i got there, we were down to 18 different components under stratcomm. so how were we providing strategic deterrence? our job was to figure out how to integrate those. now, what has happened over the last few years? isr's now back in the joint staff. counter weapons of mass destruction at socomm. cyber command is its own command. certainly heard the secretary just talk about space command is going to be its own command. all those pieces are coming back out. so the question is, how do we

provide integrated deterrence? integrated strategic deterrence in all domains? t the most important priority, prevent the use of nuclear weapons on country or allies. prevent the catastrophic cyber space actions that damage our nation. if you think about that, that requires the integration of all capabilities. nukes, global cyber, conventional. all to deliver our deterrent effect. so the big challenge we have on the table is how do we do that in the structure we have today? h so what about the second priority? deliver decisive response if deterrence fails. so what we have created now in the process of creating, we're going to have five global combat and commanders and six geographic combat and commanders. those five global combatant commanders can deliver global fires.

space demand will be able to deliver global fires. statcomm will be able to deliver global fires, conventional and nuclear. transcomm enables everybody to deliver global fires. if you think about how we do it in theater today, we do it around singular events, one event at a time. that's an environment where we're not threaten ed in all those global domains. now we're threatened on the global domains. there's going to be a fight in the future that is going on in space. and cyber space. globally. involving cyber space. all at the same time. and i ask you, what is our doctrine for integrating the global fires of the nation? and providing that in support of a geographic combatant commander somewhere? there's a whole series of options. everything from every geographic combatant commander has to have

expertise in every one of those areas in order to do that. all the way to there's got to be a combatant commander that sbe zbrat integrates that to all the other commanders to a mix of capabilities. we're actually just trying to figure out how to do that right now. that's multidomain operations at its core. that's what it's all about. to try to figure out that to deter our adversaries, integrate that so we can integrate the global fires to deliver the capability on the battlefield in the future? global fires, theater fires all have to be integrated. timing and tempo. that is unbelievably difficult. we're going to get after that this year. question and answers, we can do deeper if you want. chief? >> general goldfein was talking to us yesterday, the chief put up a slide, he talked about setting conditions. and i just fundamentally believe that preparation sets our conditions. and so when the general, you know, went on and started talking about giving, offering

up his insight and perspective of why he has a photo of a master sergeant john chap hman his office, for all of us it should be a moment of reflection for many reasons, quite frankly. you know, one of them is we probably should sit there and take the time to recognize the fact that we are honored and we are blessed to serve with and serve for that type of talent in our institution. but along with that, when you sate the sit there and know the story of master sergeant john chapman, it actually really talks about a story of preparation. and so think about it. we often sometimes say that, hey, on any given evening, in any given moment, we will just rise to the occasion. and i just don't believe that is ever true. i would offer up what master sergeant john chapman did was fall back on his level of preparation. every extra rep he took, every piece of cognitive thinking he

did, every extra lap, all went into his preparation to be there for his teammates in their time of need. i think that is an important lesson for all of us to focus on. you know, we sit there and i go back to when you look at a professional like master sergeant chapman, it really is once again something the chief talked to us about. it's about the ability for us to master our craft. it is about being those leaders of competence. it's about being those leaders of character and it's about being those leaders of consequence. are we making a difference in the lives of our airmen? are we making a difference in the lives of our service members? and once again, you could think about the interactions you have and it's just evident, you know, once again, it goes back to the talent, and we have so much forward-thinking talent across our force at the e5, literally

breathtaking. about three yeweeks ago, had th opportunity to travel with a combatant commander to bangor kipse kipsett to deliver the omaha trophy. to the crew of the "u.s.s. alabama." >> roll tide. >> thank you, sir. >> yep. >> i know it was a special day for the commander for many reasons, right? for one, you're out there recognizing 160 exceptional l sailors who once again are mastering their craft, plus you put #rolltide in there, i know it's going to be a great day for the boss. but along with that day, something else special happened. we had an opportunity to go sit down and have lunch with members of the security battalion out there. the united states marine corps marines and our united states sailors out there. united states navy sailors. it's very interesting, we're very early on. i joke about this. it was taco tuesday. win for the team. >> awesome. >> there's goodness there.

in reality, one of the first questions as we just started eating, a marine sergeant e5 looks across, looks over at the combatant commander, says, sir, in your house of armed services committee testimony, and then verbatim, read off a bunch of testimony. >> he didn't read off, he had memorized. >> yeah. >> he quoted my testimony back to me. a marine e5. and then he asked why did you say that? [ laughter ] >> so that in itself is just unbelievably just impressive. and i would like to say it's an isolated incident. it's just simply not. but in it addition to that, what that member brought up is he actually shared a really, really relevant and important message and he shared on a deployment into the ucomm aor. it was a tactical echelon example of deterrence, but having this sergeant e5 of the united states marine corps really understand that at a high level was so incredibly impressive. and so once again, it goes to the talent in our force.

you know, we sometimes, i think we equate leadership with a rank or position. leadership, in fact, is just behavior. and you can just sit there and look at all the behaviors that we need a service members and just execute, you kn. you know,ing about the nds. i find it vitally important. i think for all of us as practitioners of the professional arms, it's important to sit there and align our activities, actions and behavior toward the national defense strategy, but i'll be honest, if you haven't had an opportunity to read it, just go to the cover page. once again, commander's intent. i think the secretary of defense gave us clear marching orders. it's an unclassified summary. it says that 2018, you know, national defense strategy for united states of america, it is overlaid on the u.s. constitution and talks about sharpening america's military competitive edge. in reality, didn't have to read anything further. sharpening our nation's military

competitive edge. and so when you look at the national defense strategy and what it means to us, whether it's globally integrated operations, whether it's joint fighters -- fires, excuse me. there are two things that resonate out of that. two things that come away. our ability as professionals to advance our competitive advantage. and the ability to create dilemmas for our adversaries. you know what creates dilemmas for our adversaries? our ability to cultivate the talent that we have within our formations. you know, once again, i quite frankly if you'd asked me, hey, what keeps you up at night? nothing. i sleep like a baby. and it's because of the 162,000 professionals within our war-fighting combat and command. but the reality when you look at thiss atalent, the reason you could sleep good is just the fact that their high level of execution and what they're able to deliver us on any given moment is just in a word, spectacular.

sir? >> well done. all right, peter. questions? however you want to go. >> number of questions have come in. most of them, sir, tryinging to get you into trouble. which i'm going to avoid -- >> that's a surprise. >> couple on nuclear issues which i'd like to kind of put in a package. one is, how are things going with respect to improving the infrastructure and the sustainment of our tactical nuclear weapons in europe? number two was, how is it going in terms of sustainment of our nuclear forces because our modernization and replacement doesn't happen until, perhaps, 2027, '28. and in particular, minuteman was one of the questions was asked, and the third part of it was, do we have the technical capability to break out or do we have a sufficient edge in case the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty goes away? >> that's about 22 nuclear questions in one. so let's start with europe. general scott baradi is not here. that's really a question for

general scott baradi and nato. the one thing i'll say about that, we when the f-35 comes in europe, wow, there's a game changer. so we really don't talk a lot about nuclear capabilities with inside the european theater. i'm not going to talk about a lot today. just think about the difference the f-35 will make in our overall deterrent capability when that comes in to europe. you talk about our nuclear force readiness. our strategic force readiness. our force is unbelief bli rvabl right now. amazingly ready. we had a problem ten years ago and came out of that problem. we're in good shape today. the one thing i tell all my commanders, all my chiefs, is that we have to realize that that morale is a little bit fragile. the reason it's a little bit fragile is that everybody now understands how important it is. it is the number-one mission of our country. we have do all those things and

new stuff is coming. so the new stuff had better show up and better show up on time because that's the promise we made to everybody in this business. and if it shows up on time, the morale will stay high and the force will stay ready and we'll be good. if it doesn't show up on time, then we have sustainment problems and morale problems and other problems. so the folks of you that are building the new minuteman, the new bomber, the new nuclear command and control, the knew weapons, we've got to deliver those capabilities on time, we've got to make sure the folks that operate any element of this enterprise always have the best equipment available. chief? >> i will offer this. it's a question that comes up a lot. they ask when you go out, what do the folks especially in the nuclear enterprise, what do they feel about serving in that capacity? and, you know, i use some examples but i will offer you this. whether it's airman kerrington or fulwiley or lieutenant that's

working up in the missile on console, our nuclear force right now finds meaning, purpose and value in what they do. they want to be doing this mission. actually as you look at that slide and look at everything this combatant commander has been assigned by the president of the united states in his commander in chief hat, everybody you touch on wants to be serving in those. we continue to harness it by investing. there's a modernization piece to that. there's a talent piece to that and there's a leadership piece to that. when you look across our force and the professionals doing it, they want to be doing this because they feel value out of it. because let's face it, strategic deterrence, there's a difficulty and a complexity to that that we really haven't focused on in 30 years. but because of the threat, because of bad actors and adversaries, we need to focus on that. so i just fundamentally believe talent wants to go after hard problems. and strategic deterrence is a hard problem and we've got a lot

of amazing professionals focused on it right now in a meaningful way. >> question for both of you. it came, a very interesting one, someone came to you and said i had a choice between going to silicon valley and making a zillion dollars or go into the air force and end up at strategic command doing the things you do, what would you tell them? >> so i actually had that question happen to a young person that went to my high school. huntsville, alabama. named after virgil i. grisham. the apollo 1 astronaut who died in apollo 1 in the accident. there was a student interning with my brother. his name is james braun. james, i'll give you a quick summary, 2,400 on his s.a.t. as a sophomore in high school. perfect grades in everything he ever did.

he formed a cyber patriot team in the high school in alabama. won the national cyber patriot championship. was on "cbs this morning" with his group. and he got into m.i.t., early admission as a junior. so he was working for my brother as an intern. my brother said, you should talk to my brother. we got together when i was home one summer and sat down and talked and i said, so, james, you can write your own ticket wherever you want to go. what do you want to do with your life? and he said, sir, i want to do hardcore cyber. i said, you know, most places that's illegal. [ laughter ] he said, well, that's true. i said, you know, i know a place where we can make it legal. but you have to sign up. if you sign up, that means you got to be all in.

and james is a brilliant guy, but he was a little concerned about, you know, can i actually do all that? i said, james, you can do anything you put your mind to. what do you want to do? you can go out and make your millions of dollars, or you can come in the air force. james, today, is a junior at the air force academy. [ applause ] let's say his grades are pretty spectacular. and he's doing remarkably well and he still sends me notes every once in a while, and he's happy. but for all the folks in this room, let me ask you a question, is this air force ready to access people like james braun in two years? and the answer is, not quite. we got some work to do to make sure the air force is ready for a talent like that. isn't that a great problem to

have? so that's how the i answer the can e. >> once again, sir, there's relative examples everywhere we go. we were down in cairo springs early in the year, took a visit to the first base brigade. young e4 army specialist who had come in the united states army with a degree in i.t. her whole reason for coming in is because she wanted to serve in the war-fighting domain that is space. so we have talent that are making those kind of decisions and they have multiple choices in life. once again, it's just looking at the talent we have and they actually have choices and they're choosing to serve. we actually saw that in this very room two years ago. so one of our oay members, staff sergeant e5, pararescueman, day job, doctor in new york city, air national guard member. this is the kind of talent we pull in. i'll share you a quick story, i stole this from one of my previous commanders i worked for, so please don't tell him. this commander, serving as a

commander, air force space command at the time, paid a visit to washington state. went up there to see the air national guard unit. the cyber unit up there. he was pulling up with his aide, pulls into a parking lot and sure it was a pretty stylish compact if the story serves me correctly. >> fusion. >> as he pulled in with the fusion, along pulls up a seen year airman e4 in a $100,000 tesla. sure there's a story there. there absolutely was. he was one of the vice presidents for cyber security and microsoft. because he wants to be doing this kind of profession. the profession of arms because there are things you can do in the capacity of the arms forces member you just can't do in life. i think there's value. once again, how do we cu cultiv that talent, assess that talent and retain that talent? it's imperative each and every one of us focus on that. >> if i look at all the oall t l >> if i look at all the l the t in this room, every one of you, if you join the air force to get rich, man, the recruiter saw you

coming. you joined it because you wanted to do something bigger than yourself, that's what it's all about. >> exactly right. >> that's what it's all about. >> thank you. here's a -- i have a -- going to put a group of questions together on multidomain operations. one is, are multidomain operations unique? number two, does it require reorganization of stratcomm? third, when will you know that you've achieved the necessary benchmarks to fully utilize your capability in multidomain operations? finally, how do you train for multidomain fight? >> all right. so, unique, unique only because the threats are different. it's actually the same problem we've always had. the force i just described for you is just a different joint force. you know, we had to figure out a long time ago how to integrate air, land and sea. we put a joint force together that does that pretty darn well. actually better than anybody on the planet has ever done it

before. now we have to do air, land, sea, space, cyber. we have to do all that together. it's the same problem. we just haven't done it so we have to step forward and figure out how to walk into that problem. so it's not different. how does it impact stratcomm, does it require a stratcomm reorganization? we're actually going to explore that over the next little while. as we stand up u.s. space command. use the standup space command as the opportunity to experiment in different construct. we're going to set up exercising involving the joint staff, other commands who will walk through how do we do that? we'll explore. i don't think it does. i think it's an issue of command, authorities and responsibilities. as you look at the other questions, it's also interesting to watch what some of our competitors have done. china. three, four years ago, they formed a strategic support force where they integrated space,

cyber, counterspace, counter cyber, intelligence surveillance reconnaissance. all into a single command. kind of like stratcomm did. now they're watching us break it all apart. you know how doe with thiwe do is not because we have a single organization that has all the things underneath it. we do it best because we create normal command relationship and figure out how to fight in a joint environment. a joint environment is just becoming complicated in two new ways. two new domains we have to b integrate with the other two. it's a multiprong problem, one thing we do with one adversary impacts another adversary venan have to figure out how to work th that. there's a lot of issues there but applying what we've done in the past to the problems of today. everything today should be about the threat. we took our eye off that about 20 years ago. when we went to capability-based development and capability-based planning. where at the same time, we had a potential adversary, vladimir putin was elected in 2000,

announced the doctrine of russia will be to use nuclear weapons on a battlefield if we're threatened. he said that 18 years ago and he pledged then to increase the spending on nuclear weapons by 50%. ten years later, we said that russia and china were no longer a threat. while during that entire period, he continued increase the spending on nuclear weapons and space and cyber space capabilities. why? because he wanted to challenge the united states. it's really that simple. so in many ways, it's the same problem, it's just a different threat. a different world with different capabilities and new domains. we just have to walk into it. same problem. >> thank you, sir. three questions came in having to do with the change in national security strategy to looking at great power competition. one question was how has that impacted your stratcomm command and your work? and how do you think russia and china have responded to the, i

guess, overt, fairly upfront description of them as the key problem we're facing. >> you want to start? >> sure. i would offer this. you know, from are when you sit there and you look through the national defense strategy and talks about our return to great power competition, from from my perspective at the combatant command, frankly i think it's helpful because what that forces us to do as professionals is to focus back on the threat. that, frankly, has always been there. you know, i stole a line from a movie. it talked about the cold war never ended, it just shattered in a thousand dangerous pieces. and so when i heard that, i actually thought about that. i think that's true and valid, and the reason i think that's true and valid is all i actually have to do is look at the actions and the behavior of our adversaries. you know, you go back and look at the 1990s, coming out of desert storm, so early 1991, the takeaway from the chinese was how we fought so successfully as

a joint force, and how we leveraged space capabilities. and so when you actually compare and contrast the space ca capabilities we actually had in 1991 to today, there's just a significant delta with the actual capabilities -- that was a tipping point for the chinese. you look at the russians and the combatant commander talked about this. they never stopped viewing the world as a threat. and so time for the atrophy is over. so when we talk about the number-one priority of the commander being 21st century strategic deterrence thinking, i would just simply offer we should probably start by stop doing anything 20th century, but we allow that to jam up our processes, our procedures. the way we do business. the world is different in a very meaningful way, and so once again, how you get after these bad actors and these adversaries is actually through our intellectual capability as

professionals. that's what i'd offer up, sir. >> the national defense strategy is helpful to me because it just describes the world the way it is. it's not the way the world we wish existed. it's the way the world is. that means we have to do something about it. by describing the way the world is, it validates u.s. strategic command and tells everybody that works in this command how important their job is and their job is the most important work in the department. go ahead, peter. >> thank you. one last question. that is, space, cyber space, and maritime areas have become global common areas but are being used by our adversaries to impact the united states. how specifically do you view these threats? in terms of not only priority or what specifically are the kinds of threats you think are deadly enough to dominate your thinking? >> so there's a couple interesting things in that question. one, the fact that the term, global commons, is used about

space and cyber. when was the first time global commons really became a useful term? it was the navy, it was the sea. it was mahon. that's when we started talking about the global commons of the sea. how did we get after dealing with that? we built an unbelievably powerful navy that could make sure that the united states would preserve sea lines of communication around the world and preserve our commerce and preserve all these pieces. then we worked with the international community to develop laws of the sea. international waters. all those kind of pieces. and then air came to be about 100 years ago. and what did we do? we actually built the most powerful air force in the world that could make sure we could transit anywhere we wanted to and defend ourselves and never have a soldier, sailor, airman, marine, ever come under hostile fire from the air ever again. we walked through that and worked with the international civil aviation community to develop an arms of behavior and how that works. now we have space. now we have cyber space.

what should we do? let's think about it for a second. how about we build the most powerful space capability in the world so that we can always transit through space freely without a thing, then work with the international community to define what the norms of beoffer are so we know what they are and understand. cyber space, how about we build the most cyber capability in the world and then work with the international community to develop -- it's not that hard, ladies and gentlemen, but oh, my gosh, because it's space and sign e somehow we label it, it's a global common. we have to do something special because it's special. now, it's not 37 there are just places, places where we go. places where we operate. one is manmade. still places we go. we go there every day. we just have to treat it correctly. if we treat it correctly, we'll know exactly what to do and understand how to do that and