thank you all for being here. we will be talking with you in the next couple of days. >> [indiscernible] >> you want to address that? ok. listen, he did an about-face very quickly and that was appropriate and if you want to send his own presidential plane to pick up his folks, welcome that. it saves american taxpayers money. we think that is a great thing and i think other foreign leaders should send their presidential planes and pick up there folks who don't belong here. we are happy to send them back so i think it is a good trip. thank you. >> good to see you all. >> finally getting over it. >> later today, president trump will speak to house republicans at their annual policy retreat in miami from the trump national resort. you can watch live coverage of that at five :00 p.m. eastern on

c-span, c-span now, and online at our website, c-span.org. we take you now back to a form on nuclear deterrence. we joined this in progress. >> six submarines, very highly capable and pretty big. are they still the largest diesel boat in the world? >> it could be. it is close. >> quite big diesel boats and six of them with 42 issue sailors. virginia crew is 135-ish sailors and it is almost three times as big and we will be a third bigger yet so if you just think about something as simple as the sizing of the peer, setting aside the shore power and the radiological aspects, just the sizing of it from an infrastructure perspective is a significant investment as it goes forward.

you can talk more about that as we go and give you guys an idea of what hii is doing and then i will put it over to you if that is ok. so we obviously have a significant play. pillar one is one of the two countries that builds virginia class submarines so we are very engaged in that. i talked earlier. everything to do with the submarine will be handled in the government space under something that looks like the 1958 mutual defense agreement. we are is sitting, nothing was thrown at me so i think i got that right. so the submarine herself will handle it different. what hi has done is create three different sovereign australian corporations. i am super busy right now. we have three sovereign australian companies, very creatively named.

and then we have a joint venture with babcock international which allows us to bring to the field in australia really the only western -- the only team in the western world that designs, builds, sustains, and disposes of nuclear powered submarines on behalf of the australian government said that is a significant reach back for them. we recently completed uplift activities on behalf of the government of south australia and we will do a run for them here in the next couple of weeks for the government of western australia to uplift suppliers to prepare them to get qualified to sell into our industrial base. we believe pretty strongly there is no better way to become qualified for a nuclear powered submarine in australia than to start as early as you can. it helps relieve some of our challenges in the supply chain. we are looking to do that on a

federal basis as well in collaboration with australia. we have also created the workforce alliance which is a consortium of universities to facilitate workforce development in australia for australia and help train and development workforce -- develop workforce. last but not least, we have restructured part of the mission technologies division to really hone in and focus all the resources necessary to bring nuclear capability, workforce development, and training capability and fleet sustainment capability into the australian theater in the creation of our new global security group. all of those groups rolling into now to really provide that full window through which the full capability will come into the indo pacific for that so with that, over to you.

>> that is good. the first thing i want to do is deviate a little bit here. he's worried now. october 1962, what happened? >> that is a big detour. >> keep an missile crisis. that is when i was born, smack dab in the cuban missile crisis. my dad was a test engineer, designed for north american the act -- the atlas engines for some of our first icbm's. i first job was on the peacekeeper program and today, i had the privilege to work on the sentinel program with northrop grumman and the air force. and so, deterrence is kind of in my blood, literally, for my whole life. and so i had the privilege of working with some of you at los alamos and it has just been an incredible mission. what we're doing down in australia is that we are working closely with the aussies down

there, the australian submarine agency, to really focus on their needs around infrastructure that is capable of not only sustaining but building their fleet. some of the work that we have done with the u.s. navy has allowed us to do the things that are necessary not only to master plan the henderson defense precinct just outside of perth but to really master plan and then play out scenarios that allow them to pick the best solutions in their analysis of alternatives that are necessary to build that shipyard which, as you know gives freedom of navigation and access to the indian ocean and the south china sea. very, very important job. a lot that we have learned from our public ship yards is getting plowed into the sustainability mission that they have down there, working closely with hii to come up with what we feel to be the best approach for

sustainability. they are very fortunate. think about it. if done right, you could figure out how to sustain warships and meet the availabilities that are necessary to defend freedom around the globe. the customer is a great customer. they are learning. and i believe their eyes are wide open to the complexities of what we just have taken for granted. and the kind of work that we do for the u.s. navy and the work that is done with the royal navy in the u.k. but let's face it, it is a very, very steep learning curve. i remember we were at the session with admiral richardson a couple of years ago and his way of describing it was it is going to be hard and it's going to be harder than hard to do this right and i think if you are a history buff and you go back to the mid-1940's when we started to communicate some of

our nuclear requirements and information to the british government, with all the starts and stops they had at the time, it literally took them about 12 years to really get things up and running and we are trying to compress the schedule right now and think through this and the best way possible. we are doing sustainably -- sustainability work at h mas sterling which is close to the henderson defense precinct where we are planning the work and i think that was the first great step in the 2 -- in the two nations really cooperating and placing sailors aboard our boats so they can learn what it takes to actually operate a nuclear powered submarine with some of the u.s. equipment. everything that we are learning their, acknowledge skills, influence in the nuclear engineering arena are really supporting their efforts to plan

the next phase of work for the henderson defense precinct and the other thing that we are doing is we have started, much like michael and his team, the focus on nuclear engineering learning and the things that are necessary to get folks up to speed on the things that we have just taken for granted. >> i appreciate that. i know the floor is very engaged and he spent a lot of time in australia. tell everybody what you guys are doing and who you are doing it with down there. >> thank you, michael. i am happy to share our corporate strategy with 600 of my closest competitors. >> that is right. ok. it should be alright. >> our situation is a little bit different so the government group in florida is called mission solutions and we don't have a presence necessarily in australia but florida has actually been there for 70 years and for dj, that is five years more. and just like this event,

riverside would be 75 years that they are celebrating as well but so it knows nothing about doing work for the government so we are teamed up with a company that is a global engineering procurement construction company and it doesn't do much work for the government of australia either. on the other hand, we have great hip abilities we can offer so our first year has been more getting the lay of the land, getting established, getting people to understand who we are, and all of that is paying off. we are at the point now where people are actually reaching out to us because they know our capabilities and what we have to offer. the question is, you know -- above or below the line. above the line means you are basically a direct contractor to the government. low the line, you are a contractor that is in on the delivery side so read that as a

government consultant versus delivery contractor. we spend a lot of times with the australian submarine agency and i will tell you that just learning who is who in the sioux is complicated so the australian submarine agency, the australian submarine corporation, australian naval infrastructure, naval security and support group, security and estate group, and none of them talk to each other very well. so it is a question of who is in charge and how they are going to make decisions and how are they going to go forward? over the course of the last year, a lot of the people we talked to have departed and left. there is some reorganization going on and as we said earlier, it is hard. it is harder than hard but when you think of the australians, they are taking on an almost insurmountable task. you might call it $450 billion

that they have to do to get these technologies in place, to get the infrastructure in place, to get the submarines in place, to get the people trained and they have nobody who has done that before so it is a huge challenge and a steep hill for them to go up. would not be surprised they are taking some time. most of industry is getting impatient but things are happening but again, the australian procurement system is different so we are used to a big, you know, how are we going to do this? it would come up with an acquisition strategy and may be an industry day followed by a draft will test for proposals, etc., etc., but that is not the way the australians work and so one of their key things they have to battle is what is the crocodile closest to the canoe? h mas sterling.

they have to be ready to put some brains there. so we were waiting and waiting. only to find out that work has already started because they take what they call a panel and just start giving work to these panel contractors to start things going and that is good for the smaller projects that they have but not good for the bigger projects and the interface projects so the australians are faced with not only an organizational challenge but a procurement challenge and they know that they need -- like the companies we represent, they are not quite sure how to get that so that is a bit of a challenge and there is some work that is going on to help like they talked about. some of the major infrastructure projects are going to be probably open competitions but we do not know when. in the meantime, we have our partnership established, getting

things registered earlier. there was a lot of talk, how do you get onto the bases in the u.s.? same for over there. are they going to recognize u.s. dot clearances? u.s. doe clearances? the answer has to be yes but they have not said that yet so there's a lot of things. it has been a learning process, slower than we might like we are making some steady progress. >> so a couple of additions to that. when you think about clearance reciprocity is something that clearly has to be in place amongst all three partner nations to have a chance, just a real easy data point in the back of your mind is that to get a top-secret clearance in the u.k. acquires 10 years -- it requires 10 years of residency in the u.k. so a lot of us are 10 years late in that application process

and by the time we are done, milestones will have moved past us so there just has to be an opportunity in that. also, if you think about what we call the passport -- if we train a welder to weld to nuclear quality in shipbuilding, it does not necessarily mean that they are qualified against the standards to do that welding in accordance with union requirements in australia so we need to harmonize those and get some reciprocity and a way to track that and enable folks to get training at one place to be qualified in the other. our doe folks will recognize this discussion for a long time. they have been working on that for a long, long time. also real quickly, i skipped just a quick geography lesson. not everybody has a picture of australia in their brain and we have been talking about cities. it is a country about the same size as the united states.

the population about the same as florida so when you think about the intensity to develop the workforce from a national endeavor perspective, it is a pretty small universe of folks to draft from. the interpretation the australian government has taken with respect to who would be qualified to do that, natural born australian citizen shrinks that pool ever more in a material way so there is just a challenge in the number of people available to do the work. but if you picture australia in your mind on the left-hand side where we would see san francisco or los angeles, henderson and sterling naval base are right around perth so a little bit apart. over on the right-hand side is camera. that is sort of where we are sitting now. and where we would see new

orleans is adelaide. that is where they are going to build where they house the australian submarine corporation which is a government owned company so i normally say, just let that settle in for a minute. that is where they have their build yard and they have operations out in henderson where mike was talking about our collaboration on that project together so as we kind of go through this, there is any number of threads to explore but i thought i would start with you. you talked some of the hurdles just to get set up there. what are you thinking about how other companies -- what are the biggest hurdles that u.s. companies have the capability to support australia, who does not have the national capability to do this are facing just to get capability into the country? >> well, part of it is like i said earlier.

you have to get registered to do business in australia. you have to have a facility clearance, process to do business with the australian government so basically, the way most of us would proceed is to get a good australian consultant to walk you through the whole process and then you do that. one of the other things is you have to figure out what sort of services you are going to offer. what they really need is a lot of -- what i would call hard-core news. not necessary nuclear engineers but people who are used to working in this industry. we know the rules and regulations and i explained that to a lot of the australians. you don't need nuclear engineers. you need engineers who understand the interface with nuclear. 85 to 90% of your current engineers are fine. you need to train them on the extra requirements that come along and so if in the meantime, if you don't have those resources, you will have to contract them out and the u.s. or the u.k. could provide those.

it is going to be very expensive and i think there will be some sticker shock for the australian government when they pay u.s. salaries higher than australian engineers in general and then you're looking at the exchange rate and you are looking at the uplifts and everything that comes with sending an ex-pat to the other side of the world so it is for a company that is just starting out. you need to factor that into your business plan so don't think it will be as easy as just signing up and submitting it that i can go do this. it takes a lot more prep work to get ready. >> it is a time and money investment. it will be a slow payback. >> exactly and the australians are little slow to take up the offer in many of those areas because they truly want them to do everything that you discussed so they have hired a lot of people that are not trained and not used to it so they are going to need help i would think and it is a five year to seven year process to get all those people up to speed that than they can

say, ok, let me self perform. i don't know that they are quite ready to take that leap of faith just yet. >> second that is fair. as we looked at henderson and other pieces together, i think henderson is not only greenfield. adelaide is more greenfield and you know, your comment about if you plan it right, it is great. if you don't, it is a disaster. that is an important way to think about it. what are some of the major priorities if you are talking to the pm, what would you tell him, hey, the next two or three things we have got to do out west, schedule priority perspective to jumpstart this process. >> it is a great question. i think that right now, aligning ourselves with the right engineering contractors in the region is super important. because you know, we do things differently. we are pretty fortunate. we are an epc firm so we do a

lot of our own engineering but in this environment, you have to get used to the fact that it is not just going to be u.s. companies doing work down in australia. there's going to be some fairly significant partnerships that need to be foraged with subcontractors and other firms down there. they do like work and have the ability to be developed to do the kind of work that we are talking about that starts right now. you want them to be in a position where they can start investing in the development of their people. that is so important. the other thing i would say, you know, if you do construction work that requires some degree of labor, you need to understand local laws and all the nuances of running a labor relations organization in australia. we have been very fortunate. we must have showed up at the same time. >> we are right down the street.

the offices are like 10 minutes apart. >> you know, so 70 years of experience being down in that continent have afforded you the ability to have relationships with the unions and really understand labor laws and the things that are necessary to be in a position where you can manage that work. we are very big on building an indigenous workforce which is so important. the interface between the work that we do here and in country is hard. it is really hard. you have to think through the gaps. you have to think through the nuances of how you communicate, what systems you use. those systems, whether they be on the engineering side or procurement, construction, doesn't matter. need to operate seamlessly across all the parts and you just cannot show up tomorrow and say we are going to turn this thing on. we are off and running. so that doesn't work.

so that is a big part of it and the other part of it is just starting to get focused on the supply base down there and i think you guys have done some really good things with your strategy where you guys have focused on the things that you can do to build that manufacturing capability that is necessary for you. they are down there and you have qualified suppliers that are producing hardware for columbia-class and virginia class to support the needs and demands that we have here. i know that the admiral and the workforce industrial base team that has been focusing on building capability in the u.s. to do this really well, we have to do that with our partners and if we are not, we continue to struggle here and i just don't believe that is necessary. we can work this smarter. >> i appreciate that and i think that is exactly right. we have been saying for over a

year now in australia that if we don't look at the end, we have not actually improved the industrial capacity and capability of all three partner nations, then we probably did not do it right. this is an incredibly important opportunityi will just mention . and we can go to some questions. as you think about the timeline, everyone focuses on the submarine and focuses on the workforce to do the nuclear work in the submarine sustainment work. we are not an epc, we don't have an office in perth. we have people in perth and they tell me it is a hardship. every time i go to perth, it reminds me of san diego without any traffic. it is absolutely fabulous. they have convinced me it is a hardship too, i don't know how

that worked out. i'm going to have to revisit that. i'm going to go to perth and we will talk about it for a week or so. ultimately what people are underestimating, the need to de-conflict workforce to actually do the construction of the infrastructure, the uplift in that alone, i mean, it's the same thing. it's the trades to do construction, not necessarily just the trade associated with the submarine itself. it is also going to require a national endeavor. it's a massive set of infrastructure projects between what you are thinking about, what we are talking about at henderson, what they are doing down at adelaide. and then if they build a base out on the other coast, it is nonstop multiple billions of dollars of infrastructure in a country that i don't think has the craft to do that activity,

separate and distinct from the craft necessary to do the sustainment on the submarines. one of the things we focused on when we put this global security team together is the fact that we now have more than 1000 people doing fleet sustainment literally all over the world on our team that are in australia and guam, all over the indo pack, doing sustainment on 80% of the u.s. navy ships last year. brought a global reach for sustainment into the team. you tie that together with the capabilities that our friends here have, it is a really compelling package for australia to have the opportunity to tap the resources we have into the companies represented here. but it is not going to be easy, to greg's point, to enable that process. ok. we have about 14 or so minutes left. i thought i would see if there are any questions from the floor. it normally goes one of two ways. either there are 8000 questions or -- we will start with one.

>> hi, i'm with iranian producers of america. my question pertains to fuel. i would assume that the initial load of these reactors would be built in the united states. should we see this as a new demand on either existing u.s. origin and obligated uranium stockpiles, or a new source of demand we have to fill from industry? mr. lempke: this is how you know it's not my first time. that is an excellent question to ask the government. [laughter] so, yes. what other questions? that was a really nice try, by the way. >> we could expand that -- expand on that a little bit. the virginia class submarines, basically they get three with an

option for two more. they will be submarines in service today. they are not getting them fresh out of the shipyard. that one conference i was at last year, one of the australian groups was upset about that. we are getting used submarines. and i said, there are good runners. you should be fine. but they are getting the whole package. and i don't know the details of what happens when the submarine is decommissioned, but that class of submarine is designed to have a lifetime court. they should not have to worry about it. long-term, they are making plans for how to manage that fuel. from our side, we need that summary, whether we give it to the australians or whether they buy or not, or we keep it ourselves. our national security interest is that submarine, in the south china sea, somewhere on a good day perhaps. but certainly somewhere on the western pacific or the indian ocean, because the national security threat that australia and the u.s. and many others

face. it might be a little bit more demand signal to the shipbuilders. but it is one that is overdue and we need anyway as a nation. most of us think whichever crews are on that summary, the most important thing is that submarine is over there. mr. lempke: just like the integration of the industrial base benefits all three alliance members, at the end of the day, august is about submarine availability, how many submarines you can have -- have at sea on any given date. the implementation is designed to increase the number of ships at sea. hello. >> i'm with the simpson center. i just have a question toward ai and working with australian contractors. given a more protectionist method, measure, with the current administration, is there any concerns that while within the aukus's framework shifting

more to u.s. priorities, in favor of u.s. needs over australian needs? mr. lempke: i'm going to start in the same place that greg did. america has its not -- has not stepped onto a battlefield since 1812. to say we have not -- national interests that are aligned, probably a significant understatement. the alliance, increasing the number of submarines it has available at sea to do what the combatant commanders want to do is good for everyone. the united kingdom, the united states, the commonwealth of australia. as you focus with that in mind, where the submarine -- to see a crew that is running the simmering becomes less important than the submarine being at sea doing its job on behalf of the national security of all three of those partners. from the hi perspective,

collaborating with the industrial base in australia helps us potentially open up additional sources of supply. in post-covid, we have a number of supplier, critical items, at -- that are single or sole source they are making them as they can. it is not a diversion from the u.s., it is actually an expansion of capability across the alliance in a way that provides a unique opportunity to offset needs we have, while we train their industrial base to be sovereign capable to do it in the future to the benefit of the full team. >> we were just briefed on secretary rubio's with the meaning of the australian government. they solidify their support for them. i think what could change is the roadmap to get there. i think that is being questioned right now. mr. lempke: i think that's fair.

australia has dedicated an enormous amount of money to this endeavor. it is really important to approach this from the perspective that australia has budgeted for this, australia is paying for this in many ways. it is not a gift from the u.s. to australia. it is a mutually beneficial alliance arrangement. >> hi. can you comment on the extent to which you have failed you have been welcomed by the australian people? mr. lempke: thought we talked about you not asking any questions. [laughter] >> we are close allies but australia does not have a lot of depth in nuclear. they have an accelerator in cambria and one reactor. i would be interested to hear your views on that. thank you. mr. lempke: appreciate that, mark. what i found, and we can turn it to the team, i think they been very welcoming.

we have worked with more than 300 suppliers across the spectrum, small, medium, large suppliers. we have visited factories, we have executed supplier uplift activities with them. i think the cabability that we find in australia from a supply chain perspective is phenomenal. what we think we need is obviously scale and throughput. to be fair to them, they have -- they are meeting the demand they have had. this is a new uplift in demand. it is a collaboration of that aspect as well. by industry to industry participation, and in our collaboration with government, the australian submarine agency and the minister's office, up to and including the deputy prime minister, has been a very collaborative experience. very welcomed. and i think truly excited about the opportunity that it brings for the nation. what is your experience? mr. costas: to be a little more

blunt, it's a great answer, we need to check our egos at the door. we need to remember that they live in a tough neighborhood. and respect that. we have to go to work every day, become good partners with them, build trust, and good things will happen. but if you were that close to what the real threats are out there, you may look at things a little differently. mr. lempke: i think -- you have to go humbly into the market, right? mr. meyer: yeah, i think they don't have the nuclear industry in australia, we just talked about that in many ways. but there is bilateral support from the government for a nuclear powered submarine. they make sure they say it is not nuclear armed, is a nuclear powered submarine. and we see a lot of good support for that. i also spoke at both the australian nuclear association on the east coast, and the perth u.s. asia center over the last year.

it is against the log right now to produce commercial electrical nuclear power. it is kind of a bizarre situation. but that is also changing. more and more, they are starting to recognize that they can't get to where they want to be in terms of sustainable, green, carbon neutral without commercial nuclear power. there is not a seachange, but definitely a groundswell that is starting that might actually be more accepting of commercial nuclear power in the not too distant future. overall, because of the threats that michael says, mike said those live in a tough neighborhood, they recognize that where -- they have to change and that is important to them. it is well accepted so far. we need to make sure when we are all over there, when the government is there, we are working safely and we can continue the impeccable safety records we have today. because a single incident would set everybody back a long way. mr. lempke: yeah. obviously, i think all of that is right on the money. i do find that they are very

welcoming, they have had some challenges with fits and starts on programs before. there is a need to walk the walk, and not just bring your glossy brochure. i really do think if you keep in the back of your mind that your job, in aukus, our job in aukus is to facilitate the develop in of sovereign australian capability. it is not to move a bunch of americans there, not to make all of their products here and ship them down there for assembly. it is to create a sovereign capability that does not exist today. if you keep that in mind and have that as your first principle, it facilitates focusing in the right way and on the right thing. a couple more minutes here for questions. we have worn you out. all right. if you have any other questions,

especially late at night, if you would please call greg. he will be our team scribe. but thank you for listening. we appreciate it. we will be around if you have other questions. i will tell you, we are leaning on partners and friends and developer relationships here as we look to work in that market in a new and different way. there are several companies that we are teaming with, facilitating them entering a new market while we as a company work to enter a new market. very much appreciate the collaboration. thank you and enjoy the rest of conference. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> if the directors will make their way to the front.

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>> if i can ask you to take your seats please. and we will get started with our next panel. before we do, and while you are making your way to your seats, a special shout out from our team. one of our key managers from savannah river was just promoted to vice president today. kelly, congratulations. well done. [applause] all right. i'm honored once again to be

able to chair a panel of the three directors, who probably have if not the most difficult job, one of the most difficult jobs in d.o.e.. we are going to talk today about the challenges they face. this is -- we have done this a few times before but this is the last time that shane will be with a spear we have tried for a year to talk him out of his retirement, and unsuccessfully so. james, thank you for all of you have done for the country. let's have a round of applause for james. [applause] with that, i'm going to make this a real panel and dispense with the podium. what we would like to do today is talk about the same things that teresa talked about earlier today, the key elements of success, for the national

security enterprise, and the lads. these three lab directors, and their institutions, have made great progress in the last year in a number of areas. what we are going to do today is talk about that. and then talk about what comes next. and let -- by teaching that up, if you think about what they did, and you heard this in the briefings this morning. the life extension programs, and the r&d programs, streamlining the way we do business. all of them have had both of this bottoms up and top-down approach, where they challenge their teams to give them innovative ideas, and then they heard both from the new employees we have in the existing employees, those ideas and made them actionable, and always using a risk-based approach to make sure we are applying the great requirements to each mission and project. third is streamlined decision-making. we all know we need that. they have done a tremendous job.

and of course it is the basics of moving the decisions down to the lowest possible level, to let things get done faster. at the same time, maintaining the proper level of oversight and governance, which we know is critical using digital tools and other things. but just having good metrics and a contractor assurance programs. of course, for all of the above, using digital tools to analyze this mountain of data we generate to detect trends and inform the work we do in real time so that we avoid the problems, not just find them and fix them, but avoid them before they can impact our mission and projects. we are going to talk about the same four that teresa in dj teed up today. we will talk about innovation. then we will talk about infrastructure. thirdly, we will talk about operations and then finally, what makes it all work is developing the workforce of the future, are people strategy.

let me start with innovation. i mentioned before implementing digital tools and digital transformation as areas where you made great progress. can you describe what you have achieved? and i know in the past year, you have used it to improve our design methods, improve our operations, and our production capability, and of course, maintaining a strong science base. and then, finally, if you could wrap into that, what do you need to take that next step? would do you need from an nsa to take the next step in that innovation? do you want to start? >> i picked the wrong chair. [laughter] that was a big question. and thank you for bringing us back together again. we have spent a lot of this year talking about the digital transformation we are trying to find -- drive forward. i think it will impact our work in a number of ways that i will start with simple as part.

conceptually simplest part which is the backbone to collect the labs, plants and sites anymore seamless manner and ensure we have common electronic infrastructure that we can share information seamlessly between sites, to really streamline how we go from design through engineering to production. and make those cycles efficient and modern and provide what we are hoping will be a digital thread for the work we do so that they will have a really good data and great tools to enable us to do stockpile modernization in new ways. within the laboratories, we are also using our new tools and capabilities. you heard earlier that we just cited several new computers. , will talk about what they are doing at los alamos but we decided at livermore. this is the first exit scale computer for national security. they are number one. which is pretty exciting.

but the computing is now at a scale where we can do things that seem inconceivable 10 years ago. 3d modeling has become a routine tool of design we are linking together our engineering and physical design capabilities. this machine also has 44,000 gp use in it. it is an amazing tool for things like ai. are starting to bring that even those into our science and design communities to speed the pace of learning, and really be able to think differently about how we do all elements of our work on the stockpile. i think i will stop there and pass it over to my colleagues. >> i will just pick up where kim left off, actually. if you look at what went into making el capitan possible, and by the way, all three labs are going to be able to use that resource. so we are kind of basking in the reflected glory. i think there are a dozen key

technologies that went into enabling that tremendous computational resource, that were developed as part of the computing project, that are actually baked into all of the big investments that are being made by the hyper scalars to train their models. it doesn't get a lot of attention, but that exit scale program actually was the building blocks of what is a transformational technological revolution that is underway right now. when you read about openai announcing stargate and x ai putting 100,000 gp use, working to one million gp use in memphis, under the hood is technology that not of person of ever faster computers. one of the nice and bright products of that is machines

like el capitan or the supercomputer that we deployed at los alamos in the spring, not only our -- are wonderful for doing the multi-physics simulation that are critical to our ability to assure the effectiveness and the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile, they will also be great for artificial intelligence. because they have this hybrid architecture. and i think one of the things we are excited about is the possibility of adding that to our fluke it, not to replace the traditional modeling and simulations that we have, but to accelerate it. it will be an important training database for ai. and also to take advantage of this tremendous resource we have in terms of experiment data. that is something where the three labs are working very closely together. we are hopefulhat can make an announcement of that before too long.

but it is something that is going to enable us to go faster. and that is important, because we are going to be asked to go faster. we are being asked to go faster. the strategic posture commission capture that with the necessary but not sufficient, and we are very busy right now with things like infrastructure, topics that,. and the only way that we will have the capacity to go faster is to use some of the tools that we have been working so hard to enable over the last few decades. >> kim and tom covered a lot of the pieces of the digital transformation. but there are some other areas here that are -- i will give you the positive pieces and the challenges. in the program, it will be born digital. all of the integrative product teams have bought into basically using digital thread as their way of doing design through manufacturing. in some cases, 87-one is doing

digital thread. this is not without its challenges. because there is eight last implants into sites that have to come together and agree on a common sense of tools. culturally, that is a challenge at sandia by itself, and the mechanical tools or electrical design tools. coming with the ones that we are going to provide, only a certain version of it for our engineers. and then things simply is staying up-to-date, something as simple as our award processing tools, that they are all at the same version level. there are a lot of challenges of this. i believe tomorrow, jimmy wolf will be on a panel talking about this. you can ask them more detailed questions. we are making progress in these areas but there are a lot of challenges. mr. longenecker: and i ask you to address on renovation, a term that general mcconnell uses that may have been coined by the pass

administrator? technology insertion. you have had a strong tremendous act -- tremendous technology base at all of the labs, and you develop all of these technologies. one thing i've heard you speak about is how long it takes us, for a lot of good reasons and some not so good reasons, to deploy them. what progress have you made in the last year in technology insertion? you say, when you can deploy those technologies sooner, it can work them into the mission to go faster and better and more efficiently. kim, do you want to start with what type -- with technology insertion? ms. budil: think this is an area where we have made a lot of progress. as james mentioned with the digital transformation, changing because of technologies we use and the way we use technology is equal parts technical and cultural. it is not a simple as saying i have a great new idea or technology, let's just roll with it. there is a high degree of confidence we have to build in a new technology or new

manufacturing approach. and there are many legacy processes and procedures built on the way we do things today. that cultural peace cannot be ignored. i think we have really build a strong partnership across the labs, plans and sites that is allowing us to gain speed and inserting new technologies. we have put an emphasis on new manufacturing technologies. what's interesting to me is you usually think about designing technology and then building things. manufacturing is a tool to enable you to do things. the capabilities we have with advanced manufacturing tools mean it changes the way you think about design, because you can make things that are very different from what you can conceive about with old tools. we are sort of seeing the whole process become much more iterative as we learn the capabilities and the power of these new tools, and things like on machine inspection and control, and design optimization tools that allow us to iterate

through many variations of the new part. in our modernization programs that we are pursuing now, so we are the design agent for 80-4 and 87-1 mod, we are inserting new technologies because we have this capability to change the way we have thought about these designs to make them more manufacturing, more sustainable, easier to maintain through the life of that system. mr. mason: i think we have gone through -- i will say we have gone through a phase transition. there was a long time where really build into the way we were thinking about things was, change as little as possible. we have designs that have their origins in the era of testing, and anything that we do to introduce a change in how we manufacture, can introduce some sort of uncertainty that might cause us to question that basis.

and i think we are over that now. we are over it for a couple reasons. first off, because of the things like modeling and simulation tools, we have a better ability to understand the consequences of a change in material or a change in the manufacturing approach, and actually convince ourselves that it is ok. i think the other thing is, and james owen mentioned this in his session this morning, it is not just a question of can we design things that are easy to manufacture? this, what do the new manufacturing technologies enable in terms of design possibilities that simple he could not be accomplished any other way? and the fact that with a lot of additive manufacturing and digital design, complexity is much less frightening than it used to be.

you can actually make things that are very complex, in a relatively straightforward way. and that gives the designers some flexibility in terms of how they approach solving a problem that they did not have in the past, and we are no longer bound by that. i think we have enough confidence or ability to understand those changes, that we can take advantage of it, and also take advantage of the fact that it may require a smaller footprint. it may produce less waste material in the form of spoils, and curios we deal with, you would rather not deal with large quantities of unused material. all of these things are benefits that can help us stay within a bounded cost envelope. mr. peery: let's see, i'm pretty excited right now because last week, we had a successful 80-4 flight test with the air force. there is new technology in there. can't go into specifics, but between lawrence technology that

they have inserted, it is an amazing advancement in how we think about the systems. there is a lot of stuff coming through, kind of the laboratory scale that is going to change the way that we think about our safety things for nuclear weapon systems. i'm really excited about that coming through. mr. longenecker: the next topic, we will move onto to number two, infrastructure. kim, you can relax because i'm going to start with james this time. and infrastructure, we know our infrastructure was built 75 or 80 years ago, and needs to be upgraded. the enterprise blueprint that you all talked about and contributed to this a great description of the must-have infrastructure. and i like the way the past administrator said it is not a wish list, it's essential to the mission. to support over the next 25 years. with that, what are the key

things you need at your lab to effectively carry out the enterprise blueprint, including health and implement in those creative approaches that i know you are all working on supply chain, using commercial standards and broadening the supply base? james, you want to start? mr. peery: i'm very exciting -- excited about the blueprint, and having negotiated with nnsa and other lab plants, the list of facilities that need to be recapitalized. but i want to go in a different direction then your question. because we have to sustain a lot of cysts -- a lot of facilities before the new ones come around. that is going to be a really significant issue from a funding standpoint. we have to continue to have facilities that make the electronics for the weapons. we have to continue to have facilities that qualify parts for the weapons. and if you look at the

enterprise blueprint, some of those facilities will be five to 10 years from now before we get new facilities. and we put these facilities in a run to failure mode literally a decade ago. that was a good decision at the time. because at that time, it looked like we would be recapitalizing these facilities today. but it is going to take longer. we have to sustain these facilities to continue to execute the monetization programs. there are other things that are not in the blueprint that we need to pay attention to. lab space and office space. and a lot of that needs to be recapitalized through the complex. there is a lot to be done here. very excited about the blueprint, because it lays out a timeline for the facilities that we absolutely have to have. some of these facilities we have to have before they are recapitalized. mr. mason: the important thing in my mind about the blueprint

is that it does look across the spectrum of types of infrastructure that it needed to support what we do. it's easy to spend all of your time focusing on the really big ticket nuclear facilities, because they do take a tremendous amount of dollars to get built and they take a long time to get built. they have a very significant requirement in terms of safety and security that drives all of that. so you see a lot of focus on discussions with things like upf, the plutonium infrastructure investments at los alamos. the blueprint also talks about some of the infrastructure that we used to design, certify and assess the stockpile. those are scientific tools, they are test capabilities, they are

absolutely important. paradoxically, even though sometimes we take the shorthand to refer to these as our science facilities, if you want to know what is the shortest path between infrastructure and impact on the on alert deterrent, it is actually through those facilities because it is in resolving questions that may arise, surveillance programs or whatever. and to be honest, the pits we are building at los alamos, as important as they are, they are not going to affect the on alert deterrent until sentinel is in the field. there are a lot of pretty urgent things in that scientific piece of the infrastructure that are every bit as important as the big facilities. as james pointed out, one of the concerns is -- at los alamos, we got approval of critical decisions zero. the mission needed for much-needed modernization of the front end of our accelerated,

which is one of those tools were used to resolve issues, the -- it is important for qualifying new high explosives. but we have to keep the facility running, and in fact, this year, we don't have enough spare parts. while the lamp upgrade is tremendously important in ensuring the future of that facility, the more mundane things, we call it maintenance operations. it does not look quite as flashy as el capitan. but it is extremely important for the ongoing health of our deterrent. ms. budil: i agree wholeheartedly with james and tom. one of the best parts of the enterprise blueprint offered was the time we spent as a community coming to consensus of what is on that report. when you need is a shared

commitment to the success of all the sites. i think that is an important place for us to be because they need is so large. at my site, we have three different categories of needs for infrastructure. first and foremost is the recapitalization of some of our scientific infrastructure. we have are largely just -- laser facility which is a high-tech place but it has been operating for almost 15 years now. there is a need for an investment in sustainment of the facility, and we just recently received critical decisions zero mission need to do an energy upgrade to the laser where we will be able to increase the laser energy output from 2.2 megajoules to 2.6 megajoules, allowing us to push that facility and our ignition experiments to more high-yield regimes which are important for our support to the stockpile. to that facility routinely to do things like material testing and

exposures, and to really study in depth the science of nuclear weapons. it really is an important day today contributors to our support for the stockpile. in the second category, i would put enabling infrastructure. so we have a lot of needs on our site, as an example, one of our line items was a power and cooling upgrade to our computing facility so we could cite out cap a 10. that kind of infrastructure, while not glamorous, it is important to operating these big facilities and operating our sites in efficient and sustainable ways. for us, for those of you who have not visited livermore, it is a physically small site, we are one square mile and we have 9000 employees. that work force has grown by more than 50% in the last 10 years. we need office space and we can't g ppr way out of this problem. the average dpp scalability is

too small for a site where the footprint is so small. we have been working with nnsa to get critical decisions zero for an investment in office space infrastructure so we can build up a little bit. and much more efficiently use our site, and bring our weapons program teams closer together so we can foster collaboration for the important work we have to do going forward. it has been an interesting journey. we have been working closely on our infrastructure plans with our partners at the production sites. also trying to build out production develop and capabilities that allow us to study the science of production, and help bring new capabilities for production of polymers or explosives, and other key components, to aid this process of modernizing in the production facilities. mr. longenecker: thanks. we talked earlier today, and it is a great thing to celebrate 75

and 80 years at our facilities. the real celebrations we all want to have and you will hear this in the plants and sites tomorrow is where you and roger and eric and rich and kelly, when you commission those new facilities you are building now. that will be something to celebrate. dj, put that down for your list of champagne toasts for the future, if you would, please. let's go to operations. as we expand operations to support the upgrades to our national security capabilities, what are your top issues you need to address? obviously, we have been doing the research, we just talked about operation -- infrastructure. but as we move more into operations for pits and lap's, what are the challenges you face, how are you using digital tools to ensure the strong safety and security performance and the performance of those new facilities? and overall, what keeps you up at night when you look at

operations, moving into that phase, which is exciting and absolutely essential, but what are the things that keep you up at night to say these are really the things we have to address first and foremost to make a successful? tom, do you want to start? mr. mason: certainly our biggest challenge, now that we have -- at the event where we were celebrating, the first production unit, it was pointed out that this is not a finish line. it's actually the starting line. we have got a lot of work ahead of us over the next couple years to build out the capability to get up to the 30 pits per year that teresa mentioned in her remarks. but we have to do that in an operating facility. and that is a challenge, because we want to continue producing pits, maintaining the competency to produce the pits, train people to be proficient in doing not.

at the same time, we are ripping out obsolete hardware and bringing in new glove boxes. and in a nuclear facility that has been operating for decades, and does not necessarily have the best as built drawings, and occasionally when you open a valve, you find there is something sitting inside there that has been around for a while . that's the quickest way to knock us off our pace in terms of the infrastructure build, an operational upset that would bring work to a halt. if it's not safe, we are not doing any work until we can remedy that situation. i think for us, the biggest operational challenge is actually the interleaving of the operations with the infrastructure work. we don't have the luxury of a greenfield location. there are other important missions in the pf for facility,

in addition to pits they are ongoing as well. there is a horton surveillance work we have to do. there is the heat sources, and the areas mission, as well as r&d. it is a kind of unique challenge. and it is one that keeps me and actually a large number of other people up at night. mr. longenecker: james, do you want to go next? mr. peery: the things that keep me up at night are the maintenance of these facilities. i will give a couple examples. a critical facility for qualifying hard signal nuclear weapons, we lost a safety rod and it started to leak. fortunately we saw it. it was not an immediate issue for the safety but we had to replace the rod, and there was only one spare pair we are down to know safety rods.

now we are going to build up some new ones. but that kept the reactor down for a year. those are the things that happen when you are dealing with a nuclear facility. it is typically at least a year. with our mesa facility, a tool that is really critical to making these special transistors for nuclear weapons systems also went down for three months. fortunately we built up enough, i guess capacity and reserves, to effectively continue, so we did not lose anything on the live extension programs. but if it had happened at a different time, we would have. those are the things that are operational and producing product, but also have safety implications. ms. budil: we have been embarked on a multiyear effort to rethink how we do work. really to try to find a way to be much more efficient and move much more quickly to meet the demand a that was mentioned earlier. so we have tried to go back to

basics in this process. there are a few prime directives we have to follow. you have to be safe, secure, good stewards of the taxpayer dollar, we have to be highly transparent to the government. we have been working with our teams to try to find ways to meet those objectives, and then remove barriers that don't materially add, don't necessarily make us materially more safe or secure, don't really help us execute these programs or manage the risks that are attentive with the type of work we do, that get us focused on that delivery commitments. we have a lot of new workforce, they have lots of ideas. it has been a way to engage them and to rethink how we do our operations and our facilities. i think that's really important. and companion piece to that has been modernizing our business systems. we have a lot of home built business systems. many where their requirements were written by physicists. they were all terrible. not because the people who built

them were not competent and capable people, but because we have this byzantine set of requirements for them that was highly optimized to 20 years ago. we have been working to bring in more commercial products and really have modern infrastructure to enable business and operations at the laboratory. the last piece, we have been working with our colleagues at nnsa to streamline our contract to understand where authorities can be delegated, where requirements in the contract can be streamlined, so that we can focus on delivering at pace on our mission. and that has been a really productive effort. we have made a lot of great changes to our contract to simplify it and streamline it, make it more accessible. i look for to continuing that work with our colleagues at an nsa. mr. longenecker: and it is clear, you have worked hard -- work hard on this. but getting as close to aligned with our nnsa client on

objectives and implementation. i know it always takes longer than we would like, but as far as delegation,, we are all working on the same problem. that is a tribute to all of our end and essay counterparts out there, both in quarters and in the field. let's go to the last one. and we will have a wrap up at the end of all this. people strategy. as i said earlier, it is the attracting and retaining the workforce of the future that makes this all work. the markets changed over the past few years post-covid. i know it is still challenging in a lot of ways, different ways then it was four, five years ago with a lot of competition from other high-tech industries. what are your main initiatives to assure we are developing the workforce of the future i'm above engineers, scientists, and a sufficient numbers of the high-quality craft workers. and what helped you, they were

very helpful in helping us balance our benefits and pay and things like that. what do you need is the next step in that to make sure national security enterprise is the employer of choice for people? ms. budil: most important thing we have to offer our employees is the incredible mission that we support. the number one thing that attracts people into our environment is the opportunity to do this incredible science and technology work, in support of really critical national missions. the national commitment to the work that we do, the clear guidance on the nuclear deterrent, the pace of work that is making it an interactive environment to work on the work we have done with nnsa to really improve our salary and benefits practice -- package has been very helpful. our lab sits very proximate to the silicon valley, and to a lot

a very high tech employers. so there is always naturally a flow in and out of the laboratory due to that. the cost of living is very high in our area. but we have been able to make substantial progress. it changes the calculus for employees. they want to stay and support the mission. we are not going to pay the way google pays, that's fine, because we offer other things. but we have to offer a fair compensation package to make things work. the last piece is focusing on the employee experience. all of these new employees need to learn about us, about what we do and why it is important, about the kinds of missions we support and the kinds of opportunities they have to build a career in our environment. we have put a huge effort on teaching people about the mission and being much more purposeful and how we talk about our work, and engage with all of these new employees so that from early in their career, they really feel a part of the work we do and they understand this bigger picture of what we are trying to accomplish.

mr. longenecker: thank you. tom? mr. mason: our focus has been shifting away from the rapid growth that we experienced and the addition of new staff to more attention and development of the staff that we have. our peak hiring year was 2023. we hired about 2500 new staff. that's a lot. but the numbers have been coming down this year, depending on what happens with the budget, it will be more like 1200. our normal turnover is about 800 to 900. we are not quite at a steady state but we are getting there. the hiring is tapering. so we brought in a lot of new people, a net growth of about 5000 over the last five years or so. they are enthusiastic, they are smart, they have skills that are going to be very valuable to our mission. and what we don't want to have happen is just as they are

getting to a point of proficiency, which takes a couple of years at least in our business, that they go off somewhere else. as was mentioned, i think we have made progress in terms of our compensation and benefits, and that was really critical couple years ago, in particular when there was a lot of turnover across the economy. people were experiencing inflation and hopping jobs to try to counteract that. we are not in a bad spot there. i think where we need to be focusing though is maybe not so much the kind of monetary and benefit side of the equation, but more the job satisfaction. as kim said, our mission is a big source of job satisfaction. people want to do something that matters. so we have got that one. i think where we still have work to do is some of our, although

we talk a little bit about infrastructure and a lot of the infrastructure investments are focused on what you might call the hard infrastructure, the scientific facilities and the nuclear facilities, production and so forth, we have a lot people at loss almost who are working in pretty crappy conditions. doubled and tripled in offices where they can't read emails because it is so decrepit. obviously, you have got to have the production infrastructure. you have to have the scientific infrastructure. but we also need to give people decent spaces in which to do their jobs, that are sort of a 21st century work environment. i think the other thing where we can do better as some of the things that kim talked about in terms of streamlining how we do our work can have a huge

influence on how satisfied people are. no one wants to spend hours a day doing things that they feel like are not adding any value to this mission that is so important. and it is a tremendous source of frustration for staff when they see their time getting burned away doing things that are not meaningfully advancing the mission. although we have made a lot of progress on that front, i think there is a lot more that we could do. the ways we do things, largely built up during a time frame when there was not that kind of geopolitical urgency driving delivery that we have right now. and it was ok for things to have long timelines because it was a slowly evolving geopolitical environment. so we need to go faster to respond to the moment. but i believe in figuring out ways to go faster, removing low value added work will have a huge positive impact on our

ability to retain employees. they join our institutions to get a job done. if they feel like they can get that job done, it will be hard to pry them loose. if they feel like they are running into dead ends and they are always getting know, send me another rock, and they will not stick around. then we will have to start that recruiting and training and proficiency process all over again. it takes time and it costs money. mr. peery: this is a good news story. three years ago, i told you about double-digit attrition at the laboratory is basically three years in and you were out. we had more than 60% of our workforce was less than five years, it that kind of model just does not work for a national lab. by the time they are getting proficient in their skills, they are leaving. he worked with nnsa, we made a big deal who worked with nnsa to

get our salaries aligned with what the market would provide. worked on benefits. i will talk about one in a minutes. back to the work to implement trying to move some of these death by a thousand cuts that are happening, and how difficult it was to get things done at the laboratory. and i'm happy to say now, our attrition numbers are less than they were pre-covid. and in hot fields, like you would never believe people with ai experience would be willing to even work for market conditions, we can negotiate with nnsa, our attrition number is less than 1%. and they get to work on machine learning and ai to actually help with nuclear deterrence. we've got things like creating bots that are design experts,

working at making everything procurement to training more efficient for engineers and scientists. the one thing that blew us away that nnsa allowed to negotiate our benefits is two floating holidays. i thought, that's great. always like to have a couple extra days off. and turned out that was a huge deal to our employees. because they got to take those days off. maybe it was their birthday. at sandia, and a lot of the holidays we grouped together to give people off during the christmas break, things like martin luther king day, various things like that they got to take off. it was the most popular thing we did with regard to benefits. the numbers are looking really good. the mission is exciting as ever. a lot of new tools coming into play in how we do our work. it is an exciting place and we are not having trouble keeping people, at least at this point in time. mr. longenecker: good response.

tom, you raised a good point. we are all faced with up to half of our workforce has been here less than five years. that idea of bringing someone in that says, this procedure does not add to safety and security, why am i doing it? it doesn't even apply to my project. i think that idea that you have endorsed the past several years of getting it down to risk base, what is the risk of this operation or this r&d, and what requirements applies of people buy in? not only will they not follow the requirement, they will find someplace else to work where they don't have to do these nonsensical things when they come to work. i would say you have all seen, and i think we have, with the folks at headquarters that we have had the dialogue with some of the other folks, to talk about that. how do we apply them? how do we apply the right parts of the orders or commercial standards wherever we can? i think that is a journey we

have gone on, and i think the progress you have made in that, and congratulations, it's something that probably, we are just scratching the surface of getting down to where we have the right standards for each mission and project. ms. budil: i think it's important to remember we have done a lot of work with nnsa to streamline requirements. we have also been introspective and look inside our own institutions. i would say eight times out of 10, when someone tells you we have to do this because there is a d.o.e. order, ask them what order it is. because there isn't one. because there isn't. one we have the same problem inside our institutions where people are earnestly trying to reduce risk or manage something in the right way. so we are taking this message very seriously and trying to clean our own house as well. mr. longenecker: this is not unique to national security, but it is also true in commercial nuclear, somebody comes to work everyday and they have 110

things that are important, or 110 orders they have to meet or requirements. working with them to understand what the top four or five of the high-risk items that they absolutely must take care of first and foremost is something you have done a good job. and kudos on doing that. as we streamline that, that will energize people that will get more work done safer and keep these people around. because they sure are bright, these young kids we are hiring. they are really our future. all right, in closing, transitions are a good thing. an opportunity always for us, because the new administrator, the new secretary, the new congress will ask all of you, ok, this is an important issue. i support it. what do you need from me? for the last of the topics, what things do you need to ensure the long-term success and accelerate the national security mission? tom, can i start with you? mr. mason: to be honest, the

biggest thing is just the recognition and the articulation of the fact that it is important work. certainly with a new team coming in, we will be looking to them to articulate what their priorities are, as is always the case for the transition. i'm sure there will be changes. we don't yet know what they are. but if we have a clear articulation that yes, this matters, yes, i'm willing to lean in to be successful, there will be a question of resources. the blueprint is a great thing. but it also comes with a price tag. that is going to be a heavy lift. we will be looking to see the actions of congress to support it or not, and that naturally

the administration takes. if i look at the broader international landscape, it is hard for me to imagine a scenario where someone says this whole deterrence thing probably is not so important, after all, things are breaking our way on the international scene, and i am glad these other actors are being cooperative and not seeking to undermine. maybe it will happen, but i think it is unlikely. >> i agree with everything tom said. the funding is a heavy lift, and it is essential if we are going to get our facilities back in the shape they need to be to support the programs. we also made a lot of progress

to unleash the enhanced mission delivery initiative. we've still got a ways to go. i would suggest we've got contingency in the program because of a lot of hard work, but also trying to get the model right with regard to reviewing and reporting, but we've got work to go. we have shown with a couple demonstrators -- i cannot go into details here -- that we can go incredibly fast if we get this right between the federal oversight, project management. i would just say we need to keep on that path. >> i agree. we have built a good platform. people are starting to believe that we will clear barriers and obstacles to allow people to go faster. we are beginning to embrace that and work in different ways

across the enterprise. i am hopeful that we will be able to use that platform and continue the process to really lean in and accelerate. i think we do have examples of areas where changes in how we operate can make a big difference. you mentioned osha, so using osha standards for construction is sensible. it lowers costs, opens the contractor pool. having that more broadly adopted, i think there are several things like that where we have ideas for streamlining the regulatory environment in ways that really will enable mission delivery in a much more expeditious manner while still ensuring we do this work in the safe and secure and responsible manner that we have to in our business. i think there is a big opportunity there. i will put in one last plug for

what i think is a real opportunity. we have been exploring different ways to work with the private sector, and i think the opportunity for us to learn how to build those kinds of partnerships, public-private partnerships, and different areas of our missions is another place where i would like to see us lean forward and think differently about risk and really embrace the opportunity we have when we bring those capabilities together. mr. longenecker: thank you all. we do have about 10 minutes for questions. i have microphones on both sides of the room. anyone have a question? i am having a challenge looking into the lights. i apologize. there you are. >> hi. kim, you have a new mission in your super blog. it will have a new security

profile, and there was just an announcement in the federal register about environmental impact analysis for that. can you tell us why that is not being done in pf4? ms. budil: we are doing a supplement to our sitewide environment a linpack statement, which we just completed, to change the site posture to enable us to change the way we manage the material we already have on site. the intent is not to increase the amount of material we have on site, but because our material limits are so low, it is very difficult to do operations in the superblock, because you have to move -- every time you have to do and no operation, you have to move to real. this is a way to streamline operations. we lower the categorization of

the superblock, we de-inventory the facility. very small scale work making targets for jasper gascon experiments. we are not changing the kind of work we are doing. it is a material management shift that will make the facility much more efficient and cost-effective to operate. >> my name is brenda dillard. i am president of a university, so i work with more than 100 universities across the country. i also work with ms technology out of hope. -- out of oak ridge. we are in the digital transformation. tom, we are happy to know how far you are going along. but my question to you guys is how do we, from an essay -- from

an nsa as well as all the production facilities and lab, how do we get in this fight in setting up the ultra tag, making sure the security measures are in place? it is not just bringing indoors, next generation, but it is all of that. how did those systems work with some of our legacy systems that we have at some of our production facilities? how do we make all of that happened? -- happen? thank you. >> i think they should ask laura tomorrow. [laughter] >> i would just say that this is not her first rodeo at doing this. i think she is the best one to answer. >> iac one in the back -- i see

one in the back. >> shelley musk with inside defense. you were talking about spare parts and needing maintenance sustainment. your funding comes from congress. those are typically not the most high-profile budget items. how are you making sure that you are going to get the funding you need for those stairs or maintenance and sustain operations at facilities? >> partly just by saying over and over again we really need this. we certainly have been articulating those needs. i think those messages have been received. part of the reason we are in a bit of a pickle now is for many years, the funds were not fully spent. that does create a healthy degree of skepticism.

do you really need the money when there is money left on the table? i would say we cross that threshold several years ago. as we were ramping up, we kind of hit our pace then began executing, and that is when we sort of hit the wall. it is just a fact of life that it is easy -- easier to articulate the case for a shiny new thing that is going to give you a qualitative capability. it is hard to get people excited to say in order to do the things i did last year next year, i'm going to need some more money. the class runs are breaking and we don't have any spares, or whatever it may be. that is just a story we have to keep telling. and as i said, the thing that for me makes a pretty compelling argument is the fact that these facilities that we are relying

on, that we are now having to extend longer because it is going to take longer to get their replacements, they are in service of our on alert torrents every day. we all do the annual assessment letter and i look at the facilities that are required to do the analysis that supports that. it has a direct effect in terms of our on alert deterrent. i think if we keep explaining that to anyone who will listen, then hopefully we will make the case. >> adding on to tom, i learned in year two of this job that the only thing anyone reads that i write is the annual assessment letter. i took this year the risk of moving all of my facility issues to page two. i think a lot of people read it because we've gotten a lot of questions on how we are going to keep it alive, so it is working. >> i agree wholeheartedly with

tom. we have to keep explain to people why this is necessary, and part of that is showing what is in those buckets of money. when we talk about maintaining these facilities, what does that mean? the number of subsystems in a facility like the national ignition facility is incredible. it is easy to say a big number and see if i give you less, is it really ok? but if you go subsystem by subsystem, it becomes clear where the shortfalls are. i think that transparency helps people understand how seriously we take these budget exercises. mr. longenecker: all right, we are at the end of our time, and i realize we are standing between you and the cocktail party, but let me wrap this up by thanking the panelists for being here with us today. let's give a round of applause. [applause] and before they get away, really

thank them for the most important thing, doing this very difficult job and what they do each and every day to protect our national security, so thank you for that. ms. budil: it is an honor. [applause] >> two things. i want to invite you to join our friends from longenecker in the session next door, and tomorrow morning we start at 8:30. be here around 8:00, because we will start at 8:30. have a great evening. we will see you then. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [♪ "you're the only woman" by ambrosia plays ♪] >> c-span is live in doral,

florida to wait for president trump to address his policy retreat. while we wait, we will take a look at some of today's "washington journal." levin is the american enterprise institute constitutional studies director and also the author of the recent book "american covenant: how the constitution unified our nation and could again." thanks for joining us. guest: thank you very much for having. host: we had you want to talk about it before, but how does that parallel to the days we are seeing now under a new resident when it comes to unity in the united state. >> the argument is that the constitution brings us together helping us fight properly's agreed with our constructive, and that it assumes there will always be divisions but establishes procedures and institutions that are set up to but americans agree in ways that lead to negotiation, bargaining and compromise.

especially in the time when we are intensely, deeply divided. the kind of 50-50 moment that we live in now in the united states the last generation means that we have to let our institutions function. that's going to be hard to see in the first week of a new administration where everything we hear is what they want to do, but what they want to do and what is actually going to have to is going to mediated by these two should the difference between with the president wants and what he gets as a function of what he can get through congress, what he can persuade the courts of, but the public thinks about what he is up to. all of these things are there to help us broaden coalitions, to help us deal with each other and to force us to confront the reality of this agreement which is the basic underlying fact of our democracy. host:'s main avenue right now, executive order. how does that help or hinder him? guest: every new since bill clinton, so for 30 years now has come in with his party

controlling both houses of congress. that has not meant that they just been able to do whatever they want. it's a challenge. the first week of a new administration, this is one week. there are 208 weeks in a presidential term. the first week as defined by the president because what is in the news is what he wants to do and what he is starting to say. very soon the president has to confront the reality of the world. he doesn't simply control that reality and very simply they are tested and assessed by events they don't control. so what we learned in the first week is what he is trying to achieve. i think it doesn't show us that president trump has a distinctly assertive executive approach to this term. there are things he wants to do and he's going to be very aggressive about doing them on his own. the orders be seen, a lot of them are about telling his executive officials to start a process, to begin to do

something, and the question of what really comes of that is very much an open question. every president seemed like he's on top of the world getting everything he wants in the first week, but it doesn't last. host: he said my proudest legacy be that of a peacemaker and a unifier. what is the face on that front? guest: obviously we are a divided nation. a lot of recent presidents have started out saying they want unity. his inaugural address, the way in which he describes unity is actually very similar to how a lot of our recent president have. you look at former president bidens inaugural or the trump previous one or president obama. they talk about unity in terms of not disagreeing. they say if we all agree there is nothing we can do, but that is not what unity means in free society. what unity means is not so much thinking alike as acting together. the challenge for a president, for our national politics is how do we act together on national problems when we don't think alike?

the answer to that involves negotiation, bargaining, the test of any president is what he can get accomplished in that way. not only how does use his power, because ultimately that is much more constrained than we often imagine. and they need other people to agree with and in order to get anything accomplished. the challenge of whether this president or any president in the a unifier is whether he can get other people to come along. host: do you think there is a better sense of him doing this this time around? guest: i think he seems to have a better role -- sense of what the role of the president is that he did in his first term. i think he's much more inclined to be acted in dealing with congress that he was last time. he said he wants to be every republican member of the house. i think you should meet every democrat. i presidents often assume they

can only get support from their own party but he could easily imagine democratic vote for certain versions of a tax bill or some of his immigration bills as we seen in this first week. that he is intent on getting to know members more that he was last time. he's much more involved in setting the strategy for republican congress, thinking about how many reconciliation bills, what we do first, what do we do second. he was much more passive about that last time then this time in part because he sees how important it is for that to work out. whether it will succeed is another question. president to involve themselves in how congress does it work don't always end up getting what they want, i think he does have a different approach, a different strategy at the beginning. host: if you want to ask questions, democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002.

if you want to text us questions or comments, (202) 748-8003. a recent piece that folks can find online, you write in it that him coming back now is a refusal to pay a tentative some failures not only from former president biden, but from some in his first term. guest: you look at the politics of the 21st century and a sense, the public over and over has said no thank the person in power. as one to change. we had a very, very close narrow elections now for a long time he stands out about this moment in american all it takes is that we had no majority party, no clear majority already for almost 30 years. all of our election tevin close. every newly elected president has started out saying i won, i get to do what i want now.

but the truth is they win very narrowly. he got 49.8% of the vote. that is a 50-50 election. each time when the new president's first hard at the outset the public has reacted poorly because what they said is we don't like the last guy or than we love what you are offering. the danger of over reading the mandate is a danger that every 21st century president has run and that donald trump is clearly running. he's behaving as though he won a massive landslide election when it was a narrow election. and rather than start out by broadening his coalition, he seems to be starting out by spending political capital gain from the election. and we will see, but that has not worked out for his predecessors. it didn't work out for him in the first term. the danger is losing public support quickly and the public saying no, we don't like this either, this is not what we were saying.

neither of our parties is quite connected with with voters are looking for. they face this challenge for a generation now, and each time they've been elected because the other party was unpopular. and that is a hard mandate to read. to say well, i am here because the other guy didn't meet the public expectations. you want to say i'm here because i made promises, the public wanted it and now we are going to do it. it is very hard for a president to get their head around the fact that they won because the incumbent was unpopular they then take actions that make themselves unpopular and as we've seen, the public's ability turn against him and throw him out even when they elected i think he needs to be very cognizant of that and think about how to build our support before he takes aggressive action. but like our other 21st century presidents, it's going to be a challenge for him. host: could immigration are one of those other topics, some democrats expressing support for some of these is that an avenue he could start building support? guest: kids possible, but he has

to think about where there is broad public support. i think there is broad public support for controlling the inflow at the border. there is much less public support for mass deportation of people who are here. and that the station is an important line to draw. there are ways i think that he could use immigration to broaden his support, but there are also ways in which he can become a huge political problem for him if he asked to aggressively. the lessons of the first term are there for him. the way in which they move early on the travel bans and other things salad the public pretty quickly on president's immigration views. he does run that risk, but he does have some opportunity here as well. host: the book is "american covenant: how the constitution unified our nation and could again." this is dorothy in baltimore. morning. caller: want to ask because he seeks to be very knowledgeable

as far as what he's talking about. i wanted to enter this question why does the president not talk more about the things that help or hurt us in president, congress or the senate does what they do. the thing i think we are missing is this. we talked about what the president wanted to do, but the thing that people were talking about, one, immigration. he halted the doj civil rights division, which people keep saying that is a minority. that is not a minority, that is people with disabilities, people who have been discriminated against, women, white, black or whatever. is not just for people of color. can people keep saying it, but that is a major thing to do,

even the police department. that is where you would go, he would contact your federal government if your police department wasn't handling it right. he halted all of that. they are not thinking very well. the press keeps talking about what the president wants, what congress wants. you all should make each one of these things that he does that hurt us and be truthful about it. host: dorothy, thank you for the question. guest: you raise a number of important points. first of all, one of the ways in which thinking about politics in this first week of a new registration is a challenge is that there hasn't yet been much of a response to the president's actions within the system, and especially from the courts. federal courts act in the past tense. they review actions after they happen and the question is which of these early actions is going to pass muster in the courts and which are not. i think they are going to run into challenges very quickly.

the notion amendment doesn't require birthright citizenship is going to get tested all the way up to the supreme court. what you describe here also falls into some of these categories to fire the inspectors general, for example is a violation of federal law. the president can fire them but has to give congress 30 days notice. there's going to be a lawsuit almost inevitably. there may ultimately be some pushback from congress and from the states. and that is how our system works. our system exists in a kind of tension so that different interests, different pressures, different groups can exercise the power they have in the system and where we end up is where they land when all of those pressures are added together. we will see. this is not a last word, it is the word.

the other thing i say is part of what you say is politicians need to focus on what the public is asking for, not only what they want. in one of the base of operating is that it is difficult to know what the public wants. there's not a stronger, broad majority behind any party agenda or platform at this point. again and again we had 50-50 elections and that genuinely does make it difficult for policymakers to know exactly where the public is pushing him. gradually they are coming to some understandings about public concerns about disorder, public concerns about a lack of agency and control, whether that is at the border war and foreign policy, in criminal law in the united states. both parties are coming to recognize that that is a public priority for example. but when elections are so close and when the other factor we seen in the century is control goes back and forth, we had more

swings back and forth of control of congress in the last 25 years than any other century. we've just had the third presidential election in a row with a party in the white house has shifted. so this is a time when politicians find it genuinely difficult to know would voters are asking for. host: pensacola, republican line. pat, good morning. caller: good morning. i want to respond to the previous caller from maryland to this talking about the constitution, trump holding some civil rights cases or whatever. my question for her, and this is the right see, where with the civil-rights division of doj when these students at columbia and georgetown were blocking jewish students from being able to go to their classes? we heard nothing from the doj about that.

if that situation was reversed, if there were a bunch of white students keeping black students from getting to their classes, biden would have had the national guard on campus. but this is another plain hypocrisy that we see from the civil-rights doj because they were left-leaning. they still haven't mentioned the issue, and the civil-rights division, i think it was kristin clark, she never uttered a word about it. so you talk about the constitution, it is all about perception. people like this on the right, republicans, we expect to be treated fairly. six people were not treated fairly and it goes on and on and that is why we voted for change. host: pat in florida. guest: