Cyber, Space, and the Future of Warfare with Rep. Mike Rogers

00:00]: There will be a lot of battles fought where there's not a gun fired. It's going to be through cyber and through space.

00:09]: Welcome to CyberFocus from the McCrary Institute, where we explore the people and ideas shaping and defending our digital world. I'm your host, Frank Cilluffo, and this week I have the privilege to sit down with Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers. Congressman Rogers represents the 3rd district in the great state of Alabama, which includes the loveliest village on the plains, and has been in Congress since 2003, has been a relentless supporter of our national security, national defense, and has been a leading voice on space as well. All issues that I think are front and center facing our country today and our national security today. Really excited for our discussion. And Congressman Rogers, thank you so much for joining us.

00:54]: Glad to be with you.

00:55]: So, Mr. Chairman, I thought we'd start with a discussion around the National Defense Authorization act. And it's probably the single consistent thing in Washington during massive change. But I don't think we can take that for granted, can we? And I'd love to, for our viewers and listeners maybe to step back a little bit and explain the process.

01:15]: Sure. The National Defense Authorization act, which I'll just refer to as ndaa, that's what we all refer to it as here in D.C. is the only authorization bill that has passed every year for 64 years. No other committee can say they passed an authorization in six consecutive years, especially in the last 20. But it's also a big deal because it authorizes over half of all discretionary spending. And so it is a big bill. And in addition to that, because other committees cannot get a bill passed, most of the other authorizing committees ride on the NDAA because they know it's going to become law.

01:59]: We learned that in the solarium.

02:01]: Thanks.

02:01]: Thanks to the NDAA.

02:03]: Yes. So what we'll do is like from the Ways and Means Committee or the Energy and Commerce Committee or Financial Services or whatever, if they've got something that really needs to pass but they can't get it moving in their wheelhouse, they will attach it as an amendment to the NDAA with leadership's permission so it can can become law. So you'll usually see almost every committee riding on our bill with one or two provisions each year. But it starts at the beginning of the year. It's a year long process. And we will start at the beginning of the year having briefings mostly from different sectors of the national security world. Then we'll do Our posture hearings, where we have the combatant commanders, the 11 commanding commanders come in and talk to us about what their needs are, what the president's budget recommends and doesn't recommend. Then we'll have the secretary of defense and the chairman, the joint chief come in and testify to us. 03:03]: Same general concept after that. And simultaneously with that, each of the subcommittees is having similar hearings in their wheelhouse. For example, I used to be the subcommittee chairman for strategic forces, but which governs missile defense, national security, space, and the nuclear enterprise. So I would be having a series of subcommittee hearings on space or on the nuclear enterprise or whatever, simultaneously with the full committee having these posture hearings. And we'll generally have 60 or 70 hearings during that first five months of the year to kind of gather information about what needs to be in this bill. Then we'll pass out of committee our markup. We have what's called the chairman's mark, which is, you know, my view of what should be in the bill. And we'll have a hearing and members will add their amendments to add things to it or take things away. 04:06]: We'll pass the House version out of committee virtually every year. We'll pass it out 58 to 1. We have one member who is never going to vote with the ndaa. He's from California. So that should say all you need to know. But literally very bipartisan. It'll go to the floor. It'll pass the floor, usually with a pretty healthy margin, but a little partisan because that's where some of the social amendments are added. 04:32]: At the same time we're doing this, and this is usually in June or July when we pass the bill off the House floor. The Senate is doing the same process on their side. And during, usually the month of August, we're July and August, when we're out, our staffs are reconciling the differences between the Senate version and the House version. So we come back in September, we'll bring together a conference report where we will. We put the two bills together, and then that conference report will hopefully be on the floor in October or November for passage. And generally, the bill passes the house with about 380 to 390 votes out of 435, which is.

05:13]: Which is incredible.

05:14]: It is incredible. It is literally the only bipartisan committee left in Congress. But it also, I take great pride in. First of all, this didn't happen with just me and Adam Smith, my ranking member. It's been this way for 64 years. We don't care who's in the White House, who has control of the House of Representatives or the Senate. We find a way to take care of our war fighters and make sure they have what they need to be successful. And, and if we hit in a fight, come home safe.

05:40]: Well, Godspeed to continue down that path. And, and bicamerally, it's hard enough within the House to, to, to be able to negotiate that bicamerally is, is quite a testament and a statement to your leadership and your predecessor's leadership because this is just too important. This, this is red, white and blue, right? This isn't red or blue.

06:00]: Well, as I tell people, if we don't get this right, nothing else matters.

06:03]: Boom.

06:03]: You know, it's just like making sure the military is strong. That's what keeps us free and safe. And so it doesn't matter if Medicare and Social Security are solvent if you're dead.

06:14]: And I might just underscore, again, we can't take that for granted. So looking ahead, and I know we're early in the process, as you just explained, but what do you think some of the 2026, looking to FY fiscal year 2026, what do you think some of the priorities and your priorities are for the NDA?

06:32]: Well, my number one priority, and this is working in concert with Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is trying to get the Congress to understand, working with the administration, that we are at the lowest level of defense spending as a percentage of GDP since before World War II.

06:50]: Wow.

06:51]: It is dangerously low, 2.9% of GDP. We really should be closer to 5% when you look historically that 4 to 5% range, that bandwidth is kind of the healthy area that you can count on your military being ready to be successful and more importantly, to deter aggression.

07:12]: Boom. Yeah.

07:13]: And we're not there. So that's going to take a very substantial increase in defense spending. So that's going to be our number one priority. And we've already been talking publicly about that. And then right behind that is we've got to force acquisition reform. The fact is the Defense Department is the largest organization on the planet, which means it's inherently bureaucratic. Even if it was a private sector organization, it would still be bureaucratic because it's so large. But the acquisition system is just very risk averse, very bureaucratic, very slow. 07:49]: It takes years, and I mean sometimes a decade to get a new weapons system from concept into use. That is unacceptable, especially how fast technology changes. Now we've given the department over the last decade or So a lot of authorities to go faster, they just won't use it. They're culturally indoctrinated to do what they do. So we're going to be forcing them to take more commercial approach to acquisition to speed along the process, in part because we need to get new technologies to the warfighter faster. But secondly, we need defense contractors to want to deal with us and they don't want to deal with a process that takes eight or 10 years. So that's the big difference in acquisition reform this time from what we've done in the past is this time we are going to make them use the authorities, not just here's some authorities to.

08:39]: Go faster, which is great because again, this isn't a new problem, but I think it's not new really front and center to be able to again, push capabilities down to the warfighter to get things done. And, and that is essential that we stay ahead technologically or at least stay up. Exactly. At the very least. But my argument, we always want to be ahead. And there are certain technologies where that just moves like this. I mean, whether it's software or all the way down to two big emerging technologies such as quantum and the like. And I do think these are races we cannot afford to lose.

09:23]: It's a great example, let me tell you. Last fall we did something the Armed Services Committee hadn't done in decades, and that is we did a full committee hearing in Silicon Valley, I think it was in September of last year. And the point was to talk with folks out the tech world about what we need to be doing differently. And to touch on the point you just brought up, they were making reference to what's happening in Ukraine. Drones have revolutionized the fighting of war. And they made this point that we right now can produce several thousand, maybe ten, twenty thousand drones a month. And they said we need to have in our stockpile millions. And the first response they got back from members in that hearing was, wait a minute, you want us to buy millions of drones knowing that the software that operates them is going to be antiquated in less than six months?

10:20]: And they made dji, Right. So that's the other thing.

10:23]: Well, they made the point you don't, we don't need to touch them to upgrade them. And it's like nobody thought of that in our world. And their point was you can put a multi million warehouse stockpile of drones together and we can upgrade them every week or every month without touching them. And those are the kind of changes that we need to make sure that we can move with the speed of relevance on and just think differently. We've always just thought you buy the drones when you need them, you put them in a warehouse and they sit there and rot for years. But that's not the case anymore.

11:00]: And I mean the nature of combat war fighting and threats generally is changing so rapidly and we do need to stay ahead. And I might add, when it comes to UAS and drones also defending, defending against swarms I think is a pretty hot button issue.

11:20]: And that's why Ukraine has been a real test bed. It's just been a laboratory coming movie.

11:25]: Coming to a theater near you.

11:26]: That's right. Both sides, the Russians and the Ukrainians have evolved multiple times on their ability to take down incoming drones with various technologies. And every time, whatever they've been using is not working. They evolve and try to find a new way. It's been fascinating. It's a thing for us to keep in mind as we think about combat with China in the Indo Pacific.

11:50]: And I know you've thought about this, but. And clearly all the recent Typhoons, Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon and to a lesser extent Flax. But it does have some implications, demonstrates one of our adversaries intent. And, and, and with Volt, which is very different than say salt, this was, there was no espionage value, there was no tactical military value. That's just literally owning our systems in the event they want to move. And, and, and Guam was pretty front and center in all of that.

12:22]: And it will be. You know, that's the thing that I've, I've tried to emphasize to my colleagues in, in the House that aren't on the committee because we on the committee know it. But Guam has a big target on it. Number one target by China. If we get into a conflict, we have a lot of upgrades that we have to make at Guam. Well, first of all, just like you said, repairs from the weather, the storms they've suffered, but a lot of defensive capability because it will be target number one.

12:48]: Absolutely. And I might just note, not that you haven't thought about this, but also submersibles undersea, that to me is the domain we have. And I mean you've been a incredible advocate for space and I think it's inextricably interwoven with our economy and obviously our national defense. But the next domain is actually probably undersea. Right.

13:12]: And it's going to be unmanned.

13:13]: Yeah, it's all unmanned.

13:15]: The Anduril already has a new unmanned submersible that we're using. But a lot of companies are going to be going to that. And you're exactly right. We're going to be doing swarms underground just like we're doing swarms in the air. You're going to find the use of unmanned fighter jets is going to be very commonplace. We're already doing some of that now, but it's going to be a lot.

13:38]: More done and big implications. What about the workforce and cyber in particular? Any thoughts? I mean, ultimately the numbers are staggering. They're not good. And clearly from a recruiting standpoint, it's not always going to be the traditional recruit that would necessarily the men and women joining our armed services. But it is back to some of that Silicon Valley thinking. Any thoughts on how we can start to square that circle?

14:09]: Yeah, I've been talking with folks in the tech world about this for several years and my initial desire was to put together a brick and mortar digital service academy where federal employees, whether in the Defense Department in particular, but others could join in, would come to get a six week course. Anywhere from a six week course to a master's degree in cybersecurity. And I was finally convinced that we really should do this with rather than one school, just have a network of schools. So what we did is we have dramatically increased the digital service academy scholarships for people. They can go to Auburn, they can go to wherever. That's right. And I see that as probably the easiest way for us to try to expand the number. But you know, we're still trying to get folks to tell us what is the best way for them. 15:04]: Because you're right, there are going to be a lot of non traditional students and it may be some way that we find for them to learn online. I don't know how, but it's a big challenge A to find people, B to make them want to work for the government and not the private sector where it's much more lucrative.

15:20]: Absolutely. I might note though, the mission, at the end of the day, that's the one calling I think that is unique and I said this on many episodes, but they do really cool things. And if you can then apply that 20 years later in the private sector, God bless, that's a good calling. But I think the mission itself is essential. And the state we recently had on Arthur Orr, who's a state senator, and Matt Massey, who's the president of the Alabama School for Cyber Technology and Engineering. This is the first magnet school focused on, I mean, yes, universities, honestly, we have a responsibility, not just an opportunity. We need to arm our next digital warriors and Defenders, but I think that's almost too late. We gotta get them younger.

16:13]: Yeah. And as I was reminded when I talk with some of these tech leaders, it's not just folks that have a bachelor's, master's, or a doctorate. We need people with an associate's degree or maybe just a six month course in some basics where they can work at the lower functional levels. And that's why I really think scholarships is the best way to get younger people to want to think about this early when they're looking at career choices. And I have talked about the possibility of us taking existing employees and tell them, we'll pay for you to go back to school like the military does, but then you're required to work for us for four or five years after that. The military does that with youngsters who want to go to medical school. They'll pay for them to go to school and they go to medical school for four or five, six years, but then they have to serve in the military as a doctor for five or six years. And it's a pretty good deal for both sides. 17:13]: So those kind of things I'm thinking about as a way to at least have that fully trained cyber warrior for five or six years. And it's my hope that by the end of that five or six years, they do have a passion for the mission and we get to keep them. And as I had some tech leaders tell me what the other enticement would be is that if they will stay in our world and develop their skills, their marketability goes through the roof for the private sector. So there is a day that they will be able to cash in.

17:45]: Absolutely. And that's a good thing as long as they're serving. I mean, I don't think we can think of any issue for life anymore. At the end of the day, you draw on the talent when you can. And we got to push all the buttons, not just one or two. I think to, to, to be able to keep up. We're not winning the numbers game when it comes to the People's Republic of China.

18:04]: No, we're not.

18:05]: So we have to always be technologically more advanced and bring the best and the brightest into the fold. One big issue that's in front of us today, and I'm not asking for a position, but maybe some initial thoughts, is the splitting of NSA and Cyber Command. So currently the combatant Commander for US Cyber Command is dual hatted as the Director of the National Security Agency. There's been a lot of discussion and talk on, on splitting Those off having a civilian during director of nsa. What are some of your initial thoughts on that?

18:40]: Well, I don't know enough to say I've reached a decision. My first thought is I don't want to really create a second bureaucracy just from the efficiencies.

18:50]: We do love to build bureaucracies.

18:51]: Ye, yeah, that's part of it. And then I really kind of hate to separate the censor and the war fighter, but, you know, I am not married to any position. That's just my initial reluctance because it does seem to be growing bureaucracy and I'm trying to move in the other direction.

19:12]: Yeah. And to that point, we're all fishing from the same pond. Do we have the bodies? Do we have the numbers? It would take time to be able to build that up. That said, I was a big advocate for that eight years ago simply because I thought the Title 10 mission was being stymied by the Title 50 mission. No one wants to compromise the secret, but now we're moving in that direction. We're defending forward. We are looking at active defense issues. So I don't want to lead the witness here, but I do think that we're going to have to build that workforce and that just doesn't happen. 19:50]: So.

19:51]: Yeah. And I'm looking for all good ideas you can give me on that.

19:55]: Roger that. So we got ideas. So we got a task force where we stood up on that. I want to jump quickly to the Golden Dome.

20:02]: Yeah.

20:02]: And I do think this has a lot of implications back home in Huntsville in particular. So do you want to maybe explain what your initial thoughts are, what the Golden Dome is and what some of your initial thoughts are?

20:14]: The President, President Trump got this after he, you know, focused on Israel and what we've helped them acquire. You know, Israel has a layered missile defense system. It starts with Iron Dome for mortars coming in. And then you've got Era 1, Era 2 and David Sling, which are the different layers for, you know, various types of missiles. You know, ICBMs being the top layer. And so President Trump had made the point he would like to see us have a similar Iron Dome type layered defense system. Of course, with everything. Trump, he wants to call it Golden Dome instead of Iron Dome, but basically it's just a layered missile defense system that is more layered up than what we already have. 21:01]: We already have, obviously a missile defense system for the continental United States. This would create a significant space based low earth orbit sensor capacity that is much more sophisticated than what we have now, along with some additional interceptors and obviously this would be exactly in the wheelhouse of Huntsville. Absolutely. They are the leader in part of it.

21:27]: All right.

21:28]: And they're growing in the space mission up there. I expect sometime during the month of April that Space Command will officially be assigned to build its headquarters in Huntsville. But they already have a big space mission up there. So this will be just

21:44]: Break ground on that fast, right? As soon as you sign. Yeah.

21:47]: Trust me. I've already talked with the contractor. He is ready to turn dirt on the day the announcements made. And we do expect it to be announced right after the Air Force secretary is named. But the point is, for Huntsville, this is exactly in their wheelhouse. But for folks who don't know what Golden Dome is, it is a layered missile defense system with a lot more sensors than we currently have for missile defense.

22:11]: And forgive me if this analogy is off, but I look back to President Reagan, my hero, and he sort of initiated sdi, Star Wars, Star wars and Brilliant Pebbles. And did every initiative meet its goal? Probably not. But you needed the vision. And it certainly met the strategic intent, which not only served as an ultimate deterrent, but also arguably bankrupted the Soviet Union. Right.

22:38]: That's exactly what it did. I've. I've told so many people in the last few months as I've been trying to talk about, we need to increase the defense spending. It was Reagan's dual approach. He first took defense spending to 6% of GDP and he said, we're going to create this Star wars system that will be able to take out missiles coming into the United States from space and Russia. I mean, at that time, the Soviet Union had to tap out. They could not keep up from a financial standpoint, and it brought them down. That's what I want people to understand about why Roger and I, Roger Wicker and I are pushing to get defense spending up to 5%. 23:18]: If we do that, our adversaries but for China will have to just say, I can't do that. And I'm not sure China will be able to keep up with us if we really are serious about it. But it's exactly that Reagan approach.

23:33]: And it sets the course, the vision and the battlefield to one we can dominate. Right. Because I mean, asymmetrically, it's hard. You can't defend everything, everywhere, all the time, from every perpetrator and every modality of attack. And that's not necessarily our goal.

23:50]: No.

23:50]: But if we can dissuade, deter, and if need be, compel, we're moving in the right direction.

23:56]: Right. And these new wars are going to be fought differently.

23:58]: Absolutely.

23:58]: You know, the fact is there will be a lot of battles fought where there's not a gun fired. It's going to be through cyber and so and through space. So we really have to prepare our infrastructure and our manpower for those future capabilities. It's going to be much more high tech, much more sophisticated. That's one of the reasons why last Congress I made quality of life improvements, compensation, education, housing, et cetera, my number one priority to boost it because. And we're going to have to continue in that realm because I envision a workforce in the Defense Department, meaning both military personnel and civilian, to be much more high tech. And if we're going to have that high tech employee, whether it's a service member or civilian, we got to compete with the private sector. But in order to do that, I think you're going to see the size of our military and our civilian personnel shrink. 24:57]: But it'll be much higher paid and much higher caliber to be able to fight these high tech wars.

25:03]: Precisely where we need to go. And just out of left field, do we need a Goldwater Nickels for cyber?

25:11]: Well, we made it go water nickels for those periods who don't know.

25:14]: I'm sorry.

25:15]: It's a reformation of the way the organizational structure is in the Defense Department. We need one probably for the entire Defense Department, cyber in particular. And that is going to be a herculean effort, as was Goldwater Nichols. But it needs to come. It's just we're crossing one bridge at a time right now. But I think that's going to be in the near future.

25:37]: And maybe there's a way to do that where we're not competing with the private sector, but it's really thinking Goldwater Nickels differently where they're part of that solution.

25:47]: Well, that's an interesting, interesting point when, you know, we created the space force a few years ago.

25:53]: And I'm definitely going to go there because you are the champion.

25:56]: Well, thank you. I do consider myself the father.

25:59]: You are the father.

26:00]: But I brought in Jay Raymond, who was the first chief of space operations to talk to him about this issue with personnel. Because I wanted to create a. Instead of a Air, you know, we have Air War College in Montgomery for professional development training. I wanted to create a space graduate school for professional Huntsville based, it could be, or Colorado. I didn't care where it was. I just wanted a university where the space officers would be able to do their graduate professional development, which we need. And he said, let me Push back on that. And he said, you know, I really want us to spread it among the existing universities which have real high quality personnel. 26:45]: But he said, another thing I want to do, and this is what I think is really creative and I want to think more about this. He said, we have to recognize that a lot of our officers as they're coming up, they've got a family too. They got the same issues that every other American who works has. And about the time that they're in their career where they're really becoming proficient, their kids are also about to graduate high school and they're thinking about paying for college.

27:09]: Absolutely.

27:09]: And they. He said a lot of the officers leave at that point to go to private sector, make money so they can pay for their kids education. He said, what I would like to do is be able to say, fine, do that, go out and work in the private sector two or three years and then you can come back in for six months to 12 months intervals as an officer, bring those refreshed skills you just found in the private sector back to us. And then for that matter, for the last 15 or 20 years of your career, go back and forth. I love that idea. I love taking the idea, particularly when it comes to space and cyber, of taking folks who are in the private sector and bringing them in as an officer for a maybe a 12 year stint in the military so we can get the benefit of their skills and let them go back. There's nothing that says we have to do things the way we've always done it.

28:03]: I'm really glad you brought that up. That is what I think a Goldwater Nichols of the future could look like. Because it's not just changing services, it's literally. And I think there is importance in that. Yeah, you ought to know. I mean, let's be serious. The A10 was Army's favorite platform in the world. So to be able to understand and walk in the boots of someone of another service, I think is essential. 28:28]: But we have to take that to the next level. And I think this is a perfect segue to space. You've been a long advocate on not only standing up Space Force, which was massive and a big development, but more importantly space as a domain. Can you shed a little bit of light on some of the security? Why is it essential to our national security?

28:52]: That's a great question. What a lot of people didn't realize when we started talking about setting this up and we had figured out on the committee side is we all, in our daily private lives, use Space every day. And most people had no, have no idea. The traffic signals that you use when you drive your car, they're operated the timing by the gps. And for that matter, if you look to your phone about how to get to a restaurant or wherever that's using those GPS satellites. Those are government defense department satellites. We allow people to use them, Americans, because they paid for them, but we don't. It's not what they're there for. 29:38]: They're there to guide missiles, therefore they're there for troop placement and positioning.

29:43]: Just like highways as well.

29:44]: Exactly. Secondary effect, but same thing. If you, if you go to the bank, or let's say you go to the gas station, you put your debit card in to buy gas, you're using a satellite. You go to the bank, you're using a satellite. Everybody knows you're on television or whatever. But satellites are pervasive into every detail of our lives. Well, the same thing has happened with the military. We use them for communications, we use them for troop positioning, we use them for sensing when our adversaries are doing things. 30:18]: We have a whole series of constellations of satellites that watch our adversaries but also help us do our jobs. Well, what happened was quietly about 20 years ago, our adversaries started realizing how dependent we were. And so it came down to this idea. They knew they couldn't defeat us in a tactical war. So they thought, let's take their eyes and ears out and started developing offensive capability to take out satellites that would cripple us. That's when we knew that we had to take the space mission out of the Air Force. Create a separate service solely focused on the space domain because it is now a war fighting domain. And make sure that A, we can protect ourselves, but B, that we can let our adversaries know. 31:07]: Don't even think about touching one of our satellites because we can wipe yours out. So we've had to develop offensive capability too. So that was basically the concept. I tell people, this is the best example. You take a little fella who really doesn't like this big fella and knows he can't whoop them. But if that little fella, if he knew that the big fella had to put on a blindfold and plug his ears.

31:30]: Blind and deaf. Yep.

31:31]: Then the little guy could take a baseball bat and cold cock him.

31:33]: Absolutely.

31:34]: That's exactly. The big guy is us. With our satellites gone, we don't, we can't hear or see and in some cases can't speak. So we're completely at the mercy of any adversary. That's why we had to create the space force and why we have to focus on protecting the space assets because they are going to be critical in any future endeavor.

31:52]: And I'm glad you underscored that. It's not just militarily that is essential to our national security, but our entire economy. And our economy, people forget clocks, it sounds so generic and boring. But if you can manipulate by tenths of seconds from a national security standpoint, lots of deaths potentially and from an economic standpoint, imagine if you could trade quicker than anyone else has, has big implications.

32:18]: And just think about the broadband systems that are now up in space. You know we've been using historically ground based systems. Now Starlink, you know has gone up a bunch of competitors there are going, there are already tens of thousands of satellites up there now doing broadband. There will be millions up there. And it's, and it's if, if nobody thinks they don't use WI fi, think again. Think again.

32:42]: And, and the ground based space. So not to get wonky but at the end of the day I think we've already done that and you've done it really well. But, but space and cyber are war fighting domains but they transcend every other domain. In space's case, cyber, land, air, sea. In cyber's case space is part of that and we have to start thinking about these things. Our adversaries are, they already have demonstrated exactly anything unassured PNT you'd like to touch on here positioning.

33:17]: Yeah. Just know that, that we, we have been working on it and I feel like we're in a good place on that topic.

33:22]: Good, good, good. Let's go to finally and one thing I do want to ask. Do you, do you think we're going to be leaning a little more forward? A lot of discussion coming from Mike Waltz, National Security Advisor and others that I like to say we're never going to defend our way out of this problem. We're never going to firewall our way out of this problem. But back, back to a little bit of cyber. Do you think we're going to start seeing a little more defending forward and leaning forward in the CY at the end of the day we can't wait till they come to the water's edge.

33:54]: I hope so. It's yet to be seen what the administration is going to do there. I know that from a congressional standpoint that's our intent but I haven't heard the administration speak to that point.

34:05]: They're signaling but they haven't Fully laid that out. I do think that that is essential. Absolutely. Because I mean, our dependency is. Is incredible. Let me transition very briefly and this is also a thank you. One of our initiatives is referred to as Cirque 3. This is the Southeast Regional Cyber Collaboration center, which was, thanks to you, Mr. 34:31]: Chairman, an initiative we're doing to protect the grid in the Southeast region and looking to new technologies. And we all talk public private partnership. I've been saying long on nouns, short on verbs. This is really meant to push the verb side, actually do some things. What do you think about grid security and your thoughts on that? More generally speaking, if there's no power, I don't care what else is up, it ain't happening.

34:57]: I would urge any viewers to read the book one second after if they have any doubt about what happens when we lose our power. And in that case it's created by an electromagnetic pulse, but it could be created by other mechanisms, as you know. And I was really comforted after I read the book and had a bejesus scared out of me to find out that a lot of our utility companies had prepared alternative equipment so that if there was an EMP attack, they could get back up pretty quickly. But it really got me thinking about the cyber attack to those electrical systems as well. And that's why we're trying to be more forward leaning to make sure we're doing a better job of protecting the grid. And I'm very happy to see that regional concept employed by Auburn to try to help the utilities companies do this, because this is the exact kind of thing that the Chinese are going to try to do if we get into a conflict with them. In fact may do it before then. Some of the North Koreans would do these kind of things. 36:05]: So we've got Russia.

36:07]: We've seen initiatives in the past in Ukraine.

36:09]: Yeah, yeah. Russia is, in my view, going to be limited to regional power in the near future. But North Korea has demonstrated themselves to be very mischievous when it comes to us.

36:24]: And it's all disruptive, right?

36:26]: It's all disruptive. Yeah. I do hope that I'm not being naive in that Russia is more limited, but in the past, you're right, they have been exactly the kind of culprits that would do things like this. But we just have to recognize that those are the easiest, cheapest ways for them to try to disable us. And we've got to be thinking around the corner and be prepared for it.

36:47]: And thinking around the corner. You had discussed earlier the energy needs for data Centers and AI. I mean, the needs are staggering.

36:58]: I mean, and most people have no concept of how big they're going to be. Just like it was about space, we're having to think about this because this is an oh, no moment when you start thinking about it. We've got to get greater capacity and for, I should say, a greater generation of power. And then secondly, a bigger, stronger grid to carry it that is also protected. So there's big challenges there. Because while AI is exciting and it's going to be very pervasive in our society, just like satellites are, it takes a lot of power.

37:34]: Absolutely.

37:35]: To generate that.

37:36]: And I think it's fair to say to be AI dominant, which we need to be, we need to be energy dominant as well. Right. The two are hand in glove.

37:47]: You can't do one without the other.

37:49]: Mr. Chairman, what questions didn't I ask that I should have?

37:53]: That's it. That's about it.

37:55]: Mr. Chairman, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for being such a good steward for our national security community. All you do for the great women and men of Alabama and keep fighting the good fight.

38:05]: I'm honored.