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"Building the Base" - an in-depth series of conversations with top entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders from tech, financial, industrial, and public sectors.
Our special guests provide their unique perspectives on a broad selection of topics such as: shaping our future national security industrial base, the impact of disruptive technologies, how new startups can increasingly contribute to national security, and practical tips on leadership and personal development whether in government or the private sector.
Building the Base is hosted by Lauren Bedula, is Managing Director and National Security Technology Practice Lead at Beacon Global Strategies, and the Honorable Jim "Hondo" Geurts who retired from performing the duties of the Under Secretary of the Navy and was the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquisition and Acquisition Executive at United States Special Operations Command.
Lauren Bedula 00:00
Welcome to a new and exciting limited series that we're kicking off, called the Digital warfighting series with CENTCOM. You hear a lot about challenges and what needs to be done, but less about what's actually going on today and so we’re excited to highlight several efforts at CENTCOM. And here today, we have CENTCOM’s Chief Technology Officer who has been in the role for a year and a half now, Ms. Schuyler Moore to talk about CENTCOM’s vision for this work and what we want to accomplish with the series. Really excited to be here.
Schuyler Moore 00:31
Thank you, guys, for coming out.
Hondo Geurts 00:32
So, Sky, we had you on a building a base podcast, I don't know, maybe a year ago now hard to believe how fast time moves and we talked to you then about, the breadth, the scale, the complexity, and the excitement about digital transformation ongoing here at CENTCOM. And so, we're excited to have this talk with you and a number of folks are coming in. Can you help give our listeners just a little bit of a sense of CENTCOM’s vision, and then the sense of scale that you guys are trying to implement this digital transformation vision across?
Schuyler Moore 01:08
Sure. So, you know, the Commander has a clear vision of what his priorities are for how we go about our mission is, which is people, partners, and innovation. And innovation is certainly not just technology. It's intended to be targeted at processes at culture, there's a lot that underpins innovation for the command, and then that's paired with an urgency and breadth of threats that we face and with missions that we have to accomplish, that requires innovation in a lot of ways. There is, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. For us, we have a lot of challenges that require creative thinking to find ways of getting after it..
Lauren Bedula 01:41
When you talk about necessity as the mother of invention, today's a really important time post October 7. Things have changed since you started in the role. How has the command's vision for digital transformation and innovation evolved with such events?
Schuyler Moore 01:56
I think that the events that have happened over the last four months has been the ultimate trial for whether the tools that we've built for, whether the processes that we've put in place, have been effective and because we were running visual exercises for about a year leading up to October 7, we were investing in digital tools, and in hardware in an unmanned systems to allow us to be able to see farther to understand better to make better decisions. And then we got opportunity to test in real life whether or not those were effective, and many of them have really proven out in a really meaningful way, there are tools that users gravitated towards immediately. And as soon as the conflict started, it was clear that they gravitated towards them because they were going to fix problems for them and they were going to make them better at their jobs, which is fantastic. There were processes in place of them having that muscle memory of talking to engineers of explaining their processes to engineers that allowed them to make fixes to those tools as they needed to along the road. That said, it's not to say that everything is perfect, there were absolutely tools that users then moved away from there were tools that we had invested time in, and user said, no, that's not ready yet. These are real world operations with real consequences, we're not ready to use that tool yet. And that is fantastic feedback in and of itself.
Hondo Geurts 03:07
So, we're super excited for this series. Because you bring forth a wide variety of practitioners or operating at different elements within this very complex multi service, multinational operation across such a wide area of responsibility. Can you give us a sense kind of who you've chosen to kind of highlight this effort at these different echelons? And what our listeners should expect from each one of these guests we're have coming on.
Schuyler Moore 03:36
Absolutely. I mean, I'm really excited for this series, because it gives it gives a voice to the people that these tools are built around it. It's not that an engineer or a technologist owns and builds these tools. We are facilitating the people who are actually fighting right now. And so, you'll hear from the people who are actually no kidding fighting. We started with folks who are working in the counter UAS space. So, Colonel Molly Saulsbury, will talk to you about what that mission set looks like what it feels like to be at a base defense Operations Center and to manage the volume of threats that are coming at folks over there. We'll then move to air operations, zooming out a little bit beyond the base and looking at the theater of how Colonel Garrett Hogan manages and thinks about air operations and combat operations for his space will then move up another Echelon to look at headquarters and Brigadier General cog bill will talk to you about what coordination looks like, as you're moving up, the complexity is increasing, you have multidomain, you have cross service coordination happening, we're working with the Joint Staff, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, complexity of coordination in the number of people who have to have shared awareness is really, really critical at that level. And then of course, partners, we have Lieutenant Colonel Massey, who's our British liaison, who's going to talk about the partner and environment that we've been developing at CENTCOM and the importance of investing in tools like that because we have never fought alone. We will never fight alone. And so digital investment in that space outside of just our ourselves as US forces is critically important.
Lauren Bedula 05:01
What is the command’s hope to accomplish in terms of cultural barriers for scaling some of these efforts? Is it creating awareness of success so that you can replicate it? Or what is the command hope to get out of this?
Schuyler Moore 05:12
I hope they get a better understanding of the operational problem set. In the same way, candidly, that I have of coming into headquarters as somebody who came from a more technical side, and sitting side by side with operators and watching what their processes are, made me better and me more able to serve them and give them solutions that help them if I understand what their problem is. And so, my hope is that for folks in industry, for folks on the technical side, that listening will give them a better sense of the problem that we are collectively trying to solve for.
Lauren Bedula 05:39
And where do we take it from here? Do you see new exercises, expansion of exercises, anything you can preview in terms of the specifics, guests will talk about?
Schuyler Moore 05:51
Some common threads you'll hear across the series is about relationships. Again, we talk about the technology and the tools. But the real impact and sustainability of these capabilities comes from relationships. So, we mean by that is, you'll hear about relationships between the technical community and the users of having them embedded side by side, we have engineers that are shoulder to shoulder with our operators, both here at headquarters in the components. And we've seen huge and powerful results from that. We're talking about the relationships between different companies and industry partners, you'll hear folks talking about the opportunity and frustration sometimes when we don't have our data and our different systems integrated with one another so that they can work well together. We don't believe that any one solution can solve any of the various and complex challenges that we have in theater. It's a combination of them. And whenever those relationships within industry are working well, then we yield the results. And finally, you'll hear about the relationships across the command of the men and women in uniform who are doing such incredible work. You'll hear them talk with a lot of energy about the missions that they're working on about the experiments that they're running about the tools that they're using. There is no question that this has been a very serious time for the Commander at a very high operational tempo. But it is a testament to the quality of operators that we have out there, some of whom you will hear from over the course of this series, that they are doing such an incredible job and making such progress with the tools and solutions and mechanisms that are given to them.
Lauren Bedula 07:19
Well, there's a lot to unpack, we can't wait to do so in the coming episodes Sky. Thanks to you and your team for kicking this off. We're excited to see where we can take this.
Schuyler Moore 07:29
Thank you, guys, so much for coming in for giving these folks a chance to share what they're working on and the good progress that's been made.