Nadia Schadlow and Stephen Rodriguez
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
national security, DOGE, defense industrial base, software defined warfare, strategic pronouncements, critical minerals, regulatory reform, AI implications, private sector engagement, innovation base, national defense strategy, protracted conflicts, commercial technology, regulatory burden, national interests, strategic mindset
SPEAKERS
Stephen Rodriguez, Nadia Schadlow, Lauren Bedula, Hondo Geurts
Lauren Bedula 00:00
Welcome back to Building the Base, live from the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley. Hondo Geurts and Lauren Bedula here with two special guests for this episode. We have Stephen Rodriguez joining us. Stephen is an investor in the defense tech space and leading the Atlantic Council's work on software defined warfare, which we're excited to get into. And we also have Nadia Schadlow, who is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, but has an incredible background working in the National Security Council, leading innovation related efforts. So thank you both for joining us today.
Hondo Geurts 00:35
So let's start a little bit with maybe a little more background. You both have, over the years, become kind of great promoters in the national security policy arena and bring folks together. But how did you get involved in national security? And maybe we'll start with you, Nadia, and what kind of got you involved in this and and what's kind of your background story? And then Stephen, you can follow her.
Nadia Schadlow 00:59
Well, a long, long time ago, I studied Russian actually, in college, and that was my initial introduction to what later became the world of national security at the time, during the Cold War, thinking about arms control, US Soviet relations, all of those things. Fast forward, I worked at the Defense Department for about seven years, and then went back to grad school to do sort of a deep dive on specific aspects of military history. So I'm actually relatively new to the defense industrial space, right? Basically my last job in government was to be the architect of the 2017 National Security Strategy. And in the course of doing that, it became very clear about the sort of problems, the vulnerabilities in our defense industrial base. And these were vulnerabilities and problems which were going to and are seriously affecting our ability and our capabilities to deploy and sustain, to deploy forces, to sustain combat and ultimately impacted deterrence. So that's sort of the quick one minute background and why I think these issues are important today.
Lauren Bedula 02:07
Fantastic. Stephen, over to you.
Stephen Rodriguez 02:10
So I started right before 9/11 in the intelligence community, and had a series of jobs in the US and overseas. I had the chance to work for Secretary Gates when he replaced Don Rumsfeld, and after a series of poor life choices, one of my former managers in the IC, or intelligence community, she recruited me to join what I didn't know at the time was a venture backed tech startup. I ended up running that and exiting it in 2010 and then, after having some experience in the operational world, in the policy world, and then in the tech world. By accident of timing, Secretary Hagel was doing this thing that is now known as the Third Offset Strategy. So they were looking for bodies who had some experience in policy and in tech. And I got plugged into that, and had the chance to stand up an organization now known as NSIN, National Security Innovation Network. That was one of my babies, and that brought me and my family back to DC, and for the purposes of this discussion here, as an investor and a entrepreneur, it's exciting in many ways, because you have the opportunity to build commercial operations, but as someone who also cares very much about national service and certainly being involved in the policy debate, being involved in the think tanks like the Atlantic Council, is my way of keeping one one foot in the water, so to speak, in the DC policy ecosystem.
Lauren Bedula 03:36
Stephen, while I have you, could you tell us a little bit more about that project and the vision for it.
Stephen Rodriguez 03:42
So, as I mentioned, I started in 2001 and I made this case repeatedly to include you, Hondo and certainly Nadia. When we were standing this up after 20-25 years, I realized that most of our strategic pronouncements are completely unresourceable. We say we're going to go defend Taiwan, we'll deter Russia, we'll counter Iran, we'll and then you see on the facts on the ground, we depleted 10 years. This is highlighted yesterday, right? We depleted 10 years of military stockpiles in a month or two in Ukraine, we ran out of TLAMs after a week bombing the Houthis. And so you, you look at those, and as my Midwest family, has a saying about having a champagne taste on a beer budget. You look at what we're actually able to do, and then the strategic pronouncements we put on paper. And there's often a wide gulf between between the two. So software defined warfare is really designed to do something quite basic and quite practical as well in the very near term. So I'm not talking about the military in 2030 or 2040, in the next year or two. What are things we can do to enhance, extend and improve the lives of our platforms and systems that our Airmen, Soldiers and Marines and Sailors are going to go to war with, right? There's no cavalry coming to save us. So the true aim of software defined warfare is being very practical and saying, what can we do now, materially and tangibly to make all the safer. To tee up Nadia, this is a lot of the work she did with, I think you were the one that coined the national National Security Innovation Base, right in the previous NSS that tried to get it some of these, what are now quite fashionable terms, but getting into this concept of accessing commercial technology and integrating in military platforms.
Nadia Schadlow 05:42
Yeah, the the acronym NSIB, was essentially the idea that we needed to talk about more than the traditional defense industrial base, and that it was just a broader base, but, but I do think it's important, Steve to also add that, you know, part of the problem is in addition to resources. It was a strategic mindset in the post Cold War period that we would not need to fight sustained wars, right? Most of the war gaming, and I don't know, Hondo, your Navy days, right? The war gaming and the assumptions we made at the time were very much that these would be short wars. They would not be protracted conflicts. And we weren't thinking about protracted conflict. We also had made a deliberate decision to shift away from a two war construct to one major war. So I think a lot of those assumptions have shifted as well revealing further vulnerabilities.
Hondo Geurts 06:34
So Nadia, for those in the audience, I'm sure they'd love to figure out how a person goes about writing a national defense strategy. What a project to get on your lap. How did you go about that then to craft it, you know, and what's just a practical, how do you think your way through that, and as you think based on, you know, the observation you just made, what do you think are some key elements that we need to, you know, continue to look at, as we grow the next national defense strategy.
Nadia Schadlow 07:06
Well, I did. It was, for me, it was the National Security Strategy, sort of the umbrella document, I think one of the strengths of the 2017-2018 period was that they were well nested. The National Security Strategy had themes in it that were then reflected in the National Defense Strategy and nuclear posture review. You know, I think there's no lesson in how to develop a strategy at that level. First, you read all the other strategies, and you make some decisions and assumptions. I think second, you basically go in and say, Okay, this is a document that reflected President Trump's views of the world, fundamentally right? So you go and you read his speeches prior to for me, prior to 2017 but then as the year unfolded, the speeches that he gave in the Middle East, at the UN in Europe. We also made a decision, and it was very much a we a team effort. We made a decision to structure the document around clearly defined national interests. And I don't think every previous document had done that. Of course, national interests are mentioned and are part of them, but the decision to structure it around for clearly defined national interests, which ended up, we ended up colloquially calling it the four pillars, defend the American homeland, grow American prosperity, preserve peace through strength and advance American influence. Those were the four pillars. And once you do that, essentially it's described the problem set that you see, the challenges that you see, and propose a set of, you know, broad priority directions or solutions. It's not the job of a strategy, I think, at the national level, to go down to that operational level, right? That's the job of the departments. So the Defense Department needs to tell us, how is it going to defend the American homeland with missile defense or, you know, so I'll leave it there in case there's follow up.
Hondo Geurts 09:05
As you look now, and I think largely, that strategy has held up in terms of pillars and areas of influence. You know, Stephen talked a little bit about, how do we leverage software? What other areas are you seeing in the industrial base that we need to keep focusing on to enable that strategy, or the strategy of the new President as he comes in?
Nadia Schadlow 09:31
Well, I don't want to be too negative, but I guess this is going to sound negative. I mean, I don't think we've gotten very far at all. I wrote a piece a while ago. Sorry, to be self referential, but it's called the Crisis of Repetition. And I basically argued that, you know, started out and said, you know, we're all worried about the problem or vulnerability vis a vis critical minerals. I started to look and like, when, when did we start to think about, when did we start to notice this problem? Well, not five years ago, not 10 years ago, not 20, not 30, 40, years ago. From 1980 I could have even gone back and cited some documents from the 70s. We meaning the US government, the Defense Department, the State Department, and probably the intelligence community, but I didn't look in that world consistently expressed concern about our vulnerability vis a vis critical minerals. And we are, you know, we're not look at where we are today with China's, you know, essentially export controls on antimony and other key critical minerals. So we haven't made a huge amount of progress. And I think partly it's because of, you know, the it's really, really hard to procure things to change the regulatory climate, all of these things that, you know, I do think the DOGE impetus is the right one. And I think if they can especially work on a regulatory reform, which is one of the promises, you know, maybe we can move faster.
Lauren Bedula 10:57
And I actually don't ask this a little bit corny question, but I imagine writing a national security strategy things can keep you up at night, because you've got to get pretty deep on the threat environment. What's keeping you up at night now? Or how has that evolved since 2017-2018?
Nadia Schadlow 11:12
I think that's one of the biggest areas and Steve jump in. But one of the key differences from 2017 to today, and it's not new, is is the axis of aggressors, or, as The Economist had called it, calls it the Quartet of Chaos. I love those Brits, right? They come up with these elegant terms. So they're clearly, this is not new. Now, it almost sounds trite, but they are operating in different ways than they were six, seven years ago, eight years ago, they're creating more dilemmas and challenges for us. I think we're in the midst of a, certainly a regional war in the Middle East. I think a lot of people hesitate to talk about that. It's a war. It's an Israeli, Iranian war, right? I mean, it's just, it's a war. It's unfolding in all different ways. So that worries me. I mean, proliferation worries me. If you want me to the whole list of, you know, the more I learn about biotechnology and biosynthetics, the more I get worried. And I'm worried about, you know, I'm probably not on the AI optimist side, in the sense that I am, you know, not to get, you know, I'm on the side of, I worry about its impacts on humanity and what it means for humanity. So I was just reading Mustafa Suleyman's book, The Coming Wave, and I feel that he's, you know, if he's a little bit worried, I'm probably... he gets to be worried, founder of Deep Mind. So I know lots of people have different views.
Hondo Geurts 12:35
Steven, what's the commission come up with so far, in terms of ways that we think that software and embracing what might argue our core strengths and competitive advantages in software technology. AI, how can we better leverage that to help solve some of the dilemmas that we're facing now with the Quartet of Chaos?
Nadia Schadlow 12:58
And I would like to know if Steve shares my worry, or if he's... you follow AI very, very closely, or am I being just, do I need to kind of flip it and become more optimistic?
Stephen Rodriguez 13:07
I think that, you know, we are here at the Reagan National Defense Forum, and we saw Alex Karp touch on this briefly today. What this is a little outside the remit of the commission, but arguably more at a national security strategy level, I think we have a decision to make between acceleration and deceleration of technology. I had this debate with Mike Froman, now the new president of the Council on Foreign Relations. I was encouraged to see them here at the RNDF as well. And I framed this discussion to him about about the in this way, as well as a linear continuum between acceleration and deceleration, and I think that affects everything we look at to include AI, nuclear technology, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, drones. There's all these. We get caught up in these very minuscule or minute policy debates without realizing that essentially, we have to make a choice as a society, what are we going to adopt and where are we going to fall on that continuum? I think Alex Karp this morning hinted, he said, Look, if this were better understood and more well understood, maybe I would be more in the as they call it in the commercial world, a de-cel, right? I'd be more of a de-cel guy. But right now, it's wide open. We don't know what we're getting into. And you almost to turn a phrase from some of our lawmakers, with the bill, we have to read the bill, or we have to pass the bill to know what's in it, right? We have to develop the technology before we know what we should be scared of.
Nadia Schadlow 14:31
I don't think we can decelerate, just for the record like I don't think that's possible. I think it's going to proceed. It's going to go on. I just worried about some of the implications of it. We'll have good and bad, and I'm worried about, I don't think government has proven that it can, I mean, successfully move at any speed, let alone the speed of speed of that technology by governments really, it's, it's really hard to find examples of speediness.
Lauren Bedula 14:57
Well, maybe I'll flip, flip that around. From a more optimistic perspective, too, and change to being here in 2016-2017 at the Reagan National Defense Forum, you didn't see Palantir as the main sponsor or as many disruptive tech companies. And actually it was still sort of that post Snowden world, where there was that divide and lack of trust between the two communities. It was even before the Maven debacle. So Stephen, wondering if you can talk a little bit about that, because I know you see so much of the interest from the front lines of the venture community, the tech community, entrepreneurs who are eager to help solve some of these issues. So what's your take on that shift?
Stephen Rodriguez 15:36
It's really interesting, because for those of us who’ve coming here for a while, you have seen that shift, and I've often wondered why was that? And I think part of it, there were two shifts I saw at Reagan, just from my experience, 2013 till now. One was December 2016 when we traditionally the RNDF was really the it was the Romney team in Winter, right? It was a Republican hangout where we would get together and talk policy. And they used to have the same as this is going to be the Davos for defense. I would argue that that we've achieved that, and it's now Davos has their own desires aimed at RNDF, but I think that Trump's shock win in 2016 had a lot of Democrats who showed up that December, kind of in shock and said, Hey, we hear this is a big thing, and we'd like to be a part of it. And then I think following after that, you saw, I think it, a lot of it came out of the Third Offset Strategy and DIU 2.0 where you started to see more tech companies get involved. And I think they realized what they didn't maybe even a year or two before. I would have discussions out of respect, without naming them specifically, but many major VCs that are household names in 2014 and 2015 and they would tell me explicitly. They would say, there is no way I am ever going to touch defense. And of course, as a self interested person to defense, I said, Oh, come on in the water's fine. I'd love to work with you. And the response was way too many exogenous shocks that we can't control, like the regulatory burdens, these random defense constraints that they would see as basically a massive hurdle or headline risk to the success of their company. And I think third offset, and a lot of those initial traction points showed them, they said, Actually, those are those hurdles still exist, but we can, we can solve for that, right? We can put money against that. That's why you see all these companies now have an in house or external GA government affairs function, right? So I think that, without going on too long, that was a big shift I saw here.
Lauren Bedula 17:45
It's pretty incredible. Nadia, I'm curious to see what you've seen on the private sector side, especially with the focus or having coined this innovation based national security innovation base idea. How have you seen that landscape shift?
Nadia Schadlow 17:58
I mean, it's, it's definitely shifted in terms of companies are very eager to do business with DoD, but DoD has still been quite slow in making the necessary shifts. So a big theme of the conference today has been, you know, the same phrases that we've heard over and over and over the valley of death. We have seen some progress, and that's important to build on positive changes. I mean, the changes with DIU, the changes with Office of Strategic Capital, these are all efforts to kind of support smaller companies that have capabilities that the force needs. But, you know, it's taken two years from the announcement of the Office of Strategic Capital to just now they're still not actually deploying funds, right? So this all takes time, and two years is a long time, as Steve knows more than I in the life of a small company, and it matters. So we just need to work. We absolutely have to work faster, and I think that will be a key challenge for the next administration, to find the tools and mechanisms to force government and specifically DoD, but that's my world. But all have come to work faster and actually to figure out the pathway to doing that. I mean, I have some ideas or lots of their options out there, but it is critical, otherwise we're going to lose, you know, lose excellent innovative technologies out there that can't be brought to scale.
Hondo Geurts 19:19
Steve, anything you can share? I know the study isn't out yet from the Atlantic Council, but any kind of observations you could share of some of the things on the software side we can do to better leverage that set of expertise and try and build some momentum.
Stephen Rodriguez 19:35
It's very germane, I think it's the word, to this conversation here when you think about a high level strategy, much like the exercise Nadia has gone through in government, okay, you come up with a fancy sounding name, Software Defined Warfare, clearly a play on the engineering term. Software Defined Hardware, software defined radar, Software Defined wide area networking. Software Defined Warfare, okay? Okay, how do you move from that boilerplate statement down to something actionable? So what we did, Hondo you and Nadia, I know are intimately familiar with this, we came up with three lines of effort. Those three lines of effort are, one enhancing legacy systems with new software. So think iPhone Tesla, right, same form factor, but with new software, you can extend battery life, you can improve application performance, allow faster updates. Remember the game point? Now this is, this is, I guess, a bureaucratic move as well. We live in such a short term political horizon, even in business and certainly with policy, where, if you were to come out and say, Oh, we're going to do a again, a study or commission on the military in 2032 we're all going to be dead or speaking Chinese in 2032 like way too late. So we're almost responding to the political moment in coming up with these three LOEs. The second and third, briefly, are software designed, hardware enabled systems. So think like Palantir is Titan Project. These are new starts, right? Not old starts that have new software. These are new starts, starting with the software base in mind. And then the third and final one is enhancing the digital enterprise. So this is, you know, improving the, you know, the software backbone. The simple example is a labor of love for many is improving and reforming the defense travel service. And so the prospective Department of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth has his tagline, make America lethal again, cool. I'm on board with that. How, how do you plan on doing this? So one way you could say is, oh, if I reform DTS or defense travel service and I spend less time on that, that gives me more time to focus on, you know, actually being lethal. Dare I say? So we have 10 recommendations, very short, the whole report, I think, will be 15 pages, courtesy of our co chairs. And I think one of the ones I'm most excited about is there are several. One I'll just say, is the commercial item preference. So currently, US law already is to buy commercial. So you're probably sitting there saying, Okay, well, what gives why are we not doing it? Well, it turns out you is US law. But if a program officer, Acquisition Officer, wants to buy commercial, the onus is on them to do a bunch of paperwork to buy a commercial, see. So basically, if Hondo is back in his job, or he's in a PEO and he wants to go buy without mentioning names, but you know, and elite defense tech companies products that well marketed everything they meet to meet the mission, meet the requirement, now he has to do a mountain of paperwork. So many people may not be as motivated or as svelte as Hondo. So they say, well, I'd rather hit the easy button and buy a heritage defense industrial base player. So the the punch line is, what we realized with the previous commission, the innovation commission that we did, was that a lot of times people will get on stage and they'll say, DoD has a culture problem. DoD has a culture problem. We just fix the culture, which is ironic, because they also without a hint of irony, say, we have the best men and women in uniform. And so what we realize is a lot of the issues with, I'm using air quotes here, "culture" actually come down to nudges or incentives or disincentives for behavior. So that's one of the things we're focused on. That's one of the 10 recommendations.
Lauren Bedula 23:44
Nadia, anything to add there? I see you taking some notes.
Nadia Schadlow 23:47
I think the flip side is remove the regulatory burden of all that paperwork. Right? That's a perfect, perfect sort of DOGE thing to do, right? Remove that paperwork. Get rid of it. Identify the regulatory environment with AI. Use AI to point out how many duplicative and repeating and inane regulations there are, and remove it.
Hondo Geurts 24:08
Yeah, I think for a lot of our government listeners, the idea of addition by subtraction is really powerful. So everybody likes to add new things or a new twist, or call something, but it can be really powerful just to get rid of obstacles and blockers and things.
Stephen Rodriguez 24:23
Yeah, and identify a protagonist. That's one thing that Nadia, you and Hondo have said a lot, is when you make a recommendation, don't suggest we the key to the example, the key to fixing the Defense Innovation Unit, is to create an uber DIU, right? Because you still have DIU sitting there. So rather, you'll fix the existing problems and don't make a recommendation without a specific person. In other words, I went Colonel Mustard in the library with the wrench.
Nadia Schadlow 24:52
And, I mean, I could be wrong, but Hondo, you, you would know more, more than I I mean, if you know, I think the Secretary of Defense has the authority to remove a lot these regulations. This is not law, so find out where those regulations are relating to the paperwork that Steve mentioned for this, COTS, commercial, off the shelf technology and what's preventing it from being used more effectively? Bring up, you know, a two page list of these regulations to SecDef and say, sign them. They're obsolete.
Hondo Geurts 25:19
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I've often said most of our impediments are self inflicted and culturally reinforced. I think we're at a nice opportunity spot here to change some of that. Now, both of you have engaged, Stephen you in particular, with a bunch of tech companies. There's a whole bunch of new folks that want to get involved in Department of Defense, some actually want to even impact strategy. What recommendations do you have on how they can be successful if they want to get involved in national security or national security activities? You know, I think far too often we see people pitch a technology, not a solution, but what other what other recommendations would you have for those out there in our listening group that have a good idea, or have a product or something that thing can help?
Stephen Rodriguez 26:09
Yeah, I have a saying that says, when you come in this space, you need to identify the four M's, and it stands for that, you need to identify the money, the mission, the motivation and the mechanism. So often, people will come in, and I'm on too many defense, defense tech boards, and they'll say, I want to meet the general, or I want to meet the admiral, or I want to meet the secretary. And I'll look at him, and they'll say, the general is not going to save you. What you need to do is you need to find the person with who has the money, or knows where the money is. The first M. The second M is you need to find a person that has the mission, the requirement, or find someone who can help you write the requirement. And then the last two M's are the motivation. Now that could be the general Admiral, the champion, they'll pound the table. And finally, the mechanism, the contract vehicle. So the key to any business is identifying, you know, those 4 M's that helps you make sense of a world where you come into Reagan here, and you see, you know, very, very impressive people everywhere. And one could be forgiven for saying, I have no idea where the hell to start.
Nadia Schadlow 27:17
I guess I would say that there's one overarching question that you should be asking yourself, what problem can I help the Department of Defense solve? Don't necessarily wait for them to define it, because DoD is filled with people just like you. They don't know everything, and you might have a better kind of tactile sense of a particular problem set, because you're there working on a technology and seeing something so define the problem that you're helping DoD to solve and and think in that way, what capabilities are you giving the department? And then obviously everything that Stephen just said is absolutely true, although I would say that another medium term objective, or shorter term objective is to reduce those requirements and to make them more flexible, right? We want to kind of change, I think there are opportunities now to change that requirements process. People like Doug Beck at DIU and I think others at DoD have used this term, you know, portfolio of capabilities. So instead of having this, this very specific, you know, dictionary sized set of requirements. Have a more general sense of the capabilities we need. This is what I need in the Army, and then let companies come and deliver those capabilities.
Lauren Bedula 28:32
Thank you. And those are all pretty meaty recommendations, especially with the new administration coming in. Appreciate you sharing them. And want to note, too, it's really cool to see two different think tanks here together. We talked about reports, we talked about strategies, documents. None of us, when we're working on these, want it to just sit on a shelf right? And I think the collaboration, the people, the network, is key, and humans are at the center of that. So we always talk about talent, workforce, et cetera. Nadia, you have had an incredible career in a primarily male dominated field. I'm curious if you have any advice for our listeners who are looking to break into fields like national security, tech and others, and maybe not look like everyone in the room, but any advice to listeners in that sense?
Nadia Schadlow 29:17
I think my advice on this is always just consistent. Just do your homework. Just be prepared. Just be a good colleague. Be decent to people. If you have a choice about inviting someone to the meeting or not invite them to the meeting, generally, that will work in your benefit down the line, especially when that person becomes like Secretary of Defense or something, or whatever. So that's my general advice.
Lauren Bedula 29:39
I love it. Thank you both for coming on again and sharing such meaty ideas, sharing your experiences. We know you're very busy out here at Reagan. So thank you again for joining us.
Nadia Schadlow 29:49
Thanks for the opportunity.