Congressman Adam Smith
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
innovative thinking, Pentagon challenges, Elon Musk, Ranking Member Smith, State Senate, House Armed Services Committee, defense policy, SpaceX story, competition, defense contractors, process orientation, hacking for defense, private capital, Made in America, industrial policy
SPEAKERS
Hondo Geurts, Congressman Congressman Adam Smith, Lauren Bedula
Congressman Adam Smith 00:00
So that's an example of an innovative way of thinking. The Pentagon's not built for that. You get 10 layers of approval, you check all of those boxes, and as long as you do the process right, you're fine. The other joke I like to say about that, it's like The Office episode when Michael Scott drove into the lake because that's where the GPS was telling him to go, and who was he to look at it and say, No, I shouldn't be doing this. We want to try to get more innovative thinking and reward that thinking, and that's why I think Elon Musk, in that sense, could potentially be helpful.
Lauren Bedula 00:36
Welcome back to Building the Base. Lauren Bedula and Hondo Geurts here recording live from the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley. We are thrilled to have Ranking Member Smith with us today, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee who has been such a great partner to the Reagan Defense Forum over the years, and as always, a highlight of the day. Sir, thanks so much for joining us today.
Congressman Adam Smith 00:57
Thanks for giving me the chance.
Hondo Geurts 00:58
So congressman, what's the origin story for you? How did you grow up? What got you into politics? Got you onto the Armed Services Committee? How did that all unfold for you?
Congressman Adam Smith 01:10
There's kind of two separate stories. I mean, I grew up in the city of SeaTac, which is where the airport is. My father worked at United Airlines as a ramp serviceman and was the secretary treasurer in his union. It was a machinist union that organized. So he started taking me to political meetings in SeaTac Gosh, when I was 11, 12, 13 years old, and got me interested. Went to local legislative Democratic district meetings, got involved in a bunch of things, and then I was in law school, actually, when I decided to run for the state senate in that community, and I was elected to the State Senate when I was 25. There's a long backstory to that, but, um, knocked on a lot of doors and did it, and I just, I loved, you know, serving my community and solving problems, to be in a position to have some power to help people, you know, okay, we got a problem here. How do we fix it? And I'm just thinking, okay, what are my resources to fix said problem. Well, if I get elected, I have more power. I have the ability to help people and in the community that I grew up in and spent my whole life in. So I really enjoyed that, and it turned out I was kind of good at it, good at bringing diverse groups of people together and trying to figure out how to get them to work together and solve problems. I spent six years in the State Senate. I was lucky enough to chair the Judiciary Committee for four years, so I really got to legislate. And then I got elected to Congress at the age of 31. The Armed Services Committee, totally different thing. So I've not served in the military. My father served in the Navy, but that was years before I was even born, so I didn't have a particular military background. As I mentioned, I mentioned I had chaired the Judiciary Committee. I didn't know what committee I wanted to be on, but I represented what at the time was Fort Lewis Army Base and McCourt Air Force Base and Norm Dix, one of my mentors said, you got to be on Armed Services and I was like, okay, so I got on the Armed Services Committee immediately, and it just, it's such a great committee. I learned so much. And we also get to legislate, which I like doing from the State Senate days, and it sort of gave me a really good background on defense policy and national security policy, and I've always been very interested in it, and then my career just sort of worked out from there. In 2006 when we got the majority back, a whole bunch of things had to happen for me to get a subcommittee chair, but they did, and I chaired the subcommittee that had jurisdiction over Special Operations Command, so I went all over the world learning what they do. And then four years after that, Democrats got wiped out, everybody but one person ahead of me in seniority either lost or left. So three of us ran to be the ranking member, and in 2011 I got elected, and have been on the committee since.
Lauren Bedula 03:47
Well, you've always been a great champion to the startup community, and I know it's close to home with you with a significant tech presence, and your remarks this morning really highlighted the importance of collaboration between the tech community and the defense community. Can you talk a little bit about how that dynamic has evolved over this time you've just discussed?
Congressman Adam Smith 04:06
Sure, two pieces to that as well. I mean, first of all, I believe in innovation and competition. And part of that, I guess, goes back to my little origin story there, the part of the longer version of the story of how I got into politics. When I ran for that state senate seat, there were two people on the face of God's Green Earth who thought I had a chance to win. I spent 18 months trying to prove to people that I could win, and at the end of those 18 months, I thought I had succeeded, but all I had succeeded in was convincing the Democrats that the seat was completely unwinnable, so they decided to stop recruiting against me and just let me die in peace. And I found a way, because I have an innovative, competitive, problem solving mind, and that, I think, is how you improve quality of life. And I've taken that general outlook to my entire approach to legislating and governance. And I think we need the same thing within DoD and and we've seen that. Number one, the SpaceX story. I think you know, ULA convinced the Defense Department that competition couldn't work in space launch. So give us a monopoly tip of the hat for their ability to convince them of that. And Elon Musk came along and said, no, competition works, and I'll prove it to you. And he did. And now you see companies like Palantir and Kratos and Anduril and a lot of others doing the same thing. You know, in the AI community, they're going up, and they're competing against a lot of the prime contractors and showing that it can work. And I think you get a better product when you do that. And let me just say the, you know, the big five contractors, they're capable of competing to the line I usually use, which they don't like, is, it's not that large defense contractors can't compete. It's that they'd rather not. They'd rather just get the contract and hold on to it. Once they're forced to compete, they're capable of innovation. So you get that energy going, you get that competition going, and that's where you get the better product. The second big piece of it is, is DoD going to embrace what I just described. It's not in their DNA. It's not the way they approach things. They approach things in a very process oriented way of looking at the world. And to me, you can either have a problem solving when you look at the world, or a process way of looking at the world. The process way says I don't really trust our ability to think, so I'm going to put in place a process that's going to kind of be people proof. Follow these 10 steps, and then everything will be fine. Problem solving involves innovation, creativity, a willingness to move in a different direction. Maybe you start out here, but you wind up there. And one quick way of explaining that. I went to Stanford University, where they have a hacking for defense program. A number of universities do this. They basically take a group of undergrads, give them a real world defense problem and say, go solve it. And one things that I really found fascinating is every group that I met with that had worked on a problem, the first thing they said was, well, the first thing we figured out was they were asking the wrong question. Okay, that really wasn't where they needed to be. That's an example of an innovative way of thinking. The Pentagon's not built for that. Okay? You get 10 layers of approval, you know, you check all of those boxes, and as long as you do the process right, you're fine. The other joke I like to say about that, it's like The Office episode when Michael Scott drove into the lake, because that's where the GPS was telling him to go, and who was he to look at it and say, No, I shouldn't be doing this. We want to try to get more innovative thinking and reward that thinking, and that's why I think Elon Musk, in that sense, could potentially be helpful.
Hondo Geurts 07:37
As a former Navy acquisition executive, I spent many a hearing with you and your colleagues. What's your sense on the Hill? I mean, there's a little bit of a victim story of we can't do anything because Congress won't let us. But there are probably some some things Congress can help with to enable that. And I know you've been working very hard on the authorization bill for this year. Do you have a sense that there's a consensus to go after maybe some of those incentives for moving out at the speed we all want to get onto?
Congressman Adam Smith 08:13
We're getting there. We're not there yet. And look, there's three there's three elements to the problem. Okay, and all three elements are very good at blaming the other two, but it's all three. I mentioned the Pentagon, that they're process oriented. They don't innovate. They don't reward innovation. They don't reward risk taking. I also mentioned that in the defense contractor world, you know, they don't love competition either they want to win and then hold on to what they've got. But in Congress, the problem is twofold. I tend to find two problems with everything. But, number one, Congress, you know, likes to grandstand. So if something goes wrong, a member of Congress says, I have an opportunity. I will stand up and say, this will never be allowed to happen again. This is an outrage. This is horrible. But you know the Silicon Valley ethos, you got to tolerate failure. Well, I think people at the Pentagon, people in the defense contractor world, are like, Congress doesn't tolerate failure. So we better make sure that we're just checking a process box here, because we don't want to be out on a limb. So Congress has to show that we can tolerate failure if it's being done the right way, in a problem solving, innovative way. And we struggle with that because everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. Second we want control. And really, this is where the appropriators become a bit of a problem. You know, if you're going to encourage someone to innovate, you got to give them some flexibility. Well, if you say you have to spend the money like this, okay, so here's the money, spend it like that. And so if you got a Pentagon procurement person who takes that money just like the hacking for defense people and goes, you know what? It'd be better if we did it this way. Okay? Well, you got a three year process before you can change, all right? And that's in part because of Congress, because we say, no, you can't move the money. We have to allocate the money for this purpose, drive into the lake, basically. So, yeah, Congress needs to change as well. Yeah, I think it's interesting here for many of us who've come to Reagan over the years. If you look at the kind of placard of who's here and who's sponsored, that placard has almost flipped in in the last couple of years. Do you think the innovators outside the traditional primes have a sense now that they can compete and have opportunities here in the marketplace, or is that still something to be proven? I think we're making progress, meaning, if on a scale of one to 10, six years ago, it was at a one that's probably out of six now, okay, but we're not entirely there, but you've seen enough companies succeed, and by the way, that is, I think, to the credit of a fair number of Silicon Valley investors, you know, people like Anduril and Palantir, you know, who have made a point of going out there and investing in that innovation and showing that it can be done. So we're making progress. We've got a ways to go.
Lauren Bedula 11:03
And that's a change I think we've seen from the sponsors of Reagan too. More venture capitalists actually up on that list. That's your take on driving more private capital to these issues.
Congressman Adam Smith 11:12
Yeah, I mean, I think, A), there's money to be made, but B), I think a lot of it is driven by patriotism. I mean, Alex Karp, in his inimitable fashion, made that point this morning, you know? And I think there is a real feeling amongst some of the the Silicon Valley folks who have made their money in a bunch of different places that they they love this country, this country enabled them to make that money, and they're worried about our ability to defend ourselves, so they want to make investments to help us do that and and make money. Don't get me wrong, this is not, you know, this is not charity, but I think they are motivated by by patriotism and a desire to make the country work better, and that's a positive.
Lauren Bedula 11:51
We have a lot of patriotic entrepreneurs in our listener base, and always looking for advice from folks like you. I'm sure you've had at least 20 meetings today. Do you have any advice to folks like that? What sticks, what resonates, if they're coming to see you, what's the best practice there?
Congressman Adam Smith 12:07
Well, I mean, I guess, you know, come up with good products. I'd say the other thing is, there's a lot of people you can now partner with. You know, some of those companies that I've mentioned already, some of those investors. I met with Joe Lonsdale today as well. You know Marc Andreessen, I forget his partner's name, formed a venture fund along these lines. You know, there are a lot of people out there who will give you some of that startup capital, because sort of, go find them and make use of them.
Hondo Geurts 12:38
So we just had an election. We're in the middle of the transition. Where do you see us going, you know, in terms of this tech innovation as a country, as we deal with, you know, different priorities, potentially and foreign policy. And where do you see technology being an enabler in that kind of array of opportunities in front of us?
Congressman Adam Smith 13:01
I'll give you a deeply unsatisfying answer. I don't know. You know, talk to me in six months, because it really is hard to say exactly where the Trump administration wants to or will take things. You know, on the one hand, you know, you've certainly seen that innovative spirit amongst some of the people in the administration. I guess Elon Musk and JD Vance would be the most notable ones who have been, you know, investing or running companies that do that. I confess I forget where Vivek Ramaswamy got his money. I think he was just sort of a hedge fund guy. But anyway, you know. So there are some innovative people in there. On the other hand, you know, you've seen a certain tendency to want to take vengeance on your enemies, which is not a particularly compelling governing strategy, you know. And then some of the Cabinet picks have been alarming. If you are serious about doing effective innovation. Which one of those things wins out? I don't think we know. I mean, who is going to be in the cabinet and what's going to be the priority effectively reforming government are proving that Donald Trump is right about everything he's ever said, slash, getting even with all those enemies.
Hondo Geurts 14:21
So maybe to flip it a little bit. How can we accelerate the innovation thing? What do you think government can do, or should be doing, to continue? We certainly have momentum, I think, in better harnessing partnership.
Congressman Adam Smith 14:36
Well, first of all, get the Trump administration do the right thing. And a subtext of my remarks this morning that I don't know if people picked up on it, I was not as combative perhaps as I've been in past years. Trump won. He's coming in. He's gonna run things for the next four years, all right. And there's no point in trying to convince people not to elect him because they did. So I wanted to try to say, hey guys, if you're really. Serious about it. Here's a couple things you ought to think about, okay, and I think we ought to try and do that appeal to the better angels of their nature as they go forward. And I think there's a real opportunity for everybody who's involved to take that approach. And, you know, and a lot of my, you know, I represent a 70% Democratic district, and I'm sure a lot of my constituents would say, oh, you're being naive. He's going to be a disaster. We all know he's going to be a disaster. What are you talking about? And I don't know, you know, if I was a betting person, I would agree with them. I think that's probably where it's going to wind up. But I have to try to make it wind up in a different place, because it's just too important. I mean, our role in the world is crucial, the impact on our national security, the impact on our economy, economy and our country. Like I said, Trump is going to be president for the next four years, and we're gonna have to live with the consequences of that. And I think it's just the responsibility to do what we can to try to make that you know, better, instead of worse.
Lauren Bedula 16:01
In your opening remarks about your origin story, you talked about your interest in bringing stakeholders together to get something done, perhaps if they don't necessarily agree with each other. Do you think these issues we've discussed today are terribly political, or do you get the sense that there's a lot of momentum on both sides to tackle the defense tech and innovation.
Congressman Adam Smith 16:21
I think there is momentum on both sides. I mean, now you'll always have that window right after an election, when that happens, and then very quickly we go back to trying to prove I'm right about everything and you're wrong about everything. But look, there are two things from a professional standpoint, that I've always passionately believed in. One is creating opportunity for all. I believe that's a great thing about America. You don't have to be born rich, you don't have to be born into a prominent family, work hard, play by the rules, and you can pursue your dreams. And that gives us incredible strength, because think about it, we get to draw from the entire talent pool. And I'll tell you, my experience, there is no one segment of a society that is uniquely more talented than any other. Okay, you're as likely to find a brilliant mind and a hard worker, you know, born in the projects somewhere, as you are, I don't know, born in one of the richer areas, born in Silicon Valley, you know. And if you allow that opportunity, it's more fair. People believe in their country, and you get better results. But second, I believe in representative democracy. And I honestly don't think that a lot of people do these days, because they don't think about it all right, they believe in representative democracy in the sense that a fair society should give me what I want. Okay, that seems to be sort of like the stopping point, and I'm long understood that I am surrounded by people who disagree with me. I am surrounded by people who want things that conflict with what I want. All right, representative democracy is about having a peaceful way to resolve that. Dick Gephardt used to have a line, if I may, date myself for the moment when he would say, you know, politics is a substitute for violence, and most people don't understand that. But the way to think about it is, we are trying to resolve disputes. Disputes are inevitable in society, all right? That's why we have traffic lights. Okay? You gotta figure out who gets to go and who has to stop any given situation. So you have to have a means of resolving those disputes. And at the end of the day, there's really only two ways to do it. One, I'm strong enough to kill you, therefore I get my way. Or two, we have a set of rules that we play by that are peaceful and fair. You get your say. I get my say. We have a vote by one system or another, and then we accept the results. And so yeah, I am passionate about that sort of bringing people together. So frankly, whenever I see a conflict, I see it as an opportunity. Okay, what's going on? What do you want? What do you want? Why are you guys fighting? I have two children, so that worked out in that way as well. How can we resolve this, all right, how can we resolve this peacefully and in a way that is helpful to you? And sorry, just one more point on this a big issue for me. Sorry to give such a long answer, but successful a business manager, a friend of mine, you know, once said to me, you know, when he's doing a deal, if at the end of the deal, he got everything that he wanted, he knows he screwed up. Okay? Because it's not just about him, it's not just about his company. It's about the person he's doing the deal with. All right? A), there may come a time when that person is in a position to get whatever they want, and then he's going to want a little help. But B), it's not really possible that he is uniquely positioned to do the right thing. You want to share the wealth, okay? You want to try to have something that is fair to all? The Rotary Club has a little saying before they start their meeting that I've never probably remembered, that is along those lines, you know, when we're trying to resolve a difference, you know, and answer these four questions, is it fair to all? And I've got it, but, you know, we need to think in that that is the spirit of representative democracy. Representative democracy isn't I'm going to figure out how to organize so that I can crush you and get absolutely everything that I want because I'm right and you're wrong, and that shouldn't be questioned. That's not representative democracy. Another one of those, really, I would say, thorny issues over time is, you know, made in America, by America. How do we how do we reestablish our manufacturing capability, supply chain, yet at the same time engage with allies and partners. Do you have a sense, or does a committee have a sense on the balance of that made in America, versus engage and partner with allies? And do you see a place where we actually think through how to manufacture through all of our capabilities, not just trying to onshore everything back? Well, I think the positive in all of this is that we've recognized that we became overly dependent upon China. And I mean, starting in the mid 90s, late 90s, China became sort of the global corporate easy button. Everybody wanted to go there, all right, cheap labor, not much, environmental regulations you had to worry about, massive market. So disproportionately the world wound up with manufacturing located in China. Now we're trying to what's the phrase rebalance, I guess, you know, and, and that makes a ton of sense, and that's positive, and some of that stuff can come back to the US. So I think we need to do both. We need to build our domestic capacity, but we also need to recognize that rebalancing doesn't mean that the US grabs everything. You know, it may mean Europe or Latin America or other countries in Asia. We're seeing Malaysia and Vietnam, Mexico is coming back up. And so we have to have a sensible industrial policy. Part of that industrial policy is, yeah, let's try to get as many jobs and as much stuff we can here. But it also has to be working with partners and allies, friend sourcing, I believe, is what it's called, and we need to have a balance between those two things.
Lauren Bedula 21:58
Well, Mr. Congressman, we know you have an incredibly busy day. We're so grateful for you taking the time to come on and speak to our listeners, sharing these insights and advice today. So thank you so much for joining us.
Congressman Adam Smith 22:08
Well, thank you. It was a great interview. I appreciate the questions and the thoughtfulness.
Hannah Spata 22:13
You've been listening to Building the Base, a podcast by Lauren Bedula and Hondo Geurts. Remember to subscribe and share wherever you're listening. Have a guest suggestion? Leave a comment; we'd love to hear from you. For the latest updates and insights on the show, join our newsletter at www.buildingthebase.org. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.