Thank you for that introduction. It is good to be joining Harvard Business enterprise School’s “Technology and Countrywide Stability Convention.” I want to offer you a unique thank you to HBS’s Aerospace Club and the MIT Protection Tech Club for web hosting this convention.
This morning, I would like to talk to you about the external threats the Office faces, some inside difficulties we have, and how we are leveraging innovation and technologies to tackle these troubles.
If you read through the news or scroll through nearly any social media system, you know that the United States faces a amount of protection troubles nowadays.
Foremost on our minds are the folks of Ukraine. Russia is posing an acute menace to the environment get, with its unprovoked invasion and brutal strategies.
But even as we confront Russia’s routines, the National Defense Method names the People’s Republic of China as our most consequential strategic competitor. The PRC has the navy, technological, and economic probable to obstacle the intercontinental technique and America’s pursuits inside it for decades.
We confront other persistent threats also, like all those emanating from North Korea, Iran, and violent extremist corporations.
Defense innovation – bringing concepts, technology, and strategies with each other to fix armed forces challenges – is important to conference this problem established. Our just-introduced Fiscal Yr 2023 budget request does just that.
At the Office of Defense, substantially of the warfighter’s toolkit is cultivated by what we connect with “research, enhancement, test, and analysis,” or RDT&E. To ensure that we’re creating the resources and abilities that our gals and gentlemen in uniform need to have for the foreseeable future, we are requesting Congress devote far more than $130 billion pounds in RDT&E – which is the biggest financial commitment at any time in this category.
We request to devote nearly $28 billion in house capacity, like resilient area architectures and increased command-and-command systems.
We also ask for above $11 billion pounds for cyberspace functions. This will guard DoD information units from cyberattacks, assistance protect our crucial infrastructure, and increase our cyber toolkit – and do so within just the boundaries of the rule of law and existing lawful frameworks.
And we also requested funding for a number of attempts pertaining to synthetic intelligence, which includes developing the Office of the Chief Digital and Synthetic Intelligence Officer. This position will be centered on velocity – and making sure that we have the right procedures and organization in spot to leverage AI and info. This can help the department progress a host of various warfighting principles and capabilities.
Outside of assembly exterior issues, leveraging engineering and innovation also will help DoD deal with our possess interior processes.
With a workforce of over 2.9 million individuals operating at around 4,800 web-sites throughout 160 countries – by any measure – DoD is a huge and sophisticated entity. In actuality, just about any job or profession keep track of that exists in the personal sector most likely also exists at the Office of Protection.
To regulate an corporation of this dimension, we are aggressively pursuing digital and analytically-pushed methods.
As an illustration – at DoD, we know that we need to have to do our aspect in reducing greenhouse gasoline emissions to combat weather alter. To evaluate what alternatives we have, we require to far better recognize how and exactly where we use energy.
So we’re doing work to establish knowledge links to offer company-wide visibility of genuine-time or close to serious-time need for energy, pure gasoline, and drinking water. Surprisingly, we do not have that ability these days. So we are now executing so, down to the person installations and operational platforms.
This will help us to better evaluate and manage vitality use – to baseline where we are and to keep track of our development.
Not only will this make bigger energy performance and beat local weather adjust – it will also reduce expenditures and make our forces far more agile in the subject.
One more example –we’ve been rolling out a new federal electronic wellbeing document at the Division of Protection named MHS GENESIS. It is at the moment deployed to around 1,300 DoD areas with somewhere around 95,000 active users to day.
MHS GENESIS replaces numerous legacy digital overall health data techniques.


Apart from lowering expenditures, it improves accessibility of well being information and facts not only throughout the armed forces, but also the Office of Veterans affairs and other non-navy health care organizations.
It features better adaptability and adaptability in responding to functions these as pandemics and all-natural disasters. It also supplies around-genuine-time scientific decision guidance – which include the aggregation of individual facts.
No matter if supporting our warfighters in today’s difficult threat ecosystem, or generating efficiencies in the division, DoD wants very experienced military services and civilian workforces. We have to have people today to assistance fast-evolving places from nanotechnology to robotics. And we need people today with digital skillsets, together with details experts, software program builders, and equipment finding out gurus.
Outside of the talent, the Department is also on the lookout for approaches to perform together with American enterprises. The U.S. non-public sector is undoubtedly a person of our biggest comparative strengths. If DoD is to productively innovate, we’re heading to require to get the job done with industrial businesses and personal research entities.
We know that performing with the Office can be challenging and typically periods frustrating. DoD has a multitude of processes and needs that can be onerous. We know this, and are taking steps to reduce the limitations to performing with us.
As an illustration, the Division is leveraging diverse acquisition authorities that supply us the flexibility to each undertake and integrate professional greatest practices – as nicely as to obtain revolutionary companies that we may well not have usually labored with in the previous.
Furthermore, we’re targeted on growing our get the job done with smaller firms, who are important to our nationwide protection. So we are rising training and teaching opportunities at DoD Procurement Complex Support Centers – which are located all over the United States. We are also encouraging modest firms to signal-up for our Mentor – Protégé System. And we glimpse to our Little Business Innovation Exploration and Modest Company Technology Transfer packages to spur new capabilities.
Whether or not you have the skillset the Office is seeking for, or you are a company that would like to work alongside the Division, we just introduced a new internet site to assist you navigate the Office of Defense – www.ctoinnovation.mil. This web site is meant to be a one-stop store that is made up of back links to diverse profession paths, internships, and chances for men and women and a map of the DoD ecosystem for businesses who are fascinated in the innovative work that we do. Our goal is to present those hunting to get the job done with, and for, the Office the facts you want – and in real DevOps manner, our staff is searching for your user responses.
Events like this convention are extremely critical to our countrywide protection. Cross-reducing conversations, with viewpoints from both U.S. governing administration officials as nicely as associates from the personal sector and academia, not only construct understanding and trust, but hopefully guide to better outcomes for all.
Once more, thank you to HBS’s Aerospace Club and the MIT Protection Tech Club for web hosting. I hope that you delight in the relaxation of the meeting.