Remarks by Acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Followed by Discussion
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan; Todd Harrison, Director of Defense Budget Analysis, Director of the Aerospace Security Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies
ACTING SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PATRICK SHANAHAN: All right. Well, good morning, everyone. It’s certainly good to be here. And I just want to maybe make a — a few broad comments.
Kath, thank you so much.
You know, Kath was very involved with the National Defense Strategy Commission. Did an outstanding job.
And then Todd Harrison, thank you for the invitation. I think John Hamre’s not here, but, you know, only at CSIS could we have these types of dialogues, which are — are really so important for, you know, these very, very critical issues, as we think about what does the future look like.
And before I — I dive into my remarks, one thing I would just ask all of you to do tonight — this would be a little bit of help — say a prayer for our men and women in the military, say a prayer for the civilians that support them. They do remarkable work on our behalf.
And the one — the one word that I’ve learned — I’ve learned a lot of words since working at the Department of Defense. But the one word that I’ve really come to appreciate and understand is the word „devotion.“ And they’re devoted to their mission and they’re just doing a remarkable job.
I’m going to tell a story and then I’m going to talk a little bit about the Space Force. But let me start with this — this story. And it’s a story about making change and modernizing in the largest bureaucracy in the world.
Sometimes people say the department isn’t bold or fast enough. But in just 18 months, we went from a phone call with two bipartisan members of Congress to a proposal establishing a new branch of the armed services, the Space Force. I want to talk to you about that proposal today.
Representatives Cooper and Rogers got us started on this path, and I want to thank them for their leadership and vision. I also want to acknowledge the important role President Trump played in instilling a sense of urgency in the department, or what Secretary Mattis would call, „moving at the speed of relevance“ in establishing the Space Force as a sixth branch of the military.
You only get this kind of action if there is a compelling need to move quickly. This was true for our challenges in space.
My goal, and the department’s goal, is to grow what we call our margin of dominance in space. This margin is now contested, and our legacy systems, as you well know, are not designed to operate in this environment.
China and Russia already treat space as a warfighting domain. China is moving fast to grow their presence in space. Last year, their government put 38 rockets into orbit. This is more than double the 17 that our government launched.
What’s more, the space industry is undergoing a seismic transition, fueled by the convergence of commercial and military capabilities, decreasing launch costs and an entrepreneur-driven innovation; innovation that impacts the entire space ecosystem, from the hardware in the sky to the application of space-based communications, sensing and precision, navigation and timing data on the Earth.
During this state of evolution, we can’t afford to lose our margin of dominance.
What is vital is that we protect a $19 trillion economy and the systems our military runs on. As Representative Cooper said, „if our satellites were attacked, we would be blind, deaf and impotent before we even knew what hit us. Everything from ATM machines to Zumwalt destroyers would be paralyzed.“
If you’re faced with threats like this, you say yes to change. And so we made a strategic choice to organize to ensure American dominance in space for decades. This choice to restructure has three parts: the military service, combatant command, and a development agency.
Let’s talk about part one, the U.S. Space Force. To move forward effectively, space needs an advocate. That advocate will be the Space Force.
The Space Force will operate like other branches of the armed services, organizing, training and equipping the force with Title 10 authorities. It will have formalized leadership, including a new under secretary for space and a chief of staff of the Space Force, to focus on developing space warfighting doctrine and culture.
The organization will also focus on professional development, developing skills within the force and creating a pipeline of space experts. It won’t be very large, between 15,000 and 20,000 people, and it will have a budget the size of SOCOM.
Let me spend a moment and talk about U.S. Space Command, which is the second part of our — our restructuring.
Space Command will change the mission of space from a support function to a leading role. This is not new. This is a bit of back to the future, since we previously had Space Command but gave it up after 9/11 for NORTHCOM.
The commander will wake up every morning thinking two things: „How am I going to win in space?“ and „how will space help the joint force win in the land, sea, air and cyber domains?“
I’ll touch on the Space Development Agency, which is the third part and, in my view, the pacing element. Our space presence will be enabled by new capabilities delivered by the Space Development Agency.
There are roughly 2,500 active satellites in orbit today. American companies alone project they will add 15,000 satellites in the next decade or so.
The proliferation is primarily happening in LEO, with small sats focused on mostly communications and ISR. But the low cost of launch is expanding access to all orbits. Additionally, in the next decade, we expect to see commercially available persistent surveillance of the globe from space.
We need to leverage this commercial space investment and tap into the advancements to help solve the next generation of warfighting challenges.
There are different models for the department to follow. We can acquire commercial off-the-shelf. We can tailor commercial solutions. We can develop new technologies or some hybrid of the aforementioned.
And in parallel, we need our warfighters to experiment with new space-based applications. There are three points I really want to underscore here.
The first: The unifying factor is the need for advanced systems engineering as we design for artificial intelligence, as we design to enable low-latency movement of data, as we design to connect sensor to shooter, and as we design to enhance exquisite capabilities.
Second, if we do nothing — I’ll just say this again — if we do nothing and maintain our legacy approach, at least 10 DOD organizations working on space-based capabilities and architecture will continue to develop bespoke solutions.
And third, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to recapitalize the department’s space architecture and integrate it to deliver new solutions at scale. Our rules aren’t adaptive enough to leverage this. We need one organization in the lead to enable a department solution.
So let me — let me conclude with a few — a few short comments.
These reorganizations all tie to our National Defense Strategy and the overarching need to posture for great power competition in space. But beyond this reorganization, the president’s defense budget request also includes a 15 percent increase in our investment in space-based capabilities.
The Space Development Agency roadmap in the 1601 report has eight increments of capability and provides a path for buying down risk and delivering capability so that we can scale and take action.
The roadmap starts with hypersonics, tracking and warning for defense against adversary hypersonic missiles, with the next step to provide targeting for our hypersonic missiles. The roadmap delivers an alternate PNT so that we can operate in a GPS-jammed environment. These are just a few of the investments in our 2020 budget request.
The institutional changes and money increase demonstrate our resolve to move out and find a solution. Eighteen months ago, it was a phone call. Fourteen months ago, it was a rollout of the National Defense Strategy. Nine months ago, we received presidential guidance. Last month, there was a space force proposal. This month, it is a budget. This is what it means to compete.
The space force is a critical part of ensuring we dominate in an era of great power competition.
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
(CROSSTALK)
TODD HARRISON: Thank you for joining us here, Secretary Shanahan, for your remarks. I want to…
SEC. SHANAHAN: How’d I do?
(Laughter.)
MR. HARRISON: We’re giving it a thumbs up.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, for the hard part…
SEC. SHANAHAN: Is this on?
MR. HARRISON: I think so, let’s see. Let’s hit the button here and just see. Here we go.
SEC. SHANAHAN: Okay. All right, everybody hear me now?
MR. HARRISON: Now, they can.
SEC. SHANAHAN: All right, very good.
MR. HARRISON: Now, they can hear you on the web.
SEC. SHANAHAN: This isn’t the hard part; this is the fun part, right?
MR. HARRISON: Well, you haven’t heard my questions yet.
SEC. SHANAHAN: They’ll be fine. They’ll be good.
MR. HARRISON: So my first question — and I’ll remind folks here in the audience and watching online, if you want to ask a question, you can go to the web address you see here: aerospace.csis.org/questions. You submit your question; I’ll get it up here on the tablet. But, you know, as the moderator, I get to go first with my questions.
So first question is, you know, when the president came out with this Space Force proposal almost a year ago now, he talked about it initially as a separate department. What you guys settled on is a separate service within the Department of the Air Force.
Can you just tell me a little bit about how that — how the idea evolved and how you settled on this particular construct?
SEC. SHANAHAN: That’s a good — good way to start out today.
So, you know, you can imagine if someone said, „Create a new branch or a new department.“ You know, as you all recognize, we have lots of processes in the — in the Pentagon, but they didn’t have the „start the new department“ process.
And so a lot of this has, you know, been, you know, homegrown, and you have to think about what — what is the best organization construct so that you can go the fastest? And a — a department allows you to have complete autonomy.
So at one end — one end of the spectrum, you can have, you know, full autonomy; on the other end of the spectrum, you can say, „Let’s maintain the status quo.“ And we started with those bookends, and we said, „given the need for speed, and then how much time you might spend just reorganizing,“ we landed in a place that said, „draw off the synergy of the Air Force,“ all right?
And — and we have significant learning from the Marine Corps about how to have a service within a department.
The — the biggest thing that we’ve been working to do with the Space Force is focus on delivering capability faster. And it’s very easy in government to think about equities, and we — we didn’t want to start with, well, what are the equities? What are the structures? How do we draw a path to deliver, maintaining that margin of dominance?
And it really was all based on, you know, standing up these, you know, I’ll call it critical time-based capabilities; developing — doing the development. Space Development Agency is about development. It’s not a space acquisition agency; it’s a space development. And we said, „that’s what’s most important.“
And you could put it any place, but given most of the resources that are going to be a component or — or an element of the Space Development Agency living in the Air Force, keep it as close to that as possible. Space Command was — was easier.
MR. HARRISON: And, you know, what do you say to folks, you know, critics of creating a separate military service that say, „Well, if you’re creating United States Space Command, a combatant command for space, why can’t that be enough? Why do you also need a military service? Can’t we make Space Command kind of like Special Operations Command and give it some service-like authorities?“
SEC. SHANAHAN: We can do anything, right?
I mean, I — this is — this is what’s — in terms of — of working on something, this has been a really great experience because we’ve got this big piece of clay that we get to work with. And a lot of the critics — so you have people that are at the subatomic level, and they get into, you know, „Let’s move this little piece of the clay, you know, from — from here to there.“
I — I’d go back to the — when I came into the department, they said, „Space is really important,“ and Secretary Rumsfeld back in the early 2000s, tried to move — move the ball. So we’re talking about moving the ball. That’s — that’s the most important piece.
Go back to the — the essence of your question?
MR. HARRISON: Yeah, so Space Command.
SEC. SHANAHAN: Oh, (inaudible)
MR. HARRISON: Why isn’t creating a combatant command sufficient?
SEC. SHANAHAN: Well, the — the Space Command will only get after dealing with space, but not any new tools.
The — you know, the big — the big change is we woke up one day, and the space was contested, and everything that we had designed for was no longer as capable as we thought. You know, imagine being able to walk around your neighborhood and never having to lock your door. Well, one day all of a sudden, you have to lock your door. And things that we have on orbit aren’t — aren’t capable of that. And so you say — $19 trillion economy. That’s just ours, but — and everybody runs off of space. So how do we — how do we protect ourselves?
So the Space Command just gets at, we want somebody every day to think about, „are we defending the economy? And do we have someone focused on making sure that the military systems are protected?“
The most important thing is now, how do you replace that critical infrastructure so that it’s resilient, redundant, survivable and has new capabilities, because it really is contested? That is the most critical and pacing item. This is about retiring risk.
The — the structures are — are interesting. There — there’s lots of ways to go about it, but it’s mostly, we put together a roadmap, and the roadmap was about how do we leverage space to reduce threats to the United States?
So the first element on the roadmap is, how do we counter hypersonics that are a risk to our men and women, and to the — to the homeland?
Space is a fantastic place. You’re not geographically limited. We’ve built a space plan around the things we need in order to — to compete and win against China and Russia.
MR. HARRISON: And — and so, just last week, Chairman Smith in the House Armed Services Committee, he said that, you know, oh, they’ll — they’ll take a look at the Space Force proposal, but they’re going to — they’re going to come up with something different on their own within their committee.
You know, have — have you had discussions yet about what kind of changes they would like to see? Or — or do you have any indications on, you know, specific parts of the proposal they’re not happy with?
SEC. SHANAHAN: I haven’t — I haven’t walked through the proposal with — with Chairman Smith. But a lot of my interactions on the Hill have gone this way: In — in terms of how we view the threat and the changes we need to make, pretty universal about, you know, being more aggressive, leveraging commercial innovation, you know, removing red tape, doing things for less — less cost.
The feedback I’ve received is, worry about adding or building bigger government. That — that part has been — been universal. And, you know, I don’t blame them. I mean, I think, you know, we all want the same thing: We want a lean and a very thoughtful use of — of resources.
But that’s generally been the — been the feedback, and the — the conversations have been like this: „explain to us, you know, how you’ve come up with your costs,“ or „help us to understand why this isn’t, you know, a — a redundant effort.“
MR. HARRISON: And, you know, in terms of the bureaucratic politics within the building, so this is something that has basically been in your lap since you came to the Pentagon. You’ve been working on it, you know, from beginning to end. How have you seen the bureaucratic politics evolve during this time period, you know?
Because when the — the Space Corps proposal came out from Congress in 2017, the Air Force very publicly opposed it. And now, you know, DOD is submitting a proposal that’s somewhat similar to that.
How has that — how has that process been and — and, you know, what are your experiences in dealing with the internal bureaucracy throughout this?
SEC. SHANAHAN: Well, the — the experience has been like every experience I’ve ever had where change is involved. You know, it’s human nature. Anytime somebody proposes something different, until you understand the why and the how, there’s a lot of questions that you have to, kind of, work your way through. But you know, human nature is, you know, perpetuate the status quo. Something that is a significant change represents uncertainty.
I think when we — we started on this journey, there wasn’t a lot of definition. There was a lot of top-down direction.
And as we’ve moved along and talked about the problems we want to solve and how we want to solve them, there’s been less pushback. The pushback now comes in the flavor of, „well, why not do it this other way?“ or „this might be a better approach.“
But, you know, if you step back and think about what we’re trying to do in the department is we haven’t modernized in 30 years. The muscles we have aren’t from modernization. I mean, this is about doing something very different. And so, the first reaction is, „well, that’s not what we’ve been doing,“ or, „we’re not resourced to do this.“
So I think this is characteristic of the changes we’ll see as we continue to evolve things when it comes to hypersonics or cyber. It’s a lot of these — a lot of these domains.
But, you know, this is our — this is our 30-year window. Every 30 years you decide you’re going to make a change and it takes people — you know, you’ve got the fence-sitters, you got the people that really want to drive it, and then there are some folks that just never want to do it. But I think now you’re starting to see momentum, because we’ve been resourced, because we’ve been consistent with our strategy, and because people truly do recognize the security environment.
MR. HARRISON: And so, question from the audience here.
You know, the House is probably going to be the easier chamber to get this proposal through in some respects, since they’ve considered this in the past and voted on it. But the Senate is largely unknown what they would do. They haven’t actually debated a proposal like this in the past like the House has.
So, you know, we had invited Senator Inhofe. Unfortunately he couldn’t be here today. But what’s your message to Senator Inhofe, Senator Fischer and others on the Senate Armed Services Committee on, you know, why they should support this? Because they have been somewhat skeptical in the past. You know, what’s your — what’s your — your elevator speech for them on why they should get onboard and why this is necessary right now?
SEC. SHANAHAN: Well, I’ll give you the elevator speech in a second here. But what I’ve found with Congress as a whole is a willingness to be persuaded.
You know, people have lots of positions. What I’ve — what I’ve found in my short time here is that when we spend our time talking about interests, that’s when, you know, people are being open-minded to being persuaded.
And the — I think the compelling piece here is that $19 trillion economy and the military run on space, and we need to have confidence that we’re really protecting that. And then we start to talk about how do we — how do we develop and field the capability.
And that’s — that’s really what — when we sit down and we talk about, „we can develop it this way or we can develop it this other way,“ that becomes the selling point. But it gets a little bit technocratic, and I think for most people what they want to do is have their staffs educated that this isn’t — that we’re not — we’re not falling into some acquisition trap.
I think if I was to, you know, characterize the difference on — on our approach here is that what we should spend our time talking about is how does this tie back to Space Command?
If you think about what we’ve been doing for the last 30 years, it’s really more acquisition or, kind of, running our process. This is getting back to how do we do development. It is new muscle movement.
So we — we really — we can’t do acquisition, we have to do development. And if — and if you said, „you have a small window“ — we don’t have 10 years to do this. We have — you know, the money’s not always going to be there. So you have a window of time in which you’re going to do something.
So you fundamentally have to ask the question: Do we reorganize over five years, and resolve all our acquisition inefficiencies and figure out how to leverage the industrial base, or, you know, would we look at this through the lens that General Schriever would look at? You’d say — what we’d do is we’d say, get people that have technical chops, who’ve had a history with acquisition that understand a clear threat and let them do their job. And what I found in the department is when we enable people to go do that, we have wonderful results.
My comment about 10 different architectural studies going on; why would we want to do that? I — I know what’s going to happen: We’re going to — we’re going to come up with, you know, six or seven and then we’ll end up morphing them over time and we’ll end up spending more money.
We’ll — we’ll argue in the near term about, you know, some bureaucratic costs. But the real cost of development is the — is the area we want to keep our eye on.
MR. HARRISON: And so, speaking of costs, one — another question from the audience here is: In this budget proposal it lays out a cost of $2 billion over five years for standing up the Space Force. That’s the new cost of standing it up. And some in Congress and outside of Congress have said that, no, they actually think it’ll end up being more than that.
So, you know, what’s your confidence in the cost estimate? And how does it differ from the $13 billion estimate that we got from the Air Force back in September?
SEC. SHANAHAN: I think the Air Force estimate had just different — different assumptions. And I think over time it had — had growth factored into it.
I’d say our $2 billion number is a good parametric estimate. It’s — it’s really more of a top-down number than it is a — you know, a bottoms-up number. And you know, for the purposes of moving at speed, you — you parametrically generate a number. But in the department, we’re really going to do a bottoms-up approach to cost.
Cost grows if you don’t limit it. So to me, it would be like we need to cap it. The — if we do the top-down approach in terms of, you know, normal equities of traditional structures, I — I think it’ll probably grow. That’s what — what normally happens. I think we have to be very thoughtful.
But remember, this is much smaller. So when we — you know, when somebody says, „we’re going to start a new service,“ you start to think about, well, like the Army, you know, with half a million people. We’re talking 15,000 to 20,000 people defending $19 trillion.
When — when we make a mistake in development, we’re talking billions. So I mean, part of this is — and I’m very sensitive, we need to be very mindful about creating bureaucracy because it endures for a long time. I think we’ll — we’ll get the cost piece right. We’ve got to get the development piece tracking sooner and more quickly.
MR. HARRISON: So the next question here is: You know, standing up a Space Force, obviously most of the unclassified military space assets belong in the Air Force, but, you know, the Navy and the Army have some substantial space capabilities as well. So is the intent that you would move over those Navy and Army space capabilities? And what would the timeline for that be?
SEC. SHANAHAN: Yeah. This is the normal part of — of change, where people worry about — because when we talk about organizing, it’s immediate. „Well, what’s going to happen to me? Does my — you know, my home office change? Do I — am I out of a job? Does my job move?“
And the way we’ve really been looking at going more quickly, is against the roadmap we put in the 1601 report. So I would, you know, at a high level, say in the — in the short term, legacy is legacy. So what — why would we burn a lot of calories, you know, moving things that are working today into some new organization?
It’s — at some point, there’s some realignment that just makes sense. But it really is how — with new authority, getting after the threat, how do we organize for that?
And what I would argue is, within the resources we have today, there are a whole bunch of people, if we said, „Would you like to join this team?“ they’ll kick the door down and say, „Can I — can I join?“
And, again, remember, we’re not talking huge numbers, but we’re talking about making a huge difference that has a huge impact on the economy that we’re protecting.
MR. HARRISON: So, you know, next question.
SEC. SHANAHAN: You guys all look so serious.
(Laughter.)
This is a good day, right? Yeah.
This is such a good subject. I mean, it’s — you know, this is about the future, you know what I mean? We’re working on the future.
MR. HARRISON: So next question is, you know, some of the — you know, the differences between this new Space Development Agency and existing acquisition organizations like the Space and Missile Systems Center within the Air Force. So how do you view, in the near term, kind of, the division of responsibility between these organizations?
SEC. SHANAHAN: Well, we’d talk about it maybe at a macro level. I mean, the — you know, we’re still working through the — the details.
The — when I talk with General Thompson — and again, what we don’t want to do is disrupt the work that they’re doing today. And General Thompson has been going through a transformation program called SMC 2.0. And the team down there continues to take cost and risk and, you know, shortened flow times. So hats off to them.
I would say, there, it’s — you know, whether it’s a carve-out of some of the capability that they have, whether it’s a drawing on the resources, you know, they’re an element of the Space Development Agency.
What I think everybody here in this room should recognize is, the talent and capability in the SMC is unbelievable. And as you go around the department, the technology and the talent is extraordinary. This is about how do we harness it in this — in the short term. I go back to, you know, „what would General Schriever do?“
The — and that’s just our task at hand. I mean, there’s a — there’s a scope of work that we have to — to undertake.
We need to preserve the capabilities that are in place. I mean, I think when people hear about the proposal, they think we’re going to drop the existing structures, run away from them, we’ll be in a freefall. That is not the case.
This is about a carve-out so that we can go faster against hypersonics. This is a carve-out so we can do more in missile defense more quickly. This is a carve-out so that we can draw — you know, the NDAAs, when you read them, it’s „do things that are more innovative. Tap into the industrial base. Cut red tape of the, you know, DOD 5,000.“
We are not going to do the whole space mission, but there are — there are segments, now, if we — if we leverage less red tape and the huge investment that’s been made in commercial space, we can go a lot further for less more quickly.
MR. HARRISON: Another question here. I’m getting — seeing several from the audience, basically relating to the interaction between the Space Force proposal and NASA and human space flight.
And so, I know from reading the proposal, NASA’s not part of it.
SEC. SHANAHAN: Right.
MR. HARRISON: Would not be part of the Space Force, would not be — there’d be no human space flight in it…
SEC. SHANAHAN: Right.
MR. HARRISON: … but can you just elaborate on that? On, you know, that there is this distinction and, you know, would this change that in any way?
SEC. SHANAHAN: It does. And that’s — you know, that’s part of the calculus, the change calculus. So if you said, „let’s pick up — NASA, let’s do all the intel organizations, let’s do legacy,“ I mean, we’d be dead on arrival.
This is — later on, as we are successful, people are going to want to hitch a ride. And if — if we’re not — I mean, I’d prefer to stand on our success.
We’ve had wonderful conversations with the intelligence organizations. And they go like this. „Let’s technically be aligned. Let’s make sure, you know, we think about architectures. Organization, that happens later. It’s always complicated. But let’s make sure, in terms of the capability that we’re going to harness together later, we’ve laid the pipe and we’ve provisioned for those things.“
That alignment’s in place. The arguments we’re going to have about lines and boxes on charts, we’ve tried to push off for another day. Not because they’re — they’re unimportant. We don’t need — we don’t need to have those discussions right now. We have to move out against some of these — these threats. And we can, independent of those discussions, but with an eye towards how these pieces come together later.
Success will bring those other pieces together. And because there’s — you know, the — five years from now, because of what we can do with data and these new environments, these organizations are going to naturally change. So it’s about putting that in place. The other part will follow.
I mean, it — just look around the world. Every place where people start to have better information, their organizations change. So instead of having that debate, do the work and then that — that will naturally occur.
MR. HARRISON: So, you know, speaking more broadly about innovation within the Department of Defense, some, you know, the high-tech companies have shown a reluctance to work with DOD, to work with the military. Do you see that as a lingering problem, something that, you know, the department needs to address?
SEC. SHANAHAN: I do. We’re real hard to work with.
(Laughter.)
I don’t know if you — if you guys think that. But you know, it’s not just hard, it’s expensive.
I mean, we — you know, for a lot of good reasons. We ask people to produce certain information or, you know, use certain processes. But all those things add cost. And if you’re somebody who’s using their own money or investors‘ money and you have, you know, an opportunity to pursue something commercially or — or with the government, it causes — it really does cause people — people to pause.
So I would — I would say — and — and Secretary Lord understands this; this is one of the things she’s — she’s working on is how do we make it easier to do business with the government?
But it is — I’ve — I’ve heard this from investors, entrepreneurs, small-business owners, it’s — we — they’re — they’re very clear, „we have great stuff for you to use, but it’s just really hard to — to work with you and it takes too long.“
MR. HARRISON: And so, you know, last question for you: So, you know, how are you adjusting to the new job, the acting secretary? And what kind of surprises have you seen so far in this new position?
SEC. SHANAHAN: I’ve seen a lot of surprises.
(Laughter.)
The — I — when I — when I think about the job and what’s really important right now is continuity and being able to stick to the National Defense Strategy. We’ve — I would say it’s, you know, a year ago that we rolled out the strategy, but we’ve really been working to the strategy for about 18 months and we’ve been resourced to the strategy. And what I think you would find really encouraging is there’s a tremendous amount of alignment within the department.
I think it’s not a — it’s not a — like the biggest surprise. It’s the thing that, you know, gets me up in the morning, it makes me really excited is we can — we can win this game. I mean, we have — we have the people and we have the resources.
You know, there’s a lot — there’s a — as everyone knows, you pick up the newspapers, there’s a lot going on in the world today and especially in this — in this town. I’m really encouraged by the — the talent and the opportunity that we — we have in front of us.
We’ll push through all of the — all of the challenges. I mean, that’s just — that’s life in — in a very complicated world. But I think the — the biggest surprise for me is the commitment and the unwavering dedication to implementing the National Defense Strategy.
MR. HARRISON: Okay, Secretary, I know our time is up. I want to thank you for joining us here at CSIS.
And folks, please keep your seats until the secretary’s had a chance to exit the building.
SEC. SHANAHAN: All right, great.
Thank you, everybody.
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Zdroj: https://dod.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech-View/Article/1790964/remarks-by-acting-secretary-of-defense-shanahan-at-the-center-for-strategic-and/
Ilustračné foto: https://www.flickr.com/photos/depsecdef/47429116991/
