>>From around the globe. It's the queue cover >>Space and cyber security >>Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal poly. >>Hello and welcome to the space and cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal poly and the cube I'm chilling for a, your host. We have a great session here. Space, cyber security, the department of defense perspective. We have bond Google hall, director of C four ISR directorate office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment for the DOD and Chris Henson, technical director space and weapons, cybersecurity solutions for the national security agency. Gentlemen, thank you for taking the time for this awesome session. Thank you, John. Thank you. So we're gonna talk about the perspective of the DOD relative to space cybersecurity, a lot, going on congestion, contention, freedom, evolution innovation. So Paul, I'd like to have you start with your opening statement on how you see the space cybersecurity perspective, Don, thanks for the intro. Really appreciate it. First, let me give my thanks to Cal poly for a convening, the space and cybersecurity symposium this year, you know, and despite the pandemic, the organization and the content delivery spreading impressive, I really foot stomping. >>What can possibly be done with a number of these virtual platforms? This has been awesome. Thanks for the opportunity. I also want to recognize my colleague, Chris Nissen from NSA was actually assigned to our staff that LSD, but he brings both policy and technical perspective in this whole area. So I think you'll, you'll find his commentary, uh, and positions on things very refreshing or for today's seminar. Now space cyber security is a pretty interesting terminology for us all. Uh, cyber security means protecting against cyber threats and it's really more than just computers here on earth, right? Uh, space is the newest war fighting domain, and cybersecurity's perhaps even more of a challenge in this domain that and others. Uh, I'm sure it'll turn journal Thompson and major journals Shaw discuss the criticality of this new dorm space force. It's the newest military service in the earlier sessions and they're at the risk of repeating what they already addressed. >>Let me start by talking about what space means to DOD and what we're doing directly from my vantage point as part of the acquisition and sustainment arm of the Pentagon. Uh, what I want to share with you today is how the current space strategy ties into the national defense strategy and supports the department's operational objectives. As the director of CFRI SAR. I have come to understand how the integration of CFRI Sarcic. Billy is a powerful asset to enhance the lethality of the joint war fighter. Secretary Lord, our boss, the sec, the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment is diligent in her pursuit to adapt and modernize acquisition processes, to influence the strategy and to focus our efforts domain are to make our objectives a reality. I think first and foremost, we are building a more lethal force. This joint force will project low Valley and custom contested environments and across all domains through an operationally integrated and resiliency for ISR infrastructure. >>We are also called debating our alliances, deepening interoperability, which is very important in a future fight and collab, collaboratively planning with those partner with us in the fight most significantly for our work in acquisition and sustainment, we continue to optimize the department for greater performance and affordability through reform of the acquisition process. Now space is our newest war fighting domain. And while it is indeed unique, it shares many common traits with the others land, air and sea all are important to the defense of the U S in conflict. No doubt about this. They will be contested and they must be defended. One domain will not win future conflicts in a joint operation in a future fight in the future conflict. They must all succeed. I see three areas being key to a DOD strategic success in space, one, developing our whole of government approach in close partnership with the private sector and our allies to prioritizing our investments in resiliency, innovation, and adaptive operations, and third responding rapidly and effectively to leverage emerging technologies and seize opportunities to advance your strengths, partnerships and alliances. >>Let me emphasize that space is increasingly congested and tested and demanded as essential delete Valley operational effectiveness and the security of our nation. Now the commercialization of space offers a broad set of investments in satellite technology, potential opportunities to leverage those investments and pathways to develop cost efficient space architecture, where the department and the nation. It's funny, there's a new race, a race for space. If you will, between commercial companies buying for dominance of space. Now the joint staff within DOD is currently building an operational construct to employ and engage as a unified force, coordinated across all domains. We call it the joint, all domain command and control. It is the framework that is under development to allow us to conduct integrated operations in the future. The objective of Jesse too is to provide the war fighter access to the decision making information while providing mission assurance of the information and resilience of the underlying terrestrial air in space networks that support them operationally. >>six to maintain seamless integration, adaptation, and employment of our capability. To sense signal connect, transmit, process control, direct, and deliver lethal capabilities against the enemy. We gain a strategic advantage through the integration of these capabilities across all the domains, by providing balance bowel space, awareness, horse protection, and weapons controlled and deployment capabilities. Now successfully any ratings, the systems and capabilities will provide our war fighters overwhelming superiority on the battlefield environment, challenged by near peer adversaries, as well as non state actors in space. The character of its employment is changing, driven by increasing demands, not just by DOD, but by the commercial sector as well. You know, more and more, uh, we see greater use of small satellite systems to address a myriad of emerging questions, ubiquitous communications, awareness, sensor diversity, and many more. Uh, as I said before, the commercial world is pioneering high rate production of small satellites in our efforts to deploy hundreds, if not thousands of nodes space X, Darlene constellation is one example. >>Another one is Amazon's Kiper, uh, Kuyper just received FCC approval to deploy like over 3000 of these different notes. While a number of these companies continue to grow. Some have struggled. They some pointed as one web, uh, nevertheless, the appetite remains strong and DOD is taking advantage of these advances to support our missions. We are currently exploring how to better integrate the DOD activities involving small satellites under the small satellite coordinating activity, scholarly call it. We want to ensure collaboration and interoperability to maximize efficiency in acquisition and operation. When we started this activity on over a year and a half ago, we documented over 70 plus separate small, small sat programs within DOD. And now we've developed a very vibrant community of interest surrounding a small satellites. Now, part of the work we have identified nine focus areas for further development. These are common areas to all systems and by continuing to expand on these, our plan is they enable a standard of practice that can be applied across all of the domains. >>This includes lawn services, ground processing distribution, and of course, a topic of interest to the symposium space security and Chris we'll, we'll talk more about that being the Houston expert, uh, in this area. Uh, one challenge that we can definitely start working on today is workforce development. Cybersecurity's unique as it straddles STEM and security and policy, the trade craft is different. And unfortunately I've seen estimates recently, so suggesting a workforce gap in the next several years, much like the STEM fields, uh, during the next session, I am a part of a panel with precedent, Armstrong, Cal poly, and Steve Jake's the founder of the national security space association to address workforce development. But for this panel, I'll look forward to having further dialogue surrounding space, opera security with Chris and John. Thank you, John >>Bob, thank you for that whole thing, Steven. Yes. Workforce gaps. We need the new skill space is here. Thank you very much. Chris Henson, technical director of space and weapons, cybersecurity solutions for the national security agency. Your statement, >>Thank you for having me. Uh, I'm one of several technical leaders in space at the national security agency. And I'm currently on a joint duty assignment at the office of under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. I work under mr. GUMA hot in the C four ISR area, but almost 63 years ago on the 4th of October, 1957, Sputnik was the first artificial satellite launched by the Soviet union in space. History was made in each of you can continue to write future space history in your careers. And just like in 1957, the U S isn't alone in space to include our close partnerships and longterm activities with organizations like the Japanese space agency, the European space agency, and, uh, the Canadian space agency, just to name a few. And when we tackle cybersecurity per space, we have to address, address the idea that the communications command and control, uh, and those mission datas will transverse networks owned and operated by a variety of partners, not only.go.mil.com.edu, et cetera. We need to have all the partners address the cyber effects of those systems because the risk excepted by one is shared by all and sharing cyber best practices, lessons learned, uh, data vulnerabilities, threat data, mitigation, mitigation procedures, all our valuable takeaways, uh, in expanding this space community, improving overall conditions for healthy environment. So thank you for having me, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and your audience. And I look forward to the discussion questions. Thank you. >>Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Bob. Okay. I mean open innovation, the internet, you see plenty of examples. The theme here is partners, commercial government. It's going to take a lot of people and tech companies and technologies to make space work. So we asked my first question, Bonnie, we'll start with you is what do you see as the DOD his role in addressing cybersecurity in space? Uh, it's real, uh, it's a new frontier. Um, it's not going away. It's only going to get more innovative, more open, more contested. It seems like a lot to do there. So what's your role in addressing cyber security in space? >>I think our role is to be the leader in developing and only is it the strategy, but the, uh, the implementation plan is to ensure a full of cybersecurity. If you look at the national cyber cyber strategy, I think publishing 2018 calls for like-minded countries, industry academia, and civil society. Once you mentioned John, the support technology development, uh, digital safety policy advocacy, and research you here today, and those listening are fulfilling their strategy. When you, when you develop, enable use cyber hygiene products, as examples of capabilities, you're pushing the goal to fruition. When you know, what's on your network patron network backup, you're in encrypt your network, you're hardening and preventing cyber attacks. And we in government academia in the case of Cal poly civil networks and in commercial companies, we all benefit from doing that cyber security. Uh, and I think Chris will, we'll, we'll definitely back me up on this more than passwords encryption or pharma. It's truly a mindset and a culture of enabling missions to succeed in assured in a resilient fashion. >>Chris, you're taking reaction to, to the cybersecurity challenge involved here, >>That's it, it's starting really at the highest level of governments. We have, uh, you know, the, the recent security policy directive five that just came out just a couple of days ago, recognize all the factors of cybersecurity that need to come into play. And probably the most important outcome of that as mr said, is the leadership role and that leadership, uh, blends out very well into partnership. So partnership with industry partnership with academia partnership, with, uh, other people that are exploring space. And those partnerships lend itself very naturally to sharing cybersecurity issues, topics as we come up with best practices as we come up with mitigation strategies. And as we come up with vulnerabilities and share that information, the, uh, we're not going to go alone in space, just like we're probably not going to go alone in many other industries or areas, uh, that the DOD has to be, uh, involved in many spectrums of deploying to space. >>And that deployment involves as Mr. Guzman said, encryption authentication, knowing what's on the network, knowing the, the fabric of that network. And if nothing else, this, uh, this, uh, internet of things and work from home environment that we've, uh, partaken of these last few months has even explored and expanded that notion even more dramatically as we have people dial in from all over the different, uh, locations, well space will be that natural node that, uh, natural, uh, next network and mesh involvement that we'll have to protect and explore on not just from a terrestrial involvement, but all segments of it. Th the comm segment, the space vehicle and the ground portion, >>No bond. We talked about this in our other segment, um, around with the president of Cal poly, but the operating models of the space force and the DOD and getting space. It's a software defined world, right? So cybersecurity is a real big issue. Cause you have an operating model that's requiring software to power, these low hanging satellites. That's just an extension to the network. It's distributed computing, know what this is. If you understand what technology we do in space, it's no different, it's just a different environment. So it's software defined that just lends itself well to hacking. I mean, if I'm a hacker I'm going, Hey, why not just take out a satellite and crash it down or make the GPS do something different? I mean, it's definitely an attack vector. This is a big deal. It's not just like getting credentials that are cashed on a server. You gotta really protect, >>Right? Because in one hand it space will carry not only, uh, uh, you know, for local national security information. Uh, but the, uh, I feel like at the economic wellbeing, the financial state of allowed a lot of countries and institutions, you know, more and more John lb, they'll be using space assets to, uh, uh, to make, uh, make, make all that happen. Right. So, and if you look at the, you talk, you mentioned the attack vectors in space, you know, it's not just the computers in the ground, but if you look at the whole life cycle for satellite systems in space, you know, that the, the, the tasking that you need to do that the command, the controlling of the vehicle, the data that comes down in the ground, even when you launch the, the birds, the satellites, you know, they only need to be protected because they're all somewhat vulnerable to, uh, to hacking, uh, to cyber attacks. Especially as we grow into commercialization space, it's going to be a lot more people out there playing in this world. It's going to be a lot more companies out there. And, you know, it's hard to track, uh, uh, you know, the, the potential of, of, of foreign influences as an example, and therefore the potential of being vulnerable in terms of the cyber threat. >>Gentlemen, I like you guys said to move on to this leadership role, you mentioned that you want to be a leader. I get it. The DOD is department of defense. That's a new frontier to defend war time zone. You mentioned war time opportunity potentially, but how do you guys assist that's term hat to getting done? Because there's public and private space operations happening, um, there's security challenge. What does being a leader mean? And how does the DOD department of defense assist driving the public and private? Do you lead from a project standpoint, you lead from a funding standpoint? Is it architectural? I mean, you're talking about now a new end to end architecture. It's not just cloud it's on premise. It's in devices, it's offloaded with new AI technology and Nicks and devices. It's IOT, it's all, this is all new, this is all new. What does it mean for the DOD to be a leader and how do you assist others to get involved? And what does that mean? >>Yeah, I think, uh, the one hand, you know, DOD used to lead, uh, in terms of, uh, uh, being the only source of funding for a lot of, uh, highly developmental efforts. Uh, we're seeing a different story in space. Again, I keep going back to the commercialization of space. We're seeing a lot more players, right? So in many ways >>Ally's commercial companies are actually legally leading the R and D uh, of a lot of different technologies. So we want to take, we certainly want to take advantage of that. So from a leadership standpoint, I think we, we, Lucia can come in, you know, by partnering a lot more with, with the commercial companies, uh, in 2022, the DOD released the defense, uh, uh, space strategy as an example that highlights the threats, the challenges and opportunities the United States has faced by, by sending a example of how we, how we, uh, how we counter, uh, the threats that are out there, not just the DOD, but, but the disability and the commercial sector as well. Our current conditions are strong, but we want to use four lines of effort to meet our challenges and capitalize on our desire state space, uh, lines of effort include building a comprehensive military badges space, integrating space into a national joint and combined operations. Like I mentioned before, shaping that strategic environment and cooperating with allies, partners, and industry and other U S governmental agencies, departments, and agencies to advance the cost of space to take full advantage of what space can provide us, uh, in DOD, uh, and the nation. Chris has a domain. Now, what's your take on all that? >>That's because again, it's going to take more people, >>More diverse, potentially more security >>Halls. What's your view on it? >>Well, let's, let's look at how innovation and new technologies can help us in these areas. So, uh, and, and mentioned it a couple of topics that you hit on already. One of the areas that we can improve on is certainly in the, uh, the architecture, uh, where we look at a zero trust architecture, one of the NIST standards that's come about where it talks about the authentication, uh, the need to know a granular approach, this idea of being able to protect, not just data, but the resources and how people can get access to those, whether they're coming in through an identification, authentication Prudential, or, uh, other aspects of, uh, the, the idea of not just anybody should be able to have access to data or anybody should have access once they're on the inside of the network. So that zero trust architecture is, is one approach where we can show some leadership and guidance. >>Another area is in, uh, a topic that you touched on as well was in the software area. So some innovations are coming on very rapidly and strong in this artificial intelligence and machine learning. So if we can take this AI and ML and apply it to our software development areas, they can parse so much information very quickly. And, uh, you know, this vast array of code that's going into system nowadays, and then that frees up our human, uh, explicit talent and developers that can then look at other areas and not focus on minor bawling to Beverly fix a vulnerability. Uh, they, they can really use their unique skills and talents to come up with a better process, a better way, and let the artificial intelligence and machine learning, find those common problems, those, those unknown, hidden lines of code that, uh, get put into a software alarm Prairie, and then pull down over and over again from system to system. So I think between, uh, an architecture leadership role and employee innovation are two areas that we can show, uh, some benefits and process improvement to this whole system. >>That's a great point, Chris, and you think about just the architectural computer architecture, you know, S you know, network attached storage is an advantage software defined there. You could have flash all flash arrays for storage. You could have multiple cores on a device and this new architecture, offloads things, and it's a whole new way to gain efficiencies. I mean, you got Intel, you got Nvidia, you've got armed all the processors all built in. Um, so there's definitely been commercial best practices and benefits to a new kind of architecture that takes advantage of these new things. It's just, just efficiencies. Um, but this brings up the whole supply chain conversation. I want to get your thoughts on this, because there is talk about predatory investments and access and tactics to gain supply chain access to space systems, your thoughts. >>Yeah. It's a serious threat and not just for, uh, the U S uh, space. So supply chain, if you will, is the supply chain. And I says, you know, writ large, I think, uh, I think it's a, it's a, it's a threat that's, that's real, we're we're seeing today. I just saw an example recently, uh, involving, uh, our, I think our launch services were, there was a, uh, a foreign, uh, threat that was those trying to get into a true through with predatory investments. Uh, so, uh, it is something that we need to, uh, be aware of it it's happening, uh, and is continuing to happen. Uh, it's an easy way to gain access, to, uh, do our IP. Uh, and, uh, so it's something that we, uh, are serious about in terms of, uh, awareness and, and countering >>Chris, your thoughts. I mean, we've see, I mean, I'm an open source guy. I was seen it when I grew up in the industry in the eighties, open source became a revolution, but with that, it enabled new tactics for, um, state sponsored attacks on it that became a domain in of itself. Um, that's well-documented and people talk about that all the time in cyber. Now you have open innovation with hardware, software connected systems. This is going to bring supply chain nightmare. How do you track it all? Who's got what software and what device, where the chip come from, who made it, this is the potential is everywhere. How do you see the, these tactics, whether it's a VC firm from another country or this, that, and the other thing startup. >>Yeah. So when we see, when we see coal companies being purchased by foreign investors, and, you know, we can get blocked out of those, whether it's in the food industry, or if it's in a microchip, then that microchip could be used in a cell phone or a satellite or an automobile. So all of our industries that have these companies that are being purchased, or a large born investment influx into those, you know, that could be suspect. And we, we have to be very careful with those, uh, and, and do the tracking of those, especially when those, uh, some of those parts of mechanisms are coming from off shore. And then going again, going back to, uh, the space policy directive five, it calls out for better supply chain, resource management, the tracking, the knowing the pedigree and the, the quantitative of ability of knowing where those software libraries came from, where the parts came from and the tracking and delivery of that from an end to end system. >>And typically when we have a really large vendor, they can, they can do that really well. But when we have a subcontractor to a subcontractor, to a subcontractor, their resources may not be such that they can do that. Try tracking in mitigation for counterfeits or fraudulent materials going into our systems. So it's a very difficult challenge, and we want to ensure as best we can that as we ingest those parts, as we ingest those software libraries and technologies into the system, that, uh, before we employ them, we have to do some robust testing. And I don't want to say that the last line of defense, but that certainly is a mechanism for finding out, do the systems perform as they stated, uh, on a test bench or a flat set, whatever the case may be before we actually deploy it. And then we're relying on the output or the data that comes from that, that system that may have some corrupt or suspect parts in it. >>Great point, this federal grant, >>The problem with space systems is kind of, you know, is once you, once you launch the bird or the sunlight, uh, your access to it is, is diminished significantly, right? Unless you, you go up there and take it down. Uh, so, you know, kind of to Chris's point, we need to be able to test all the different parts of insurer that is performing as, as described there ass, I spent as specified, uh, with, with good knowledge that it's, uh, it's, uh, it's trustworthy. Uh, and, uh, so we that all on the ground before we, we take it up to launch it. >>It's funny. You want agility, you want speed and you want security, and you want reliability and risk management all aggressive, and it's a technical problem. It says it's a business model problem. I'd love to get real quick. Before we jump into some of the more workforce and gap issues on the personnel side, have you guys should just take a minute to explain quickly what's the federal view. If you had to kind of summarize the federal view of the DOD and the roll with it wants to take, so all the people out there on the commercial side or students out there who are, you know, wanting to jump in, what is the current modern federal view of space cybersecurity. >>Chris, why don't you take that on I'll follow up. Okay. Uh, I don't know that I can give you the federal view, but I can certainly give you the department of defense. That cybersecurity is extremely important. And as our vendors and our suppliers, uh, take on a very, very large and important role, one area that we're looking at improving on is a cyber certification maturity model, where we, where we look at the vendors and how they implement an employee cyber hygiene. So that guidance in and of itself shows the emphasis of cyber security that when we want to write a contract or a vendor, uh, for, for a purchase, that's going to go into a space system. We'd like to know from a third party audit capability, can that vendor, uh, protect and defend to some extent the amount that that part or piece or software system is going to have a cyber protection already built into it from that vendor, from the ground floor up before it even gets put into a larger system. >>So that shows a level of the CMMC process that we've thought about and, uh, started to employ, uh, beginning in 2021 and will be further built on in, in the out years. How, how important the DOD takes that. And other parts of the government are looking at this, in fact, other nations are looking at the CMMC model. So I think it shows a concern in very many areas, uh, not just in the department of defense that they're going to adopt an approach like this. Uh, so it shows the, the pluses and the benefits of a cybersecurity model that, uh, all can build on boggy reaction. Yeah, I'll just, uh, I'll just add to that, John, you, you, you, you asked earlier about, you know, how do we, uh, track, uh, commercial entities or, or people in the space and cyber security domains? Uh, I can tell you that, uh, at least my view of it, you know, space and cyber security are new, it's exciting, it's challenging a lot technical challenges there. So I think in >>Terms of attracting the right people, personnel to work those areas, uh, I think it's, it's not only intellectually challenging, uh, but it's important for, for the dependency that NASA States, uh, and it's important for, for, for economic security, uh, writ large for, for us as well. So I think, uh, in terms of a workforce and trying to get people interested in, in those domains, uh, I hope that they see the same thing we do in terms of, of the challenges and the opportunities it presents itself in the future. >>Awesome. I love your talk on intro track there falling. You mentioned, uh, the three key areas of DOD sec success, developing a government whole government approach to partnership with the private sector. I think that's critical and the allies prioritizing the right investments on resilience, innovation, adaptive operations, and responding to rapidly to effectively emerging technology. So you can be fast, all think are all things. I all, all those things are relevant. So given that, I want to get your thoughts on the defense space strategy in 2020, the DOD released dispense defense space, strategy, highlighting threats, and challenges and opportunities. How would you summarize those threats and those challenges and opportunities? What are the, what are those things that you're watching in the defense space area? Right. >>Well, I think, I think I saw, as I said before, of course, as well, you know, uh, or, or seeing that a space will be highly contested, uh, because it's a critical element in our, in our war fighting construct, uh, Dwayne, a future conflict, I think we need to, to win space as well. So when you, when you look at our near peer adversaries, there's a lot of efforts, uh, in trying to, to, to take that advantage away from the United States. So, so the threat is real, uh, and I think it's going to continue to evolve and grow. Uh, and the more we use space, both commercial and government, I think you're going to see a lot more when these threads some AFAs itself, uh, in, in forms of cyber, cyber attacks, or even kinetic attacks in some cases as needed. Uh, so yeah, so with the, the, the threat is need growing, uh, space is congested, as we talked about, it will continually be contested in the future as well. So we need to have, uh, like we do now in, in, in all the other domains, a way to defend it. And that's what we're working on with India, with the, how do we pilot with tech, our assets in space, and how do we make sure that the data information that traverses through space assets are trust 40, um, and, uh, and, and, and free of any, uh, uh, interference >>Chris, exciting time. I'm your, if you're in technology, um, this is crossing many lines here, tech society will war time, defense, new areas, new tech. I mean, it's security, it's intoxicating at many levels, because if you think about it, it's not one thing. It's not one thing anymore. It spans a broader spectrum, these opportunities. >>Yeah. And I, and I think that expansion is, is a natural outgrowth from, as our microprocessors and chips and technology continue to shrink smaller and smaller. You know, we, we think of our, our cell phones and our handheld devices and tablets, and so on that have just continued to, uh, get embedded in our everyday society, our everyday way of life. And that's a natural extension when we start applying those to space systems. When we think of smallsats and cube sets and the technology that's, uh, can be repurposed into, uh, a small vehicle and the cost has come down so dramatically that, you know, we, we can afford to get a rapid experiments, rapid, um, exploitations and, and different approaches in space and learn from those and repeat them very quickly and very rapidly. And that applies itself very well to an agile development process, dev sec ops, and this notion of spins and cycles and refreshing and re uh, addressing priorities very quickly so that when we do put a new technology up, that the technology is very lean and cutting edge, and hasn't been years and years in the making, but it's, uh, relevant and new, and the, uh, the cybersecurity and the vulnerabilities of that have to be addressed because of, and allow that DevSecOps process to take place so that we can look at those vulnerabilities and get that new technology and those new, new experiments and demonstrations in space and get lessons learned from them over and over again. >>Well, that brings us to the next big topic I want to spend the remainder of our time on that is workforce this next generation. If I wasn't so old, I would quit my job and I would join medially. It's so much, it's a fun, it's exciting. And it's important. And this is what I think is a key point is that cybersecurity in and of itself has got a big gap of shortage of workers, nevermind, adding space to it. So this is, uh, the intersection of space and cybersecurity. There is a workforce opportunity for this next generation, a young person to person re-skilling, this is a big deal. Bong, you have thoughts on this. It's not just STEM, it's everything. >>Yeah. It's everything, you know, uh, the opportunities would have in space it's significant and tremendous. And I think, uh, if I were young, again, as you pointed out, John, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm lucky that I'm in this domain in this world and I started years ago. Uh, but it continues to be exciting, uh, lots of, lots of opportunities, you know, and when you, when you look at, uh, some of the commercial space, uh, systems that are being, being put up, uh, if you look at, I mentioned Starlink before, and, and, uh, Amazon's Kuyper constellation. These guys are talking about couple of thousand satellites in space to provide ubiquitous communications for internet globally and that sort of thing. Uh, and they're not the only ones that are out there producing capability. Uh, we're seeing a lot more commercial imagery products being developed by bike, by companies, both within the U S and, and, uh, foreign foreign elements as well. So I think it's an exciting time to be in space. Certainly lots of opportunities, there's technical challenges, uh, galore in terms of, you know, not only the overcoming the physics of space, but being able to operate, uh, flexibly, uh, in, uh, get the most you can out of the capabilities we have, uh, uh, operating up as high as being cool. I mean, everyone looks at launch. >>She gets millions of views on live streams, the on demand, reruns get millions and millions of views. Um, it's, there's a lot of things there. Um, so Chris, what specifically could you share are things that people would work on? Um, jobs skills, what are some, what's the aperture, what's it look like if you zoom out and look at all the opportunities from a scale standpoint, what's out there, >>We'll talk to the aperture, but I want to give a shout out to our space force. And I mean, their, their job is to train and equip, uh, future space and, uh, that, that space talent. And I think that's going to be a huge plus up, uh, to have, uh, uh, a space force that's dedicated to training equipping, uh, the, an acquisition and a deployment model that, uh, will benefit not just the other services, but all of our national defense and our, uh, you know, our, our strategic way of, uh, how, how this company, country, employees space, uh, altogether. So having, having a space for us, I think, as a, is a huge, uh, a huge issue. And then to get to that aperture aspect of, of what you're, what you're asking and, you know, that addresses a larger workforce. Uh, we need so many different talents in, in this area. >>Uh, we can, we can have, we can employ a variety of people, uh, from technical writers to people who write, uh, write in developed software to those who, uh, are bending metal and actually, uh, working in a hardware environment. And, uh, those that do planning and launch operations and all of those spectrums and issues of jobs, or are directly related to a workforce that can contribute to, to space. And then once that data gets to the ground and employed out to a user, whether it's a data or we're looking at, uh, from a sensor recent, uh, recent events on, uh, shipping lanes, those types of things. So space has such a wide and diverse swath that the aperture's really wide open, uh, for a variety of backgrounds. And, and those that, uh, really just want to take an opportunity, take a, take a technical degree or a degree that, uh, can apply itself to a tough problem, uh, because they certainly exist in space. And we can, we can use that mindset of problem solving, whether you come at it from a hacker mindset, an ethical, a white hat approach to testing and vulnerability exploration, or somebody who knows how to actually, um, make, uh, operations, uh, safer, better, uh, through space situation awareness. So there's a, there's a huge swath of opportunity for us >>Bon talk about the, um, the cyber security enabled environment, the use cases that are possible when you have cybersecurity in play with space systems, um, which is in and of itself, a huge range of jobs, codings supply chain. We just talked about a bunch of them. There's still more connected use cases that go beyond that, that, that are enabled by it. If you think about it, and this is what the students at Cal poly and every other college and university community college, you name it, or watching videos on YouTube, anyone with a brain can jump in. If they, if they see the future, it's an all net new space force is driving awareness, but there's a whole slew of these new use cases that I call space enabled by cybersecurity systems. Your thoughts. >>Absolutely. I, you know, I was, uh, had planned on attending the, uh, uh, the cyber challenge that's Cal poly had planned in June, of course, a pandemic, uh, uh, took care of that plan. But, but I was intrigued by, by the approach that the Cal poly was taking with, with, uh, middle school and high school kids of, of, of, of exposing him to a problem set here. You have a, a satellite that came down from space, uh, and, uh, part of the challenge was to do Porensic analysis on the debris, uh, the remaining pieces of the sound like to figure out what happened. Uh, it had a, uh, a cybersecurity connotation. It was hacked. It was attacked by, by cyber threat nation, took it down. And the beauty of having these kids kind of play with, with the remaining parts of the satellite figure out what happened. >>So I was pretty exciting. I was really looking forward to participating in that, but again, the pandemic kind of blew that up, but I, I look forward to future events like that to, to get our young people intrigued and interested in, uh, in this new field of space. Now, you know, Chris was talking earlier about opportunities, the opportunity that you talk about, you know, while I would like to have people come to the government, right. To help us out. It's not, it's not just focused on government, right? There's not lots of opportunities in commercial space. I, if you will, uh, for, for a lot of talent to, uh, uh, to have, uh, to participate in. So the challenge is a man's government and the commercial sector, John, >>I mean, you get the hardcore, you know, I want to work for the DOD. I want to work for NSA. I want to work for the government. You clearly got people who want to have that kind of mission, but for the folks out there, Chris and bong that are like, I'll do I qualify it? It's like the black box of the DOD. It's like a secret thing. You got any clearance, you've got to get all these certifications. And you've got to take all kinds of tests and background checks. And, um, is it like that? And will that continue? Cause some people might say, Hey, can I even get involved? What do I do? So I know there's some private partnerships going on with companies out there in the private sector. So this is now a new, you guys seem to be partnering and going outside the comfort zone of the old kind of tactical things. What are some of those opportunities that people could get involved that they might not know about >>PR for NSA, there's a variety of workforce, uh, initiatives that, uh, uh, for anybody from a high school work study can take advantage of to, uh, those that would like have to have internships. And those that are in a traditional academic environment, there's, uh, several NSA schools across the country that have a academic and cyber acts, uh, sites of excellence that participate in projects that are shepherded and mentored by those at NSA that can get those tough problems that don't have maybe a classified or super sensitive, uh, nature that that can be worked in and in an academia environment. So, so those are two or three examples of how somebody can break into, uh, the, uh, an intelligence organization and the, and the other agencies have those, uh, opportunities as well across the intelligence community and the, the partnership between and collaborative collaboration between private industry and the agencies and the department of defense just continue to grow over and over again. And even myself being able to take care advantage of a joint duty assignment between my home organization and the Pentagon just shows another venue of somebody that's in one organization can partner and leverage with another organization as well. So I'm an example of, of that partnering that's going on today. >>So there's some innovation, bong, non traditional pathways to find talent. What are out there? What are new, what are these new nontraditional ways >>I was going to add to what Chris was, was mentioning John? Yeah. Even within view and under the purview of our chief information officer, back in 2013, the deputy surfed dirty defense signed the, uh, what we call the DOD cyberspace workforce strategy, uh, into effect. And that included a program called the cyber information technology exchange program. It's an exchange program in which a, uh, you know, private sector employee and worked for the DOD in cyber security positions, uh, span across multiple mission critical areas. So this is one opportunity to learn, uh, you know, in inside the DOD what's happening as a private sector person, if you will, uh, going back to what we talked about, you know, kinda, uh, opportunities, uh, within the government for, for somebody who might be interested, uh, you know, you don't have to be super smart, Bork and space. Uh, there's a lot of like, like Chris pointed out, there's a lot of different areas that we need to have people down within people to do, uh, to conduct the mission space. So you don't have to be mathematician mathematician. You don't have to be an engineer to succeed in this business. I think there's plenty of opportunities for, for any types of, of talent, any type of academic disciplines that, that, that, that they're out there. >>And I think, you know, Chris is shout out to the space force is really worth calling out again, because I think to me, that's a big deal. It's a huge deal. It's going to change the face of our nation and society. So super, super important. And that's going to rise the tide. I think it's gonna create, uh, some activation, uh, for a younger generation, certainly, and kind of new opportunities, new problems to solve new threats to take on and, and move it on. So really super conversation space in cybersecurity, the department of defense perspective, Von and Chris, thank you for taking the time. I'd love you guys just to close out. We'll start with you bong. And then Chris summarize for the folks watching, whether it's a student at Cal poly or other university or someone in industry and government, what is the department of defense perspective for space cybersecurity? >>Chris, won't go and take that on. I started, thank you. Uh, cyber security applies to much more than just the launch and download of mission data or human led exploration and the planning, testing, and experiments in the lab prior to launch require that cyber protection, just as much as any other space link, ground segment, trust rail network, or user data, and any of that loss of intellectual property or proprietary data is an extremely valuable and important, and really warrants, cybersecurity safeguards in any economic espionage or data exfiltration or denied access to that data I E ransomware or some other, uh, attack that can cripple any business or government endeavor. Uh, no matter how small or large, if it's left in our economic backbone, uh, clearly depends on space and GPS is more than just a direction finding our banking needs that a T and timing from P and T or whether it says systems that protect our shipping and airline industry of whether they can navigate and go through a particular storm or not, uh, even fighting forest fires picked up by a remote sensor. >>All those space-based assets, uh, require protection from spoofing date, uh, data denial or total asset loss. An example would be if a satellite sensitive optics were intentionally pointed at the sun and damaged, or if a command, uh, to avoid collision with another space vehicle was delayed or disrupted or a ground termination command. As we just saw just a few days ago at T minus three seconds prior to liftoff, if those all don't go as planned, uh, those losses are real and can be catastrophic. So the threat to space is pervasive real and genuine, and your active work across all those platforms is a necessary and appreciated. And your work in this area is critical, uh, going forward going forward. Uh, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you and, uh, talking on this important topic. >>Thank you, Chris Henson, goodbye. >>Closing remarks. Yeah. Likewise, John, uh, again, uh, as, as Chris said, thank you for, for the opportunity to discuss this very important, uh, around space, cyber security, as well as addressing, uh, at the end there, we were talking about workforce development and the need to have, uh, people, uh, in the mix for four features. We discussed with you. We need to start that recruiting early, uh, as we're doing to address, uh, the STEM gap today, we need to apply the same thing for cybersecurity. We, we absolutely need smart, innovative people to protect both Iraq. Anomic wellbeings a nation as well as our national defense. So this is the right conversation to have at this time, John and I, again, thank you and our Cal poly hose for, or, uh, having a symposium and, and having this opportunity to have this dialogue. Thank you, >>Gentlemen. Thank you for your time and great insights. We couldn't be there in person. We're here virtual for the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020, the Cal poly I'm Jennifer with Silicon angle and the cube, your host. Thank you for watching.

>> Voiceover: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly. >> Hello everyone? Welcome to the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly and theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host. We have a great session here. Space cybersecurity, the Department of Defense perspective. We have Bong Gumahad, Director of C4ISR, Directorate Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment for the DOD. And Chris Henson, Technical Director Space and Weapons, Cybersecurity Solutions for the National Security Agency. Gentlemen, thank you for taking the time for this awesome session. >> Thank you, John. >> Thank you. >> So we're going to talk about the perspective of the DOD relative to space cybersecurity. A lot going on, congestion, contention, freedom, evolution, innovation. So Bong, I'd like to have you start with your opening statement on how you see the space cybersecurity perspective. >> John, thanks for the intro, really appreciate it. First, let me give my thanks to Cal Poly for convening the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium this year. And despite the pandemic, the organization and the content delivery is pretty impressive. I really foot stomping what can possibly be done with a number of these virtual platforms. This has been awesome, thanks for the opportunity. I also want to recognize my colleague, Chris Henson from NSA, who is actually assigned to our staff at the OUSD, but he brings both policy and technical perspective in this whole area. So I think you'll find his commentary and positions on things very refreshing for today's seminar. Now space cybersecurity is a pretty interesting terminology for us all. Cybersecurity means protecting against cyber threats. And it's really more than just computers here on earth. Space is the newest war fighting domain and cybersecurity is perhaps even more of a challenge in this domain than others. I'm sure Lieutenant General Thompson and Major John Shaw discuss the criticality of this new Space Force. It's the newest military service in the earlier sessions and they're at the risk of repeating what they already addressed. Let me start by talking about what space means to DOD and what we're doing directly from my advantage point as part of the Acquisition and Sustainment arm of the Pentagon. Well, what I want to share with you today is how the current space strategy ties into the National Defense strategy and supports the department's operational objectives. As the director of C4ISR, I have come to understand how the integration of C4ISR capability is a powerful asset to enhance the lethality of the joint war fighter. Secretary Lord, our boss, the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment is diligent in her pursuit to adapt and modernize acquisition processes, to influence the strategy and to focus our efforts to make our objectives a reality. I think first and foremost, we are building a more lethal force. This joint force will project lethality in contested environments and across all domains through an operationally integrated and resiliency 4ISR infrastructure. We are also cultivating our alliances, deepening interoperability, which is very important in a future fight and collaboratively planning with those who partner with us in the fight. Most significantly for our work in acquisition and sustainment, we continue to optimize the department for greater performance and affordability through reform of the acquisition process. Now space is our newest fighting domain. And while it is indeed unique, it shares many common traits with the others, land, air and sea. All are important to the defense of the US. In conflict, no doubt about this, they will be contested and they must be defended. One domain will not win future conflicts and in a joint operation in a future fight and the future conflict they must all succeed. I see three areas being key toward DOD strategic success in space. One, developing our whole of government approach in close partnership with the private sector and our allies. Two, prioritizing our investments in resiliency, innovation and adaptive operations. And third, responding rapidly and effectively to leverage emerging technologies and seize opportunities to advance US strengths, partnerships and alliances. Let me emphasize that space is increasingly congested and tested and demanded as essential to lethality operational effectiveness and the security of our nation. Now the commercialization space offers a broad set of investments in satellite technology, potential opportunities to leverage those investments and pathways to develop cost efficient space architecture, for the department and the nation. It's funny, there's a new race, a race for space, if you will, between commercial companies buying for dominance of space. Now the joint staff within DOD is currently building an operational construct to employ and engage as a unified force coordinated across all domains. We call it the Joint All Domain Command and Control, JADC2. It is the framework that is under development to allow us to conduct integrated operations in the future. The objective of JADC2 is to provide the war fighter access to the decision making information while providing mission assurance of the information and resilience of the underlying terrestrial air in space networks that support them. Operationally, JADC2 seeks to maintain seamless integration, adaptation, and employment of our capability to sense signal, connect, transmit, process control, direct, and deliver lethal capabilities against the enemy. We gain a strategic advantage through the integration of these capabilities across all the domains, by providing balance space awareness, horse protection, and weapons controlled and deployment capabilities. Now successfully any ratings in these systems and capabilities will provide our war fighters overwhelming superiority on the battlefield in an environment challenged by near peer adversaries, as well as non state actors. In space, the character of its employment is changing, driven by increasing demands, not just by DOD, but by the commercial sector as well. You know, more and more we see greater use of small satellite systems to address a myriad of emerging questions, ubiquitous communications, awareness, sensory diversity, and many more. As I said before, the commercial world is pioneering high rate production of small satellites in their efforts to deploy hundreds, if not thousands of nodes. SpaceX Starlink Constellation is one example. Another one is Amazon's Kuiper. Kuiper just received FCC approval to deploy like over 3000 of these different nodes. While a number of these companies continue to grow, some have struggled. Case in point is OneWeb. Nevertheless, the appetite remains strong and DOD is taken advantage of these advances to support our missions. We are currently exploring how to better integrate the DOD activities involving small satellites under the small satellite coordinating activity, scholarly call it. We want to ensure collaboration and interoperability to maximize efficiency in acquisition and operation. When we started this activity on over a year and a half ago, we documented over 70 plus separate small sat programs within DOD. And now we've developed a very vibrant community of interest surrounding our small satellites. Now, part of the work we have identified nine focus areas for further development. These are common areas to all systems and by continuing to expand on these, our plan is to enable a standard of practice that can be applied across all of the domains. This includes lawn services, ground processing distribution, and of course, a topic of interest to the symposium space security and Chris will talk more about that, being that he's the expert in this area. One challenge that we can definitely start working on today is workforce development. Cybersecurity is unique as it straddles STEM and security and policy. The trade craft is different. And unfortunately I've seen estimates recently suggesting a workforce gap in the next several years, much like the STEM fields. During the next session, I am a part of a panel with president Armstrong at Cal Poly, and Steve Jacques, the founder of the National Security Space Association to address workforce development. But for this panel, I'll look forward to having this dialogue surrounding space cybersecurity with Chris and John. Thank you, John. >> Bong, thank you for that opening statement and yes, workforce gaps, we need the new skill space is here. Thank you very much. Chris Henson's Technical Director of Space and Weapons, Cybersecurity Solutions for the National Security Agency. Your opening statement. >> Thank you for having me. I'm one of several technical leaders in space at the National Security Agency. And I'm currently on a joint duty assignment at the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. I work under Mr. Gumahad in the C4ISR area. But almost 63 years ago, on the 4th of October, 1957, Sputnik was the first artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union and space history was made. And each of you can continue to write future space history in your careers. And just like in 1957, the US isn't alone in space to include our close partnerships and longterm activities with organizations like the Japanese Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, just to name a few. And when we tackle cybersecurity per space, we have to address the idea that the communications command and control and those mission datas will transverse networks owned and operated by a variety of partners, not only .go, .mil, .com, .edu, et cetera. We need to have all the partners address the cyber effects of those systems because the risk accepted by one is shared by all. And sharing cyber best practices, lessons learned, data vulnerabilities, threat data mitigation procedures, all our valuable takeaways in expanding the space community, improving overall conditions for healthy environment. So thank you for having me, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and your audience. And I look forward to the discussion questions, thank you. >> Thank you, Chris, thank you, Bong. Okay, I mean, open innovation, the internet, you see plenty of examples. The theme here is partners, commercial, government. It's going to take a lot of people and tech companies and technologies to make space work. So we asked my first question, Bong, we'll start with you is what do you see as the DOD's role in addressing cybersecurity in space? It's real, it's a new frontier. It's not going away, it's only going to get more innovative, more open, more contested. It seems like a lot to do there. What's your role in addressing cyber security in space? >> I think our role is to be the leader in developing not only is it the strategy, but the implementation plans to ensure a full of cybersecurity. If you look at the National Cyber Strategy, I think published in 2018, calls for like-minded countries, industry academia, and civil society. Once you mentioned John, the support technology development, digital safety policy, advocacy, and research. You here today, and those listening are fulfilling their strategy. When you develop, enable use cyber hygiene products as examples and capabilities, you're pushing the goal to provision. When you know what's on your network, patch network, backup and encrypt your network, you're hardening and preventing cyber attacks. And we in government academia, in the case of Cal Poly, civil networks and in commercial companies, we all benefit from doing that. Cyber security, and I think Chris will definitely back me up on this, more than passwords encryption or firewall. It's truly a mindset and a culture of enabling mission to succeed in assured and in a resilient fashion. >> Chris, you're take and reaction to the cybersecurity challenge involved here. >> It's starting really at the highest level of governments. We have, you know, the recent security policy Directive-5 that just came out just a couple of days ago, recognize all the factors of cybersecurity that need to come into play. And probably the most important outcome of that as Mr. Gumahad said, is the leadership role. And that leadership blends out very well into partnership. So partnership with industry, partnership with academia, partnership with other people that are exploring space. And those partnerships blend itself very naturally to sharing cybersecurity issues, topics, as we come up with best practices, as we come up with mitigation strategies, and as we come up with vulnerabilities and share that information. We're not going to go alone in space, just like we're probably not going to go alone in many other industries or areas. That the DOD has to be involved in many spectrums of deploying to space. And that deployment involves, as Mr. Gumahad said, encryption, authentication, knowing what's on the network, knowing the fabric of that network, and if nothing else, this internet of things and work from home environment that we've partaken of these last few months has even explored and expanded that notion even more dramatically as we have people dial in from all over the different locations. Well, space will be that natural node, that natural next network in measure involvement that we'll have to protect and explore on, not just from a terrestrial involvement, but all segments of it. The calm segment, the space vehicle, and the ground portion. >> You know, Bong, we talked about this in our other segment around with the president of Cal Poly, but the operating models of the Space Force and of the DOD and getting to space. But it's a software defined world, right? So cybersecurity is a real big issue 'cause you have an operating model that's requiring software to power these low hanging satellites. That's just an extension to the network. It's distributed computing, we know what this is. If you understand what technology we do in space, it's no different, it's just a different environment so it's software defined. That just lends itself well to hacking. I mean, if I'm a hacker I'm going, "Hey, why not just take out a satellite and crash it down "or make the GPS do something different?" I mean, it's definitely an attack vector. This is a big deal. It's not just like getting credentials that are cashed on a server, you got to really protect. >> Right, because in one hand it space will carry not only focal national security information, but if you look at the economic wellbeing, the financial state of a lot of countries, institutions, you know, more and more John, they'll be using space assets to make all that happen. So, and if you look at the, you mentioned the attack vectors in space. It's not just the computers in the ground, but if you look at the whole life cycle for satellite systems in space, the tasking that you need to do, the command and controlling of the vehicle, the data that comes down in the ground, even when you launch the birds, the satellites, you know, they all need to be protected because they're all somewhat vulnerable to hacking, to cyber attacks. Especially as we grow into commercialization space, it's going to be a lot more people out there playing in this world. It's going to be a lot more companies out there. And, you know, it's hard to track, the potential of foreign influences as an example, and therefore the potential of being vulnerable in terms of the cyber threat. >> Gentlemen, like you guys said to move on to this leadership role, Bong, you mentioned it. You want to be a leader, I get it, the DOD is Department of Defense, it's a new frontier to defend war time zone, you mentioned war time opportunity potentially. But how do you guys assist that's term hat to getting done? Because there's public and private space operations happening, there's security challenge. What does being a leader mean? And how does the DOD, Department of Defense assist driving the public and private? Do you lead from a project standpoint? Do you lead from a funding standpoint? Is it architectural? I mean, you're talking about now a new end-to-end architecture. It's not just cloud it's on premise, it's in devices, it's offloaded with new AI technology and nix and devices. It's IOT, it's all this and all new. This is all new. What does it mean for the DOD to be a leader and how do you assist others to get involved? And what does that mean? >> Yeah, I think the one hand, you know, DOD used to lead in terms of being the only source of funding for a lot of highly developmental efforts. We're seeing a different story in space. Again, I keep going back to the commercialization of space. We're seeing a lot more players, right? So in many ways allies commercial companies are actually leading the R&D of a lot different technology. So we certainly want to take advantage of that. So from a leadership standpoint, I think leadership can come in, by partnering a lot more with the commercial companies. In 2020, the DOD released the Defense Space Strategy, as an example, that highlights the threats, the challenges and opportunities the United States has faced by setting example of how we counter the threats that are out there, not just the DOD, but the civilian and the commercial sector as well. Our current conditions are strong, but we want to use four lines of effort to meet our challenges and capitalize on our desire to state space. Our lines of effort include building a comprehensive military badges space, integrating space into a national joint and combined operations, like I mentioned before. Shaping that strategic environment and cooperating with allies, partners in industry and other US governmental departments and agencies to advance the cost of space. To take full advantage of what space can provide us in DOD and the nation. >> Chris as a domain now, what's your take on all of this? Because again, it's going to take more people, more diverse, potentially more security hauls. What's your view on this? >> Well, let's look at how innovation and new technologies can help us in these areas. So, and mentioned it a couple of topics that you hit on already. One of the areas that we can improve on is certainly in the architecture. Where we look at a zero trust architecture, one of the NIST standards that's come about. Where it talks about the authentication, the need to know a granular approach, this idea of being able to protect, not just data, but the resources and how people can get access to those, whether they're coming in through an identification, authentication credential, or other aspects of the idea of not just anybody should be able to have access to data or anybody should have access once they're on the inside of the network. So that zero trust architecture is one approach where we can show some leadership and guidance. Another area is in a topic that you touched on as well, was in the software area. So some innovations are coming on very rapidly and strong in this artificial intelligence and machine learning. So if we can take this AI and ML and apply it to our software development areas, they can parse so much information very quickly. And you know, this vast array of software code that's going into system nowadays. And then that frees up our human exquisite talent and developers that can then look at other areas and not focus on minor vulnerability, fix a vulnerability. They can really use their unique skills and talents to come up with a better process, a better way, and let the artificial intelligence and machine learning, find those common problems, those unknown hidden lines of code that get put into a software library and then pull down over and over again from system to system. So I think between an architecture leadership role and employee innovation are two areas that we can show some benefits and process improvement to this whole system. >> That's a great point, Chris, and you think about just the architectural computer architecture network attached storage is an advantage software defined there. You could have flash, all flash arrays for storage. You could have multiple cores on a device. And this new architecture, offloads things, and it's a whole new way to gain efficiencies. I mean, you got Intel, you got Nvidia, you've got armed, all the processors all built in. So there's definitely been commercial best practices and benefits to a new kind of architecture that takes advantage of these new things. It's just efficiencies. But this brings up the whole supply chain conversation. I want to get your thoughts on this because there is talk about predatory investments and access and tactics to gain supply chain access to space systems, your thoughts? >> Yeah, it's a serious threat and not just for the US space supply chain, if you will, is the supply chain you access with large, I think it's a threat that's this real we're seeing today. I just saw an example recently involving, I think our law and services, where there was a foreign threat that was trying to get into a troop through with predatory investments. So it is something that we need to be aware of, it's happening and will continue to happen. It's an easy way to gain access to do our IP. And so it's something that we are serious about in terms of awareness and countering. >> Chris, your thoughts? I mean, I'm an open source guy. We've seen it when I grew up in the industry in the '80s open source became a revolution. But with that, it enabled new tactics for state sponsored attacks and that became a domain in of itself. That's well-documented and people talk about that all the time in cyber. Now you have open innovation with hardware, software connected systems. This is going to bring a supply chain nightmare. How do you track it all? (chuckles) Who's got what software and what device... Where the chip from? Who made it? Just the potential is everywhere. How do you see these tactics? Whether it's a VC firm from another country or this, that, and the other thing, startup, big company-- >> Yeah, so when we see coal companies being purchased by foreign investors, and, you know, we can get blocked out of those, whether it's in the food industry, or if it's in a microchip. Then that microchip could be used in a cell phone or a satellite or an automobile. So all of our are industries that have these companies that are being purchased or a large born investment influx into those, they can be suspect. And we have to be very careful with those and do the tracking of those, especially when those, some of those parts and mechanisms are coming from off shore. And again, going back to the Space Policy Directive-5, it calls out for better supply chain, resource management, the tracking, the knowing the pedigree and the quantitative ability of knowing where those software libraries came from, where the parts came from, and the tracking and delivery of that from an end-to-end system. And typically when we have a really large vendor, they can do that really well. But when we have a subcontractor to a subcontractor, to a subcontractor, their resources may not be such that they can do that tracking in mitigation for counterfeits or fraudulent materials going into our systems. So it's a very difficult challenge, and we want to ensure as best we can that as we ingest those parts, as we ingest those software libraries and technologies into the system, that before we employ them, we have to do some robust testing. And I don't want to say that's the last line of defense, but that certainly is a mechanism for finding out do the systems perform as they stated on a test bench or a flat set, whatever the case may be, before we actually deploy it. And then we're relying on the output or the data that comes from that system that may have some corrupt or suspect parts in it. >> Great point, this federal views-- >> The problem with space systems is kind of, you know, is once you launch the bird or the satellite, your access to it is diminished significantly, right? Unless you go up there and take it down. So, you know, kind of to Chris's point, we need to be able to test all the different parts to ensure that is performing as described there, as specified with good knowledge that it's trustworthy. And so we do that all on the ground before we take it up to launch it. >> It's funny, you want agility, you want speed, and you security, and you want reliability, and risk management. All aggressive, and it's a technical problem, it's a business model problem. Love to get real quick before we jump into some of the more workforce and gap issues on the personnel side, have you guys to just take a minute to explain quickly what's the federal view? If you had to kind of summarize the federal view of the DOD and the role with it wants to take, so all the people out there on the commercial side or students out there who are wanting to jump in, what is the current modern federal view of space cybersecurity? >> Chris, why don't you take that on and I'll follow up. >> Okay, I don't know that I can give you the federal view, but I can certainly give you the Department of Defense that cyber security is extremely important. And as our vendors and our suppliers take on a very, very large and important role, one area that we're looking at improving on is a cyber certification maturity model, where we look at the vendors and how they implement and employee cyber hygiene. So that guidance in and of itself shows the emphasis of cyber security. That when we want to write a contract or a vendor for a purchase that's going to go into a space system, we'd like to know from a third party audit capability, can that vendor protect and defend to some extent the amount that that part or piece or software system is going to have a cyber protection already built into it from that vendor, from the ground floor up, before it even gets put into a larger system. So that shows a level of the CMMC process that we've thought about and started to employ beginning in 2021 and will be further built on in the out years. How important the DOD takes that. And other parts of the government are looking at this. In fact, other nations are looking at the CMMC model. So I think it shows a concern in very many areas, not just in the Department of Defense, that they're going to adopt an approach like this. So it shows the pluses and the benefits of a cybersecurity model that all can build on. >> Bong, your reaction. >> Yeah, I'll just add to that. John, you asked earlier about, you know, how do we track commercial entities or people into the space and cyber security domains? I can tell you that at least my view of it, space and cybersecurity are new. It's exciting, it's challenging, a lot of technical challenges there. So I think in terms of attracting the right people and personnel to work those areas, I think it's not only intellectually challenging, but it's important for the defensing and near States. And it's important for economic security at large for us as well. So I think in terms of a workforce and trying to get people interested in those domains, I hope that they see the same thing we do in terms of the challenges and the opportunities it presents itself in the future. >> Awesome, I loved your talk on intro track there. Bong, you mentioned the three key areas of DOD success, developing a whole government approach to partnership with the private sector. I think that's critical, and the allies. Prioritizing the right investments on resilience, innovation, adaptive operations, and responding to rapidly to effectively emerging technology seem to be fast. I think all those things are relevant. So given that, I want to get your thoughts on the Defense Space Strategy. In 2020, the DOD released dispense Defense Space Strategy, highlighting threats, and challenges and opportunities. How would you summarize those threats and those challenges and opportunities? What are those things that you're watching in the defense space area? >> Right, well, I think as I said before, Chris as well, you know, we're seeing that space will be highly contested because it's a critical element in our war fighting construct. To win our future conflict, I think we need to win space as well. So when you look at our near peer adversaries, there's a lot of efforts in China to take that advantage away from the United States. So the threat is real, and I think it's going to continue to evolve and grow. And the more we use space, for both commercial and government, I think you're going to see a lot more when these threats, some AFAs itself in forms of cyber attacks, or even kinetic attacks in some cases as needed. So, yeah, so the threat is indeed growing, space is congested, as we talked about, it will continually be contested in the future as well. So we need to have, like we do now in all the other domains, a way to defend it. And that's what we're working on within DOD. How do we protect our assets in space, and how do we make sure that the data information that traverses through space assets are trustworthy and free of any interference. >> Chris, exciting time, I'm mean, if you're in technology, this is crossing many lines here, tech, society, war time defense, new areas, new tech. I mean, it's security, it's intoxicating at many levels because if you think about it, it's not one thing. It's not one thing anymore. It spans a broader spectrum, these opportunities. >> Yeah and I think that expansion is a natural outgrowth from, as our microprocessors and chips and technology continue to shrink smaller and smaller. You know, we think of our cell phones and our handheld devices and tablets and so on that have just continued to get embedded in our everyday society, our everyday way of life. And that's a natural extension when we start applying those to space systems, when we think of smallsats and cube sets and the technology that's can be repurposed into a small vehicle, and the cost has come down so dramatically that, you know, we can afford to get rapid experiments, rapid exploitations and different approaches in space and learn from those and repeat them very quickly and very rapidly. And that applies itself very well to an agile development process, DevSecOps, and this notion of spins and cycles and refreshing and re-addressing priorities very quickly so that when we do put a new technology up, that the technology is very lean and cutting edge, and hasn't been years and years in the making, but it's relevant and new. And the cybersecurity and the vulnerabilities of that have to be addressed and allow that DevSecOps process to take place so that we can look at those vulnerabilities and get that new technology and those new experiments and demonstrations in space and get lessons learned from them over and over again. >> Well, that brings us to the next big topic. I want to spend the remainder of our time on, that is workforce, this next generation. If I wasn't so old, I would quit my job and I would join immediately. It's so much fun, it's exciting, and it's important. And this is what I think is a key point is that cybersecurity in and of itself has got a big gap of shortage of workers, nevermind adding space to it. So this is the intersection of space and cybersecurity. There is a workforce opportunity for this next generation, young person to person re-skilling, this is a big deal. Bong, you have thoughts on this? It's not just STEM, it's everything. >> Yeah, it's everything, you know, the opportunities we have in space, it's significant and tremendous. And I think if I were young again, as you pointed out, John, you know, I'm lucky that I'm in this domain in this world and I started years ago, but it continues to be exciting, lots of opportunities, you know. When you look at some of the commercial space systems are being put up, if you look at, I mentioned Starlink before and Amazon's Kuiper Constellation. These guys are talking about couple of thousand satellites in space to provide ubiquitous communications for internet globally, and that sort of thing. And they're not the only ones that are out there producing capability. We're seeing a lot more commercial imagery products being developed by companies, both within the US and foreign elements as well. So I think it's an exciting time to be in space. Certainly lots of opportunities. There's technical challenges galore in terms of not only the overcoming the physics of space, but being able to operate flexibly and get the most you can out of the capabilities we have operating up in space. >> Besides being cool, I mean, everyone looks at launch of space gets millions of views on live streams, the On-Demand reruns get millions and millions of views. There's a lot of things there. So, Chris, what specifically could you share are things that people would work on? Jobs, skills, what's the aperture? What's it look like if you zoom out and look at all the opportunities from a scale standpoint, what's out there? >> I'll talk to the aperture, but I want to give a shout out to our Space Force. And I mean, their job is to train and equip each air space and that space talent. And I think that's going to be a huge plus up to have a Space Force that's dedicated to training, equipping, an acquisition and a deployment model that will benefit not just the other services, but all of our national defense and our strategic way of how this company, country employees space altogether. So having a Space Force, I think, is a huge issue. And then to get to that aperture aspect of what you're asking and that addresses a larger workforce, we need so many different talents in this area. We can employ a variety of people from technical writers, to people who write and develop software to those who bending metal and actually working in a hardware environment. And those that do planning and launch operations and all of those spectrums and issues of jobs, are directly related to a workforce that can contribute to space. And then once that data gets to the ground and employed out to a user, whether it's a weather data, or we're looking at from a sensor, recent events on shipping lanes, those types of things. So space has such a wide and diverse swath that the aperture's really wide open for a variety of backgrounds. And those that really just want to take an opportunity, take a technical degree, or a degree that can apply itself to a tough problem, because they certainly exist in space. And we can use that mindset of problem solving, whether you come at it from a hacker mindset, an ethical, white hat approach to testing and vulnerability exploration. Or somebody who knows how to actually make operations safer, better through space situation awareness. So there's a huge swath of opportunity for us. >> Bong, talk about the cybersecurity enabled environment, the use cases that are possible when you have cybersecurity in play with space systems, which is in and of itself, a huge range of jobs, codings, supply chain, we just talked about a bunch of them. There's still more connected use cases that go beyond that, that are enabled by it, if you think about it. And this is what the students at Cal Poly and every other college and university, community college, you name it, who are watching videos on YouTube. Anyone with a brain can jump in if they see the future. It's all net news. Space Force is driving awareness, but there's a whole slew of these new use cases that I call space enabled by cyber secure systems. Your thoughts? >> Absolutely, I was had planned on attending the Cyber Challenge that's Cal Poly had planned in June. Of course, the pandemic took care of that plan, but I was intrigued by the approach that the Cal Poly was taking with middle school and high school kids of exposing him to a problem set. Here, you have a satellite that came down from space and part of the challenge was to do forensic analysis on the debris, the remaining pieces of the satellite to figure out what happened. It had a cyber cybersecurity connotation. It was hacked, it was attacked by cyber threat nation, took it down. And the beauty of having these kids kind of play with the remaining parts of the satellite, figure out what happened. So it was pretty exciting. I was really looking forward to participating in that, but again, the pandemic kind of blew that up, but I look forward to future events like that, to get our young people intrigued and interested in this new field of space. Now, Chris was talking earlier about opportunities, there're opportunities that you talk about, while I would like to have people come to the government, to help us out, it's not just focused on government. There's lots of opportunities in commercial space, if you will, for a lot of talent to participate in. So the challenge is immense, both government and the commercial sector, John. >> I mean, you get the hardcore, you know, I want to work for the DOD, I want to work for NSA, I want to work for the government. You clearly got people who want to have that kind of mission. But for the folks out there, Chris and Bong that are like, "Do I qualify?" It's like the black box of the DOD, it's like a secret thing, you got to get clearance, you've got to get all these certifications. And you got to take all kinds of tests and background checks. Is it like that, and will that continue? 'Cause some people might say, "Hey, can I even get involved? "What do I do?" So I know there's some private partnerships going on with companies out there in the private sector. So this is now a new, you guys seem to be partnering and going outside the comfort zone of the old kind of tactical things. What are some of those opportunities that people could get involved in that they might not know about? >> For NSA, there's a variety of workforce initiatives that for anybody from a high school work study can take advantage of to those that would like have to have internships. And those that are in a traditional academic environment, there's several NSA schools across the country that have academic and cyber sites of excellence that participate in projects that are shepherded and mentored by those at NSA that can get those tough problems that don't have maybe a classified or super sensitive nature that can be worked in and in an academia environment. So those are two or three examples of how somebody can break into an intelligence organization. And the other agencies have those opportunities as well across the intelligence community. And the partnership between and collaboration between private industry and the agencies and the Department of Defense just continue to grow over and over again. And even myself being able to take advantage of a joint duty assignment between my home organization and the Pentagon, just shows another venue of somebody that's in one organization can partner and leverage with another organization as well. So I'm an example of that partnering that's going on today. >> So there's some innovation. Bong, nontraditional pathways to find talent, what are out there, what are new? What are these new nontraditional ways? >> I was going to add to what Chris was mentioning, John. Even within DOD and under the purview of our chief information officer, back in 2013, the Deputy Secretary Defense signed the, what we call the DOD Cyberspace Workforce Strategy into effect. And that included a program called the Cyber Information Technology Exchange Program. It's an exchange program in which a private sector employee can work for the DOD in cyber security positions span across multiple mission critical areas. So this is one opportunity to learn, inside the DOD what's happening as a private sector person, if you will. Going back to what we talked about, kind of opportunities within the government for somebody who might be interested. You don't have to be super smart, dork in space, there's a lot of, like Chris pointed out, there's a lot of different areas that we need to have people, talented people to conduct the mission in space. So you don't have to be mathematician. You don't have to be an engineer to succeed in this business. I think there's plenty of opportunities for any types of talent, any type of academic disciplines that are out there. >> All right, thank you, and Chris's shout out to the Space Force is really worth calling out again, because I think to me, that's a big deal. It's a huge deal. It's going to change the face of our nation and society. So super, super important. And that's going to rise the tide. I think it's going to create some activation for a younger generation, certainly, and kind of new opportunities, new problems to solve, new threats to take on, and move it on. So really super conversation, space and cybersecurity, the Department of Defense perspective. Bong and Chris, thank you for taking the time. I'd love you guys just to close out. We'll start with you Bong and then Chris. Summarize for the folks watching, whether it's a student at Cal Poly or other university or someone in industry and government, what is the Department of Defense perspective for space cybersecurity? >> Chris, want to go and take that on? >> That's right, thank you. Cybersecurity applies to much more than just the launch and download of mission data or human led exploration. And the planning, testing, and experiments in the lab prior to launch require that cyber protection, just as much as any other space link, ground segment, trust rail network, or user data, and any of that loss of intellectual property or proprietary data is an extremely valuable and important, and really warrants cyber security safeguards. In any economic espionage, your data exfiltration, or denied access to that data, i.e. ransomware or some other attack, that can cripple any business or government endeavor, no matter how small or large, if it's left unprotected. And our economic backbone clearly depends on space. And GPS is more than just a direction finding, banking needs that T and timing from P and T or whether it just systems that protect our shipping and airline industry of whether they can navigate and go through a particular storm or not. Even fighting forest fires picked up by a remote sensor. All those space space assets require protection from spoofing date, data denial, or total asset loss. An example would be if a satellite sensitive optics or intentionally pointed at the sun and damaged, or if a command to avoid collision with another space vehicle was delayed or disrupted or a ground termination command as we just saw just a few days ago at T minus three seconds prior to liftoff, if those all don't go as planned, those losses are real and can be catastrophic. So the threat to space is pervasive, real and genuine, and your active work across all those platforms is necessary and appreciated. And your work in this area is critical going forward. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you and talking on this important topic. Thank you, Chris Henson. Bong Gumahad, closing remarks? >> Yeah, likewise, John, again, as Chris said, thank you for the opportunity to discuss this very important around space cybersecurity, as well as addressing at the end there, we were talking about workforce development and the need to have people in the mix for future. (indistinct) We discussed, we need to start that recruiting early as we're doing to address the STEM gap today, we need to apply the same thing for cybersecurity. We absolutely need smart and innovative people to protect both our economic wellbeing as a nation, as well as our national defense. So this is the right conversation to have at this time, John. And again, thank you and Cal Poly host for having this symposium and having this opportunity to have this dialogue. Thank you. >> Gentlemen, thank you for your time and great insights. We couldn't be there in person. We're here virtual for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, the Cal Poly. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, your host. Thank you for watching. (soft music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's The Cube, covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal Poly. >> Everyone, welcome to this special virtual conference, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly with support from The Cube. I'm John Furey, your host and master of ceremony's got a great topic today, and this session is really the intersection of space and cybersecurity. This topic, and this conversation is a cybersecurity workforce development through public and private partnerships. And we've got a great lineup, we've Jeff Armstrong is the president of California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly. Jeffrey, thanks for jumping on and Bong Gumahad. The second, Director of C4ISR Division, and he's joining us from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for the acquisition and sustainment of Department of Defense, DOD, and of course Steve Jacques is Executive Director, founder National Security Space Association, and managing partner at Velos. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for this session, we've got an hour of conversation, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So we've got a virtual event here, we've got an hour to have a great conversation, I'd love for you guys to do an opening statement on how you see the development through public and private partnerships around cybersecurity and space, Jeff, we'll start with you. >> Well, thanks very much, John, it's great to be on with all of you. On behalf of Cal Poly, welcome everyone. Educating the workforce of tomorrow is our mission at Cal Poly, whether that means traditional undergraduates, masters students, or increasingly, mid-career professionals looking to upskill or re-skill. Our signature pedagogy is learn by doing, which means that our graduates arrive at employers, ready day one with practical skills and experience. We have long thought of ourselves as lucky to be on California's beautiful central coast, but in recent years, as we've developed closer relationships with Vandenberg Air Force Base, hopefully the future permanent headquarters of the United States Space Command with Vandenberg and other regional partners, We have discovered that our location is even more advantageous than we thought. We're just 50 miles away from Vandenberg, a little closer than UC Santa Barbara and the base represents the Southern border of what we have come to think of as the central coast region. Cal Poly and Vandenberg Air Force Base have partnered to support regional economic development, to encourage the development of a commercial space port, to advocate for the space command headquarters coming to Vandenberg and other ventures. These partnerships have been possible because both parties stand to benefit. Vandenberg, by securing new streams of revenue, workforce, and local supply chain and Cal Poly by helping to grow local jobs for graduates, internship opportunities for students and research and entrepreneurship opportunities for faculty and staff. Crucially, what's good for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for Cal Poly is also good for the central coast and the U.S., creating new head of household jobs, infrastructure, and opportunity. Our goal is that these new jobs bring more diversity and sustainability for the region. This regional economic development has taken on a life of its own, spawning a new nonprofit called REACH which coordinates development efforts from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the South to Camp Roberts in the North. Another factor that has facilitated our relationship with Vandenberg Air Force Base is that we have some of the same friends. For example, Northrop Grumman has as long been an important defense contractor and an important partner to Cal Poly, funding scholarships in facilities that have allowed us to stay current with technology in it to attract highly qualified students for whom Cal Poly's costs would otherwise be prohibitive. For almost 20 years, Northrop Grumman has funded scholarships for Cal Poly students. This year, they're funding 64 scholarships, some directly in our College of Engineering and most through our Cal Poly Scholars Program. Cal Poly scholars support both incoming freshmen and transfer students. These are especially important, 'cause it allows us to provide additional support and opportunities to a group of students who are mostly first generation, low income and underrepresented, and who otherwise might not choose to attend Cal Poly. They also allow us to recruit from partner high schools with large populations of underrepresented minority students, including the Fortune High School in Elk Grove, which we developed a deep and lasting connection. We know that the best work is done by balanced teams that include multiple and diverse perspectives. These scholarships help us achieve that goal and I'm sure you know Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a very large contract to modernize the U.S. ICBM armory with some of the work being done at Vandenberg Air Force Base, thus supporting the local economy and protecting... Protecting our efforts in space requires partnerships in the digital realm. Cal Poly has partnered with many private companies such as AWS. Our partnerships with Amazon Web Services has enabled us to train our students with next generation cloud engineering skills, in part, through our jointly created digital transformation hub. Another partnership example is among Cal Poly's California Cyber Security Institute College of Engineering and the California National Guard. This partnership is focused on preparing a cyber-ready workforce, by providing faculty and students with a hands on research and learning environment side by side with military law enforcement professionals and cyber experts. We also have a long standing partnership with PG&E most recently focused on workforce development and redevelopment. Many of our graduates do indeed go on to careers in aerospace and defense industry. As a rough approximation, more than 4,500 Cal Poly graduates list aerospace or defense as their employment sector on LinkedIn. And it's not just our engineers in computer sciences. When I was speaking to our fellow panelists not too long ago, speaking to Bong, we learned that Rachel Sims, one of our liberal arts majors is working in his office, so shout out to you, Rachel. And then finally, of course, some of our graduates soar to extraordinary heights, such as Commander Victor Glover, who will be heading to the International Space Station later this year. As I close, all of which is to say that we're deeply committed to workforce development and redevelopment, that we understand the value of public-private partnerships, and that we're eager to find new ways in which to benefit everyone from this further cooperation. So we're committed to the region, the state and the nation, in our past efforts in space, cyber security and links to our partners at, as I indicated, aerospace industry and governmental partners provides a unique position for us to move forward in the interface of space and cyber security. Thank you so much, John. >> President Armstrong, thank you very much for the comments and congratulations to Cal Poly for being on the forefront of innovation and really taking a unique, progressive view and want to tip a hat to you guys over there, thank you very much for those comments, appreciate it. Bong, Department of Defense. Exciting, you've got to defend the nation, space is global, your opening statement. >> Yes, sir, thanks John, appreciate that. Thank you everybody, I'm honored to be in this panel along with Preston Armstrong of Cal Poly and my longtime friend and colleague Steve Jacques of the National Security Space Association to discuss a very important topic of a cybersecurity workforce development as President Armstrong alluded to. I'll tell you, both of these organizations, Cal Poly and the NSSA have done and continue to do an exceptional job at finding talent, recruiting them and training current and future leaders and technical professionals that we vitally need for our nation's growing space programs, as well as our collective national security. Earlier today, during session three, I, along with my colleague, Chris Samson discussed space cyber security and how the space domain is changing the landscape of future conflicts. I discussed the rapid emergence of commercial space with the proliferation of hundreds, if not thousands of satellites, providing a variety of services including communications, allowing for global internet connectivity, as one example. Within DOD, we continued to look at how we can leverage this opportunity. I'll tell you, one of the enabling technologies, is the use of small satellites, which are inherently cheaper and perhaps more flexible than the traditional bigger systems that we have historically used and employed for DOD. Certainly not lost on me is the fact that Cal Poly pioneered CubeSats 28, 27 years ago, and they set a standard for the use of these systems today. So they saw the value and benefit gained way ahead of everybody else it seems. And Cal Poly's focus on training and education is commendable. I'm especially impressed by the efforts of another of Steven's colleague, the current CIO, Mr. Bill Britton, with his high energy push to attract the next generation of innovators. Earlier this year, I had planned on participating in this year's cyber innovation challenge in June, Oops, Cal Poly hosts California middle, and high school students, and challenge them with situations to test their cyber knowledge. I tell you, I wish I had that kind of opportunity when I was a kid, unfortunately, the pandemic changed the plan, but I truly look forward to future events such as these, to participate in. Now, I want to recognize my good friend, Steve Jacques, whom I've known for perhaps too long of a time here, over two decades or so, who was an acknowledged space expert and personally I've truly applaud him for having the foresight a few years back to form the National Security Space Association to help the entire space enterprise navigate through not only technology, but policy issues and challenges and paved the way for operationalizing space. Space, it certainly was fortifying domain, it's not a secret anymore, and while it is a unique area, it shares a lot of common traits with the other domains, such as land, air, and sea, obviously all are strategically important to the defense of the United States. In conflict, they will all be contested and therefore they all need to be defended. One domain alone will not win future conflicts, and in a joint operation, we must succeed in all. So defending space is critical, as critical as to defending our other operational domains. Funny, space is the only sanctuary available only to the government. Increasingly as I discussed in a previous session, commercial space is taking the lead in a lot of different areas, including R&D, the so-called new space. So cybersecurity threat is even more demanding and even more challenging. The U.S. considers and futhered access to and freedom to operate in space, vital to advancing security, economic prosperity and scientific knowledge of the country, thus making cyberspace an inseparable component of America's financial, social government and political life. We stood up US Space Force a year ago or so as the newest military service. Like the other services, its mission is to organize, train and equip space forces in order to protect U.S. and allied interest in space and to provide spacecape builders who joined force. Imagine combining that U.S. Space Force with the U.S. Cyber Command to unify the direction of the space and cyberspace operation, strengthen DOD capabilities and integrate and bolster a DOD cyber experience. Now, of course, to enable all of this requires a trained and professional cadre of cyber security experts, combining a good mix of policy, as well as a high technical skill set. Much like we're seeing in STEM, we need to attract more people to this growing field. Now, the DOD has recognized the importance to the cybersecurity workforce, and we have implemented policies to encourage its growth. Back in 2013, the Deputy Secretary of Defense signed a DOD Cyberspace Workforce Strategy, to create a comprehensive, well-equipped cyber security team to respond to national security concerns. Now, this strategy also created a program that encourages collaboration between the DOD and private sector employees. We call this the Cyber Information Technology Exchange program, or CITE that it's an exchange program, which is very interesting in which a private sector employee can naturally work for the DOD in a cyber security position that spans across multiple mission critical areas, important to the DOD. A key responsibility of the cyber security community is military leaders, unrelated threats, and the cyber security actions we need to have to defeat these threats. We talked about rapid acquisition, agile business processes and practices to speed up innovation, likewise, cyber security must keep up with this challenge. So cyber security needs to be right there with the challenges and changes, and this requires exceptional personnel. We need to attract talent, invest in the people now to grow a robust cybersecurity workforce for the future. I look forward to the panel discussion, John, thank you. >> Thank you so much, Bob for those comments and, you know, new challenges or new opportunities and new possibilities and freedom to operate in space is critical, thank you for those comments, looking forward to chatting further. Steve Jacques, Executive Director of NSSA, you're up, opening statement. >> Thank you, John and echoing Bongs, thanks to Cal Poly for pulling this important event together and frankly, for allowing the National Security Space Association be a part of it. Likewise, on behalf of the association, I'm delighted and honored to be on this panel of President Armstrong, along with my friend and colleague, Bong Gumahad. Something for you all to know about Bong, he spent the first 20 years of his career in the Air Force doing space programs. He then went into industry for several years and then came back into government to serve, very few people do that. So Bong, on behalf of the space community, we thank you for your lifelong devotion to service to our nation, we really appreciate that. And I also echo a Bong shout out to that guy, Bill Britton. who's been a long time co-conspirator of ours for a long time, and you're doing great work there in the cyber program at Cal Poly, Bill, keep it up. But Professor Armstrong, keep a close eye on him. (laughter) I would like to offer a little extra context to the great comments made by President Armstrong and Bong. And in our view, the timing of this conference really could not be any better. We all recently reflected again on that tragic 9/11 surprise attack on our homeland and it's an appropriate time we think to take pause. While a percentage of you in the audience here weren't even born or were babies then, for the most of us, it still feels like yesterday. And moreover, a tragedy like 9/11 has taught us a lot to include, to be more vigilant, always keep our collective eyes and ears open, to include those "eyes and ears from space," making sure nothing like this ever happens again. So this conference is a key aspect, protecting our nation requires we work in a cyber secure environment at all times. But you know, the fascinating thing about space systems is we can't see 'em. Now sure, we see space launches, man, there's nothing more invigorating than that. But after launch they become invisible, so what are they really doing up there? What are they doing to enable our quality of life in the United States and in the world? Well to illustrate, I'd like to paraphrase elements of an article in Forbes magazine, by Bongs and my good friend, Chuck Beames, Chuck is a space guy, actually had Bongs job a few years in the Pentagon. He's now Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer at York Space Systems and in his spare time, he's Chairman of the Small Satellites. Chuck speaks in words that everyone can understand, so I'd like to give you some of his words out of his article, paraphrase somewhat, so these are Chuck's words. "Let's talk about average Joe and plain Jane. "Before heading to the airport for a business trip "to New York city, Joe checks the weather forecast, "informed by NOAA's weather satellites, "to see what to pack for the trip. "He then calls an Uber, that space app everybody uses, "it matches riders with drivers via GPS, "to take him to the airport. "So Joe has launched in the airport, "unbeknownst to him, his organic lunch is made "with the help of precision farming "made possible to optimize the irrigation and fertilization "with remote spectral sensing coming from space and GPS. "On the plane, the pilot navigates around weather, "aided by GPS and NOAA's weather satellites "and Joe makes his meeting on time "to join his New York colleagues in a video call "with a key customer in Singapore, "made possible by telecommunication satellites. "En route to his next meeting, "Joe receives notice changing the location of the meeting "to the other side of town. "So he calmly tells Siri to adjust the destination "and his satellite-guided Google maps redirect him "to the new location. "That evening, Joe watches the news broadcast via satellite, "report details of meeting among world leaders, "discussing the developing crisis in Syria. "As it turns out various forms of "'remotely sensed information' collected from satellites "indicate that yet another banned chemical weapon "may have been used on its own people. "Before going to bed, Joe decides to call his parents "and congratulate them for their wedding anniversary "as they cruise across the Atlantic, "made possible again by communication satellites "and Joe's parents can enjoy the call "without even wondering how it happened. "The next morning back home, "Joe's wife, Jane is involved in a car accident. "Her vehicle skids off the road, she's knocked unconscious, "but because of her satellite equipped OnStar system, "the crash is detected immediately, "and first responders show up on the scene in time. "Joe receives the news, books an early trip home, "sends flowers to his wife "as he orders another Uber to the airport. "Over that 24 hours, "Joe and Jane used space system applications "for nearly every part of their day. "Imagine the consequences if at any point "they were somehow denied these services, "whether they be by natural causes or a foreign hostility. "In each of these satellite applications used in this case, "were initially developed for military purposes "and continued to be, but also have remarkable application "on our way of life, just many people just don't know that." So ladies and gentlemen, now you know, thanks to Chuck Beames. Well, the United States has a proud heritage of being the world's leading space-faring nation. Dating back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, today, we have mature and robust systems operating from space, providing overhead reconnaissance to "watch and listen," provide missile warning, communications, positioning, navigation, and timing from our GPS system, much of which you heard in Lieutenant General JT Thomson's earlier speech. These systems are not only integral to our national security, but also to our quality of life. As Chuck told us, we simply no longer can live without these systems as a nation and for that matter, as a world. But over the years, adversaries like China, Russia and other countries have come to realize the value of space systems and are aggressively playing catch up while also pursuing capabilities that will challenge our systems. As many of you know, in 2007, China demonstrated its ASAT system by actually shooting down one of its own satellites and has been aggressively developing counterspace systems to disrupt ours. So in a heavily congested space environment, our systems are now being contested like never before and will continue to be. Well, as a Bong mentioned, the United States have responded to these changing threats. In addition to adding ways to protect our system, the administration and the Congress recently created the United States Space Force and the operational United States Space Command, the latter of which you heard President Armstrong and other Californians hope is going to be located at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Combined with our intelligence community, today we have focused military and civilian leadership now in space, and that's a very, very good thing. Commensurately on the industry side, we did create the National Security Space Association, devoted solely to supporting the National Security Space Enterprise. We're based here in the DC area, but we have arms and legs across the country and we are loaded with extraordinary talent in scores of former government executives. So NSSA is joined at the hip with our government customers to serve and to support. We're busy with a multitude of activities underway, ranging from a number of thought-provoking policy papers, our recurring spacetime webcasts, supporting Congress's space power caucus, and other main serious efforts. Check us out at nssaspace.org. One of our strategic priorities and central to today's events is to actively promote and nurture the workforce development, just like Cal-Poly. We will work with our U.S. government customers, industry leaders, and academia to attract and recruit students to join the space world, whether in government or industry, and to assist in mentoring and training as their careers progress. On that point, we're delighted to be working with Cal Poly as we hopefully will undertake a new pilot program with them very soon. So students stay tuned, something I can tell you, space is really cool. While our nation's satellite systems are technical and complex, our nation's government and industry workforce is highly diverse, with a combination of engineers, physicists and mathematicians, but also with a large non-technical expertise as well. Think about how government gets these systems designed, manufactured, launching into orbit and operating. They do this via contracts with our aerospace industry, requiring talents across the board, from cost estimating, cost analysis, budgeting, procurement, legal, and many other support tasks that are integral to the mission. Many thousands of people work in the space workforce, tens of billions of dollars every year. This is really cool stuff and no matter what your education background, a great career to be part of. In summary, as Bong had mentioned as well, there's a great deal of exciting challenges ahead. We will see a new renaissance in space in the years ahead and in some cases it's already begun. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, are in the game, stimulating new ideas and business models. Other private investors and startup companies, space companies are now coming in from all angles. The exponential advancement of technology and micro electronics now allows a potential for a plethora of small sat systems to possibly replace older satellites, the size of a Greyhound bus. It's getting better by the day and central to this conference, cybersecurity is paramount to our nation's critical infrastructure in space. So once again, thanks very much and I look forward to the further conversation. >> Steve, thank you very much. Space is cool, it's relevant, but it's important as you pointed out in your awesome story about how it impacts our life every day so I really appreciate that great story I'm glad you took the time to share that. You forgot the part about the drone coming over in the crime scene and, you know, mapping it out for you, but we'll add that to the story later, great stuff. My first question is, let's get into the conversations, because I think this is super important. President Armstrong, I'd like you to talk about some of the points that was teased out by Bong and Steve. One in particular is the comment around how military research was important in developing all these capabilities, which is impacting all of our lives through that story. It was the military research that has enabled a generation and generation of value for consumers. This is kind of this workforce conversation, there are opportunities now with research and grants, and this is a funding of innovation that is highly accelerated, it's happening very quickly. Can you comment on how research and the partnerships to get that funding into the universities is critical? >> Yeah, I really appreciate that and appreciate the comments of my colleagues. And it really boils down to me to partnerships, public-private partnerships, you have mentioned Northrop Grumman, but we have partnerships with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Space X, JPL, also member of an organization called Business Higher Education Forum, which brings together university presidents and CEOs of companies. There's been focused on cybersecurity and data science and I hope that we can spill into cybersecurity and space. But those partnerships in the past have really brought a lot forward. At Cal Poly, as mentioned, we've been involved with CubeSat, we've have some secure work, and we want to plan to do more of that in the future. Those partnerships are essential, not only for getting the R&D done, but also the students, the faculty, whether they're master's or undergraduate can be involved with that work, they get that real life experience, whether it's on campus or virtually now during COVID or at the location with the partner, whether it may be governmental or industry, and then they're even better equipped to hit the ground running. And of course we'd love to see more of our students graduate with clearance so that they could do some of that secure work as well. So these partnerships are absolutely critical and it's also in the context of trying to bring the best and the brightest in all demographics of California and the U.S. into this field, to really be successful. So these partnerships are essential and our goal is to grow them just like I know our other colleagues in the CSU and the UC are planning to do. >> You know, just as my age I've seen, I grew up in the eighties and in college and they're in that system's generation and the generation before me, they really kind of pioneered the space that spawned the computer revolution. I mean, you look at these key inflection points in our lives, they were really funded through these kinds of real deep research. Bong, talk about that because, you know, we're living in an age of cloud and Bezos was mentioned, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, you got new ideas coming in from the outside, you have an accelerated clock now in terms of the innovation cycles and so you got to react differently, you guys have programs to go outside of the defense department, how important is this because the workforce that are in schools and/or folks re-skilling are out there and you've been on both sides of the table, so share your thoughts. >> No, thanks Johnny, thanks for the opportunity to respond to, and that's what, you know, you hit on the nose back in the 80's, R&D and space especially was dominated by government funding, contracts and so on, but things have changed as Steve pointed out, allow these commercial entities funded by billionaires are coming out of the woodwork, funding R&D so they're taking the lead, so what we can do within the DOD in government is truly take advantage of the work they've done. And since they're, you know, paving the way to new approaches and new way of doing things and I think we can certainly learn from that and leverage off of that, saves us money from an R&D standpoint, while benefiting from the product that they deliver. You know, within DOD, talking about workforce development, you know, we have prioritized and we have policies now to attract and retain the talent we need. I had the folks do some research and it looks like from a cybersecurity or workforce standpoint, a recent study done, I think last year in 2019, found that the cyber security workforce gap in U.S. is nearing half a million people, even though it is a growing industry. So the pipeline needs to be strengthened, getting people through, you know, starting young and through college, like Professor Armstrong indicated because we're going to need them to be in place, you know, in a period of about maybe a decade or so. On top of that, of course, is the continuing issue we have with the gap with STEM students. We can't afford not have expertise in place to support all the things we're doing within DoD, not only DoD but the commercial side as well, thank you. >> How's the gap get filled, I mean, this is, again, you've got cybersecurity, I mean, with space it's a whole other kind of surface area if you will, it's not really surface area, but it is an IOT device if you think about it, but it does have the same challenges, that's kind of current and progressive with cybersecurity. Where's the gap get filled, Steve or President Armstrong, I mean, how do you solve the problem and address this gap in the workforce? What are some solutions and what approaches do we need to put in place? >> Steve, go ahead., I'll follow up. >> Okay, thanks, I'll let you correct me. (laughter) It's a really good question, and the way I would approach it is to focus on it holistically and to acknowledge it upfront and it comes with our teaching, et cetera, across the board. And from an industry perspective, I mean, we see it, we've got to have secure systems in everything we do, and promoting this and getting students at early ages and mentoring them and throwing internships at them is so paramount to the whole cycle. And that's kind of, it really takes a focused attention and we continue to use the word focus from an NSSA perspective. We know the challenges that are out there. There are such talented people in the workforce, on the government side, but not nearly enough of them and likewise on the industry side, we could use more as well, but when you get down to it, you know, we can connect dots, you know, the aspects that Professor Armstrong talked about earlier to where you continue to work partnerships as much as you possibly can. We hope to be a part of that network, that ecosystem if you will, of taking common objectives and working together to kind of make these things happen and to bring the power, not just of one or two companies, but of our entire membership thereabout. >> President Armstrong-- >> Yeah, I would also add it again, it's back to the partnerships that I talked about earlier, one of our partners is high schools and schools Fortune, Margaret Fortune, who worked in a couple of administrations in California across party lines and education, their fifth graders all visit Cal Poly, and visit our learned-by-doing lab. And you've got to get students interested in STEM at an early age. We also need the partnerships, the scholarships, the financial aid, so the students can graduate with minimal to no debt to really hit the ground running and that's exacerbated and really stress now with this COVID induced recession. California supports higher education at a higher rate than most states in the nation, but that has brought this year for reasons all understand due to COVID. And so our partnerships, our creativity, and making sure that we help those that need the most help financially, that's really key because the gaps are huge. As my colleagues indicated, you know, half a million jobs and I need you to look at the students that are in the pipeline, we've got to enhance that. And the placement rates are amazing once the students get to a place like Cal Poly or some of our other amazing CSU and UC campuses, placement rates are like 94%. Many of our engineers, they have jobs lined up a year before they graduate. So it's just going to take a key partnerships working together and that continued partnership with government local, of course, our state, the CSU, and partners like we have here today, both Steve and Bong so partnerships is the thing. >> You know, that's a great point-- >> I could add, >> Okay go ahead. >> All right, you know, the collaboration with universities is one that we put on lot of emphasis here, and it may not be well known fact, but just an example of national security, the AUC is a national centers of academic excellence in cyber defense works with over 270 colleges and universities across the United States to educate and certify future cyber first responders as an example. So that's vibrant and healthy and something that we ought to take advantage of. >> Well, I got the brain trust here on this topic. I want to get your thoughts on this one point, 'cause I'd like to define, you know, what is a public-private partnership because the theme that's coming out of the symposium is the script has been flipped, it's a modern era, things are accelerated, you've got security, so you've got all of these things kind of happenning it's a modern approach and you're seeing a digital transformation play out all over the world in business and in the public sector. So what is a modern public-private partnership and what does it look like today because people are learning differently. COVID has pointed out, which is that we're seeing right now, how people, the progressions of knowledge and learning, truth, it's all changing. How do you guys view the modern version of public-private partnership and some examples and some proof points, can you guys share that? We'll start with you, Professor Armstrong. >> Yeah, as I indicated earlier, we've had, and I could give other examples, but Northrop Grumman, they helped us with a cyber lab many years ago that is maintained directly, the software, the connection outside it's its own unit so the students can learn to hack, they can learn to penetrate defenses and I know that that has already had some considerations of space, but that's a benefit to both parties. So a good public-private partnership has benefits to both entities and the common factor for universities with a lot of these partnerships is the talent. The talent that is needed, what we've been working on for years of, you know, the undergraduate or master's or PhD programs, but now it's also spilling into upskilling and reskilling, as jobs, you know, folks who are in jobs today that didn't exist two years, three years, five years ago, but it also spills into other aspects that can expand even more. We're very fortunate we have land, there's opportunities, we have ONE Tech project. We are expanding our tech park, I think we'll see opportunities for that and it'll be adjusted due to the virtual world that we're all learning more and more about it, which we were in before COVID. But I also think that that person to person is going to be important, I want to make sure that I'm driving across a bridge or that satellite's being launched by the engineer that's had at least some in person training to do that in that experience, especially as a first time freshman coming on campus, getting that experience, expanding it as an adult, and we're going to need those public-private partnerships in order to continue to fund those at a level that is at the excellence we need for these STEM and engineering fields. >> It's interesting people and technology can work together and these partnerships are the new way. Bongs too with reaction to the modern version of what a public successful private partnership looks like. >> If I could jump in John, I think, you know, historically DOD's had a high bar to overcome if you will, in terms of getting rapid... pulling in new companies, miss the fall if you will, and not rely heavily on the usual suspects, of vendors and the like, and I think the DOD has done a good job over the last couple of years of trying to reduce that burden and working with us, you know, the Air Force, I think they're pioneering this idea around pitch days, where companies come in, do a two-hour pitch and immediately notified of, you know, of an a award, without having to wait a long time to get feedback on the quality of the product and so on. So I think we're trying to do our best to strengthen that partnership with companies outside of the main group of people that we typically use. >> Steve, any reaction, any comment to add? >> Yeah, I would add a couple and these are very excellent thoughts. It's about taking a little gamble by coming out of your comfort zone, you know, the world that Bong and I, Bong lives in and I used to live in the past, has been quite structured. It's really about, we know what the threat is, we need to go fix it, we'll design as if as we go make it happen, we'll fly it. Life is so much more complicated than that and so it's really, to me, I mean, you take an example of the pitch days of Bong talks about, I think taking a gamble by attempting to just do a lot of pilot programs, work the trust factor between government folks and the industry folks and academia, because we are all in this together in a lot of ways. For example, I mean, we just sent a paper to the white house at their request about, you know, what would we do from a workforce development perspective and we hope to embellish on this over time once the initiative matures, but we have a piece of it for example, is a thing we call "clear for success," getting back to president Armstrong's comments so at a collegiate level, you know, high, high, high quality folks are in high demand. So why don't we put together a program that grabs kids in their underclass years, identifies folks that are interested in doing something like this, get them scholarships, have a job waiting for them that they're contracted for before they graduate, and when they graduate, they walk with an SCI clearance. We believe that can be done, so that's an example of ways in which public-private partnerships can happen to where you now have a talented kid ready to go on day one. We think those kinds of things can happen, it just gets back down to being focused on specific initiatives, giving them a chance and run as many pilot programs as you can, like pitch days. >> That's a great point, it's a good segue. Go ahead, President Armstrong. >> I just want to jump in and echo both the Bong and Steve's comments, but Steve that, you know, your point of, you know our graduates, we consider them ready day one, well they need to be ready day one and ready to go secure. We totally support that and love to follow up offline with you on that. That's exciting and needed, very much needed more of it, some of it's happening, but we certainly have been thinking a lot about that and making some plans. >> And that's a great example, a good segue. My next question is kind of re-imagining these workflows is kind of breaking down the old way and bringing in kind of the new way, accelerate all kinds of new things. There are creative ways to address this workforce issue and this is the next topic, how can we employ new creative solutions because let's face it, you know, it's not the days of get your engineering degree and go interview for a job and then get slotted in and get the intern, you know, the programs and you'd matriculate through the system. This is multiple disciplines, cybersecurity points at that. You could be smart in math and have a degree in anthropology and be one of the best cyber talents on the planet. So this is a new, new world, what are some creative approaches that's going to work for you? >> Alright, good job, one of the things, I think that's a challenge to us is, you know, somehow we got me working for, with the government, sexy right? You know, part of the challenge we have is attracting the right level of skill sets and personnel but, you know, we're competing, oftentimes, with the commercial side, the gaming industry as examples is a big deal. And those are the same talents we need to support a lot of the programs that we have in DOD. So somehow we have do a better job to Steve's point about making the work within DOD, within the government, something that they would be interested early on. So attract them early, you know, I could not talk about Cal Poly's challenge program that they were going to have in June inviting high school kids really excited about the whole idea of space and cyber security and so on. Those are some of the things that I think we have to do and continue to do over the course of the next several years. >> Awesome, any other creative approaches that you guys see working or might be an idea, or just to kind of stoke the ideation out there? Internships, obviously internships are known, but like, there's got to be new ways. >> Alright, I think you can take what Steve was talking about earlier, getting students in high school and aligning them sometimes at first internship, not just between the freshman and sophomore year, but before they enter Cal Poly per se and they're involved. So I think that's absolutely key, getting them involved in many other ways. We have an example of upskilling or work redevelopment here in the central coast, PG&E Diablo nuclear plant that is going to decommission in around 2024. And so we have a ongoing partnership to work and reposition those employees for the future. So that's, you know, engineering and beyond but think about that just in the manner that you were talking about. So the upskilling and reskilling, and I think that's where, you know, we were talking about that Purdue University, other California universities have been dealing with online programs before COVID, and now with COVID so many more Faculty were pushed into that area, there's going to be a much more going and talk about workforce development in upskilling and reskilling, the amount of training and education of our faculty across the country in virtual and delivery has been huge. So there's always a silver linings in the cloud. >> I want to get your guys' thoughts on one final question as we end the segment, and we've seen on the commercial side with cloud computing on these highly accelerated environments where, you know, SAS business model subscription, and that's on the business side, but one of the things that's clear in this trend is technology and people work together and technology augments the people components. So I'd love to get your thoughts as we look at a world now, we're living in COVID, and Cal Poly, you guys have remote learning right now, it's at the infancy, it's a whole new disruption, if you will, but also an opportunity enable new ways to encollaborate, So if you look at people and technology, can you guys share your view and vision on how communities can be developed, how these digital technologies and people can work together faster to get to the truth or make a discovery, hire, develop the workforce, these are opportunities, how do you guys view this new digital transformation? >> Well, I think there's huge opportunities and just what we're doing with this symposium, we're filming this on Monday and it's going to stream live and then the three of us, the four of us can participate and chat with participants while it's going on. That's amazing and I appreciate you, John, you bringing that to this symposium. I think there's more and more that we can do. From a Cal Poly perspective, with our pedagogy so, you know, linked to learn by doing in-person will always be important to us, but we see virtual, we see partnerships like this, can expand and enhance our ability and minimize the in-person time, decrease the time to degree, enhance graduation rate, eliminate opportunity gaps for students that don't have the same advantages. So I think the technological aspect of this is tremendous. Then on the upskilling and reskilling, where employees are all over, they can re be reached virtually, and then maybe they come to a location or really advanced technology allows them to get hands on virtually, or they come to that location and get it in a hybrid format. So I'm very excited about the future and what we can do, and it's going to be different with every university, with every partnership. It's one size does not fit all, There's so many possibilities, Bong, I can almost imagine that social network that has a verified, you know, secure clearance. I can jump in, and have a little cloak of secrecy and collaborate with the DOD possibly in the future. But these are the kind of crazy ideas that are needed, your thoughts on this whole digital transformation cross-pollination. >> I think technology is going to be revolutionary here, John, you know, we're focusing lately on what we call visual engineering to quicken the pace of the delivery capability to warfighter as an example, I think AI, Machine Language, all that's going to have a major play in how we operate in the future. We're embracing 5G technologies, and the ability for zero latency, more IOT, more automation of the supply chain, that sort of thing, I think the future ahead of us is very encouraging, I think it's going to do a lot for national defense, and certainly the security of the country. >> Steve, your final thoughts, space systems are systems, and they're connected to other systems that are connected to people, your thoughts on this digital transformation opportunity. >> Such a great question and such a fun, great challenge ahead of us. Echoing my colleagues sentiments, I would add to it, you know, a lot of this has, I think we should do some focusing on campaigning so that people can feel comfortable to include the Congress to do things a little bit differently. You know, we're not attuned to doing things fast, but the dramatic, you know, the way technology is just going like crazy right now, I think it ties back to, hoping to convince some of our senior leaders and what I call both sides of the Potomac river, that it's worth taking this gamble, we do need to take some of these things you know, in a very proactive way. And I'm very confident and excited and comfortable that this is going to be a great time ahead and all for the better. >> You know, I always think of myself when I talk about DC 'cause I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a political person, but I always say less lawyers, more techies than in Congress and Senate, so (laughter)I always get in trouble when I say that. Sorry, President Armstrong, go ahead. >> Yeah, no, just one other point and Steve's alluded to this and Bong did as well, I mean, we've got to be less risk averse in these partnerships, that doesn't mean reckless, but we have to be less risk averse. And also, as you talk about technology, I have to reflect on something that happened and you both talked a bit about Bill Britton and his impact on Cal Poly and what we're doing. But we were faced a few years ago of replacing traditional data, a data warehouse, data storage, data center and we partnered with AWS and thank goodness, we had that in progress and it enhanced our bandwidth on our campus before COVID hit, and with this partnership with the digital transformation hub, so there's a great example where we had that going. That's not something we could have started, "Oh COVID hit, let's flip that switch." And so we have to be proactive and we also have to not be risk-averse and do some things differently. That has really salvaged the experience for our students right now, as things are flowing well. We only have about 12% of our courses in person, those essential courses and I'm just grateful for those partnerships that I have talked about today. >> And it's a shining example of how being agile, continuous operations, these are themes that expand the space and the next workforce needs to be built. Gentlemen, thank you very much for sharing your insights, I know Bong, you're going to go into the defense side of space in your other sessions. Thank you gentlemen, for your time, for a great session, I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, thank you all. I'm John Furey with The Cube here in Palo Alto, California covering and hosting with Cal Poly, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, thanks for watching. (bright atmospheric music)