from around the globe it's thecube covering space and cyber security symposium 2020 hosted by cal poly hello and welcome to thecube's coverage we're here hosting with cal poly an amazing event space in the intersection of cyber security this session is defending satellite and space infrastructure from cyber threats got two great guests we've got major general john shaw combined four space component commander u.s space command and vandenberg air force base in california and roland cuello who's the ceo of maverick space systems gentlemen thank you for spending the time to come on to this session for the cal poly space and cyber security symposium appreciate it absolutely um guys defending satellites and space infrastructure is the new domain obviously it's a war warfighting domain it's also the future of the world and this is an important topic because we rely on space now for our everyday life and it's becoming more and more critical everyone knows how their phones work and gps just small examples of all the impacts i'd like to discuss with this hour this topic with you guys so if we can have you guys do an opening statement general if you can start with your opening statement we'll take it from there thanks john and greetings from vandenberg air force base we are just down the road from cal poly here on the central coast of california and uh very proud to be part of this uh effort and part of the partnership that we have with with cal poly on a number of fronts um i should uh so in in my job here i actually uh have two hats that i wear and it's i think worth talking briefly about those to set the context for our discussion you know we had two major organizational events within our department of defense with regard to space last year in 2019 and probably the one that made the most headlines was the stand-up of the united states space force that happened uh december 20th last year and again momentous the first new branch in our military since 1947 uh and uh it is a it's just over nine months old now as we're making this recording uh and already we're seeing a lot of change uh with regard to how we're approaching uh organizing training and equipping on a service side or space capabilities and so i uh in that with regard to the space force the hat i wear there is commander of space operations command that was what was once 14th air force when we were still part of the air force here at vandenberg and in that role i'm responsible for the operational capabilities that we bring to the joint warfighter and to the world from a space perspective didn't make quite as many headlines but another major change that happened last year was the uh the reincarnation i guess i would say of united states space command and that is a combatant command it's how our department of defense organizes to actually conduct warfighting operations um most people are more familiar perhaps with uh central command centcom or northern command northcom or even strategic command stratcom well now we have a space com we actually had one from 1985 until 2002 and then stood it down in the wake of the 9 11 attacks and a reorganization of homeland security but we've now stood up a separate command again operationally to conduct joint space operations and in that organization i wear a hat as a component commander and that's the combined force-based component command uh working with other all the additional capabilities that other services bring as well as our allies that combined in that title means that uh i under certain circumstances i would lead an allied effort uh in space operations and so it's actually a terrific job to have here on the central coast of california uh both working the uh how we bring space capabilities to the fight on the space force side and then how we actually operate those capabilities it's a point of joint in support of joint warfighters around the world um and and national security interests so that's the context now what el i i also should mention you kind of alluded to john you're beginning that we're kind of in a change situation than we were a number of years ago and that space we now see space as a warfighting domain for most of my career going back a little ways most of my my focus in my jobs was making sure i could bring space capabilities to those that needed them bringing gps to that special operations uh soldier on the ground somewhere in the world bringing satellite communications for our nuclear command and control bringing those capabilities for other uses but i didn't have to worry in most of my career about actually defending those space capabilities themselves well now we do we've actually gone to a point where we're are being threatened in space we now are treating it more like any other domain normalizing in that regard as a warfighting domain and so we're going through some relatively emergent efforts to protect and defend our capabilities in space to to design our capabilities to be defended and perhaps most of all to train our people for this new mission set so it's a very exciting time and i know we'll get into it but you can't get very far into talking about all these space capabilities and how we want to protect and defend them and how we're going to continue their ability to deliver to warfighters around the globe without talking about cyber because they fit together very closely so anyway thanks for the chance to be here today and i look forward to the discussion general thank you so much for that opening statement and i would just say that not only is it historic with the space force it's super exciting because it opens up so much more challenges and opportunities for to do more and to do things differently so i appreciate that statement roland your opening statement your your job is to put stuff in space faster cheaper smaller better your opening statement please um yes um thank you john um and yes you know to um general shaw's point you know with with the space domain and the need to protect it now um is incredibly important and i hope that we are more of a help um than a thorn in your side um in terms of you know building satellites smaller faster cheaper um you know and um definitely looking forward to this discussion and you know figuring out ways where um the entire space domain can work together you know from industry to to us government even to the academic environment as well so first would like to say and preface this by saying i am not a cyber security expert um we you know we build satellites um and uh we launch them into orbit um but we are by no means you know cyber security experts and that's why um you know we like to partner with organizations like the california cyber security institute because they help us you know navigate these requirements um so um so i'm the ceo of um of maverick space systems we are a small aerospace business in san luis obispo california and we provide small satellite hardware and service solutions to a wide range of customers all the way from the academic environment to the us government and everything in between we support customers through an entire you know program life cycle from mission architecture and formulation all the way to getting these customer satellites in orbit and so what we try to do is um provide hardware and services that basically make it easier for customers to get their satellites into orbit and to operate so whether it be reducing mass or volume um creating greater launch opportunities or providing um the infrastructure and the technology um to help those innovations you know mature in orbit you know that's you know that's what we do our team has experienced over the last 20 years working with small satellites and definitely fortunate to be part of the team that invented the cubesat standard by cal poly and stanford uh back in 2000 and so you know we are in you know vandenberg's backyard um we came from cal poly san luis obispo um and you know our um our hearts are fond you know of this area and working with the local community um a lot of that success um that we have had is directly attributable um to the experiences that we learned as students um working on satellite programs from our professors and mentors um you know that's you know all you know thanks to cal poly so just wanted to tell a quick story so you know back in 2000 just imagine a small group of undergraduate students you know myself included with the daunting task of launching multiple satellites from five different countries on a russian launch vehicle um you know many of us were only 18 or 19 not even at the legal age to drink yet um but as you know essentially teenagers we're managing million dollar budgets um and we're coordinating groups um from around the world um and we knew that we knew what we needed to accomplish um yet we didn't really know um what we were doing when we first started um the university was extremely supportive um and you know that's the cal poly learn by doing philosophy um i remember you know the first time we had a meeting with our university chief legal counsel and we were discussing the need to to register with the state department for itar nobody really knew what itar was back then um and you know discussing this with the chief legal counsel um you know she was asking what is itar um and we essentially had to explain you know this is um launching satellites as part of the um the u.s munitions list and essentially we have a similar situation you know exporting munitions um you know we are in similar categories um you know as you know as weapons um and so you know after that initial shock um everybody jumped in you know both feet forward um the university um you know our head legal counsel professors mentors and the students um you know knew we needed to tackle this problem um because you know the the need was there um to launch these small satellites and um you know the the reason you know this is important to capture the entire spectrum of users of the community um is that the technology and the you know innovation of the small satellite industry occurs at all levels you know so we have academia commercial national governments we even have high schools and middle schools getting involved and you know building satellite hardware um and the thing is you know the the importance of cyber security is incredibly important because it touches all of these programs and it touches you know people um at a very young age um and so you know we hope to have a conversation today um to figure out you know how do we um create an environment where we allow these programs to thrive but we also you know protect and you know keep their data safe as well thank you very much roland appreciate that uh story too as well thanks for your opening statement gentlemen i mean i love this topic because defending the assets in space is is as obvious um you look at it but there's a bigger picture going on in our world right now and generally you kind of pointed out the historic nature of space force and how it's changing already operationally training skills tools all that stuff is revolving you know in the tech world that i live in you know change the world is a topic they use that's thrown around a lot you can change the world a lot of young people we have just other panels on this where we're talking about how to motivate young people changing the world is what it's all about with technology for the better evolution is just an extension of another domain in this case space is just an extension of other domains similar things are happening but it's different there's a huge opportunity to change the world so it's faster there's an expanded commercial landscape out there certainly government space systems are moving and changing how do we address the importance of cyber security in space general we'll start with you because this is real it's exciting if you're a young person there's touch points of things to jump into tech building hardware to changing laws and and everything in between is an opportunity and it's exciting and it's truly a chance to change the world how does the commercial government space systems teams address the importance of cyber security so john i think it starts with with the realization that as i like to say that cyber and space are bffs uh there's nothing that we do on the cutting edge of space that isn't heavy reliant heavily reliant on the cutting edge of cyber and frankly there's probably nothing on the cutting edge of cyber that doesn't have a space application and when you realize that you see how how closely those are intertwined as we need to move forward at at speed it becomes fundamental to to the to answering your question let me give a couple examples we one of the biggest challenges i have on a daily basis is understanding what's going on in the space domain those on the on the on the surface of the planet talk about tyranny of distance across the oceans across large land masses and i talk about the tyranny of volume and you know right now we're looking out as far as the lunar sphere there's activity that's extending out to the out there we expect nasa to be conducting uh perhaps uh human operations in the lunar environment in the next few years so it extends out that far when you do the math that's a huge volume how do you do that how do you understand what's happening in real time in within that volume it is a big data problem by the very definition of that that kind of effort to that kind of challenge and to do it successfully in the years ahead it's going to require many many sensors and the fusion of data of all kinds to present a picture and then analytics and predictive analytics that are going to deliver an idea of what's going on in the space arena and that's just if people are not up to mischief once you have threats introduced into that environment it is even more challenging so i'd say it's a big data problem that we'll be enjoying uh tackling in the years ahead a second example is you know we if i if i had to if we had to take a vote of what were the most uh amazing robots that have ever been designed by humans i think that spacecraft would have to be up there on the list whether it's the nasa spacecraft that explore other planets or the ones that we or gps satellites that that amazingly uh provide a wonderful service to the entire globe uh and beyond they are amazing technological machines that's not going to stop i mean all the work that roland talked about at the at the even even that we're doing it at the kind of the microsoft level is is putting cutting-edge technology into smaller packages you can to get some sort of capability out of that as we expand our activities further and further into space for national security purposes or for exploration or commercial or civil the the cutting edge technologies of uh artificial intelligence uh and machine to machine engagements and machine learning are going to be part of that design work moving forward um and then there's the threat piece as we try to as we operate these these capabilities how these constellations grow that's going to be done via networks and as i've already pointed out space is a warfighting domain that means those networks will come under attack we expect that they will and that may happen early on in a conflict it may happen during peace time in the same way that we see cyber attacks all the time everywhere in many sectors of of activity and so by painting that picture you kind of get you we start to see how it's intertwined at the very very base most basic level the cutting edge of cyber and cutting edge of space with that then comes the need to any cutting edge cyber security capability that we have is naturally going to be needed as we develop space capabilities and we're going to have to bake that in from the very beginning we haven't done that in the past as well as we should but moving forward from this point on it will be an essential ingredient that we work into all of our new capability roland we're talking about now critical infrastructure we're talking about new capabilities being addressed really fast so it's kind of chaotic now there's threats so it's not as easy as just having capabilities because you've got to deal with the threats the general just pointed out but now you've got critical infrastructure which then will enable other things down down the line how do you protect it how do we address this how do you see this being addressed from a security standpoint because you know malware these techniques can be mapped in as extended into into space and takeovers wartime peacetime these things are all going to be under threat that's pretty well understood i think people kind of get that how do we address it what's your what's your take yeah you know absolutely and you know i couldn't agree more with general shaw you know with cyber security and space being so intertwined um and you know i think with fast and rapid innovation um comes you know the opportunity for threats especially um if you have bad actors um that you know want to cause harm and so you know as a technology innovator and you're pushing the bounds um you kind of have a common goal of um you know doing the best you can um and you know pushing the technology balance making it smaller faster cheaper um but a lot of times what entrepreneurs and you know small businesses and supply chains um are doing and don't realize it is a lot of these components are dual use right i mean you could have a very benign commercial application but then a small you know modification to it and turn it into a military application and if you do have these bad actors they can exploit that and so you know i think the the big thing is um creating a organization that is you know non-biased that just wants to kind of level the playing field for everybody to create a set standard for cyber security in space i think you know one group that would be perfect for that you know is um cci um you know they understand both the cybersecurity side of things and they also have you know at cal poly um you know the the small satellite group um and you know just having kind of a a clearinghouse or um an agency where um can provide information that is free um you know you don't need a membership for and to be able to kind of collect that but also you know reach out to the entire value chain you know for a mission and um making them aware um of you know what potential capabilities are and then how it might um be you know potentially used as a weapon um and you know keeping them informed because i think you know the the vast majority of people in the space industry just want to do the right thing and so how do we get that information free flowing to you know to the us government so that they can take that information create assessments and be able to not necessarily um stop threats from occurring presently but identify them long before that they would ever even happen um yeah that's you know general i want to i want to follow up on that real quick before we go to the next talk track critical infrastructure um you mentioned you know across the oceans long distance volume you know when you look at the physical world you know you had you know power grids here united states you had geography you had perimeters uh the notion of a perimeter and the moat this is and then you had digital comes in then you have we saw software open up and essentially take down this idea of a perimeter and from a defense standpoint and that everything changed and we had to fortify those critical assets uh in the u.s space increases the same problem statement significantly because it's you can't just have a perimeter you can't have a moat it's open it's everywhere like what digital's done and that's why we've seen a slurge of cyber in the past two decades attacks with software so this isn't going to go away you need the critical infrastructure you're putting it up there you're formulating it and you've got to protect it how do you view that because it's going to be an ongoing problem statement what's the current thinking yeah i i think my sense is a mindset that you can build a a firewall or a defense or some other uh system that isn't dynamic in his own right is probably not heading in the right direction i think cyber security in the future whether it's for our space systems or for other critical infrastructure is going to be a dynamic fight that happens at a machine-to-machine um a speed and dynamic um i don't think it's too far off where we will have uh machines writing their own code in real time to fight off attacks that are coming at them and by the way the offense will probably be doing the same kind of thing and so i i guess i would not want to think that the answer is something that you just build it and you leave it alone and it's good enough it's probably going to be a constantly evolving capability constantly reacting to new threats and staying ahead of those threats that's the kind of use case just to kind of you know as you were kind of anecdotal example is the exciting new software opportunities for computer science majors i mean i tell my young kids and everyone man it's more exciting now i wish i was 18 again it's so so exciting with ai bro i want to get your thoughts we were joking on another panel with the dod around space and the importance of it obviously and we're going to have that here and then we had a joke it's like oh software's defined everything it says software's everything ai and and i said well here in the united states companies had data centers and they went to the cloud and they said you can't do break fix it's hard to do break fix in space you can't just send a tech up i get that today but soon maybe robotics the general mentions robotics technologies and referencing some of the accomplishments fixing things is almost impossible in space but maybe form factors might get better certainly software will play a role what's your thoughts on that that landscape yeah absolutely you know for for software in orbit um you know there's there's a push for you know software-defined radios um to basically go from hardware to software um and you know that's that that's a critical link um if you can infiltrate that and a small satellite has propulsion on board you could you know take control of that satellite and cause a lot of havoc and so you know creating standards and you know that kind of um initial threshold of security um you know for let's say you know these radios you know communications and making that um available um to the entire supply chain to the satellite builders um and operators you know is incredibly key and you know that's again one of the initiatives that um that cci is um is tackling right now as well general i want to get your thoughts on best practices around cyber security um state of the art today uh and then some guiding principles and kind of how the if you shoot the trajectory forward what what might happen uh around um supply chain there's been many stories where oh we outsourced the chips and there's a little chip sitting in a thing and it's built by someone else in china and the software is written from someone in europe and the united states assembles it it gets shipped and it's it's corrupt and it has some cyber crime making i'm oversimplifying the the statement but this is what when you have space systems that involve intellectual property uh from multiple partners whether it's from software to creation and then deployment you get supply chain tiers what are some of the best practices that you see involving that don't stunt the innovation but continues to innovate but people can operate safely what's your thoughts yeah so on supply chain i think i think the symposium here is going to get to hear from lieutenant general jt thompson uh from space missile system center down in los angeles and and uh he's a he's just down the road from us there uh on the coast um and his team is is the one that we look to really focus on as he acquires and develop again bake in cyber security from the beginning and knowing where the components are coming from and and properly assessing those as you as you put together your space systems is a key uh piece of what his team is focused on so i expect we'll hear him talk about that when it talks to i think she asked the question a little more deeply about how do the best practices in terms of how we now develop moving forward well another way that we don't do it right is if we take a long time to build something and then you know general general jt thompson's folks take a while to build something and then they hand it over to to to me and my team to operate and then they go hands-free and and then and then that's you know that's what i have for for years to operate until the next thing comes along that's a little old school what we're going to have to do moving forward with our space capabilities and with the cyber piece baked in is continually developing new capability sets as we go we actually have partnership between general thompson's team and mine here at vandenberg on our ops floor or our combined space operations center that are actually working in real time together better tools that we can use to understand what's going on the space environment to better command and control our capabilities anywhere from military satellite communications to space domain awareness sensors and such and so and we're developing those capabilities in real time it's a dev and and with the security pieces so devsecops is we're practicing that in in real time i think that is probably the standard today that we're trying to live up to as we continue to evolve but it has to be done again in close partnership all the time it's not a sequential industrial age process while i'm on the subject of partnerships so general thompson's and team and mine have good partnerships it's part partnerships across the board are going to be another way that we are successful and that uh it means with with academia in some of the relationships that we have here with cal poly it's with the commercial sector in ways that we haven't done before the old style business was to work with just a few large um companies that had a lot of space experience well we need we need a lot of kinds of different experience and technologies now in order to really field good space capabilities and i expect we'll see more and more non-traditional companies being part of and and organizations being part of that partnership that will work going forward i mentioned at the beginning that um uh allies are important to us so everything that uh that role and i've been talking about i think you have to extrapolate out to allied partnerships right it doesn't help me uh as a combined force component commander which is again one of my jobs it doesn't help me if the united states capabilities are cyber secure but i'm trying to integrate them with capabilities from an ally that are not cyber secure so that partnership has to be dynamic and continually evolving together so again close partnering continually developing together from the acquisition to the operational sectors with as many um different sectors of our economy uh as possible are the ingredients to success general i'd love to just follow up real quick i was having just a quick reminder for a conversation i had with last year with general keith alexander who was does a lot of cyber security work and he was talking about the need to share faster and the new school is you got to share faster and to get the data you mentioned observability earlier you need to see what everything's out there he's a real passionate person around getting the data getting it fast and having trusted partners so that's not it's kind of evolving as i mean sharing is a well-known practice but with cyber it's sensitive data potentially so there's a trust relationship there's now a new ecosystem that's new for uh government how do you view all that and your thoughts on that trend of the sharing piece of it on cyber so it's i don't know if it's necessarily new but it's at a scale that we've never seen before and by the way it's vastly more complicated and complex when you overlay from a national security perspective classification of data and information at various levels and then that is again complicated by the fact you have different sharing relationships with different actors whether it's commercial academic or allies so it gets very very uh a complex web very quickly um so that's part of the challenge we're working through how can we how can we effectively share information at multiple classification levels with multiple partners in an optimal fashion it is certainly not optimal today it's it's very difficult even with maybe one industry partner for me to be able to talk about data at an unclassified level and then various other levels of classification to have the traditional networks in place to do that i could see a solution in the future where our cyber security is good enough that maybe i only really need one network and the information that is allowed to flow to the players within the right security environment um to uh to make that all happen as quickly as possible so you've actually uh john you've hit on yet another big challenge that we have is um is evolving our networks to properly share with the right people at the right uh clearance levels as at speed of war which is what we're going to need yeah and i wanted to call that out because this is an opportunity again this discussion here at cal poly and around the world is for new capabilities and new people to solve the problems and um it's again it's super exciting if you you know you're geeking out on this it's if you have a tech degree or you're interested in changing the world there's so many new things that could be applied right now roland will get your thoughts on this because one of the things in the tech trends we're seeing this is a massive shift all the theaters of the tech industry are are changing rapidly at the same time okay and it affects policy law but also deep tech the startup communities are super important in all this too we can't forget them obviously the big trusted players that are partnering certainly on these initiatives but your story about being in the dorm room now you got the boardroom and now you got everything in between you have startups out there that want to and can contribute and you know what's an itar i mean i got all these acronym certifications is there a community motion to bring startups in in a safe way but also give them a ability to contribute because you look at open source that proved everyone wrong on software that's happening now with this now open network concept the general is kind of alluding to which is it's a changing landscape your thoughts i know you're passionate about this yeah absolutely you know and i think um you know as general shaw mentioned you know we need to get information out there faster more timely and to the right people um and involving not only just stakeholders in the us but um internationally as well you know and as entrepreneurs um you know we have this very lofty vision or goal uh to change the world and um oftentimes um you know entrepreneurs including myself you know we put our heads down and we just run as fast as we can and we don't necessarily always kind of take a breath and take a step back and kind of look at what we're doing and how it's touching um you know other folks and in terms of a community i don't know of any formal community out there it's mostly ad hoc and you know these ad hoc communities are folks who let's say have you know was was a student working on a satellite um you know in college and they love that entrepreneurial spirit and so they said well i'm gonna start my own company and so you know a lot of the these ad hoc networks are just from relationships um that are that have been built over the last two decades um you know from from colleagues that you know at the university um i do think formalizing this and creating um kind of a you know clearinghouse to to handle all of this is incredibly important yeah um yeah there's gonna be a lot of entrepreneurial activity no doubt i mean just i mean there's too many things to work on and not enough time so i mean this brings up the question though while we're on this topic um you got the remote work with covid everyone's working remotely we're doing this remote um interview rather than being on stage works changing how people work and engage certainly physical will come back but if you looked at historically the space industry and the talent you know they're all clustered around the bases and there's always been these areas where you're you're a space person you're kind of working there and there's jobs there and if you were cyber you were 10 in other areas over the past decade there's been a cross-pollination of talent and location as you see the intersection of space general start with you you know first of all central coast is a great place to live i know that's where you guys live but you can start to bring together these two cultures sometimes they're you know not the same maybe they're getting better we know they're being integrated so general can you just share your thoughts because this is uh one of those topics that everyone's talking about but no one's actually kind of addressed directly um yeah john i i think so i think i want to answer this by talking about where i think the space force is going because i think if there was ever an opportunity or inflection point in our department of defense to sort of change culture and and try to bring in non-traditional kinds of thinking and and really kind of change uh maybe uh some of the ways that the department of defense has does things that are probably archaic space force is an inflection point for that uh general raymond our our chief of space operations has said publicly for a while now he wants the us space force to be the first truly digital service and uh you know what we what we mean by that is you know we want the folks that are in the space force to be the ones that are the first adopters or the early adopters of of technology um to be the ones most fluent in the cutting edge technological developments on space and cyber and and other um other sectors of the of of the of the economy that are technologically focused uh and i think there's some can that can generate some excitement i think and it means that we probably end up recruiting people into the space force that are not from the traditional recruiting areas that the rest of the department of defense looks to and i think it allows us to bring in a diversity of thought and diversity of perspective and a new kind of motivation um into the service that i think is frankly is is really exciting so if you put together everything i mentioned about how space and cyber are going to be best friends forever and i think there's always been an excitement in them you know from the very beginning in the american psyche about space you start to put all these ingredients together and i think you see where i'm going with this that really changed that cultural uh mindset that you were describing it's an exciting time for sure and again changing the world and this is what you're seeing today people do want to change world they want a modern world that's changing roy look at your thoughts on this i was having an interview a few years back with a tech entrepreneur um techie and we were joking we were just kind of riffing and we and i said everything that's on star trek will be invented and we're almost there actually if you think about it except for the transporter room you got video you got communicators so you know not to bring in the star trek reference with space force this is digital and you start thinking about some of the important trends it's going to be up and down the stack from hardware to software to user experience everything your thoughts and reaction yeah abs absolutely and so you know what we're seeing is um timeline timelines shrinking dramatically um because of the barrier to entry for you know um new entrants and you know even your existing aerospace companies is incredibly low right so if you take um previously where you had a technology on the ground and you wanted it in orbit it would take years because you would test it on the ground you would verify that it can operate in space in a space environment and then you would go ahead and launch it and you know we're talking tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to do that now um we've cut that down from years to months when you have a prototype on the ground and you want to get it launched you don't necessarily care if it fails on orbit the first time because you're getting valuable data back and so you know we're seeing technology being developed you know for the first time on the ground and in orbit in a matter of a few months um and the whole kind of process um you know that that we're doing as a small business is you know trying to enable that and so allowing these entrepreneurs and small small companies to to get their technology in orbit at a price that is sometimes even cheaper than you know testing on the ground you know this is a great point i think this is really an important point to call out because we mentioned partnerships earlier the economics and the business model of space is doable i mean you do a mission study you get paid for that you have technology you can get stuff up up quickly and there's a cost structure there and again the alternative was waterfall planning years and millions now the form factors are different now again there may be different payloads involved but you can standardize payloads you got robotic arms all this is all available this brings up the congestion problem this is going to be on the top of mind the generals of course but you got the proliferation okay of these constellation systems you have more and more tech vectors i mean essentially that's malware i mean that's a probe you throw something up in space that could cause some interference maybe a takeover general this is the this is the real elephant in the room the threat matrix from new stuff and new configurations so general how does the proliferation of constellation systems change the threat matrix so i i think the uh you know i guess i'm gonna i'm gonna be a little more optimistic john than i think you pitched that i'm actually excited about these uh new mega constellations in leo um i'm excited about the the growing number of actors that are that are going into space for various reasons and why is that it's because we're starting to realize a new economic engine uh for the nation and for human society so the question is so so i think we want that to happen right when uh um when uh we could go to almost any any other domain in history and and and you know there when when air traffic air air travel started to become much much more commonplace with many kinds of uh actors from from private pilots flying their small planes all the way up to large airliners uh you know there there was a problem with congestion there was a problem about um challenges about uh behavior and are we gonna be able to manage this and yes we did and it was for the great benefit of society i could probably look to the maritime domain for similar kinds of things and so this is actually exciting about space we are just going to have to find the ways as a society and it's not just the department of defense it's going to be civil it's going to be international find the mechanisms to encourage this continued investment in the space domain i do think the space force uh will play a role in in providing security in the space environment as we venture further out as as economic opportunities emerge uh wherever they are um in the in the lunar earth lunar system or even within the solar system space force is going to play a role in that but i'm actually really excited about the those possibilities hey by the way i got to say you made me think of this when you talked about star trek and and and space force and our technologies i remember when i was younger watching the the next generation series i thought one of the coolest things because being a musician in my in my spare time i thought one of the coolest things was when um commander riker would walk into his quarters and and say computer play soft jazz and there would just be the computer would just play music you know and this was an age when you know we had we had hard uh um uh media right like how will that that is awesome man i can't wait for the 23rd century when i can do that and where we are today is is so incredible on those lines the things that i can ask alexa or siri to play um well that's the thing everything that's on star trek think about it almost invented i mean you got the computers you got the only thing really is the holograms are starting to come in you got now the transporter room now that's physics we'll work on that right right so there's a there is this uh a balance between physics and imagination but uh we have not exhausted either well um personally everyone that knows me knows i'm a huge star trek fan all the series of course i'm an original purist but at that level but this is about economic incentive as well roland i want to get your thoughts because you know the gloom and doom you got to think about the the bad stuff to make it good if i if i put my glass half full on the table there's economic incentives just like the example of the plane and the air traffic there's there's actors that are more actors that are incented to have a secure system what's your thoughts to general's comments around the optimism and and the potential threat matrix that needs to be managed absolutely so and you know one of the things that we've seen over the years um as you know we build these small satellites is a lot of the technology you know that the general is talking about um you know voice recognition miniaturized chips and sensors um started on the ground and i mean you know you have you know your iphone um that about 15 years ago before the first iphone came out um you know we were building small satellites in the lab and we were looking at cutting-edge state-of-the-art magnetometers and sensors um that we were putting in our satellites back then we didn't know if they were going to work and then um a few years later as these students graduate they go off and they go out to under you know other industries and so um some of the technology that was first kind of put in these cubesats in the early 2000s you know kind of ended up in the first generation iphone smartphones um and so being able to take that technology rapidly you know incorporate that into space and vice versa gives you an incredible economic advantage because um not only are your costs going down um because you know you're mass producing you know these types of terrestrial technologies um but then you can also um you know increase you know revenue and profit um you know by by having you know smaller and cheaper systems general let's talk about that for real quickly it's a good point i want to just shift it into the playbook i mean everyone talks about playbooks for management for tech for startups for success i mean one of the playbooks that's clear from in history is investment in r d around military and or innovation that has a long view spurs innovation commercially i mean just there's a huge many decades of history that shows that hey we got to start thinking about these these challenges and you know next you know it's in an iphone this is history this is not like a one-off and now with space force you get you're driving you're driving the main engine of innovation to be all digital you know we we riff about star trek which is fun but the reality is you're going to be on the front lines of some really new cool mind-blowing things could you share your thoughts on how you sell that people who write the checks or recruit more talent well so i first i totally agree with your thesis that the that you know national security well could probably go back an awful long way hundreds to thousands of years that security matters tend to drive an awful lot of innovation and creativity because um you know i think the the probably the two things that drive drive people the most are probably an opportunity to make money uh but only by beating that out are trying to stay alive um and uh and so i don't think that's going to go away and i do think that space force can play a role um as it pursues uh security uh structures you know within the space domain to further encourage economic investment and to protect our space capabilities for national security purposes are going to be at the cutting edge this isn't the first time um i think we can point back to the origins of the internet really started in the department of defense and with a partnership i should add with academia that's how the internet got started that was the creativity in order to to meet some needs there cryptography has its roots in security but we use it uh in in national security but now we use it in for economic reasons and meant and a host of other kinds of reasons and then space itself right i mean we still look back to uh apollo era as an inspiration for so many things that inspired people to to either begin careers in in technical areas or in space and and so on so i think i think in that same spirit you're absolutely right i guess i'm totally agreeing with your thesis the space force uh will be and a uh will have a positive inspirational influence in that way and we need to to realize that so when we are asking for when we're looking for how we need to meet capability needs we need to spread that net very far look for the most creative solutions and partner early and often with those that that can that can work on those when you're on the new frontier you've got to have a team sport it's a team effort you mentioned the internet just anecdotally i'm old enough to remember this because i remember the days that was going on and said the government if the policy decisions that the u.s made at that time was to let it go a little bit invisible hand they didn't try to commercialize it too fast and but there was some policy work that was done that had a direct effect to the innovation versus take it over and next you know it's out of control so i think you know i think this this just a cross-disciplinary skill set becomes a big thing where you need to have more people involved and that's one of the big themes of this symposium so it's a great point thank you for sharing that roland your thoughts on this because you know you got policy decisions we all want to run faster we want to be more innovative but you got to have some ops view now mostly ops people want things very tight very buttoned up secure the innovators want to go faster it's the yin and yang that's that's the world we live in how's it all balanced in your mind yeah um you know one of the things um that may not be apparently obvious is that you know the us government and department of um of defense is one of the biggest investors in technology in the aerospace sector um you know they're not the traditional venture capitalists but they're the ones that are driving technology innovation because there's funding um you know and when companies see that the us governments is interested in something businesses will will re-vector um you know to provide that capability and in the i would say the more recent years we've had a huge influx of private equity venture capital um coming into the markets to kind of help augment um you know the government investment and i think having a good partnership and a relationship with these private equity venture capitalists and the us government is incredibly important because the two sides you know can can help collaborate and kind of see a common goal but then also too on um you know the other side is you know there's that human element um and as general shaw was saying it's like not you know not only do companies you know obviously want to thrive and do really well some companies just want to stay alive um to see their technology kind of you know grow into what they've always dreamed of and you know oftentimes entrepreneurs um are put in a very difficult position because they have to make payroll they have to you know keep the lights on and so sometimes they'll take investment um from places where they may normally would not have you know from potentially foreign investment that could potentially you know cause issues with you know the you know the us supply chain well my final question is the best i wanted to say for last because i love the idea of human space flight i'd love to be on mars i'm not sure i'll be able to make it someday but how do you guys see the possible impacts of cyber security on expanding human space flight operations i mean general this is your wheelhouse this is urine command putting humans in space and certainly robots will be there because they're easy to go because they're not human but humans in space i mean you're starting to see the momentum the discussion uh people are are scratching that itch what's your take on that how do we see making this more possible well i i think we will see we will see uh commercial space tourism uh in the future i'm not sure how wide and large a scale it will become but we'll we will see that and um part of uh i think the mission of the space force is going to be probably to again do what we're doing today is have really good awareness of what's going on the domain to uh to to to ensure that that is done safely and i think a lot of what we do today will end up in civil organizations to do space traffic management and safety uh in in that uh arena um and uh um it is only a matter of time uh before we see um humans going even beyond the you know nasa has their plan the the artemis program to get back to the moon and the gateway initiative to establish a a space station there and that's going to be an exploration initiative but it is only a matter of time before we have um private citizens or private corporations putting people in space and not only for tourism but for economic activity and so it'll be really exciting to watch it would be really exciting and space force will be a part of it general roland i want to thank you for your valuable time to come on this symposium i really appreciate it final uh comment i'd love to you to spend a minute to share your personal thoughts on the importance of cyber security to space and we'll close it out we'll start with you roland yeah so i think that the biggest thing um i would like to try to get out of this you know from my own personal perspective is um creating that environment that allows um you know the the aerospace supply chain small businesses you know like ourselves be able to meet all the requirements um to protect um and safeguard our data but also um create a way that you know we can still thrive and it won't stifle innovation um you know i'm looking forward um to comments and questions um you know from the audience um to really kind of help um you know you know basically drive to that next step general final thoughts the importance of cyber security to space i'll just i'll go back to how i started i think john and say that space and cyber are forever intertwined they're bffs and whoever has my job 50 years from now or 100 years from now i predict they're going to be saying the exact same thing cyber and space are are intertwined for good we will always need the cutting edge cyber security capabilities that we develop as a nation or as a as a society to protect our space capabilities and our cyber capabilities are going to need space capabilities in the future as well general john shaw thank you very much roland cleo thank you very much for your great insight thank you to cal poly for putting this together i want to shout out to the team over there we couldn't be in person but we're doing a virtual remote event i'm john furrier with thecube and siliconangle here in silicon valley thanks for watching

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's "theCUBE" covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly. >> I want to welcome to theCUBE's coverage, we're here hosting with Cal Poly an amazing event, space and the intersection of cyber security. This session is Defending Satellite and Space Infrastructure from Cyber Threats. We've got two great guests. We've got Major General John Shaw of combined force space component commander, U.S. space command at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Roland Coelho, who's the CEO of Maverick Space Systems. Gentlemen, thank you for spending the time to come on to this session for the Cal Poly Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. Appreciate it. >> Absolutely. >> Guys defending satellites and space infrastructure is the new domain, obviously it's a war-fighting domain. It's also the future of the world. And this is an important topic because we rely on space now for our everyday life and it's becoming more and more critical. Everyone knows how their phones work and GPS, just small examples of all the impacts. I'd like to discuss with this hour, this topic with you guys. So if we can have you guys do an opening statement. General if you can start with your opening statement, we'll take it from there. >> Thanks John and greetings from Vandenberg Air Force Base. We are just down the road from Cal Poly here on the central coast of California, and very proud to be part of this effort and part of the partnership that we have with Cal Poly on a number of fronts. In my job here, I actually have two hats that I wear and it's I think, worth talking briefly about those to set the context for our discussion. You know, we had two major organizational events within our Department of Defense with regard to space last year in 2019. And probably the one that made the most headlines was the standup of the United States Space Force. That happened December 20th, last year, and again momentous, the first new branch in our military since 1947. And it's just over nine months old now, as we're makin' this recording. And already we're seein' a lot of change with regard to how we are approaching organizing, training, and equipping on a service side for space capabilities. And so, with regard to the Space Force, the hat I wear there is Commander of Space Operations Command. That was what was once 14th Air Force, when we were still part of the Air Force here at Vandenberg. And in that role, I'm responsible for the operational capabilities that we bring to the joint warfighter and to the world from a space perspective. Didn't make quite as many headlines, but another major change that happened last year was the reincarnation, I guess I would say, of United States Space Command. And that is a combatant command. It's how our Department of Defense organizes to actually conduct war-fighting operations. Most people are more familiar perhaps with Central Command, CENTCOM or Northern Command, NORTHCOM, or even Strategic Command, STRATCOM. Well, now we have a SPACECOM. We actually had one from 1985 until 2002, and then stood it down in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and a reorganization of Homeland Security. But we've now stood up a separate command again operationally, to conduct joint space operations. And in that organization, I wear a hat as a component commander, and that's the combined force-based component command working with other, all the additional capabilities that other services bring, as well as our allies. The combined in that title means that under certain circumstances, I would lead in an allied effort in space operations. And so it's actually a terrific job to have here on the central coast of California. Both working how we bring space capabilities to the fight on the Space Force side, and then how we actually operate those capabilities in support of joint warfighters around the world and national security interests. So that's the context. Now what also I should mention and you kind of alluded to John at your beginning, we're kind of in a changed situation than we were a number of years ago, in that we now see space as a war-fighting domain. For most of my career, goin' back a little ways, most of my focus in my jobs was making sure I could bring space capabilities to those that needed them. Bringing GPS to that special operations soldier on the ground somewhere in the world, bringing satellite communications for our nuclear command and control, bringing those capabilities for other uses. But I didn't have to worry in most of my career, about actually defending those space capabilities themselves. Well, now we do. We've actually gone to a point where we're are being threatened in space. We now are treating it more like any other domain, normalizing in that regard as a war-fighting domain. And so we're going through some relatively emergent efforts to protect and defend our capabilities in space, to design our capabilities to be defended, and perhaps most of all, to train our people for this new mission set. So it's a very exciting time, and I know we'll get into it, but you can't get very far into talking about all these space capabilities and how we want to protect and defend them and how we're going to continue their ability to deliver to warfighters around the globe, without talking about cyber, because they fit together very closely. So anyway, thanks for the chance to be here today. And I look forward to the discussion. >> General, thank you so much for that opening statement. And I would just say that not only is it historic with the Space Force, it's super exciting because it opens up so much more challenges and opportunities to do more and to do things differently. So I appreciate that statement. Roland in your opening statement. Your job is to put stuff in space, faster, cheaper, smaller, better, your opening statement, please. >> Yes, thank you, John. And yes, to General Shaw's point with the space domain and the need to protect it now is incredibly important. And I hope that we are more of a help than a thorn in your side in terms of building satellites smaller, faster, cheaper. Definitely looking forward to this discussion and figuring out ways where the entire space domain can work together, from industry to U.S. government, even to the academic environment as well. So first, I would like to say, and preface this by saying, I am not a cybersecurity expert. We build satellites and we launch them into orbit, but we are by no means cybersecurity experts. And that's why we like to partner with organizations like the California Cybersecurity Institute because they help us navigate these requirements. So I'm the CEO of Maverick Space Systems. We are a small aerospace business in San Luis Obispo, California. And we provide small satellite hardware and service solutions to a wide range of customers. All the way from the academic environment to the U.S. government and everything in between. We support customers through an entire program life cycle, from mission architecture and formulation, all the way to getting these customer satellites in orbit. And so what we try to do is provide hardware and services that basically make it easier for customers to get their satellites into orbit and to operate. So whether it be reducing mass or volume, creating greater launch opportunities, or providing the infrastructure and the technology to help those innovations mature in orbit, that's what we do. Our team has experience over the last 20 years, working with small satellites. And I'm definitely fortunate to be part of the team that invented the CubeSat standard by Cal Poly and Stanford back in 2000. And so, we are in VandenBerg's backyard. We came from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and our hearts are fond of this area, and working with the local community. A lot of that success that we have had is directly attributable to the experiences that we learned as students, working on satellite programs from our professors and mentors. And that's all thanks to Cal Poly. So just wanted to tell a quick story. So back in 2000, just imagine a small group of undergraduate students, myself included, with the daunting task of launching multiple satellites from five different countries on a Russian launch vehicle. Many of us were only 18 or 19, not even at the legal age to drink yet, but as essentially teenagers we were managing million-dollar budgets. And we were coordinating groups from around the world. And we knew what we needed to accomplish, yet we didn't really know what we were doing when we first started. The university was extremely supportive and that's the Cal Poly learn-by-doing philosophy. I remember the first time we had a meeting with our university chief legal counsel, and we were discussing the need to register with the State Department for ITAR. Nobody really knew what ITAR was back then. And discussing this with the chief legal counsel, she was asking, "What is ITAR?" And we essentially had to explain, this is, launching satellites is part of the U.S. munitions list. And essentially we had a similar situation exporting munitions. We are in similar categories as weapons. And so, after that initial shock, everybody jumped in both feet forward, the university, our head legal counsel, professors, mentors, and the students knew we needed to tackle this problem because the need was there to launch these small satellites. And the reason this is important to capture the entire spectrum of users of the community, is that the technology and the innovation of the small satellite industry occurs at all levels, so we have academia, commercial, national governments. We even have high schools and middle schools getting involved and building satellite hardware. And the thing is the importance of cybersecurity is incredibly important because it touches all of these programs and it touches people at a very young age. And so, we hope to have a conversation today to figure out how do we create an environment where we allow these programs to thrive, but we also protect and keep their data safe as well. >> Thank you very much Roland. Appreciate that a story too as well. Thanks for your opening statement. Gentlemen, I mean I love this topic because defending the assets in space is obvious, if you look at it. But there's a bigger picture going on in our world right now. And general, you kind of pointed out the historic nature of Space Force and how it's changing already, operationally, training, skills, tools, all that stuff is evolving. You know in the tech world that I live in, change the world is a topic they use, gets thrown around a lot, you can change the world. A lot of young people, and we have other panels on this where we're talkin' about how to motivate young people, changing the world is what it's all about technology, for the better. Evolution is just an extension of another domain. In this case, space is just an extension of other domains, similar things are happening, but it's different. There's huge opportunity to change the world, so it's faster. There's an expanded commercial landscape out there. Certainly government space systems are moving and changing. How do we address the importance of cybersecurity in space? General, we'll start with you because this is real, it's exciting. If you're a young person, there's touch points of things to jump into, tech, building hardware, to changing laws, and everything in between is an opportunity, and it's exciting. And it is truly a chance to change the world. How does the commercial government space systems teams, address the importance of cybersecurity? >> So, John, I think it starts with the realization that as I like to say, that cyber and space are BFFs. There's nothing that we do on the cutting edge of space that isn't heavily reliant on the cutting edge of cyber. And frankly, there's probably nothing on the cutting edge of cyber that doesn't have a space application. And when you realize that and you see how closely those are intertwined as we need to move forward at speed, it becomes fundamental to answering your question. Let me give a couple examples. One of the biggest challenges I have on a daily basis is understanding what's going on in the space domain. Those on the surface of the planet talk about tyranny of distance across the oceans or across large land masses. And I talk about the tyranny of volume. And right now, we're looking out as far as the lunar sphere. There's activity that's extending out there. We expect NASA to be conducting perhaps human operations in the lunar environment in the next few years. So it extends out that far. When you do the math that's a huge volume. How do you do that? How do you understand what's happening in real time within that volume? It is a big data problem by the very definition of that kind of effort and that kind of challenge. And to do it successfully in the years ahead, it's going to require many, many sensors and the fusion of data of all kinds, to present a picture and then analytics and predictive analytics that are going to deliver an idea of what's going on in the space arena. And that's just if people are not up to mischief. Once you have threats introduced into that environment, it is even more challenging. So I'd say it's a big data problem that we'll enjoy tackling in the years ahead. Now, a second example is, if we had to take a vote of what were the most amazing robots that have ever been designed by humans, I think that spacecraft would have to be up there on the list. Whether it's the NASA spacecraft that explore other planets, or GPS satellites that amazingly provide a wonderful service to the entire globe and beyond. They are amazing technological machines. That's not going to stop. I mean, all the work that Roland talked about, even that we're doin' at the kind of the microsat level is putting cutting-edge technology into small a package as you can to get some sort of capability out of that. As we expand our activities further and further into space for national security purposes, or for exploration or commercial or civil, the cutting-edge technologies of artificial intelligence and machine-to-machine engagements and machine learning are going to be part of that design work moving forward. And then there's the threat piece. As we operate these capabilities, as these constellations grow, that's going to be done via networks. And as I've already pointed out space is a war-fighting domain. That means those networks will come under attack. We expect that they will and that may happen early on in a conflict. It may happen during peace time in the same way that we see cyber attacks all the time, everywhere in many sectors of activity. And so by painting that picture, we start to see how it's intertwined at the very, very most basic level, the cutting edge of cyber and cutting edge of space. With that then comes the need to, any cutting edge cybersecurity capability that we have is naturally going to be needed as we develop space capabilities. And we're going to have to bake that in from the very beginning. We haven't done that in the past as well as we should, but moving forward from this point on, it will be an essential ingredient that we work into all of our capability. >> Roland, we're talkin' about now, critical infrastructure. We're talkin' about new capabilities being addressed really fast. So, it's kind of chaotic now there's threats. So it's not as easy as just having capabilities, 'cause you've got to deal with the threats the general just pointed out. But now you've got critical infrastructure, which then will enable other things down the line. How do you protect it? How do we address this? How do you see this being addressed from a security standpoint? Because malware, these techniques can be mapped in, extended into space and takeovers, wartime, peace time, these things are all going to be under threat. That's pretty well understood, and I think people kind of get that. How do we address it? What's your take? >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't agree more with General Shaw, with cybersecurity and space being so intertwined. And, I think with fast and rapid innovation comes the opportunity for threats, especially if you have bad actors that want to cause harm. And so, as a technology innovator and you're pushing the bounds, you kind of have a common goal of doing the best you can, and pushing the technology bounds, making it smaller, faster, cheaper. But a lot of times what entrepreneurs and small businesses and supply chains are doing, and don't realize it, is a lot of these components are dual use. I mean, you could have a very benign commercial application, but then a small modification to it, can turn it into a military application. And if you do have these bad actors, they can exploit that. And so, I think that the big thing is creating a organization that is non-biased, that just wants to kind of level the playing field for everybody to create a set standard for cybersecurity in space. I think one group that would be perfect for that is CCI. They understand both the cybersecurity side of things, and they also have at Cal Poly the small satellite group. And just having kind of a clearing house or an agency where can provide information that is free, you don't need a membership for. And to be able to kind of collect that, but also reach out to the entire value chain for a mission, and making them aware of what potential capabilities are and then how it might be potentially used as a weapon. And keeping them informed, because I think the vast majority of people in the space industry just want to do the right thing. And so, how do we get that information free flowing to the U.S. government so that they can take that information, create assessments, and be able to, not necessarily stop threats from occurring presently, but identify them long before that they would ever even happen. Yeah, that's- >> General, I want to follow up on that real quick before we move to the next top track. Critical infrastructure you mentioned, across the oceans long distance, volume. When you look at the physical world, you had power grids here in the United States, you had geography, you had perimeters, the notion of a perimeter and a moat, and then you had digital comes in. Then you have, we saw software open up, and essentially take down this idea of a perimeter, and from a defense standpoint, and everything changed. And we have to fortify those critical assets in the U.S. Space increases the same problem statement significantly, because you can't just have a perimeter, you can't have a moat, it's open, it's everywhere. Like what digital's done, and that's why we've seen a surge of cyber in the past two decades, attacks with software. So, this isn't going to go away. You need the critical infrastructure, you're putting it up there, you're formulating it, and you got to protect it. How do you view that? Because it's going to be an ongoing problem statement. What's the current thinking? >> Yeah, I think my sense is that a mindset that you can build a firewall, or a defense, or some other system that isn't dynamic in its own right, is probably not headed in the right direction. I think cybersecurity in the future, whether it's for space systems, or for other critical infrastructure is going to be a dynamic fight that happens at a machine-to-machine speed and dynamic. I don't think that it's too far off where we will have machines writing their own code in real time to fight off attacks that are coming at them. And by the way, the offense will probably be doing the same kind of thing. And so, I guess I would not want to think that the answer is something that you just build it and you leave it alone and it's good enough. It's probably going to be a constantly-evolving capability, constantly reacting to new threats and staying ahead of those threats. >> That's the kind of use case, you know as you were, kind of anecdotal example is the exciting new software opportunities for computer science majors. I mean, I tell my young kids and everyone, man it's more exciting now. I wish I was 18 again, it's so exciting with AI. Roland, I want to get your thoughts. We were joking on another panel with the DoD around space and the importance of it obviously, and we're going to have that here. And then we had a joke. It's like, oh software's defined everything. Software's everything, AI. And I said, "Well here in the United States, companies had data centers and then they went to the cloud." And then he said, "You can do break, fix, it's hard to do break, fix in space. You can't just send a tech up." I get that today, but soon maybe robotics. The general mentions robotics technologies, in referencing some of the accomplishments. Fixing things is almost impossible in space. But maybe form factors might get better. Certainly software will play a role. What's your thoughts on that landscape? >> Yeah, absolutely. You know, for software in orbit, there's a push for software-defined radios to basically go from hardware to software. And that's a critical link. If you can infiltrate that and a small satellite has propulsion on board, you could take control of that satellite and cause a lot of havoc. And so, creating standards and that kind of initial threshold of security, for let's say these radios, or communications and making that available to the entire supply chain, to the satellite builders, and operators is incredibly key. And that's again, one of the initiatives that CCI is tackling right now as well. >> General, I want to get your thoughts on best practices around cybersecurity, state-of-the-art today, and then some guiding principles, and kind of how the, if you shoot the trajectory forward, what might happen around supply chain? There's been many stories where, we outsource the chips and there's a little chip sittin' in a thing and it's built by someone else in China, and the software is written from someone in Europe, and the United States assembles it, it gets shipped and it's corrupt, and it has some cyber, I'm making it up, I'm oversimplifying the statement. But this is what when you have space systems that involve intellectual property from multiple partners, whether it's from software to creation and then deployment. You got supply chain tiers. What are some of best practices that you see involving, that don't stunt the innovation, but continues to innovate, but people can operate safely. What's your thoughts? >> Yeah, so on supply chain, I think the symposium here is going to get to hear from General JT Thompson from space and missile system center down in Los Angeles, and he's just down the road from us there on the coast. And his team is the one that we look to to really focus on, as he fires and develops to again bake in cybersecurity from the beginning and knowing where the components are coming from, and properly assessing those as you put together your space systems, is a key piece of what his team is focused on. So I expect, we'll hear him talk about that. When it talks to, I think, so you asked the question a little more deeply about how do the best practices in terms of how we now develop moving forward. Well, another way that we don't do it right, is if we take a long time to build something and then General JT Thompson's folks take a while to build something, and then they hand it over to me, and my team operate and then they go hands free. And then that's what I have for years to operate until the next thing comes along. That's a little old school. What we're going to have to do moving forward with our space capabilities, and with the cyber piece baked in is continually developing new capability sets as we go. We actually have partnership between General Thompson's team and mine here at Vandenberg on our ops floor, or our combined space operation center, that are actually working in real time together, better tools that we can use to understand what's going on in the space environment to better command and control our capabilities anywhere from military satellite communications, to space domain awareness, sensors, and such. And we're developing those capabilities in real time. And with the security pieces. So DevSecOps is we're practicing that in real time. I think that is probably the standard today that we're trying to live up to as we continue to evolve. But it has to be done again, in close partnership all the time. It's not a sequential, industrial-age process. While I'm on the subject of partnerships. So, General Thompson's team and mine have good partnerships. It's partnerships across the board are going to be another way that we are successful. And that it means with academia and some of the relationships that we have here with Cal Poly. It's with the commercial sector in ways that we haven't done before. The old style business was to work with just a few large companies that had a lot of space experience. Well, we need a lot of kinds of different experience and technologies now in order to really field good space capabilities. And I expect we'll see more and more non-traditional companies being part of, and organizations, being part of that partnership that will work goin' forward. I mentioned at the beginning that allies are important to us. So everything that Roland and I have been talking about I think you have to extrapolate out to allied partnerships. It doesn't help me as a combined force component commander, which is again, one of my jobs. It doesn't help me if the United States capabilities are cybersecure, but I'm tryin' to integrate them with capabilities from an ally that are not cybersecure. So that partnership has to be dynamic and continually evolving together. So again, close partnering, continually developing together from the acquisition to the operational sectors, with as many different sectors of our economy as possible, are the ingredients to success. >> General, I'd love to just follow up real quick. I was having just a quick reminder for a conversation I had with last year with General Keith Alexander, who does a lot of cybersecurity work, and he was talking about the need to share faster. And the new school is you got to share faster to get the data, you mentioned observability earlier, you need to see what everything's out there. He's a real passionate person around getting the data, getting it fast and having trusted partners. So that's not, it's kind of evolving as, I mean, sharing's a well known practice, but with cyber it's sensitive data potentially. So there's a trust relationship. There's now a new ecosystem. That's new for government. How do you view all that and your thoughts on that trend of the sharing piece of it on cyber? >> So, I don't know if it's necessarily new, but it's at a scale that we've never seen before. And by the way, it's vastly more complicated and complex when you overlay from a national security perspective, classification of data and information at various levels. And then that is again complicated by the fact you have different sharing relationships with different actors, whether it's commercial, academic, or allies. So it gets very, very complex web very quickly. So that's part of the challenge we're workin' through. How can we effectively share information at multiple classification levels with multiple partners in an optimal fashion? It is certainly not optimal today. It's very difficult, even with maybe one industry partner for me to be able to talk about data at an unclassified level, and then various other levels of classification to have the traditional networks in place to do that. I could see a solution in the future where our cybersecurity is good enough that maybe I only really need one network and the information that is allowed to flow to the players within the right security environment to make that all happen as quickly as possible. So you've actually, John you've hit on yet another big challenge that we have, is evolving our networks to properly share, with the right people, at the right clearance levels at the speed of war, which is what we're going to need. >> Yeah, and I wanted to call that out because this is an opportunity, again, this discussion here at Cal Poly and around the world is for new capabilities and new people to solve the problems. It's again, it's super exciting if you're geeking out on this. If you have a tech degree or you're interested in changin' the world, there's so many new things that could be applied right now. Roland, I want to get your thoughts on this, because one of the things in the tech trends we're seeing, and this is a massive shift, all the theaters of the tech industry are changing rapidly at the same time. And it affects policy law, but also deep tech. The startup communities are super important in all this too. We can't forget them. Obviously, the big trusted players that are partnering certainly on these initiatives, but your story about being in the dorm room. Now you've got the boardroom and now you got everything in between. You have startups out there that want to and can contribute. You know, what's an ITAR? I mean, I got all these acronym certifications. Is there a community motion to bring startups in, in a safe way, but also give them ability to contribute? Because you look at open source, that proved everyone wrong on software. That's happening now with this now open network concept, the general was kind of alluding to. Which is, it's a changing landscape. Your thoughts, I know you're passionate about this. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think as General Shaw mentioned, we need to get information out there faster, more timely and to the right people, and involving not only just stakeholders in the U.S., but internationally as well. And as entrepreneurs, we have this very lofty vision or goal to change the world. And oftentimes, entrepreneurs, including myself, we put our heads down and we just run as fast as we can. And we don't necessarily always kind of take a breath and take a step back and kind of look at what we're doing and how it's touching other folks. And in terms of a community, I don't know of any formal community out there, it's mostly ad hoc. And, these ad hoc communities are folks who let's say was a student working on a satellite in college. And they loved that entrepreneurial spirit. And so they said, "Well, I'm going to start my own company." And so, a lot of these ad hoc networks are just from relationships that have been built over the last two decades from colleagues at the university. I do think formalizing this and creating kind of a clearing house to handle all of this is incredibly important. >> And there's going to be a lot of entrepreneurial activity, no doubt, I mean there's too many things to work on and not enough time. I mean this brings up the question that I'm going to, while we're on this topic, you got the remote work with COVID, everyone's workin' remotely, we're doin' this remote interview rather than being on stage. Work's changing, how people work and engage. Certainly physical will come back. But if you looked at historically the space industry and the talent, they're all clustered around the bases. And there's always been these areas where you're a space person. You kind of work in there and the job's there. And if you were cyber, you were generally in other areas. Over the past decade, there's been a cross-pollination of talent and location. As you see the intersection of space, general we'll start with you, first of all, central coast is a great place to live. I know that's where you guys live. But you can start to bring together these two cultures. Sometimes they're not the same. Maybe they're getting better. We know they're being integrated. So general, can you just share your thoughts because this is one of those topics that everyone's talkin' about, but no one's actually kind of addressed directly. >> Yeah, John, I think so. I think I want to answer this by talkin' about where I think the Space Force is going. Because I think if there was ever an opportunity or an inflection point in our Department of Defense to sort of change culture and try to bring in non-traditional kinds of thinking and really kind of change maybe some of the ways that the Department of Defense does things that are probably archaic, Space Force is an inflection point for that. General Raymond, our Chief of Space Operations, has said publicly for awhile now, he wants the U.S. Space Force to be the first truly digital service. And what we mean by that is we want the folks that are in the Space Force to be the ones that are the first adopters, the early adopters of technology. To be the ones most fluent in the cutting edge, technologic developments on space and cyber and other sectors of the economy that are technologically focused. And I think there's some, that can generate some excitement, I think. And it means that we'll probably ended up recruiting people into the Space Force that are not from the traditional recruiting areas that the rest of the Department of Defense looks to. And I think it allows us to bring in a diversity of thought and diversity of perspective and a new kind of motivation into the service, that I think is frankly really exciting. So if you put together everything I mentioned about how space and cyber are going to be best friends forever. And I think there's always been an excitement from the very beginning in the American psyche about space. You start to put all these ingredients together, and I think you see where I'm goin' with this. That this is a chance to really change that cultural mindset that you were describing. >> It's an exciting time for sure. And again, changing the world. And this is what you're seeing today. People do want to change the world. They want a modern world that's changing. Roland, I'll get your thoughts on this. I was having an interview a few years back with a technology entrepreneur, a techie, and we were joking, we were just kind of riffing. And I said, "Everything that's on "Star Trek" will be invented." And we're almost there actually, if you think about it, except for the transporter room. You got video, you got communicators. So, not to bring in the "Star Trek" reference with Space Force, this is digital. And you start thinking about some of the important trends, it's going to be up and down the stack, from hardware to software, to user experience, everything. Your thoughts and reaction. >> Yeah, absolutely. And so, what we're seeing is timelines shrinking dramatically because of the barrier to entry for new entrants and even your existing aerospace companies is incredibly low, right? So if you take previously where you had a technology on the ground and you wanted it in orbit, it would take years. Because you would test it on the ground. You would verify that it can operate in a space environment. And then you would go ahead and launch it. And we're talking tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to do that. Now, we've cut that down from years to months. When you have a prototype on the ground and you want to get it launched, you don't necessarily care if it fails on orbit the first time, because you're getting valuable data back. And so, we're seeing technology being developed for the first time on the ground and in orbit in a matter of a few months. And the whole kind of process that we're doing as a small business is trying to enable that. And so, allowing these entrepreneurs and small companies to get their technology in orbit at a price that is sometimes even cheaper than testing on the ground. >> You know this is a great point. I think this is really an important point to call out because we mentioned partnerships earlier, the economics and the business model of space is doable. I mean, you do a mission study. You get paid for that. You have technology that you get stuff up quickly, and there's a cost structure there. And again, the alternative was waterfall planning, years and millions. Now the form factors are doing, now, again, there may be different payloads involved, but you can standardize payloads. You've got robotic arms. This is all available. This brings up the congestion problem. This is going to be on the top of mind of the generals of course, but you've got the proliferation of these constellation systems. You're going to have more and more tech vectors. I mean, essentially that's malware. I mean, that's a probe. You throw something up in space that could cause some interference. Maybe a takeover. General, this is the real elephant in the room, the threat matrix from new stuff and new configurations. So general, how does the proliferation of constellation systems change the threat matrix? >> So I think the, you know I guess I'm going to be a little more optimistic John than I think you pitched that. I'm actually excited about these new mega constellations in LEO. I'm excited about the growing number of actors that are going into space for various reasons. And why is that? It's because we're starting to realize a new economic engine for the nation and for human society. So the question is, so I think we want that to happen. When we could go to almost any other domain in history and when air travel started to become much, much more commonplace with many kinds of actors from private pilots flying their small planes, all the way up to large airliners, there was a problem with congestion. There was a problem about, challenges about behavior, and are we going to be able to manage this? And yes we did. And it was for the great benefit of society. I could probably look to the maritime domain for similar kinds of things. And so this is actually exciting about space. We are just going to have to find the ways as a society, and it's not just the Department of Defense, it's going to be civil, it's going to be international, find the mechanisms to encourage this continued investment in the space domain. I do think that Space Force will play a role in providing security in the space environment, as we venture further out, as economic opportunities emerge, wherever they are in the lunar, Earth, lunar system, or even within the solar system. Space Force is going to play a role in that. But I'm actually really excited about those possibilities. Hey, by the way, I got to say, you made me think of this when you talked about "Star Trek" and Space Force and our technologies, I remember when I was younger watchin' the Next Generation series. I thought one of the coolest things, 'cause bein' a musician in my spare time, I thought one of the coolest things was when Commander Riker would walk into his quarters and say, "Computer play soft jazz." And there would just be, the computer would just play music. And this was an age when we had hard media. Like how will that, that is awesome. Man, I can't wait for the 23rd century when I can do that. And where we are today is so incredible on those lines. The things that I can ask Alexa or Siri to play. >> Well that's the thing, everything that's on "Star Trek," think about it, it's almost invented. I mean, you got the computers, you got, the only thing really is, holograms are startin' to come in, you got, now the transporter room. Now that's physics. We'll work on that. >> So there is this balance between physics and imagination, but we have not exhausted either. >> Well, firstly, everyone that knows me knows I'm a huge "Star Trek" fan, all the series. Of course, I'm an original purist, but at that level. But this is about economic incentive as well. Roland, I want to get your thoughts, 'cause the gloom and doom, we got to think about the bad stuff to make it good. If I put my glass half full on the table, this economic incentives, just like the example of the plane and the air traffic. There's more actors that are incented to have a secure system. What's your thoughts to general's comments around the optimism and the potential threat matrix that needs to be managed. >> Absolutely, so one of the things that we've seen over the years, as we build these small satellites is a lot of that technology that the General's talking about, voice recognition, miniaturized chips, and sensors, started on the ground. And I mean, you have your iPhone, that, about 15 years ago before the first iPhone came out, we were building small satellites in the lab and we were looking at cutting-edge, state-of-the-art magnetometers and sensors that we were putting in our satellites back then. We didn't know if they were going to work. And then a few years later, as these students graduate, they go off and they go out to other industries. And so, some of the technology that was first kind of put in these CubeSats in the early 2000s, kind of ended up in the first generation iPhone, smartphones. And so being able to take that technology, rapidly incorporate that into space and vice versa gives you an incredible economic advantage. Because not only are your costs going down because you're mass producing these types of terrestrial technologies, but then you can also increase revenue and profit by having smaller and cheaper systems. >> General, let's talk about that real quickly, that's a good point, I want to just shift it into the playbook. I mean, everyone talks about playbooks for management, for tech, for startups, for success. I mean, one of the playbooks that's clear from your history is investment in R&D around military and/or innovation that has a long view, spurs innovation, commercially. I mean, just there's a huge, many decades of history that shows that, hey we got to start thinking about these challenges. And next thing you know it's in an iPhone. This is history, this is not like a one off. And now with Space Force you're driving the main engine of innovation to be all digital. You know, we riff about "Star Trek" which is fun, the reality is you're going to be on the front lines of some really new, cool, mind-blowing things. Could you share your thoughts on how you sell that to the people who write the checks or recruit more talent? >> First, I totally agree with your thesis that national security, well, could probably go back an awful long way, hundreds to thousands of years, that security matters tend to drive an awful lot of innovation and creativity. You know I think probably the two things that drive people the most are probably an opportunity to make money, but beating that out are trying to stay alive. And so, I don't think that's going to go away. And I do think that Space Force can play a role as it pursues security structures, within the space domain to further encourage economic investment and to protect our space capabilities for national security purposes, are going to be at the cutting edge. This isn't the first time. I think we can point back to the origins of the internet, really started in the Department of Defense, with a partnership I should add, with academia. That's how the internet got started. That was the creativity in order to meet some needs there. Cryptography has its roots in security, in national security, but now we use it for economic reasons and a host of other kinds of reasons. And then space itself, I mean, we still look back to Apollo era as an inspiration for so many things that inspired people to either begin careers in technical areas or in space and so on. So I think in that same spirit, you're absolutely right. I guess I'm totally agreeing with your thesis. The Space Force will have a positive, inspirational influence in that way. And we need to realize that. So when we are asking for, when we're looking for how we need to meet capability needs, we need to spread that net very far, look for the most creative solutions and partner early and often with those that can work on those. >> When you're on the new frontier, you got to have a team sport, it's a team effort. And you mentioned the internet, just anecdotally I'm old enough to remember this 'cause I remember the days that it was goin' on, is that the policy decisions that the U.S. made at that time was to let it go a little bit invisible hand. They didn't try to commercialize it too fast. But there was some policy work that was done, that had a direct effect to the innovation. Versus take it over, and the next thing you know it's out of control. So I think there's this cross-disciplinary skillset becomes a big thing where you need to have more people involved. And that's one of the big themes of this symposium. So it's a great point. Thank you for sharing that. Roland, your thoughts on this because you got policy decisions. We all want to run faster. We want to be more innovative, but you got to have some ops view. Now, most of the ops view people want things very tight, very buttoned up, secure. The innovators want to go faster. It's the ying and yang. That's the world we live in. How's it all balance in your mind? >> Yeah, one of the things that may not be apparently obvious is that the U.S. government and Department of Defense is one of the biggest investors in technology in the aerospace sector. They're not the traditional venture capitalists, but they're the ones that are driving technology innovation because there's funding. And when companies see that the U.S. government is interested in something, businesses will revector to provide that capability. And, I would say the more recent years, we've had a huge influx of private equity, venture capital coming into the markets to kind of help augment the government investment. And I think having a good partnership and a relationship with these private equity, venture capitalists and the U.S. government is incredibly important because the two sides can help collaborate and kind of see a common goal. But then also too, on the other side there's that human element. And as General Shaw was saying, not only do companies obviously want to thrive and do really well, some companies just want to stay alive to see their technology kind of grow into what they've always dreamed of. And oftentimes entrepreneurs are put in a very difficult position because they have to make payroll, they have to keep the lights on. And so, sometimes they'll take investment from places where they may normally would not have, from potentially foreign investment that could potentially cause issues with the U.S. supply chain. >> Well, my final question is the best I wanted to save for last, because I love the idea of human space flight. I'd love to be on Mars. I'm not sure I'm able to make it someday, but how do you guys see the possible impacts of cybersecurity on expanding human space flight operations? I mean, general, this is your wheelhouse. This is your in command, putting humans in space and certainly robots will be there because they're easy to go 'cause they're not human. But humans in space. I mean, you startin' to see the momentum, the discussion, people are scratchin' that itch. What's your take on that? How do we see makin' this more possible? >> Well, I think we will see commercial space tourism in the future. I'm not sure how wide and large a scale it will become, but we will see that. And part of the, I think the mission of the Space Force is going to be probably to again, do what we're doin' today is have really good awareness of what's going on in the domain to ensure that that is done safely. And I think a lot of what we do today will end up in civil organizations to do space traffic management and safety in that arena. And, it is only a matter of time before we see humans going, even beyond the, NASA has their plan, the Artemis program to get back to the moon and the gateway initiative to establish a space station there. And that's going to be a NASA exploration initiative. But it is only a matter of time before we have private citizens or private corporations putting people in space and not only for tourism, but for economic activity. And so it'll be really exciting to watch. It'll be really exciting and Space Force will be a part of it. >> General, Roland, I want to thank you for your valuable time to come on this symposium. Really appreciate it. Final comment, I'd love you to spend a minute to share your personal thoughts on the importance of cybersecurity to space and we'll close it out. We'll start with you Roland. >> Yeah, so I think the biggest thing I would like to try to get out of this from my own personal perspective is creating that environment that allows the aerospace supply chain, small businesses like ourselves, be able to meet all the requirements to protect and safeguard our data, but also create a way that we can still thrive and it won't stifle innovation. I'm looking forward to comments and questions, from the audience to really kind of help, basically drive to that next step. >> General final thoughts, the importance of cybersecurity to space. >> I'll go back to how I started I think John and say that space and cyber are forever intertwined, they're BFFs. And whoever has my job 50 years from now, or a hundred years from now, I predict they're going to be sayin' the exact same thing. Cyber and space are intertwined for good. We will always need the cutting edge, cybersecurity capabilities that we develop as a nation or as a society to protect our space capabilities. And our cyber capabilities are going to need space capabilities in the future as well. >> General John Shaw, thank you very much. Roland Coelho, thank you very much for your great insight. Thank you to Cal Poly for puttin' this together. I want to shout out to the team over there. We couldn't be in-person, but we're doing a virtual remote event. I'm John Furrier with "theCUBE" and SiliconANGLE here in Silicon Valley, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(soft music) >> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is theCUBE Conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman coming to you from our Boston area studio here for a CUBE conversation. Really like when we can dig into help some of the nonprofits in our industry, going to be talking about, training, helping other people lift up their careers. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guests, Jerome Hardaway. He's the founder of vets who code coming down from Nashville, Jerome, I seem to remember a time where I was able to travel. I did some lovely hiking even saw bear last time I was down in Nashville. Thanks so much for joining us. Roger that. Thank you, a funny story. I saw a cow on the loose while driving on the highway yesterday. So not much has changed. (Jerome laughs) Thank you guys for having me. >> Yeah, it is a little bit of strange times here in the Covert area. I live kind of suburban Massachusetts area. One of my neighbors did report a small bear in the area. I'm definitely seeing more than just the usual, what kind of wild turkeys and the like that we get up in New England, but let's talk about Vets Who Code. So, you're the founder, the name doesn't leave much up for us to guess what you do, but tell us a little bit as to the inspiration and the goals of your organization. Roger that, Vets Who Code is the first veteran founded, operated and led, a remote 501 C three that focuses on training veterans regardless where they are and modern age of technologies. Our stack right now, I would say is focused more towards front-end DevOps with a lot of serverless technologies being built-in. And that's pretty much what exactly what we do well. >> Well awesome, I had been loving digging into the serverless ecosystem the last few years. Definitely an exciting area, help us understand a little bit, who comes and joins this? What skill set do they have to have coming in? And explain a little bit the programs that they can offer that they can be part of. >> Yeah, cool. So we run Vets Who Code like a mixture between a tech company or a tech nonprofit, I guess, using those practices while also using military practices as well. And the people that come in are veterans and military spouses. And we try to use what we call a pattern matching practice, showcasing like. Hey, these are the things, he's been in military. This is how it translates to the tech side. Like, our sit reps is what you guys would call stand up. Kanban is what we would call like systems checks and frag orders, Op orders, things like that, or, our SLPs. So we turn around, we just train them, retrain them. So that way they can understand the lingo, understand how things, how you code, move and communicate and make sure that these guys and girls, they know how the work as JavaScript engineers and a serverless community. As of right now, we've helped 252 veterans in 37 States get jobs, our social economic impacts, then I think it's at 17.6 million right now. So it all from the comfort of their homes, that's like the cool and free, and those are like the coolest things that we've been able to do. >> Wow, that's fascinating. Jerome, I heard something that you've talked about, leveraging the military organizational styles. I'm just curious, there's in the coding world a lot of times we talk about Conway's law, which is that the code will end up resembling the look of the organization. And you talk about DevOps, DevOps is all about various organizations collaborating and working together. It seems a little bit different from what I would think of traditional military command and control. So is that anything you've given any thought to? Is there some of the organizational pieces that you need to talk to people about? Moving into these environments compared to what they might've had in the military. >> Negative, I think the biggest misconception that we have is that people, when you're talking about how the military moves, they're thinking of the military of yesteryear of 20, 30, 40 years ago. They're not thinking of global war on terrorism veterans and how we move and things like that. We understand distributed chains. We understand cause we call, that's what we've done at CENTAF and CENTCOM in Iraq and Afghanistan. So we honored, like we are already doing a lot of this stuff, we just naming it different. So that's part of the thing that we have as an advantage as the, cause all the people who are educators, there are veterans who learn how to code and they've been working in industry and they know. And so when they're teaching, they know the entire process that a veteran's going to go through. So that's how now we focus on things. And so the organizational structure for us first term to second term veterans is pretty normal. If you're coming out within the last, heck 10 years. (Jerome laughs) >> Yeah, absolutely. That's wonderful. And I I've had the opportunity to work with plenty of people that had come from the military. Very successful in the tech industry, definitely tend to be hard workers and engaged in what they'r doing. Curious, you talked about being able to do this remotely and then it is free. What's the impact of the current global pandemic? Everything that's happening here in 2020 been on what you're doing in your resources. >> Of the impact, unfortunately, I mean, not unfortunately, fortunately it has been nothing but positive. It's been crazy, we've gotten more applications. We have people are seeing that during, I was the crazy person in the room, when in 2014, when I was saying nonprofits should move to remote first protocols. So that way they could have greater impact for less, with less financial resources. And back then I was the, like what are you talking about? This is the way we've always done. Well now everybody was scrambling to try to figure out how to help people without being in same room with them. We were like, Oh, okay, lt's do today. So we got an influx of people applying, influx of people, sending me, trying to get into our next cohort in August. It's just, the biggest thing that has happened for Vets Who Code is yet, it's been a really positive experience for us, which is really weird to say, but I think it has, my doomsday Murphy's law style of preparing, I assume that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So I try to prepare for that. So being open source, being serverless, being having everything in a manner to where--in case I was out of the pot, out of the situation, other people operate having this distributed teams, or there are other leaders that can take over and do things. It's all stuff that, I guess I got from the military. So, we were know we were prepared because there was absolutely zero pivot for us. If anything, it has been more resources. We've been able to dive deeper in more subjects because people have had more time, but, we can do, we can dive deeper into AWS. We started a lunch and learn every two weeks. We actually have a lunch and learn next week with Dr. Lee Johnson. And she's going to be talking, we open that to it by all juniors and entry level devs, developers, regardless of whether you're a veteran or not, we just throw it on Twitter and let them get in. And the focus will be on tech ethics. We all know, right now we've been leading the charge on trying to make sure people are supercharging their skills during this time frame. So that's what, it's been very positive. I've been working with magazine, front-end masters. It's been awesome. >> Well, that's wonderful. Wish everyone had the mindset coming into 2020, because it does seem that anything that could go wrong has, (both laugh) I'm curious, once people have skilled up and they've gone through the program, what connections do you have with industry? How do you help with job placement in that sort of activity? >> That is the most asked question, because that is the thing that people expect because of code schools, because of our educational program protocols. We don't really need that issue because our veterans are skilled enough to where to hiring managers know the quality that we produce. I live in Nashville and I've only been able to place one veteran that I've trained locally in the community because of fame companies have snatched up every other veteran I've ever trained in the community, so things like that, it's not a problem because no, a usually 80% of our veterans have jobs before they even graduate. So you're literally picking up, picking people who, they know they have the potential to get a bit companies if they put the work in and it's just as they come, we actually have people. I think a company reached out to me yesterday and I was like, I don't even have people for you. They already have jobs. (jerome laughs) Or I'm in a situation now where all my senior devs are looking for fame companies. Cause that's one of the things we do is that we support our veterans from reentry to retirement. So we're not like other code schools where they only focus on that 30 to 60 to 90 days, so that first job, our veterans, they keep coming back to re-skill, get more skills, come up to the lunch and learns, come to our Slack side chats to become better programmers. And once they're, so we've helped several of our programmers go from entry-level dev to senior dev, from absolutely zero experience. And so, I think that's the most rewarding thing. When you see a person who they came in knowing nothing. And three years later, like after the cohort safe they got their job and then they come back after they got the jobs, they want to get more skills and they get another job and then they come back. And the next thing, my favorite, one of my favorites Schuster, he starts at a local web shop, a web dev shop in Savannah, Georgia. And then next thing, oh, he's on Amazon, he's at Amazon three years later and you're like, Oh wow, we did that, that's awesome. So that's the path that we do is awesome. >> I'm curious, are there certain skill sets that you see in more need than other? And I'm also curious, do you recommend, or do you help people along with certain certifications? Thinking, the cloud certifications definitely have been on the rise, the last couple years. >> I feel like the cloud, the cloud certifications have been on the rise because it's expensive to like test for that stuff. If a person messes up, unless you have a very dedicated environment to where they can't mess up, they can cost you a lot of money, right? So you want that certain, right? But for us, it's been, we just focused on what we like to call front-end DevOps. We focus on Jamstack, which is JavaScript, APIs and markup, also along with a lot of serverless. So we're using AWS, we're using, also they're, they're learning Lambda functions, all this stuff. We're using a query language called GraphQL. We're using Apollo with that query language. We're using some node, React, GET, Speed. And a lot of third party API has to do like a lot of heavy lifting cause we believe that the deeper dive that a person has in a language and being able to manipulate and utilize APIs that they can, the better they will be, Right? So, same way that colleges do it, but a more modern take like colleges, they give you the most painful language to learn, which is usually like C right? Where you had to make everything a very low-level language. And then you're going through this process of building. And because of that, other languages are easier because you felt the pain points. We do the same thing, but with JavaScript, because it's the most accessible, painful language on earth, that's what I called it with Wire magazine last year anyway. (jerome laughs) >> So Jerome, you've laid out how you you're well organized. You're lean and financially, making sure that things are done responsibly. We want to give you the opportunity though. What's the call to action? Vets Who Code, you're looking for more people to participate. Is it sponsorships? Work in the community, look to engage. >> Roger that, we are looking for two things. One, we're always looking for people to help support us. We're open source, we're on GitHub sponsors. Like the people who we we're up, we're open source. But the people that do most of our tickets are the students themselves. So that's one of the best things about us. there is no better move, feeling that having something in production that works, right? It actually does something right? Like, Oh, this actually helps people, right? So we help have our veterans like actually pull tickets and do things like that. But, we also, we build, we're building out teams that they're on all the time as well. We have our new tutorials team or veterans. They literally built front facing tutorials for people on the outside. So that way they can learn little skills as we also have podcasts team and they're always podcasting, always interviewing people that in community, from our mentors to our students, to our alumni. And so just, let's throw our podcasts on Spotify. Let's do some codes, the best Code podcast and sponsor song get up. >> Wonderful, Jerome. We want to give you the final word. you're very passionate. You've got a lot interested, loved hearing about some of the skill sets that you're helping others with. What's exciting you these days? What kind of things are you digging into, beyond Vets Who Code? >> Oh man, everything serverless dude. As a front-end, as a person who was full stack and move to front-end. This has never been a more exciting time to learn how to code because there's so many serverless technologies and is leveling the playing field for front-end engineers, just knowing a little bit of like server-side code and having DevOp skills and being able to work in a CLI, you can do like Jamstack and the people that are using it. You have Nike, you have governments. It's just, it's such an exciting time to be a front-end. So I'm just like, and just seeing also how people are like really turning towards wanting their data more open source. So that's another thing that's really exciting for me. I've never been a person that was very highbrow when it came to talking about code. I felt like that was kind of boring, but seeing how, when it comes to like how code is actually helping normal, average everyday people and how the culture as a whole is starting to get more hip to how, API is like our running the world and how tech is being leveraged for. And it gets them, I'm on fire with these conversations, so I try to contain it cause I don't want to scare anyone on TV, but we could talk like, we could talk hours of that stuff. Love it. >> Well, Jerome, thank you so much for sharing with our community, everything you're doing and wonderful activity Vets Who Code, definitely call out to the community, make sure check it out, support it. If you can and tie so much in Jerome, I've got a regular series I do called Cloud Native Insights that are poking at some of those areas that you were talking about serverless and some of the emerging areas. So Jerome, thanks so much for joining, pleasure having you on the program. >> Roger that, thank you for having me. >> All right. Be sure to check out thecube.net for all of the videos that we have as well as Siliconangle.com for the news an6d the writeups, what we do. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE. (soft music)