>>Welcome back here on the Cube. I'm John Walls. We are in Las Vegas at the Venetian, and this is Reinvent 22 in the Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. Glad to have you with us here as we continue our conversations. I'm joined by Paul Puckett, who's the former director of the Enterprise Cloud Management Services at the US Army. Paul, good to see you sir. Hey, you as well, John. Thank you. And Justin, she who is managing director and cloud go to market lead at Accenture Federal Services. Justin, good morning to you. Good morning, John. Yeah, glad to have you both here on the cube. First time too, I believe, right? Yes sir. Well, welcome. I wish we had some kind of baptism or indoctrination, but I'll see what I can come up with in the next 10 minutes for you. Let's talk about the Army, Paul. So enterprise cloud management, US Army. You know, I can't imagine the scale we're talking about here. I can't imagine the solutions we're talking about. I can't imagine the users we're talking about. Just for our folks at home, paint the picture a little bit of what kind of landscape it is that you have to cover with that kind of title. >>Sure. The United States Army, about 1.4 million people. Obviously a global organization responsible for protecting and defending the United States as part of our sister services in the Department of Defense. And scale often comes up a lot, right? And we talk about any capability to your solution for the United States Army scale is the, the number one thing, but oftentimes people overlook quality first. And actually when you think of the partnership between the Army and Accenture Federal, we thought a lot when it came to establishing the enterprise Cloud management agency that we wanted to deliver quality first when it came to adopting cloud computing and then scale that quality and not so much be afraid of the, the scale of the army and the size that forces us to make bad decisions. Cuz we wanted to make sure that we proved that there was opportunity and value in the cloud first, and then we wanted to truly scale that. And so no doubt, an immense challenge. The organization's been around for now three years, but I think that we've established irreversible momentum when it comes to modernization, leveraging cloud computing >>For the army. So let's back up. You kind of threw it in there, the ecma. So this agency was, was your a collaboration, right? To create from the ground up and it's in three years in existence. So let's just talk about that. What went into that thinking? What went into the planning and then how did you actually get it up and run into the extent that it is today? >>Sure. Well, it was once the enterprise cloud management office. It was a directorate within the, the CIO G six of the United States Army. So at the headquarters, the army, the chief information Officer, and the G six, which is essentially the military arm for all IT capability were once a joint's organization and the ECMO was created to catalyze the adoption of cloud computing. The army had actually been on a, a cloud adoption journey for many years, but there wasn't a lot of value that was actually derived. And so they created the ecma, well, the ECMO at the time brought me in as the director. And so we were responsible for establishing the new strategy for the adoption of cloud. One of the components of that strategy was essentially we needed an opportunity to be able to buy cloud services at scale. And this was part of our buy secure and build model that we had in place. And so part of the buy piece, we put an acquisition strategy together around how we wanted to buy cloud at scale. We called it the cloud account management optimization. OTA >>Just rolls right off the >>Tongue, it just rolls right off the tongue. And for those that love acronyms, camo, >>Which I liked it when I was say cama, I loved that. That was, that was, >>You always have to have like a tundra, a little >>Piece of that. Very good. It was good. >>But at the time it was novetta, no, Nevada's been bought up by afs, but Novea won that agreement. And so we've had this partnership in place now for just about a year and a half for buying cloud computing net scale. >>So let's talk about, about what you deal with on, on the federal services side here, Justin, in terms of the army. So obviously governance, a major issue, compliance, a major issue, security, you know, paramount importance and all that STEM leads up to quality that Paul was talking about. So when you were looking at this and keeping all those factors in, in your mind, right? I mean, how many, like, oh my God, what kind of days did you have? Oh, well, because this was a handful. >>Well, it was, but you could see when we were responding to the acquisition that it was really, you know, forward thinking and forward leaning in terms of how they thought about cloud acquisition and cloud governance and cloud management. And it's really kind of a sleepy area like cloud account acquisition. Everyone's like, oh, it's easy to get in the cloud, you know, run your credit card on Amazon and you're in, in 30 seconds or less. That's really not the case inside the federal government, whether it's the army, the Air Force or whoever, right? Those, those are, they're real challenges in procuring and acquiring cloud. And so it was clear from, you know, Paul's office that they understood those challenges and we were excited to really meet them with them. >>And, and how, I guess from an institutional perspective, before this was right, I I assume very protective, very tight cloistered, right? You, you, in terms of being open to or, or a more open environment, there might have been some pushback was they're not. Right? So dealing with that, what did you find that to be the case? Well, so >>There's kind of a few pieces to unpacking that. There's a lot of fear in trepidation around something you don't understand, right? And so part of it is the teaching and training and the, and the capability and the opportunity in the cloud and the ability to be exceptionally secure when it comes to no doubt, the sensitivity of the information of the Department of Defense, but also from an action acquisition strategy perspective, more from a financial perspective, the DOD is accustomed to buying hardware. We make these big bets of these big things to, to live in today's centers. And so when we talk about consuming cloud as a utility, there's a lot of fear there as well, because they don't really understand how to kind of pay for something by the drink, if you will, because it incentivizes them to be more efficient with their utilization of resources. >>But when you look at the budgeting process of the d od, there really is not that much of incentive for efficiency. The p PPE process, the planning program, budgeting, execution, they care about execution, which is spending money and you can spend a lot of money in the cloud, right? But how are you actually utilizing that? And so what we wanted to do is create that feedback loop and so the utilization is actually fed into our financial systems that help us then estimate into the future. And that's the capability that we partnered with AFS on is establishing the closing of that feedback loop. So now we can actually optimize our utilization of the cloud. And that's actually driving better incentives in the PPE >>Process. You know, when you think about these keywords here, modernized, digitized, data driven, so on, so forth, I, I don't think a lot of people might connect that to the US government in general just because of, you know, it's a large intentionally slow moving bureaucratic machine, right? Is that fair to characterize it that way? It >>Is, but not in this case. Right? So what we done, >>You you totally juxtapose that. Yeah. >>Yeah. So what we've done is we've really enabled data driven decision making as it relates to cloud accounts and cloud governance. And so we have a, a tool called Cloud Tracker. We deployed for the army at a number of different classifications, and you get a full 360 view of all of your cloud utilization and cloud spend, you know, really up to date within 24 hours of it occurring, right? And there a lot of folks, you know, they didn't never went into the console, they never looked at what they were spending in cloud previously. And so now you just go to a simple web portal and see the entire entirety of the army cloud spend right there at your fingertips. So that really enables like better decision making in terms of like purchasing savings plans and reserved instances and other sorts of AWS specific tools to help you save money. >>So Paul, tell me about Cloud Tracker then. Yeah, I mean from the client side then, can you just say this dashboard lays it out for you right? In great detail about what kind of usage, what kind of efficiencies I assume Yeah. What's working, what's not? >>Absolutely. Well, and, and I think a few things to unpack that's really important here is listen, any cloud service provider has a concept. You can see what you're actually spending. But when it comes to money in the United States government, there are different colors of money. There's regulations when it comes to how money is identified for different capabilities or incentives. And you've gotta be very explicit in how you track and how you spend that money from an auditability perspective. Beyond that, there is a move when it comes to the technology business management, which is the actual labeling of what we actually spend money on for different services or labor or software. And what Cloud Tracker allows us to do is speak the language of the different colors of money. It allows us to also get very fine grain in the actual analysis of, from a TBM perspective, what we're spending on. >>But then also it has real time hooks into our financial systems for execution. And so what that really does for us is it allows us to complete the picture, not just be able to see our spend in the cloud, but also be able to able to see that spending context of all things in the P P P E process as well as the execution process that then really empowers the government to make better investments. And all we're seeing is either cost avoidance or cost savings simply because we're able to close that loop, like I said. Yep. And then we're able to redirect those funds, retag them, remove them through our actual financial office within the headquarters of the army, and be able to repurpose that to other modernization efforts that Congress is essentially asking us to invest >>In. Right. So you know how much money you have, basically. Exactly. Right. You know how much you've already spent, you know how you're spending it, and now you how much you have left, >>You can provide a reliable forecast for your spend. >>Right. You know, hey, we're, we're halfway through this quarter, we're halfway through the, the fiscal year, whatever the case might be. >>Exactly. And the focus on expenditures, you know, the government rates you on, you know, how much have you spent, right? So you have a clear total transparency into what you're going to spend through the rest of the fiscal. Sure. >>All right. Let's just talk about the relationship quickly then about going forward then in terms of federal services and then what on, on the, the US Army side. I mean, what now you've laid this great groundwork, right? You have a really solid foundation where now what next? >>We wanna be all things cloud to the army. I mean, we think there's tremendous opportunity to really aid the modernization efforts and governance across the holistic part of the army. So, you know, we just, we want to, we wanna do it all with the Army as much as we can. It's, it's, it's a fantastic >>Opportunity. Yeah. AFS is, is in a very kind of a strategic role. So as part of the ecma, we own the greater strategy and execution for adoption of cloud on behalf of the entire army. Now, when it comes to delivery of individual capabilities for mission here and there, that's all specific to system owners and different organizations. AFS plays a different role in this instance where they're able to more facilitate the greater strategy on the financial side of the house. And what we've done is we've proven the ability to adopt cloud as a utility rather than this fixed thing, kind of predict the future, spend a whole bunch of money and never use the resource. We're seeing the efficiency for the actual utilization of cloud as a utility. This actually came out as one of the previous NDAs. And so how we actually address nda, I believe it was 2018 in the adoption of cloud as a utility, really is now cornerstone of modernization across all of the do d and really feeds into the Jo Warfighting cloud capability, major acquisition on behalf of all of the D O D to establish buying cloud as just a common service for everyone. >>And so we've been fortunate to inform that team of some of our lessons learned, but when it comes to the partnership, we just see camo moving into production. We've been live for now a year and a half. And so there's another two and a half years of runway there. And then AFS also plays a strategic role at part of our cloud enablement division, which is essentially back to that teaching part, helping the Army understand the opportunity of cloud computing, align the architectures to actually leverage those resources and then deliver capabilities that save soldier's >>Lives. Well, you know, we've, we've always known that the Army does its best work on the ground, and you've done all this groundwork for the military, so I'm not surprised, right? It's, it's a winning formula. Thanks to both of you for being with us here in the executive summit. Great conversation. Awesome. Thanks for having us. A good deal. All right. Thank you. All right. You are watching the executive summit sponsored by Accenture here at Reinvent 22, and you're catching it all on the cube, the leader in high tech coverage.

>>Welcome back to the cubes coverage here in Washington D. C. For a W. S. Public sector summit. I'm john fraser host of the queues and in person event but of course we have remote guests. It's a hybrid event as well. Amazon is streaming amazon web services, streaming all the teams, some of the key notes of course all the cube interviews are free and streaming out there as well on the all the cube channels and all the social coordinates. Our next guest is Melissa Pavlik President and Ceo POV con joining me here to talk about predictive maintenance, bringing that to life for the U. S. Air Force melissa. Thanks for coming in remotely on our virtual cube here at the physical event. >>Excellent, thank you. Good morning >>Show. People have been been um face to face for the first time since 2019. A lot of people remote calling in checking things out kind of an interesting time, right? We're living in so uh what's your, what's your take on all this? >>Sure. I mean it's a new way of doing business, right? Um I will say, I guess for us as a company we always have been remote so it's not too much of a change but it is definitely challenging, especially trying to engage with such a large user community such as the United States Air Force who isn't always used to working as remotely. So it's definitely a unique challenge for sure. >>Well let's get into, I love this topic. You had a real success story. There is a case study with the U. S. Air Force, what's the relationship take us through what you guys are doing together? >>Sure. Absolutely. So we started working with the Air Force now about five years ago on this subject and predictive maintenance. Sometimes you might hear me catch myself and say CBM plus condition based maintenance. They're synonymous. They mean the exact same thing basically. But about five years ago the Air Force was contemplating how do we get into a space of getting ahead of unscheduled maintenance events? Um if the military they're big push always his readiness how do we improve readiness? So to do that it was a big ask of do we have the data to get ahead of failures? So we started on this journey about five years ago as I said and frankly we started under the radar we weren't sure if it was going to work. So we started with two platforms. And of course when I think a lot of people here predictive maintenance, they immediately think of sensor data and sensors are wonderful data but unfortunately especially in an entity such as the Air Force not all assets are censored. So it also opened up a whole other avenue of how do we use the data that they have today to be able to generate and get ahead of failures. So it did start a really great partnership working not only with the individual, I'll say Air Force entities that Air Force Lifecycle Management Center but we also worked across all the major commands, the individual units, supply control, logistics and everyone else. So it's been a really great team effort to bring together all of those but typically would be rather segregated operations together. >>Yeah, they're getting a lot of props lately on a lot of their projects across the board and this one particular, how did you guys specifically help them modernize and with their and get this particular maintenance thing off the ground? >>Absolutely. I think quite simply it was what really we put their existing data to work. We really wanted to get in there and think about they already had a ton of data. There wasn't a need to generate more. We're talking about petabytes of information. So how do we use that and put it into a focus of getting ahead of failure? We said we established basically three key performance parameters right from the beginning it was, we knew we wanted to increase availability which was going to directly improve readiness. We needed to make sure we were reducing mission aborts and we wanted to get ahead of any kind of maintenance costs. So for us it was really how do we leverage and embrace machine learning and ai paired with just big data analytics and how do we take frankly what is more of a World War Two era architecture and turn it into something that is in the information age. So our modernization really started with how do we take their existing data and turn it into something that is useful and then simultaneously how do we educate the workforce and helping them understand what truly machine learning and AI offer because I think sometimes there's everyone has their own opinions of what that means, but when you put it into action and you need to make sure that it's something that they can take action on, right, it's not just pushing a dot moving numbers around, it's really thinking about and considering how their operations are done and then infusing that with the data on the back end, >>it's awesome. You know the old workflows in the cloud, this is legit, I mean physical assets, all kinds of things and his legacy is also but you want the modernization, I was gonna ask you about the machine learning and ai component, you brought that up. What specifically are you leveraging their from the ai side of the machine learning side? >>Absolutely for us, most and foremost we're talking about responsible a i in this case because unfortunately a lot of the data in the Air Force is human entry, so it's manual, which basically means it's open and rife for a lot of error into that data. So we're really focused heavily on the data integrity, we're really focused on utilizing different types of machine learning because I think on the surface the general opinion is there's a lot of data here. So it would open itself naturally into a lot of potential machine learning techniques, but the reality situation is this data is not human understandable unless you are a prior maintainer, frankly, it's a lot of codes, there's not a whole lot of common taxonomy. So what we've done is we've looked at those supervised and unsupervised models, we've taken a whole different approach to infusing it with truly, what I would say arguably is the most important key element, domain expertise. You know, someone who actually understands what this data means. So that way we can in in End up with actionable output something that the air force can actually put into use, see the results coming out of it. And thus far it's been great. Air mobility command has come back and said we've been able to reduce their my caps, which are parts waiting for maintenance by 18%. That's huge in this space. >>Yeah, it's interesting about unsupervised and supervised machine learning. That's a big distinct because you mentioned there's a lot of human error going on. That's a big part. Can you explain a little bit more because that was that to solve the human error part or was it the mix and match because the different data sets, but why the why both machine learning modes. >>So really it was to address both items frankly. When we started down this path, we weren't sure we were going to find right, We went in with some hypotheses and some of those ended up being true and others were not. So it was a way for us to quickly adjust as we needed to again put the data into actionable use and make sure we were responsibly doing that. So for us a lot of it, because it's human understanding and human error that goes into this natural language processing is a really big area in this space. So for us, adjusting between and trying different techniques is really where we were able to discover and find out what was going to be the most effective and useful in this particular space as well as cost effective. Because for us there's also this resistance, you have to have resist the urge to want to monitor everything. In this case we're talking about really focusing on those top drivers and depending on the type of data that we had, depending on the users that we knew were going to get involved with it as well as I would say, the historical information, it really would help us dictate on supervised versus supervised and going the unsupervised route. In some cases there's just still not ready for that because the data is just so manual. Once we get to a point where there is more automation and more automated data collection, unsupervised will definitely no doubt become more valuable right now though, in order to get those actionable. That supervised modeling was really what we found to be the most valuable >>and that makes total sense. You've got a lot of head room to grow into with Unsupervised, which is actually harder as you as you know, everyone, everyone everyone knows that. But I mean that's really the reality. Congratulations. I gotta ask you on the AWS side what part do they play in all this? Obviously the cloud um their relationship with the Air Force as well, what's their what's their role in this particular maintenance solution? >>Sure, absolutely. And I'll just say, I mean we're really proud to be a partner network with them and so when we started this there was no cloud, so today a lot of opportunity or things we hear about in the Air Force where like cloud one platform one, those weren't in existence, you know, five years ago or so. So for us when we started down this path and we had to identify very quickly a format and a host location that would allow us not only handle large amounts of data but do all of the deep analysis we needed to AWS GovCloud is where that came in. Plus it also is awesome that they were already approved at I. L. Five to be able to host that we in collaboration with them host a nist 801 +71 environment. And so it's really allowed us to to grow and deliver this this impact out over 6000 users today on the Air Force side. So for us with a W. S. Has been a great partnership. They obviously have some really great native services that are inside their cloud as well as the pairing and easy collaboration among not only licensed products but also all that free and open source that's out there because again, arguably that's the best community to pull from because they're constantly evolving and working in the space. But a W has been a really great partner for us and of course we have some of our very favorite services I'm happy to talk about, but they've been really great to work with >>what's the top services. >>So for us, a lot of top services are like ec two's work spaces, of course S three and Glacier um are right up there, but you really enjoy working across glue Athena were really big on, we find a commercial service we're looking for that's not yet available in Govcloud. And we pull in our AWS partners and ask, hey, you know when it's going to get into the gulf cloud space and they move pretty quickly to get those in there. So recent months are definitely a theme in blue. Well, >>congratulations, great solution, I love this application because it highlights the power of the cloud, What's the future in store for the U. S. Air Force when it comes to predictive maintenance. >>Sure. I mean, I think at this point they are just going to continue adding additional top driver analyses you through our work for the past couple years. We've identified a lot of operational and functional opportunities for them. So there's gonna be some definitely foundational changing coming along, some enabling new technologies to get that data integrity more automated as well so that there isn't such a heavy lift on the downstream, we're talking about data cleansing, but I think as far as predictive maintenance goes, we're definitely going to see more and more improvements across the readiness level, getting rid of and eliminating that unscheduled event that drives a lot of the readiness concerns that are out there. And we're also hoping to see a lot more improvement and I'd say enhancement across the supply chain because we know that's also an area that really they could get ahead on your part of our other work as we developed a five year long range supply forecast and it's really been opening some eyes to see how they can better plan, not only on the maintenance side but also supporting maintenance from a logistics and supply, >>great stuff melissa. Great to have you on President Ceo Path Con, you're also the business owner. Um how's things going with the business? The pandemic looks like I'm gonna come out of it stronger. Got the tailwind with cloud technology. The modernization boom is here in, in Govcloud, 10 years celebrating Govcloud birthday here at this event. How's business house? How are you doing >>good. Everything has actually been, we were, I guess fortunate, as I mentioned the very beginning, we were remote companies. So fortunately for us the pandemic did not have that much of an operational hiccup and being that a lot of our clients are in the federal space, we were able to continue working and amazingly we actually grew during the pandemic. We added quite a bit of a personnel to the team and so we're looking forward to doing some more predictive maintenance across, not only explaining the Air Force but the other services as well. >>You know, the people who were Agile had some cloud action going on, we're productive and they came out stronger melissa. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you for coming in remotely and joining our face to face event from the interwebs. Thank you so much for coming on cuba >>All right, thank you, john have a great rest of your day. >>Okay. I'm john for here at the cube with a W. S. Public sector summit in person and remote bringing guest on. We've got the new capability of bringing remotes in. We do in person. I'll see you face to face hear the cube and it's like to be here at the public sector summit. Thanks for watching. Mhm. Mhm >>robert, Herjavec

>>AWS public sector summit here in person in Washington, D. C. For two days live. Finally a real event. I'm john for your host of the cube. Got a great guest Howard Levinson from data bricks, regional vice president and general manager of the federal team for data bricks. Uh Super unicorn. Is it a decade corn yet? It's uh, not yet public but welcome to the cube. >>I don't know what the next stage after unicorn is, but we're growing rapidly. >>Thank you. Our audience knows David bricks extremely well. Always been on the cube many times. Even back, we were covering them back when big data was big data. Now it's all data everything. So we watched your success. Congratulations. Thank you. Um, so there's no, you know, not a big bridge for us across to see you here at AWS public sector summit. Tell us what's going on inside the data bricks amazon relationship. >>Yeah. It's been a great relationship. You know, when the company got started some number of years ago we got a contract with the government to deliver the data brooks capability and they're classified cloud in amazon's classified cloud. So that was the start of a great federal relationship today. Virtually all of our businesses in AWS and we run in every single AWS environment from commercial cloud to Govcloud to secret top secret environments and we've got customers doing great things and experiencing great results from data bricks and amazon. >>The federal government's the classic, I call migration opportunity. Right? Because I mean, let's face it before the pandemic even five years ago, even 10 years ago. Glacier moving speed slow, slow and they had to get modernized with the pandemic forced really to do it. But you guys have already cleared the runway with your value problems. You've got lake house now you guys are really optimized for the cloud. >>Okay, hardcore. Yeah. We are, we only run in the cloud and we take advantage of every single go fast feature that amazon gives us. But you know john it's The Office of Management and Budget. Did a study a couple of years ago. I think there were 28,000 federal data centers, 28,000 federal data centers. Think about that for a minute and just think about like let's say in each one of those data centers you've got a handful of operational data stores of databases. The federal government is trying to take all of that data and make sense out of it. The first step to making sense out of it is bringing it all together, normalizing it. Fed aerating it and that's exactly what we do. And that's been a real win for our federal clients and it's been a real exciting opportunity to watch people succeed in that >>endeavour. We have another guest on. And she said those data center huggers tree huggers data center huggers, majority of term people won't let go. Yeah. So but they're slowly dying away and moving on to the cloud. So migrations huge. How are you guys migrating with your customers? Give us an example of how it's working. What are some of the use cases? >>So before I do that I want to tell you a quick story. I've I had the luxury of working with the Air Force Chief data officer Ailene vedrine and she is commonly quoted as saying just remember as as airmen it's not your data it's the Air Force's data. So people were data center huggers now their data huggers but all of that data belongs to the government at the end of the day. So how do we help in that? Well think about all this data sitting in all these operational data stores they're getting it's getting updated all the time. But you want to be able to Federated this data together and make some sense out of it. So for like an organization like uh us citizenship and immigration services they had I think 28 different data sources and they want to be able to pull that data basically in real time and bring it into a data lake. Well that means doing a change data capture off of those operational data stores transforming that data and normalizing it so that you can then enjoy it. And we've done that I think they're now up to 70 data sources that are continually ingested into their data lake. And from there they support thousands of users doing analysis and reports for the whole visa processing system for the United States, the whole naturalization environment And their efficiency has gone up I think by their metrics by 24 x. >>Yeah. I mean Sandy carter was just on the cube earlier. She's the Vice president partner ecosystem here at public sector. And I was coming to her that federal game has changed, it used to be hard to get into you know everybody and you navigate the trip wires and all the subtle hints and and the people who are friends and it was like cloak and dagger and so people were locked in on certain things databases and data because now has to be freely available. I know one of the things that you guys are passionate about and this is kind of hard core architectural thing is that you need horizontally scalable data to really make a I work right. Machine learning works when you have data. How far along are these guys in their thinking when you have a customer because we're seeing progress? How far along are we? >>Yeah, we still have a long way to go in the federal government. I mean, I tell everybody, I think the federal government's probably four or five years behind what data bricks top uh clients are doing. But there are clearly people in the federal government that have really ramped it up and are on a par were even exceeding some of the commercial clients, U. S. C. I. S CBP FBI or some of the clients that we work with that are pretty far ahead and I'll say I mentioned a lot about the operational data stores but there's all kinds of data that's coming in at U S. C. I. S. They do these naturalization interviews, those are captured in real text. So now you want to do natural language processing against them, make sure these interviews are of the highest quality control, We want to be able to predict which people are going to show up for interviews based on their geospatial location and the day of the week and other factors the weather perhaps. So they're using all of these data types uh imagery text and structure data all in the Lake House concept to make predictions about how they should run their >>business. So that's a really good point. I was talking with keith brooks earlier directive is development, go to market strategy for AWS public sector. He's been there from the beginning this the 10th year of Govcloud. Right, so we're kind of riffing but the jpl Nasa Jpl, they did production workloads out of the gate. Yeah. Full mission. So now fast forward today. Cloud Native really is available. So like how do you see the the agencies in the government handling Okay. Re platform and I get that but now to do the reef acting where you guys have the Lake House new things can happen with cloud Native technologies, what's the what's the what's the cross over point for that point. >>Yeah, I think our Lake House architecture is really a big breakthrough architecture. It used to be, people would take all of this data, they put it in a Hadoop data lake, they'd end up with a data swamp with really not good control or good data quality. And uh then they would take the data from the data swamp where the data lake and they curate it and go through an E. T. L. Process and put a second copy into their data warehouse. So now you have two copies of the data to governance models. Maybe two versions of the data. A lot to manage. A lot to control with our Lake House architecture. You can put all of that data in the data lake it with our delta format. It comes in a curated way. Uh there's a catalogue associated with the data. So you know what you've got. And now you can literally build an ephemeral data warehouse directly on top of that data and it exists only for the period of time that uh people need it. And so it's cloud Native. It's elastically scalable. It terminates when nobody's using it. We run the whole center for Medicaid Medicare services. The whole Medicaid repository for the United States runs in an ephemeral data warehouse built on Amazon S three. >>You know, that is a huge call out, I want to just unpack that for a second. What you just said to me puts the exclamation point on cloud value because it's not your grandfather's data warehouse, it's like okay we do data warehouse capability but we're using higher level cloud services, whether it's governance stuff for a I to actually make it work at scale for those environments. I mean that that to me is re factoring that's not re platform Ng. Just re platform that's re platform Ng in the cloud and then re factoring capability for on uh new >>advantages. It's really true. And now you know at CMS, they have one copy of the data so they do all of their reporting, they've got a lot of congressional reports that they need to do. But now they're leveraging that same data, not making a copy of it for uh the center for program integrity for fraud. And we know how many billions of dollars worth of fraud exist in the Medicaid system. And now we're applying artificial intelligence and machine learning on entity analytics to really get to the root of those problems. It's a game >>changer. And this is where the efficiency comes in at scale. Because you start to see, I mean we always talk on the cube about like how software is changed the old days you put on the shelf shelf where they called it. Uh that's our generation. And now you got the cloud, you didn't know if something is hot or not until the inventory is like we didn't sell through in the cloud. If you're not performing, you suck basically. So it's not working, >>it's an instant Mhm. >>Report card. So now when you go to the cloud, you think the data lake and uh the lake house what you guys do uh and others like snowflake and were optimized in the cloud, you can't deny it. And then when you compare it to like, okay, so I'm saving you millions and millions if you're just on one thing, never mind the top line opportunities. >>So so john you know, years ago people didn't believe the cloud was going to be what it is. Like pretty much today, the clouds inevitable. It's everywhere. I'm gonna make you another prediction. Um And you can say you heard it here first, the data warehouse is going away. The Lake house is clearly going to replace it. There's no need anymore for two separate copies, there's no need for a proprietary uh storage copy of your data and people want to be able to apply more than sequel to the data. Uh Data warehouses, just restrict. What about an ocean house? >>Yeah. Lake is kind of small. When you think about this lake, Michigan is pretty big now, I think it's I >>think it's going to go bigger than that. I think we're talking about Sky Computer, we've been a cloud computing, we're going to uh and we're going to do that because people aren't gonna put all of their data in one place, they're going to have, it spread across different amazon regions or or or amazon availability zones and you're going to want to share data and you know, we just introduced this delta sharing capability. I don't know if you're familiar with it but it allows you to share data without a sharing server directly from picking up basically the amazon, you RLS and sharing them with different organizations. So you're sharing in place. The data actually isn't moving. You've got great governance and great granularity of the data that you choose to share and data sharing is going to be the next uh >>next break. You know, I really loved the Lake House were fairly sing gateway. I totally see that. So I totally would align with that and say I bet with you on that one. The Sky net Skynet, the Sky computing. >>See you're taking it away man, >>I know Skynet got anything that was computing in the Sky is Skynet that's terminated So but that's real. I mean I think that's a concept where it's like, you know what services and functions does for servers, you don't have a data, >>you've got to be able to connect data, nobody lives in an island. You've got to be able to connect data and more data. We all know more data produces better results. So how do you get more data? You connect to more data sources, >>Howard great to have you on talk about the relationship real quick as we end up here with amazon, What are you guys doing together? How's the partnership? >>Yeah, I mean the partnership with amazon is amazing. We have, we work uh, I think probably 95% of our federal business is running in amazon's cloud today. As I mentioned, john we run across uh, AWS commercial AWS GovCloud secret environment. See to us and you know, we have better integration with amazon services than I'll say some of the amazon services if people want to integrate with glue or kinesis or Sagemaker, a red shift, we have complete integration with all of those and that's really, it's not just a partnership at the sales level. It's a partnership and integration at the engineering level. >>Well, I think I'm really impressed with you guys as a company. I think you're an example of the kind of business model that people might have been afraid of which is being in the cloud, you can have a moat, you have competitive advantage, you can build intellectual property >>and, and john don't forget, it's all based on open source, open data, like almost everything that we've done. We've made available to people, we get 30 million downloads of the data bricks technology just for people that want to use it for free. So no vendor lock in. I think that's really important to most of our federal clients into everybody. >>I've always said competitive advantage scale and choice. Right. That's a data bricks. Howard? Thanks for coming on the key, appreciate it. Thanks again. Alright. Cube coverage here in Washington from face to face physical event were on the ground. Of course, we're also streaming a digital for the hybrid event. This is the cubes coverage of a W. S. Public sector Summit will be right back after this short break.

(radio calls) >> Announcer: From around the globe, its theCUBE covering Space & Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal poly. Hello, welcome back to theCUBE virtual coverage with Cal Poly for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium, a day four and the wrap up session, keynote session with the Lieutenant Governor of California, Eleni Kounalakis. She's here to deliver her keynote speech on the topic of California's role in supporting America's Cybersecurity future. Eleni, take it away. >> Thank you, John, for the introduction. I am Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis. It is an honor to be part of Cal Poly Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. As I speak kind of Pierre with the governor's office of business and economic development is available on the chat, too ready to answer any questions you might have. California and indeed the world are facing significant challenges right now. Every day we are faced with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn that is ensued. We have flattened the curve in California and are moving in the right direction but it is clear that we're not out of the woods yet. It is also impossible right now to escape the reality of climate change from the fire sparked by exceptionally rare, dry lightening events to extreme heat waves threatening public health and putting a strain on our electricity grid. We see that climate change is here now. And of course we've been recently confronted with a series of brutal examples of institutionalized racism that have created an awakening among people of all walks of life and compelled us into the streets to march and protest. In the context of all this, we cannot forget that we continue to be faced with other less visible but still very serious challenges. Cybersecurity threats are one of these. We have seen cities, companies and individuals paralyzed by attacks costing time and money and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity. Our state agencies, local governments, police departments, utilities, news outlets and private companies from all industries are target. The threats around cybersecurity are serious but not unlike all the challenges we face in California. We have the tools and fortitude to address them. That is why this symposium is so important. Thank you, Cal Poly and all the participants for being here and for the important contributions you bring to this conference. I'd like to also say a few words about California's role in America's future in space. California has been at the forefront of the aerospace industry for more than a century through all the major innovations in aerospace from wooden aircraft, to World War II Bombers, to rockets and Mars rovers. California has played a pivotal role. Today, California is the number one state in total defense spending, defense contract spending and total number of personnel. It is estimated the Aerospace and Defense Industry, provides $168 billion in economic impact to our state. And America's best trained and most experienced aerospace and technology workforce lives here in California. The fact that the aerospace and defense sector, has had a strong history in California is no accident. California has always had strong innovation ecosystem and robust infrastructure that puts many sectors in a position to thrive. Of course, a big part of that infrastructure is a skilled workforce. And at the foundation of a skilled workforce is education. California has the strongest system of public higher education in the world. We're home to 10 university of California campuses, 23 California State university campuses and 116 California Community Colleges. All told nearly 3 million students are enrolled in public higher education. We also have world renowned private universities including the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University numbers one and three in the country for aerospace engineering. California also has four national laboratories and several NASA facilities. California possesses a strong spirit of innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Half of all venture capital funding in the United States, goes to companies here in California. Lastly, but certainly no less critical to our success, California is a diverse state. 27% of all Californians are foreign born, 27% more than one in four of our population of 40 million people are immigrants from another country, Europe central and South America, India, Asia, everywhere. Our rich cultural diversity is our strength and helps drive our economy. As I look to the future of industries like cybersecurity and the growing commercial space industry, I know our state will need to work with those industries to make sure we continue to train our workforce for the demands of an evolving industry. The office of the lieutenant governor has a unique perspective on higher education and workforce development. I'm on the UC Board of Regents, the CSU Board of Trustees. And as of about two weeks ago, the Community Colleges Board of Governors. The office of the lieutenant governor is now the only office that is a member of every governing board, overseeing our public higher education system. Earlier in the symposium, we heard a rich discussion with Undersecretary Stewart Knox from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency about what the state is doing to meet the needs of space and cybersecurity industries. As he mentioned, there are over 37,000 job vacancies in cybersecurity in our state. We need to address that gap. To do so, I see an important role for public private partnerships. We need input from industry and curriculum development. Some companies like Lockheed Martin, have very productive partnerships with universities and community colleges that train students with skills they need to enter aerospace and cyber industries. That type of collaboration will be key. We also need help from the industry to make sure students know that fields like cybersecurity even exist. People's early career interests are so often shaped by the jobs that members of their family have or what they see in popular culture. With such a young and evolving field like cybersecurity, many students are unaware of the job opportunities. I know for my visits to university campuses that students are hungry for STEM career paths where they see opportunities for good paying jobs. When I spoke with students at UC Merced, many of them were first generation college students who went through community college system before enrolling in a UC and they gravitated to STEM majors. With so many job opportunities available to STEM students, cybersecurity ought to be one that they are aware of and consider. Since this symposium is being hosted by Cal Poly, I wanted to highlight the tremendous work they're doing as leaders in the space and cybersecurity industry. Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute, does incredible work bringing together academia, industry and government training the next generation of cyber experts and researching emerging cybersecurity issues. As we heard from the President of Cal Poly, Jeff Armstrong the university is in the perfect location to contribute to a thriving space industry. It's close to Vandenberg Air Force Base and UC Santa Barbara and could be home to the future permanent headquarters of US Space Command. The state is also committed to supporting this space industry in the Central Coast. In July, the State of California, Cal poly US-based force and the others signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a commercial space port at Vandenberg Air Force Base and to develop a master plan to grow the commercial space industry in the region. Governor Newsom has made a commitment to lift up all regions of the state. And this strategy will position the Central Coast to be a global leader in the future of the space industry. I'd like to leave you with a few final thoughts, with everything we're facing. Fires, climate change, pandemic. It is easy to feel overwhelmed but I remain optimistic because I know that the people of the State of California are resilient, persistent, and determined to address our challenges and show a path toward a better future for ourselves and our families. The growth of the space industry and the economic development potential of projects like the Spaceport at Vandenberg Air Force Base, our great example of what we can look forward to. The potential for the commercial space industry to become a $3 trillion industry by mid century, as many experts predict is another. There are so many opportunities, new companies are going to emerge doing things we never could have dreamed of today. As Lieutenant General John Thompson said in the first session, the next few years of space and cyber innovation are not going to be a pony ride at the state fair, they're going to be a rodeo. We should all saddle up. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you very much, Eleni. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your participation and all your support to you and your staff. You guys doing a lot of work, a lot going on in California but cybersecurity and space as it comes together, California's playing a pivotal role in leading the world and the community. Thank you very much for your time. >> Okay, this session is going to continue with Bill Britton. Who's the vice president of technology and CIO at Cal Poly but more importantly, he's the director of the cyber institute located at Cal Poly. It's a global organization looking at the intersection of space and cybersecurity. Bill, let's wrap this up. Eleni had a great talk, talking about the future of cybersecurity in America and its future. The role California is playing, Cal Poly is right in the Central Coast. You're in the epicenter of it. We've had a great lineup here. Thanks for coming on. Let's put a capstone on this event. >> Thank you, John. But most importantly, thanks for being a great partner helping us get this to move forward and really changing the dynamic of this conversation. What an amazing time we're at, we had quite an unusual group but it's really kind of the focus and we've moved a lot of space around ourselves. And we've gone from Lieutenant General Thompson and the discussion of the opposition and space force and what things are going on in the future, the importance of cyber in space. And then we went on and moved on to the operations. And we had a private company who builds, we had the DOD, Department Of Defense and their context and NASA and theirs. And then we talked about public private partnerships from President Armstrong, Mr. Bhangu Mahad from the DOD and Mr. Steve Jacques from the National Security Space Association. It's been an amazing conference for one thing, I've heard repeatedly over and over and over, the reference to digital, the reference to cloud, the reference to the need for cybersecurity to be involved and really how important that is to start earlier than just at the employment level. To really go down into the system, the K through 12 and start there. And what an amazing time to be able to start there because we're returning to space in a larger capacity and it's now all around us. And the lieutenant governor really highlighted for us that California is intimately involved and we have to find a way to get our students involved at that same level. >> I want to ask you about this inflection point that was a big theme of this conference and symposium. It was throughout the interviews and throughout the conversations, both on the chat and also kind of on Twitter as well in the social web. Is that this new generation, it wasn't just space and government DOD, all the normal stuff you see, you saw JPL, the Hewlett Foundation, the Defense Innovation Unit, Amazon Web Services, NASA. Then you saw entrepreneurs come in, who were doing some stuff. And so you had this confluence of community. Of course, Cal Poly had participated in space. You guys does some great job, but it's not just the physical face-to-face show up, gets to hear some academic papers. This was a virtual event. We had over 300 organizations attend, different organizations around the world. Being a virtual event you had more range to get more people. This isn't digital. This symposium isn't about Central California anymore. It's global. >> No, it really has gone. >> What really happened to that? >> It's really kind of interesting because at first all of this was word of mouth for this symposium to take place. And it just started growing and growing and the more that we talk to organizations for support, the more we found how interconnected they were on an international scale. So much so that we've decided to take our cyber competition next year and take it globally as well. So if in fact as Major General Shaw said, this is about a multinational support force. Maybe it's time our students started interacting on that level to start with and not have to grow into it as they get older, but do it now and around space and around cybersecurity and around that digital environment and really kind of reduce the digital dividing space. >> Yeah, General Thompson mentioned this, 80 countries with programs. This is like the Olympics for space and we want to have these competitions. So I got great vision and I love that vision, but I know you have the number... Not number, the scores and from the competition this year that happened earlier in the week. Could you share the results of that challenge? >> Yeah, absolutely. We had 83 teams participate this year in the California Cyber Innovation Challenge. And again, it was based around a spacecraft scenario where a spacecraft, a commercial spacecraft was hacked and returned to earth. And the students had to do the forensics on the payload. And then they had to do downstream network analysis, using things like Wireshark and autopsy and other systems. It was a really tough competition. The students had to work hard and we had middle school and high school students participate. We had an intermediate league, new schools who had never done it before or even some who didn't even have STEM programs but were just signing up to really get involved in the experience. And we had our ultimate division which was those who had competed in several times before. And the winner of that competition was North Hollywood. They've been the winning team for four years in a row. Now it's a phenomenal program, they have their hats off to them for competing and winning again. Now what's really cool is not only did they have to show their technical prowess in the game but they also have to then brief and out-brief what they've learned to a panel of judges. And these are not pushovers. These are experts in the field of cybersecurity in space. We even had a couple of goons participating from DefCon and the teams present their findings. So not only are we talking technical, we're talking about presentation skills. The ability to speak and understand. And let me tell you, after reading all of their texts to each other over the weekend adds a whole new language they're using to interact with each other. It's amazing. And they are so more advanced and ready to understand space problems and virtual problems than we are. We have to challenge them even more. >> Well, it sounds like North Hollywood got the franchise. It's likethe Patriots, the Lakers, they've got a dynasty developing down there in North Hollywood. >> Well, what happens when there's a dynasty you have to look for other talent. So next year we're going global and we're going to have multiple states involved in the challenge and we're going to go international. So if North Hollywood pulls it off again next year, it's going to be because they've met the best in the world than defeated >> Okay, the gauntlet has been thrown down, got to take down North Hollywood from winning again next year. We'll be following that. Bill, great to get those results on the cyber challenge we'll keep track and we'll put a plug for it on our site. So we got to get some press on that. My question to you is now as we're going digital, other theme was that they want to hire digital natives into the space force. Okay, the DOD is looking at new skills. This was a big theme throughout the conference not just the commercial partnerships with government which I believe they had kind of put more research and personally, that's my personal opinion. They should be putting in way more research into academic and these environments to get more creative. But the skill sets was a big theme. What's your thoughts on how you saw some of the highlight moments there around skill sets? >> John, it's really interesting 'cause what we've noticed is in the past, everybody thinks skill sets for the engineering students. And it's way beyond that. It's all the students, it's all of them understanding what we call cyber cognizance. Understanding how cybersecurity works whatever career field they choose to be in. Space, there is no facet of supporting space that doesn't need that cyber cognizance. If you're in the back room doing the operations, you're doing the billing, you're doing the contracting. Those are still avenues by which cybersecurity attacks can be successful and disrupt your space mission. The fact that it's international, the connectivities, all of those things means that everyone in that system digitally has to be aware of what's going on around them. That's a whole new thought process. It's a whole new way of addressing a problem and dealing with space. And again it's virtual to everyone. >> That's awesome. Bill, great to have you on. Thank you for including theCUBE virtual, our CUBE event software platform that we're rolling out. We've been using it for the event and thank you for your partnership in this co-creation opening up your community, your symposium to the world, and we're so glad to be part of it. I want to thank you and Dustin and the team and the President of Cal Poly for including us. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, John. It's been an amazing partnership. We look forward to it in the future. >> Okay, that's it. That concludes the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, your host with Cal Poly, who put on an amazing virtual presentation, brought all the guests together. And again, shout out to Bill Britton and Dustin DeBrum who did a great job as well as the President of Cal poly who endorsed and let them do it all. Great event. See you soon. (flash light sound)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly >>Oven. Welcome back to the Space and Cyber Security Symposium. 2020 I'm John for your host with the Cuban silicon angle, along with Cal Poly, representing a great session here on industry success in developing space and cybersecurity. Resource is Got a great lineup. Brigadier General Steve Hotel, whose are also known as Bucky, is Call Sign director of Space Portfolio Defense Innovation Unit. Preston Miller, chief information security officer at JPL, NASA and Major General retired Clint Crozier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions at Amazon Web services, also known as a W s. Gentlemen, thank you for for joining me today. So the purpose of this session is to spend the next hour talking about the future of workforce talent. Um, skills needed and we're gonna dig into it. And Spaces is an exciting intersection of so many awesome disciplines. It's not just get a degree, go into a track ladder up and get promoted. Do those things. It's much different now. Love to get your perspectives, each of you will have an opening statement and we will start with the Brigadier General Steve Hotel. Right? >>Thank you very much. The Defense Innovation Unit was created in 2015 by then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. To accomplish three things. One is to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology into the Department of Defense so that we can transform and keep our most relevant capabilities relevant. And also to build what we call now called the national Security Innovation Base, which is inclusive all the traditional defense companies, plus the commercial companies that may not necessarily work with focus exclusively on defense but could contribute to our national security and interesting ways. Um, this is such an exciting time Azul here from our other speakers about space on and I can't, uh I'm really excited to be here today to be able to share a little bit of our insight on the subject. >>Thank you very much. Precedent. Miller, Chief information security officer, Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA, Your opening statement. >>Hey, thank you for having me. I would like to start off by providing just a little bit of context of what brings us. Brings us together to talk about this exciting topic for space workforce. Had we've seen In recent years there's been there's been a trend towards expanding our space exploration and the space systems that offer the great things that we see in today's world like GPS. Um, but a lot of that has come with some Asian infrastructure and technology, and what we're seeing as we go towards our next generation expects of inspiration is that we now want to ensure that were secured on all levels. And there's an acknowledgement that our space systems are just a susceptible to cyber attacks as our terrestrial assistance. We've seen a recent space, uh, policy Directive five come out from our administration, that that details exactly how we should be looking at the cyber principle for our space systems, and we want to prevent. We want to prevent a few things as a result of that of these principles. Spoofing and jamming of our space systems are not authorized commands being sent to those space systems, lots of positive control of our space vehicles on lots of mission data. We also acknowledge that there's a couple of frameworks we wanna adopt across the board of our space systems levers and things like our nice miss cybersecurity frameworks. eso what has been a challenge in the past adopted somebody Cyber principles in space systems, where there simply has been a skill gap in a knowledge gap. We hire our space engineers to do a few things. Very well designed space systems, the ploy space systems and engineer space systems, often cybersecurity is seen as a after thought and certainly hasn't been a line item and in any budget for our spaces in racing. Uh, in the past in recent years, the dynamic started to change. We're now now integrating cyber principles at the onset of development of these life cycle of space. Systems were also taking a hard look of how we train the next generation of engineers to be both adequate. Space engineers, space system engineers and a cyber engineers, as a result to Mrs success on DWI, also are taking a hard look at What do we mean when we talk about holistic risk management for our space assistance, Traditionally risk management and missing insurance for space systems? I've really revolved around quality control, but now, in recent years we've started to adopt principles that takes cyber risk into account, So this is a really exciting topic for me. It's something that I'm fortunate to work with and live with every day. I'm really excited to get into this discussion with my other panel members. Thank you. >>You Preston. Great insight there. Looking forward. Thio chatting further. Um, Clint Closure with a W. S now heading up. A director of aerospace and satellite Solutions, formerly Major General, Your opening statement. >>Thanks, John. I really appreciate that introduction and really appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. And thanks to Cal Poly for putting it together, you know, I can't help, but as I think to Cal Poly there on the central California coast, San Luis Obispo, California I can't help but to think back in this park quickly. I spent two years of my life as a launch squadron commander at Vandenberg Air Force Base, about an hour south of Cal Poly launching rockets, putting satellites in orbit for the national intelligence community and so some really fond memories of the Central California coast. I couldn't agree more with the theme of our symposium this week. The space and cyber security we've all come to know over the last decade. How critical spaces to the world, whether it's for national security intelligence, whether it's whether communications, maritime, agriculture, development or a whole host of other things, economic and financial transactions. But I would make the case that I think most of your listeners would agree we won't have space without cybersecurity. In other words, if we can't guaranteed cybersecurity, all those benefits that we get from space may not be there. Preston in a moment ago that all the threats that have come across in the terrestrial world, whether it be hacking or malware or ransomware or are simple network attacks, we're seeing all those migrate to space to. And so it's a really important issue that we have to pay attention to. I also want to applaud Cow Pauling. They've got some really important initiatives. The conference here, in our particular panel, is about developing the next generation of space and cyber workers, and and Cal Poly has two important programs. One is the digital transformation hub, and the other is space data solutions, both of which, I'm happy to say, are in partnership with a W. S. But these were important programs where Cal Poly looks to try to develop the next generation of space and cyber leaders. And I would encourage you if you're interested in that toe. Look up the program because that could be very valuable is well, I'm relatively new to the AWS team and I'm really happy Thio team, as John you said recently retired from the U. S. Air Force and standing up the U. S. Space force. But the reason that I mentioned that as the director of the aerospace and satellite team is again it's in perfect harmony with the theme today. You know, we've recognized that space is critically important and that cyber security is critically important and that's been a W s vision as well. In fact, a W s understands how important the space domain is and coupled with the fact that AWS is well known that at a W s security is job zero and stolen a couple of those to fax A. W. S was looking to put together a team the aerospace and satellite team that focus solely and exclusively every single day on technical innovation in space and more security for the space domain through the cloud and our offerings there. So we're really excited to reimagine agree, envision what space networks and architectures could look like when they're born on the cloud. So that's important. You know, talk about workforce here in just a moment, but but I'll give you just a quick sneak. We at AWS have also recognized the gap in the projected workforce, as Preston mentioned, Um, depending on the projection that you look at, you know, most projections tell us that the demand for highly trained cyber cyber security cloud practitioners in the future outweighs what we think is going to be the supply. And so a ws has leaned into that in a number of ways that we're gonna talk about the next segment. I know. But with our workforce transformation, where we've tried to train free of charge not just a W s workers but more importantly, our customers workers. It s a W s we obsessed over the customer. And so we've provided free training toe over 7000 people this year alone toe bring their cloud security and cyber security skills up to where they will be able to fully leverage into the new workforce. So we're really happy about that too? I'm glad Preston raised SPD five space policy Directive five. I think it's gonna have a fundamental impact on the space and cyber industry. Uh, now full disclosure with that said, You know, I'm kind of a big fan of space policy directives, ESPN, Or was the space policy directive that directed to stand up of the U. S. Space Force and I spent the last 18 months of my life as the lead planner and architect for standing up the U. S. Space force. But with that said, I think when we look back a decade from now, we're going to see that s p d five will have as much of an impact in a positive way as I think SPD for on the stand up of the space Force have already done so. So I'll leave it there, but really look forward to the dialogue and discussion. >>Thank you, gentlemen. Clint, I just wanna say thank you for all your hard work and the team and the people who were involved in standing up Space force. Um, it is totally new. It's a game changer. It's modern, is needed. And there's benefits on potential challenges and opportunities that are gonna be there, so thank you very much for doing that. I personally am excited. I know a lot of people are excited for what the space force is today and what it could become. Thank you very much. >>Yeah, Thanks. >>Okay, So >>with >>that, let me give just jump in because, you know, as you're talking about space force and cybersecurity and you spend your time at Vanderburgh launching stuff into space, that's very technical. Is operation okay? I mean, it's complex in and of itself, but if you think about like, what's going on beyond in space is a lot of commercial aspect. So I'm thinking, you know, launching stuff into space on one side of my brain and the other side of brain, I'm thinking like air travel. You know, all the logistics and the rules of the road and air traffic control and all the communications and all the technology and policy and, you >>know, landing. >>So, Major General Clint, what's your take on this? Because this is not easy. It's not just one thing that speaks to the diversity of workforce needs. What's your reaction to that? >>Yeah. I mean, your observation is right on. We're seeing a real boom in the space and aerospace industry. For all the good reasons we talked about, we're recognizing all the value space from again economic prosperity to exploration to being ableto, you know, improve agriculture and in weather and all those sorts of things that we understand from space. So what I'm really excited about is we're seeing this this blossom of space companies that we sort of referred to his new space. You know, it used to be that really only large governments like the United States and a handful of others could operate in the space domain today and largely infused because of the technological innovation that have come with Cyber and Cyrus Space and even the cloud we're seeing more and more companies, capabilities, countries, all that have the ability, you know. Even a well funded university today can put a cube sat in orbit, and Cal Poly is working on some of those too, by the way, and so it's really expanded the number of people that benefits the activity in space and again, that's why it's so critically important because we become more and more reliant and we will become more and more reliant on those capabilities that we have to protect him. It's fundamental that we do. So, >>Bucky, I want you to weigh in on this because actually, you you've flown. Uh, I got a call sign which I love interviewing people. Anyone who's a call sign is cool in my book. So, Bucky, I want you to react to that because that's outside of the technology, you know, flying in space. There's >>no >>rule. I mean, is there like a rules? I mean, what's the rules of the road? I mean, state of the right. I mean, what I mean, what what's going? What's gonna have toe happen? Okay, just logistically. >>Well, this is very important because, uh and I've I've had access thio information space derived information for most of my flying career. But the amount of information that we need operate effectively in the 21st century is much greater than Thanet has been in the past. Let me describe the environment s so you can appreciate a little bit more what our challenges are. Where, from a space perspective, we're going to see a new exponential increase in the number of systems that could be satellites. Uh, users and applications, right? And so eso we're going we're growing rapidly into an environment where it's no longer practical to just simply evolved or operate on a perimeter security model. We and with this and as I was brought up previously, we're gonna try to bring in MAWR commercial capabilities. There is a tremendous benefit with increasing the diversity of sources of information. We use it right now. The military relies very heavily on commercial SAT com. We have our military capabilities, but the commercial capabilities give us capacity that we need and we can. We can vary that over time. The same will be true for remote sensing for other broadband communications capabilities on doing other interesting effects. Also, in the modern era, we doom or operations with our friends and allies, our regional partners all around the world, in order to really improve our interoperability and have rapid exchange of information, commercial information, sources and capabilities provides the best means of doing that. So that so that the imperative is very important and what all this describes if you want to put one word on it. ISS, we're involving into ah hybrid space architectures where it's gonna be imperative that we protect the integrity of information and the cyber security of the network for the things most important to us from a national security standpoint. But we have to have the rules that that allows us to freely exchange information rapidly and in a way that that we can guarantee that the right users are getting the right information at the right. >>We're gonna come back to that on the skill set and opportunities for people driving. That's just looking. There's so much opportunity. Preston, I want you to react to this. I interviewed General Keith Alexander last year. He formerly ran Cyber Command. Um, now he's building Cyber Security Technologies, and his whole thesis is you have to share. So the question is, how do you share and lock stuff down at the same time when you have ah, multi sided marketplace in space? You know, suppliers, users, systems. This is a huge security challenge. What's your reaction to this? Because we're intersecting all these things space and cybersecurity. It's just not easy. What's your reaction? >>Absolutely, Absolutely. And what I would say in response to that first would be that security really needs to be baked into the onset of how we develop and implement and deploy our space systems. Um, there's there's always going to be the need to collect and share data across multiple entities, particularly when we're changing scientific data with our mission partners. Eso with that necessitates that we have a security view from the onset, right? We have a system spaces, and they're designed to share information across the world. How do we make sure that those, uh, those other those communication channels so secure, free from interception free from disruption? So they're really done? That necessitates of our space leaders in our cyber leaders to be joining the hip about how to secure our space systems, and the communications there in Clinton brought up a really good point of. And then I'm gonna elaborate on a little bit, just toe invite a little bit more context and talk about some the complexities and challenges we face with this advent of new space and and all of our great commercial partners coming into therefore way, that's going to present a very significant supply chain risk management problems that we have to get our hands around as well. But we have these manufacturers developing these highly specialized components for the space instruments, Um, that as it stands right now, it's very little oversight And how those things air produced, manufactured, put into the space systems communication channels that they use ports protocols that they use to communicate. And that's gonna be a significant challenge for us to get get our hands around. So again, cybersecurity being brought in. And the very onset of these development thes thes decisions in these life cycles was certainly put us in a best better position to secure that data in our in our space missions. >>Yeah, E just pick up on that. You don't mind? Preston made such a really good point there. But you have to bake security in up front, and you know there's a challenge and there's an opportunity, you know, with a lot of our systems today. It was built in a pre cyber security environment, especially our government systems that were built, you know, in many cases 10 years ago, 15 years ago are still on orbit today, and we're thankful that they are. But as we look at this new environment and we understand the threats, if we bake cybersecurity in upfront weaken balance that open application versus the risk a long as we do it up front. And you know, that's one of the reasons that our company developed what we call govcloud, which is a secure cloud, that we use thio to manage data that our customers who want to do work with the federal government or other governments or the national security apparatus. They can operate in that space with the built in and baked in cybersecurity protocols. We have a secret region that both can handle secret and top secret information for the same reasons. But when you bake security into the upfront applications, that really allows you to balance that risk between making it available and accessible in sort of an open architecture way. But being sure that it's protected through things like ITAR certifications and fed ramp, uh, another ice T certifications that we have in place. So that's just a really important point. >>Let's stay high level for a man. You mentioned a little bit of those those govcloud, which made me think about you know, the tactical edge in the military analogy, but also with space similar theater. It's just another theater and you want to stand stuff up. Whether it's communications and have facilities, you gotta do it rapidly, and you gotta do it in a very agile, secure, I high availability secure way. So it's not the old waterfall planning. You gotta be fast is different. Cloud does things different? How do you talk to the young people out there, whether it's apparent with with kids in elementary and middle school to high school, college grad level or someone in the workforce? Because there are no previous jobs, that kind of map to the needs out there because you're talking about new skills, you could be an archaeologist and be the best cyber security guru on the planet. You don't have to have that. There's no degree for what, what we're talking about here. This >>is >>the big confusion around education. I mean, you gotta you like math and you could code you can Anything who wants to comment on that? Because I think this >>is the core issue. I'll say there are more and more programs growing around that educational need, and I could talk about a few things we're doing to, but I just wanna make an observation about what you just said about the need. And how do you get kids involved and interested? Interestingly, I think it's already happening, right. The good news. We're already developing that affinity. My four year old granddaughter can walk over, pick up my iPad, turn it on. Somehow she knows my account information, gets into my account, pulls up in application, starts playing a game. All before I really even realized she had my iPad. I mean, when when kids grow up on the cloud and in technology, it creates that natural proficiency. I think what we have to do is take that natural interest and give them the skill set the tools and capabilities that go with it so that we're managing, you know, the the interest with the technical skills. >>And also, like a fast I mean, just the the hackers are getting educated. Justus fast. Steve. I mean e mean Bucky. What do you do here? You CIt's the classic. Just keep chasing skills. I mean, there are new skills. What are some of those skills? >>Why would I amplify eloquent? Just said, First of all, the, uh, you know, cyber is one of those technology areas where commercial side not not the government is really kind of leading away and does a significant amount of research and development. Ah, billions of dollars are spent every year Thio to evolve new capabilities. And a lot of those companies are, you know, operated and and in some cases, led by folks in their early twenties. So the S O. This is definitely an era and a generation that is really poised in position. Well, uh, Thio take on this challenge. There's some unique aspects to space. Once we deploy a system, uh, it will be able to give me hard to service it, and we're developing capabilities now so that we could go up and and do system upgrades. But that's not a normal thing in space that just because the the technical means isn't there yet. So having software to find capabilities, I's gonna be really paramount being able to dio unique things. The cloud is huge. The cloud is centric to this or architectural, and it's kind of funny because d o d we joke because we just discovered the cloud, you know, a couple years ago. But the club has been around for a while and, uh, and it's going to give us scalability on and the growth potential for doing amazing things with a big Data Analytics. But as Preston said, it's all for not if if we can't trust the data that we receive. And so one of the concepts for future architectures is to evolve into a zero trust model where we trust nothing. We verify and authenticate everyone. And, uh, and that's that's probably a good, uh, point of departure as we look forward into our cybersecurity for space systems into the future. >>Block everyone. Preston. Your reaction to all this gaps, skills, What's needed. I mean it Z everyone's trying to squint through this >>absolutely. And I wanna want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the space agencies and organizations that are responsible for deploying these spaces into submission. So what is gonna take in this new era on, and what do we need from the workforce to be responsive to the challenges that we're seeing? First thing that comes to mind is creating a culture of security throughout aerospace right and ensuring that Azzawi mentioned before security isn't an afterthought. It's sort of baked into our models that we deploy and our rhetoric as well, right? And because again we hire our spaces in years to do it very highly. Specialized thing for a highly specialized, uh, it's topic. Our effort, if we start to incorporate rhetorically the importance of cybersecurity two missing success and missing assurance that's going to lend itself toe having more, more prepared on more capable system engineers that will be able to respond to the threats accordingly. Traditionally, what we see in organizational models it's that there's a cyber security team that's responsible for the for the whole kit kaboodle across the entire infrastructure, from enterprise systems to specialize, specialize, space systems and then a small pocket of spaces, years that that that are really there to perform their tasks on space systems. We really need to bridge that gap. We need to think about cybersecurity holistically, the skills that are necessary for your enterprise. I t security teams need to be the same skills that we need to look for for our system engineers on the flight side. So organizationally we need we need to address that issue and approach it, um todo responsive to the challenges we see our our space systems, >>new space, new culture, new skills. One of the things I want to bring up is looking for success formulas. You know, one of the things we've been seeing in the past 10 years of doing the Cube, which is, you know, we've been called the ESPN of Tech is that there's been kind of like a game ification. I want to. I don't wanna say sports because sports is different, but you're seeing robotics clubs pop up in some schools. It's like a varsity sport you're seeing, you know, twitch and you've got gamers out there, so you're seeing fun built into it. I think Cal Poly's got some challenges going on there, and then scholarships air behind it. So it's almost as if, you know, rather than going to a private sports training to get that scholarship, that never happens. There's so many more scholarship opportunities for are not scholarship, but just job opportunities and even scholarships we've covered as part of this conference. Uh, it's a whole new world of culture. It's much different than when I grew up, which was you know, you got math, science and English. You did >>it >>and you went into your track. Anyone want to comment on this new culture? Because I do believe that there is some new patterns emerging and some best practices anyone share any? >>Yeah, I do, because as you talked about robotics clubs and that sort of things, but those were great and I'm glad those air happening. And that's generating the interest, right? The whole gaming culture generating interest Robotic generates a lot of interest. Space right has captured the American in the world attention as well, with some recent NASA activities and all for the right reasons. But it's again, it's about taking that interested in providing the right skills along the way. So I'll tell you a couple of things. We're doing it a w s that we found success with. The first one is a program called A W s Academy. And this is where we have developed a cloud, uh, program a cloud certification. This is ah, cloud curriculum, if you will, and it's free and it's ready to teach. Our experts have developed this and we're ready to report it to a two year and four year colleges that they can use is part of the curriculum free of charge. And so we're seeing some real value there. And in fact, the governor's in Utah and Arizona recently adopted this program for their two year schools statewide again, where it's already to teach curriculum built by some of the best experts in the industry s so that we can try to get that skills to the people that are interested. We have another program called A W s educate, and this is for students to. But the idea behind this is we have 12 cracks and you can get up to 50 hours of free training that lead to A W s certification, that sort of thing. And then what's really interesting about that is all of our partners around the world that have tied into this program we manage what we call it ws educate Job board. And so if you have completed this educate program now, you can go to that job board and be linked directly with companies that want people with those skills we just helped you get. And it's a perfect match in a perfect marriage there. That one other piece real quickly that we're proud of is the aws Uh restart program. And that's where people who are unemployed, underemployed or transitioning can can go online. Self paced. We have over 500 courses they can take to try to develop those initial skills and get into the industry. And that's been very popular, too, So that those air a couple of things we're really trying to lean into >>anyone else want to react. Thio that question patterns success, best practices, new culture. >>I'd like Thio. The the wonderful thing about what you just touched on is problem solving, right, And there's some very, very good methodologies that are being taught in the universities and through programs like Hacking for Defense, which is sponsored by the National Security Innovation Network, a component of the I you where I work but the But whether you're using a lien methodologies or design school principals or any other method, the thing that's wonderful right now and not just, uh, where I work at the U. The Space force is doing this is well, but we're putting the problem out there for innovators to tackle, And so, rather than be prescriptive of the solutions that we want to procure, we want we want the best minds at all levels to be able to work on the problem. Uh, look at how they can leverage other commercial solutions infrastructure partnerships, uh, Thio to come up with a solution that we can that we can rapidly employ and scale. And if it's a dual use solution or whether it's, uh, civil military or or commercial, uh, in any of the other government solutions. Uh, that's really the best win for for the nation, because that commercial capability again allows us to scale globally and share those best practices with all of our friends and allies. People who share our values >>win win to this commercial. There's a business model potential financial benefits as well. Societal impact Preston. I want to come to you, JPL, NASA. I mean, you work in one of the most awesome places and you know, to me, you know, if you said to me, Hey, John, come working JP like I'm not smart enough to go there like I mean, like, it's a pretty It's intimidating, it might seem >>share folks out there, >>they can get there. I mean, it's you can get there if you have the right skills. I mean I'm just making that up. But, I mean, it is known to be super smart And is it attainable? So share your thoughts on this new culture because you could get the skills to get there. What's your take on all this >>s a bucket. Just missing something that really resonated with me, right? It's do it your love office. So if you put on the front engineer, the first thing you're gonna try to do is pick it apart. Be innovative, be creative and ways to solve that issue. And it has been really encouraging to me to see the ground welcome support an engagement that we've seen across our system. Engineers in space. I love space partners. A tackling the problem of cyber. Now that they know the West at risk on some of these cyber security threats that that they're facing with our space systems, they definitely want to be involved. They want to take the lead. They want to figure things out. They wanna be innovative and creative in that problem solving eso jpl We're doing a few things. Thio Raise the awareness Onda create a culture of security. Andi also create cyber advocates, cybersecurity advocates across our space engineers. We host events like hacked the lad, for example, and forgive me. Take a pause to think about the worst case scenarios that could that could result from that. But it certainly invites a culture of creative problem solving. Um, this is something that that kids really enjoy that are system engineers really enjoyed being a part off. Um, it's something that's new refreshing to them. Eso we were doing things like hosting a monthly cybersecurity advocacy group. When we talk about some of the cyber landscape of our space systems and invite our engineers into the conversation, we do outweighs programs specifically designed to to capture, um, our young folks, uh, young engineers to deceive. They would be interested and show them what this type of security has to offer by ways of data Analytic, since the engineering and those have been really, really successful identifying and bringing in new talent to address the skill gaps. >>Steve, I want to ask you about the d. O. D. You mentioned some of the commercial things. How are you guys engaging the commercial to solve the space issue? Because, um, the normalization in the economy with GPS just seeing spaces impacts everybody's lives. We we know that, um, it's been talked about. And and there's many, many examples. How are you guys the D o. D. From a security standpoint and or just from an advancement innovation standpoint, engaging with commercials, commercial entities and commercial folks? >>Well, I'll throw. I'll throw a, uh, I'll throw ah, compliment to Clint because he did such an outstanding job. The space forces already oriented, uh, towards ah, commercial where it's appropriate and extending the arms. Leveraging the half works on the Space Enterprise Consortium and other tools that allow for the entrepreneurs in the space force Thio work with their counterparts in a commercial community. And you see this with the, uh, you know, leveraging space X away to, uh, small companies who are doing extraordinary things to help build space situational awareness and, uh, s So it's it's the people who make this all happen. And what we do at at the D. O. D level, uh, work at the Office of Secretary defense level is we wanna make sure that they have the right tools to be able to do that in a way that allows these commercial companies to work with in this case of a space force or with cyber command and ways that doesn't redefine that. The nature of the company we want we want We want commercial companies to have, ah, great experience working with d o d. And we want d o d toe have the similar experience working, working with a commercial community, and and we actually work interagency projects to So you're going to see, uh, General Raymond, uh, hey, just recently signed an agreement with the NASA Esa, you're gonna see interagency collaborations on space that will include commercial capabilities as well. So when we speak as one government were not. You know, we're one voice, and that's gonna be tremendous, because if you're a commercial company on you can you can develop a capability that solves problems across the entire space enterprise on the government side. How great is that, Right. That's a scaling. Your solution, gentlemen. Let >>me pick you back on that, if you don't mind. I'm really excited about that. I mentioned new space, and Bucky talked about that too. You know, I've been flying satellites for 30 years, and there was a time where you know the U. S. Government national security. We wouldn't let anybody else look at him. Touch him. Plug into, um, anything else, right. And that probably worked at the time. >>But >>the world has changed. And more >>importantly, >>um, there is commercial technology and capability available today, and there's no way the U. S government or national security that national Intel community can afford economically >>to >>fund all that investment solely anymore. We don't have the manpower to do it anymore. So we have this perfect marriage of a burgeoning industry that has capabilities and it has re sources. And it has trained manpower. And we are seeing whether it's US Space Force, whether it's the intelligence community, whether it's NASA, we're seeing that opened up to commercial providers more than I've ever seen in my career. And I can tell you the customers I work with every day in a W s. We're building an entire ecosystem now that they understand how they can plug in and participate in that, and we're just seeing growth. But more importantly, we're seeing advanced capability at cheaper cost because of that hybrid model. So that really is exciting. >>Preston. You know you mentioned earlier supply chain. I don't think I think you didn't use the word supply chain. Maybe you did. But you know about the components. Um, you start opening things up and and your what you said baking it in to the beginning, which is well known. Uh, premise. It's complicated. So take me through again, Like how this all gonna work securely because And what's needed for skill sets because, you know, you're gonna open. You got open source software, which again, that's open. We live in a free society in the United States of America, so we can't lock everything down. You got components that are gonna be built anywhere all around the world from vendors that aren't just a certified >>or maybe >>certified. Um, it's pretty crazy. So just weigh in on this key point because I think Clint has it right. And but that's gonna be solved. What's your view on this? >>Absolutely. And I think it really, really start a top, right? And if you look back, you know, across, um in this country, particularly, you take the financial industry, for example, when when that was a burgeoning industry, what had to happen to ensure that across the board. Um, you know, your your finances were protected these way. Implemented regulations from the top, right? Yeah. And same thing with our health care industry. We implemented regulations, and I believe that's the same approach we're gonna need to take with our space systems in our space >>industry >>without being too directive or prescriptive. Instance she ating a core set of principles across the board for our manufacturers of space instruments for deployment and development of space systems on for how space data and scientific data is passed back and forth. Eso really? We're gonna need to take this. Ah, holistic approach. Thio, how we address this issue with cyber security is not gonna be easy. It's gonna be very challenging, but we need to set the guard rails for exactly what goes into our space systems, how they operate and how they communicate. >>Alright, so let's tie this back to the theme, um, Steve and Clint, because this is all about workforce gaps, opportunities. Um, Steve, you mentioned software defined. You can't do break fix in space. You can't just send a technician up in the space to fix a component. You gotta be software defined. We're talking about holistic approach, about commercial talk about business model technology with software and policy. We need people to think through, like you know. What the hell are you gonna do here, right? Do you just noticed road at the side of the road to drive on? There's no rules of engagement. So what I'm seeing is certainly software Check. If you wanna have a job for the next millennial software policy who solves two problems, what does freedom looked like in space Congestion Contention and then, obviously, business model. Can you guys comment on these three areas? Do you agree? And what specific person might be studying in grad school or undergraduate or in high school saying, Hey, I'm not a techie, but they can contribute your thoughts. I'll >>start off with, uh, speak on on behalf of the government today. I would just say that as policy goes, we need to definitely make sure that we're looking towards the future. Ah, lot of our policy was established in the past under different conditions, and, uh, and if there's anything that you cannot say today is that space is the same as it was even 10 years ago. So the so It's really important that our policy evolves and recognizes that that technology is going to enable not just a new ways of doing things, but also force us to maybe change or or get rid of obsolete policies that will inhibit our ability to innovate and grow and maintain peace with with a rapid, evolving threat. The for the for the audience today, Uh, you know, you want some job assurance, cybersecurity and space it's gonna be It's gonna be an unbelievable, uh, next, uh, few decades and I couldn't think of a more exciting for people to get into because, you know, spaces Ah, harsh environment. We're gonna have a hard time just dud being able differentiate, you know, anomalies that occur just because of the environment versus something that's being hacked. And so JPL has been doing this for years on they have Cem Cem great approaches, but but this is this is gonna be important if you put humans on the moon and you're going to sustain them there. Those life support systems are gonna be using, you know, state of the art computer technology, and which means, is also vulnerable. And so eso the consequences of us not being prepared? Uh, not just from our national security standpoint, but from our space exploration and our commercial, uh, economic growth in space over the long term all gonna be hinged on this cyber security environment. >>Clint, your thoughts on this too ill to get. >>Yeah. So I certainly agree with Bucky. But you said something a moment ago that Bucky was talking about as well. But that's the idea that you know in space, you can't just reach out and touch the satellite and do maintenance on the satellite the way you can't a car or a tank or a plane or a ship or something like that. And that is true. However, right, comma, I want to point out. You know, the satellite servicing industry is starting to develop where they're looking at robotic techniques in Cape abilities to go up in services satellite on orbit. And that's very promising off course. You got to think through the security policy that goes with that, of course. But the other thing that's really exciting is with artificial intelligence and machine learning and edge computing and database analytics and all those things that right on the cloud. You may not even need to send a robotic vehicle to a satellite, right? If you can upload and download software defined, fill in the blank right, maybe even fundamentally changing the mission package or the persona, if you will, of the satellite or the spacecraft. And that's really exciting to, ah, lot >>of >>security policy that you've gotta work through. But again, the cloud just opens up so many opportunities to continue to push the boundaries. You know, on the AWS team, the aerospace and satellite team, which is, you know, the new team that I'm leading. Now our motto is to the stars through the cloud. And there are just so many exciting opportunities right for for all those capabilities that I just mentioned to the stars through the cloud >>President, your thoughts on this? >>Yes, eso won >>a >>little bit of time talking about some of the business model implications and some of the challenges that exists there. Um, in my experience, we're still working through a bit of a language barrier of how we define risk management for our space systems. Traditionally traditionally risk management models is it is very clear what poses a risk to a flight mission. Our space mission, our space system. Um, and we're still finding ways to communicate cyber risk in the same terms that are system engineers are space engineers have traditionally understood. Um, this is a bit of a qualitative versus quantitative, a language barrier. But however adopting a risk management model that includes cybersecurity, a za way to express wish risk to miss the success, I think I think it would be a very good thing is something that that we have been focused on the J. P o as we Aziz, we look at the 34 years beyond. How do >>we >>risk that gap and not only skills but communication of cyber risk and the way that our space engineers and our project engineers and a space system managers understand >>Clinton, like Thio talk about space Force because this is the most popular new thing. It's only a couple of nine months in roughly not even a year, uh, already changing involving based on some of the reporting we've done even here at this symposium and on the Internet. Um, you know, when I was growing up, you know, I wasn't there when JFK said, you know, we're gonna get to the moon. I was born in the sixties, so, you know, when I was graduating my degree, you know, Draper Labs, Lincoln Lab, JPL, their pipeline and people wasn't like a surge of job openings. Um, so this kind of this new space new space race, you know, Kennedy also said that Torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. So in a way that's happening right now with space force. A new generation is here is a digital generation. It's multi disciplinary generation. Could you take a minute and share, uh, for for our audience? And here at this symposium, um, the mission of Space Force and where you see it going because this truly is different. And I think anyone who's young e I mean, you know, if this was happening when I was in college would be like dropping everything. I'm in there, I think, cause there's so many areas thio jump into, um, it's >>intellectually challenging. >>It's intoxicating in some level. So can you share your thoughts? >>Yeah. Happy to do that. Of course. I I need to remind everybody that as a week ago I'm formally retired. So I'm not an official spokesman for US forces. But with that, you know, it said I did spend the last 18 months planning for it, designing and standing it up. And I'll tell you what's really exciting is you know, the commander of, uh, US Base Force General J. Raymond, who's the right leader at the right time. No question in my >>mind. But >>he said, I want to stand up the Space Force as the first fully digital service in the United States. Right? So he is trying >>to bake >>cloud baked cybersecurity, baked digital transformational processes and everything we did. And that was a guidance he gave us every day, every day. When we rolled in. He said, Remember, guys, I don't wanna be the same. I don't wanna be stale. I want new thinking, new capabilities and I want it all to be digital on. That's one of the reasons When we brought the first wave of people into the space force, we brought in space operations, right. People like me that flew satellites and launch rockets, we brought in cyber space experts, and we brought in intelligence experts. Those were the first three waves of people because of that, you know, perfect synergy between space and cyber and intel all wrapped in >>it. >>And so that was really, really smart. The other thing I'll say just about, you know, Kennedy's work. We're going to get to the moon. So here we are. Now we're going back to the Moon Project Artemus that NASA is working next man first woman on the moon by 2024 is the plan and >>then >>with designs to put a permanent presence on the moon and then lean off to march. So there was a lot to get excited about. I will tell you, as we were taking applications and looking at rounding out filling out the village in the U. S. Space Force, we were overwhelmed with the number of people that wanted, and that was a really, really good things. So they're off to a good start, and they're just gonna accomplishment major things. I know for sure. >>Preston, your thoughts on this new generation people out there were like I could get into this. This is a path. What's your what's your opinion on this? And what's your >>E could, uh, you so bold as to say >>that >>I feel like I'm a part of that new generation eso I grew up very much into space. Uh, looking at, um, listen to my, uh, folks I looked up to like Carl Sagan. Like like Neil Tyson. DeGrasse on did really feeling affinity for what What this country has done is for is a space program are focused on space exploration on bond. Through that, I got into our security, as it means from the military. And I just because I feel so fortunate that I could merge both of those worlds because of because of the generational, um, tailoring that we do thio promote space exploration and also the advent of cybersecurity expertise that is needed in this country. I feel like that. We are We are seeing a conversions of this too. I see a lot of young people really getting into space exploration. I see a lot of young people as well. Um uh, gravitating toward cybersecurity as a as a course of study. And to see those two worlds colliding and converse is something that's very near and dear to me. And again, I I feel like I'm a byproduct of that conversion, which is which, Really, Bothwell for space security in the future, >>we'll your great leader and inspiration. Certainly. Senior person as well. Congratulations, Steve. You know, young people motivational. I mean, get going. Get off the sidelines. Jump in Water is fine, Right? Come on in. What's your view on motivating the young workforce out there and anyone thinking about applying their skills on bringing something to the table? >>Well, look at the options today. You have civil space President represents you have military space. Uh, you have commercial space on and even, you know, in academia, the research, the potential as a as an aspiring cyber professional. All of you should be thinking about when we when we When? When we first invented the orbit, which eventually became the Internet, Uh, on Lee, we were, uh if all we had the insight to think Well, geez, you know whether the security implications 2030 years from now of this thing scaling on growing and I think was really good about today's era. Especially as Clint said, because we were building this space infrastructure with a cyber professionals at ground zero on dso the So the opportunity there is to look out into the future and say we're not just trying to secure independent her systems today and assure the free for all of of information for commerce. You know, the GPS signal, Uh, is Justus much in need of protection as anything else tied to our economy, But the would have fantastic mission. And you could do that. Uh, here on the ground. You could do it, uh, at a great companies like Amazon Web services. But you can also one of these states. Perhaps we go and be part of that contingency that goes and does the, uh, the se's oh job that that president has on the moon or on Mars and, uh, space will space will get boring within a generation or two because they'll just be seen as one continuum of everything we have here on Earth. And, uh, and that would be after our time. But in the meantime, is a very exciting place to be. And I know if I was in in my twenties, I wanna be, uh, jumping in with both feet into it. >>Yeah, great stuff. I mean, I think space is gonna be around for a long long time. It's super exciting and cybersecurity making it secure. And there's so many areas defeating on. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your awesome insight. Great panel. Um, great inspiration. Every one of you guys. Thank you very much for for sharing for the space and cybersecurity symposium. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. >>Thanks, John. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, >>I'm >>John for your host for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. Thanks for watching.

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

from around the globe it's thecube covering space and cyber security symposium 2020 hosted by cal poly hello everyone welcome to the space and cyber security symposium 2020 hosted by cal poly where the intersection of space and security are coming together i'm john furrier your host with thecube here in california i want to welcome our featured guest lieutenant general john f thompson with the united states space force approach to cyber security that's the topic of this session and of course he's the commander of the space and missile system center in los angeles air force base also heading up space force general thank you for coming on really appreciate you kicking this off welcome to the symposium hey so uh thank you very much john for that very kind introduction also uh very much thank you to cal poly uh for this opportunity to speak to this audience today also a special shout out to one of the organizers uh dustin brun for all of his work uh helping uh get us uh to this point uh ladies and gentlemen as uh as uh john mentioned uh i'm jt thompson uh i lead the 6 000 men and women of the united states space forces space and missile system center which is headquartered here at los angeles air force base in el segundo if you're not quite sure where that's at it's about a mile and a half from lax this is our main operating location but we do have a number of other operating locations around the country with about 500 people at kirtland air force base in albuquerque new mexico uh and about another 500 people on the front range of the rockies uh between colorado springs and uh and denver plus a smattering of other much smaller operating locations nationwide uh we're responsible for uh acquiring developing and sustaining the united states space force's critical space assets that includes the satellites in the space layer and also on the ground layer our ground segments to operate those satellites and we also are in charge of procuring launch services for the u.s space force and a number of our critical mission partners across the uh department of defense and the intelligence community um just as a couple of examples of some of the things we do if you're unfamiliar with our work we developed and currently sustained the 31 satellite gps constellation that satellite constellation while originally intended to help with global navigation those gps signals have provided trillions of dollars in unanticipated value to the global economy uh over the past three decades i mean gps is everywhere i think everybody realizes that agriculture banking the stock market the airline industry uh separate and distinct navigation systems it's really pervasive across both the capabilities for our department of defense and capabilities for our economy and and individuals billions of individuals across our country and the planet some of the other work we do for instance in the communications sector uh secure communications satellites that we design and build that link america's sons and daughters serving in the military around the world and really enable real-time support and comms for our deployed forces and those of our allies we also acquire uh infrared missile warning satellites uh that monitor the planet for missile launches and provide advanced warning uh to the u.s homeland and to our allies uh in case some of those missile launches are uh nefarious um on a note that's probably a lot closer to home maybe a lot closer to home than many of us want to think about here in the state of california in 2018 smc jumped through a bunch of red tape and bureaucracy uh to partner with the u.s forest service during the two of the largest wildfires in the state's history the camp and woolsey fires in northern california as those fires spread out of control we created processes on the fly to share data from our missile warning satellites those are satellites that are systems that are purpose built to see heat sources from thousands of miles above the planet and we collaborated with the us forest service so that firefighters on the ground uh could track those fires more in real time and better forecast fires and where they were spreading thereby saving lives and and property by identifying hot spots and flare-ups for firefighters that data that we were able to working with our contractors pass to the u.s forest service and authorities here in california was passed in less than an hour as it was collected to get it into the hands of the emergency responders the first responders as quickly as possible and doing that in an hour greatly surpassed what was available from some of the other assets in the airborne and ground-based fire spotters it was really instrumental in fighting those fires and stopping their spread we've continued uh that involvement in recent years using multiple systems to support firefighters across the western u.s this fall as they battled numerous wildfires that unfortunately continue working together with the u.s forest service and with other partners uh we like to make uh we like to think that we made a difference here but there's still a lot more work to go and i think that we should always be asking ourselves uh what else can space data be used for and how can we more rapidly get that space data to uh stakeholders so that they can use it for for purposes of good if you will how else can we protect our nation how else can we protect our friends and allies um i think a major component of the of the discussion that we will have throughout this conference is that the space landscape has changed rapidly and continues to change rapidly um just over the past few years uh john and i were talking before we went live here and 80 nations now have uh space programs 80 nearly 80 space faring nations on the planet um if you just look at one mission area that uh the department of defense is interested in and that's small launch there are currently over a hundred different small launch companies uh within the u.s industrial base vying for commercial dod and civil uh payload capabilities uh mostly to low earth orbit it's it's just truly a remarkable time if you factor in those things like artificial intelligence and machine learning um where we're revolutionary revolutionizing really uh the ways that we generate process and use data i mean it's really remarkable in 2016 so if you think about this four years ago uh nasa estimated that there were 28 terabytes of information transiting their space network each day and that was four years ago um uh obviously we've got a lot of desire to work with a lot of the people in the audience of this congress or in this conference uh we need to work with big thinkers like many of you to answer questions on how best we apply data analytics to extract value and meaning from that data we need new generations of thinkers to help apply cutting edge edge theories of data mining cyber behaviorism and internet of things 2.0 it's just truly a remarkable time uh to be in the space business and the cyber aspects of the states of the space business are truly truly daunting and important to uh to all of us um integrating cyber security into our space systems both commercial and government is a mandate um it's no longer just a nice to have as the us space force and department of the air force leadership has said many times over the past couple of years space is becoming congested and contested and that contested aspect means that we've got to focus on cyber security uh in the same way that the banking industry and cyber commerce focus on uh cyber security day in and day out the value of the data and services provided is really directly tied to the integrity and availability of that data and services from the space layer from the ground control segments associated with it and this value is not just military it's also economic and it's not just american it's also a value for the entire world particularly particularly our allies as we all depend upon space and space systems your neighbors and friends here in california that are employed at the space and missile system center uh work with network defenders we work with our commercial contractors and our systems developers um our international allies and partners to try and build as secure and resilient systems as we can from the ground up that keep the global commons of space free and open for exploration and for commerce um as john and i were talking earlier before we came online there's an aspect of cyber security for space systems especially for some of our legacy systems that's more how do we bolt this on because we fielded those space systems a number of years ago and the the challenges of cyber security in the space domain have grown so we have a part that we have to worry about bolting it on but then we have to worry about building it in as we as we field new systems and build in a flexibility that that realizes that the cyber threat or the cyber security landscape will evolve over time it's not just going to be stagnant there will always be new vulnerabilities and new threat vectors that we always have to look at look uh as secretary barrett who is our secretary of the air force likes to say most americans use space before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning the american way of life really depends on space and as part of the united states space force we work with defense leaders our congress joint and international military teammates and industry to ensure american leadership in space i really thank you for this opportunity to address the audience today john and thanks so much to cal poly for letting me be one of the speakers at this event i really look forward to this for uh several months and so with that i look forward to your questions as we kind of move along here general thank you very much for the awesome uh introductory statement uh for the folks watching on the stream brigadier general carthan is going to be in the chat answering any questions feel free to chat away he's the vice commander of space and missile systems center he'll be available um a couple comments from your keynote before i get to my questions because it just jumped in my head you mentioned the benefits of say space but the fires in california we're living that here that's really real time that's a benefit you also mentioned the ability for more people launching payloads into space and i only imagine moore's law smaller faster cheaper applies to rockets too so i'm imagining you have the benefits of space and you have now more potential objects flying out sanctioned and maybe unsanctioned so you know is it going to be more rules around that i mean this is an interesting question because it's exciting space force but for all the good there is potentially bad out there yeah so i i john i think the uh i think the basics of your question is as space becomes more congested and contested is there a need for more international norms of how satellites fly in space what kind of basic features satellites have to perhaps deorbit themselves what kind of basic protections does do all satellites should all satellites be afforded as part of a peaceful global commons of space i think those are all fantastic questions and i know that u.s and many uh allied policy makers are looking very very hard at those kinds of questions in terms of what are the norms of behavior and how we uh you know how how we field and field is the military term but you know how we uh populate uh using civil or uh commercial terms uh that space layer at different altitudes uh low earth orbit mid mid-earth orbit geosynchronous earth orbit different kinds of orbits uh what the kind of mission areas we accomplish from space that's all things that need to be definitely taken into account as uh as the place gets a little bit not a little bit as the place gets increasingly more popular day in and day out well i'm super excited for space force i know that a new generation of young folks are really interested in it's an emerging changing great space the focus here at this conference is space and cyber security intersection i'd like to get your thoughts on the approach that space force is taking to cyber security and how it impacts our national goals here in the united states yeah yeah so that's a that's a great question john let me let me talk about in two uh two basic ways but number one is and and i know um some people in the audience this might make them a little bit uncomfortable but i have to talk about the threat right um and then relative to that threat i really have to talk about the importance of uh of cyber and specifically cyber security as it relates to that threat um the threats that we face um really represent a new era of warfare and that new era of warfare involves both space and cyber uh we've seen a lot of action in recent months uh from certain countries notably china and russia uh that have threatened what i referred to earlier as the peaceful global commons of space for example uh it through many unclassified sources and media sources everybody should understand that um uh the russians have been testing on orbit uh anti-satellite capabilities it's been very clear if you were following just the week before last the department of defense released its uh 2020 military and security developments involving the people's republic of china um uh and uh it was very clear that china is developing asats electronic jammers directed energy weapons and most relevant to today's discussion offensive cyber uh capabilities there are kinetic threats uh that are very very easy to see but a cyber attack against a critical uh command and control site or against a particular spacecraft could be just as devastating to the system and our war fighters in the case of gps and important to note that that gps system also impacts many civilians who are dependent upon those systems from a first response perspective and emergency services a cyber attack against a ground control site could cause operators to lose control of a spacecraft or an attacker could feed spoofed data to a system to mislead operators so that they send emergency services personnel to the to the wrong address right attacks on spacecraft on orbit whether directly via a network of intrusion or enabled through malware introduced during the systems production uh while we're building the satellite can [ __ ] or corrupt the data denial of service type attacks on our global networks obviously would disrupt our data flow and interfere with ongoing operations and satellite control i mean if gps went down i you know i hesitate to say it this way because we might elicit some screams from the audience but if gps went down a starbucks wouldn't be able to handle your mobile order uber drivers wouldn't be able to find you and domino's certainly certainly wouldn't be able to get there in 30 minutes or less right so with a little bit of tongue-in-cheek there from a military operations perspective it's dead serious um uh we have become accustomed in the commercial world to threats like lance ransomware and malware and those things have unfortunately become commonplace in commercial terrestrial networks and computer systems however what we're seeing is that our adversaries with the increased competition in space these same techniques are being retooled if you will to use against our national security space systems uh day in and day out um as i said during my opening remarks on the importance of cyber the value of these systems is directly tied to their integrity if commanders in the field uh firefighters in california or baristas in in starbucks can't trust the data they see they're receiving then that really harms their decision-making capabilities one of the big trends we've recently seen is the mood move towards proliferated leo uh uh constellations obviously uh spacex's uh starlink uh on the commercial side and on the military side the work that darpa and my organization smc are doing on blackjack and casino as well as some space transport layer constellation work that the space development agency is designing are all really really important types of mesh network systems that will revolutionize how we plan and field warfighting systems and commercial communications and internet providing systems but they're also heavily reliant on cyber security uh we've got to make sure that they are secured to avoid an accident or international damage uh loss of control of these constellations really could be catastrophic from both a mission perspective or from uh you know satellites tumbling out of low earth orbit perspective another trend is introductions in artificial intelligence and machine learning on board spacecraft or at the edge our satellites are really not so much hardware systems with a little software anymore in the commercial sector and in the defense sector they're basically flying boxes full of software right and we need to ensure the data that we're getting out of those flying boxes full of software are helping us base our decisions on accurate data and algorithms govern governing the right actions and that those uh that those systems are impervious to the extent possible uh to nefarious uh modifications so in summation a cyber security is vital element of everything in our national security space goals and i would argue for our national uh goals uh writ large including uh economic and information uh uh dimensions uh the space force leadership at all levels uh from uh some of the brand new second lieutenants that general raymond uh swore into the space force this morning uh ceremonially from the uh air force association's air space and cyberspace conference uh to the various highest levels general raymond uh general d t thompson myself and a number of other senior leaders in this enterprise we've got to make sure that we're all working together to keep cyber security at the forefront of our space systems because it they absolutely depend on it you know you mentioned uh hardware software threats opportunities challenges i want to ask you because you you got me thinking of the minute there around infrastructure i mean we've heard critical infrastructure you know grids here on on earth you're talking about critical infrastructure a redefinition of what critical infrastructure is an extension of what we have so i'd love to get your thoughts about space force's view of that critical infrastructure vis-a-vis the threat vectors because you know the term threat vectors has been kicked around in the cyber space oh yeah threat vectors they're always increasing the surface area well if the surface area is from space it's an unlimited surface area so you got different vectors so you got new critical infrastructure developing real time really fast and you got an expanded threat vector landscape putting that in perspective for the folks that aren't really inside the ropes on these critical issues how would you explain this and how would you talk about those two things well so i tell you um i just like um uh just like uh i'm sure people in the security side or the cyber security side of the business in the banking industry feel they feel like it's uh all possible threat vectors represent a dramatic and protect potentially existential threat to all of the dollars that they have in the banking system to the financial sector on the department of defense side we've got to have sort of the same mindset um that threat vector from to and through space against critical space systems ground segments the launch enterprise or transportation uh to orbit and the various different uh domains within uh within space itself like i mentioned before uh leo mio and geo-based satellites with different orbits all of the different mission areas that are accomplished from space that i mentioned earlier some that i didn't mention like weather tactical or wide band communications uh various new features of space control all of those are things that we have to worry about from a cyber security uh threat perspective and it's a it's a daunting challenge right now right yeah it's awesome and one of the things we've been following on the hardware side here in the on the ground is the supply chain we've seen you know malware being you know really put into really obscure hardware who manufactures it as being outsourced obviously government has restrictions but with the private sector uh you mentioned china and and the us kind of working together across these these peaceful areas but you got to look at the supply chain how does the supply chain the security aspect impact the mission of the u.s space force yeah yeah so so um how about another um just in terms of an example another kind of california-based historical example right um the very first u.s satellite uh explorer one was built by uh the jet propulsion uh laboratory folks uh not far from here in el segundo up in uh up in pasadena um that satellite when it was first built in the late 50s uh weighed a little bit over 30 pounds and i'm sure that each and every part was custom made and definitely made by u.s companies fast forward to today the global supply chain is so tightly coupled and frankly many industries are so specialized almost specialized regionally around the planet we focus every day to guarantee the integrity of every component that we put in our space systems is absolutely critical to the operations of those satellites and we're dependent upon them but it becomes more difficult and more difficult to understand the the heritage if you will of some of the parts that are used the thousands of parts that are used in some of our satellites that are literally school bus sized right the space industry especially uh national security space sector um uh is relatively small compared to other commercial industries and we're moving to towards using more and more parts uh from non-us companies uh cyber security and cyber awareness have to be baked in from the beginning if we're going to be using parts that maybe we don't necessarily um understand 100 percent like an explorer one uh the the lineage of that particular part the environmental difficulties in space are well known the radiation environment the temperature extremes the vacuum those require specialized component and the us military is not the only uh customer in that space in fact we're definitely not the dominant customer uh in space anymore all those factors require us along with our other government partners and many different commercial space organizations to keep a very close eye on our supply chains from a quality perspective a security perspective and availability um there's open source reporting on supply training intrusions from um many different breaches of commercial retailers to the infectious spread of uh you know compromised patches if you will and our adversaries are aware of these techniques as i mentioned earlier with other forms of attack considering our supply chains and development networks really becomes fair game for our adversaries so we have to uh take that threat seriously um between the government and industry sectors here in the u.s we're also working with our industry partners to enact stronger defenses and assess our own vulnerabilities last fall we completed an extensive review of all of our major contracts here at space and missile system center to determine the levels of cyber security requirements we've implemented across our portfolio and it sounds really kind of you know businessy geeky if you will you know hey we looked at our contracts to make sure that we had the right clauses in our contracts to address cyber security as dynamically as we possibly could and so we found ourselves having to add new language to our contracts to require system developers to implement some more advanced uh protective measures in this evolving cyber security environment so that data handling and supply chain perspective uh protections um from contract inception to launch and operations were taken into account uh cyber security really is a key performance parameter for us now it's as important as the the mission performance of the system it's as important as cost it's as important as schedule because if we deliver the perfect system on time and on cost uh it can perform that missile warning or that communications mis mission perfectly but it's not cyber secure if it doesn't have cyber protections built into it or the ability to implement mitigations against cyber uh threats then we've essentially fielded a shoe box in space that doesn't do the k the the war fighter or the nation uh any good um supply chain risk management is a is a major challenge for us uh we're doing a lot to coordinate with our industry partners uh we're all facing it head on uh to try and build secure and trusted components uh that keep our confidence as leaders firefighters and baristas uh as the case may be uh but it is a challenge and we're trying to rise to that challenge you know this so exciting this new area because it really touches everything you know talk about geeking out on on the tech the hardware the systems but also you put your kind of mba hat on you go what's the roi of the extra development and how you how things get built because the always the exciting thing for space geeks is like you're building cool stuff people love it's it's exciting but you still have to build and cyber security has proven that security has to be baked in from the beginning and be thought as a system architecture so you're still building things which means you've got to acquire things you got to acquire parts you got to acquire build software and and sustain it how is security impacting the acquisition and the sustainment of these systems for space yeah from initial development uh through planning for the acquisition design development fielding or production fielding and sustainment it impacts all aspects of of the life cycle john uh we simply especially from the concept of baking in cyber security uh we can't wait until something is built and then try and figure out how to make it cyber secure so we've moved way further uh towards working side by side with our system developers to strengthen cyber security from the very beginning of a system's development cyber security and the resilience associated with it really have to be treated as a key system attribute as i mentioned earlier equivalent with data rates or other metrics of performance we like to talk in uh in the space world about uh mission assurance and mission assurance has always you know sort of taken us as we as we technically geek out right mission assurance has always taken us to the will this system work in space right can it work in a vacuum can it work in you know as it as it uh you know transfers through uh the van allen radiation belt or through the the um the southern hemisphere's electromagnetic anomaly right will it work out in space and now from a resiliency perspective yeah it has to work in space it's got to be functional in space but it's also got to be resistant to these cyber security threats it's it's not just i think uh general dt thompson quoted this term it's not just widget assurance anymore it's mission assurance um uh how does that satellite uh operator that ground control segment operate while under attack so let me break your question a little bit uh just for purposes of discussion into into really two parts uh cyber uh for cyber security for systems that are new and cyber security uh for systems that are in sustainment or kind of old and legacy um obviously there's cyber vulnerabilities that threaten both and we really have to employ different strategies for for defense of of each one for new systems uh we're desperately trying to implement across the department of defense in particular in the space world a kind of a devsecops methodology and practice to delivering software faster and with greater security for our space systems here at smc we have a program called enterprise ground services which is a tool kit basically a collection of tools for common command and control of different satellite systems egs as we call it has an integrated suite for defensive cyber capabilities network operators can use these tools to gain unprecedented insight to data flows and to monitor space network traffic for anomalies or other potential indicators of of bad behavior malicious behavior if you will um uh it's rudimentary at this point but because we're using devsecops and that incremental development approach as we scale it it just becomes more and more capable you know every every product increment that we field here at uh at uh la air force base uh uh we have the united space space forces west coast software factory which we've dubbed kobayashi maru they're using those agile devops uh software development practices uh to deliver uh space awareness software uh to the combined space operations center uh affectionately called the csp that c-spock is just down the road uh from cal poly uh there in san luis obispo at vandenberg air force base they've securely linked the c-spock with other space operation centers around the planet our allies australia canada and the uk uh we're partnering with all of them to enable secure and enhanced combined space operations so lots of new stuff going on as we bake in new development uh capabilities for our our space systems but as i mentioned earlier we've got large constellations on satellite of satellites on orbit right now some of them are well in excess of a decade or more old on orbit and so the design aspects of those satellites are several decades old and so but we still have to worry about them because they're critical to our space capabilities um we've been working with an air force materiel command organization uh called crows which stands for the cyber resiliency office for uh weapon systems to assess all of those legacy platforms from a cyber security perspective and develop defensive strategies and potential hardware and software upgrades to those systems to better enable them to to live through this increasingly cyber security uh concerned era that we currently live in our industry partners have been critical to to both of those different avenues both new systems and legacy systems we're working closely with them to defend and upgrade uh national assets and develop the capabilities to do similar with uh with new national assets coming online the vulnerabilities of our space systems really kind of threaten the way we've done business in the past both militarily and in the case of gps economically the impacts of that cyber security risk are clear in our acquisition and sustainment processes but i've got to tell you it that as the threat vectors change as the vulnerabilities change we've got to be nimble enough agile enough to be able to bounce back and forth we can't just say uh many people in the audience are probably familiar with the rmf or the risk management framework approach to um to reviewing uh the cyber security of a system we can't have program managers and engineers just accomplish an rmf on a system and then hey high five we're all good uh it's a journey not a destination that's cyber security and it's a constant battle rhythm throughout a weapon systems life cycle not just a single event i want to get to this commercial business needs and your needs on the next question but before i go there you mentioned the agile and i see that clearly because when you have accelerated innovation cycles you've got to be faster and we saw this in the computer industry mainframes mini computers and then when you started getting beyond me when the internet hit and pcs came out you saw the big enterprises the banks and and government start to work with startups it used to be a joke in the entrepreneurial circles is that you know there's no way if you're a startup you're ever going to get a contract with a big business enterprise now that used to be for public sector and certainly uh for you guys so as you see startups out there and there's acquisition involved i'm sure would love to love to have a contract with space force there's an roi calculation where if it's in space and you have a sustainment view edit software you might have a new kind of business model that could be attractive to startups could you share your thoughts on the folks who want to be a supplier to you uh whether they're a startup or an existing business that wants to be agile but they might not be that big company we are john that's a fantastic question we are desperately trying to reach out to to those new space advocates to those startups to those um what we sometimes refer to within the department of defense those non-traditional uh defense contractors a couple of things just for uh thinking purposes on some of the things that we're trying to highlight um uh three years ago we created here at uh space and missile system center uh the space enterprise consortium uh to provide a platform uh a contractual vehicle really to enable us to rapidly prototype uh development of space systems and to collaborate uh between the u.s space force uh traditional defense contractors non-traditional vendors like startups and even some academic institutions uh spec as we call it space enterprise consortium uses a specialized contracting tool to get contracts uh awarded quickly many in the audience may be familiar with other transaction agreements and that's what spec is based on and so far in just three years spec has awarded 75 different uh prototyping contracts worth over 800 million dollars with a 36 reduction in time to award and because it's a consortium based competition for um for these kinds of prototyping efforts the barrier to entry for small and non-traditional for startups even for academic institutions to be able to compete for these kinds of prototypings is really lowered right um uh these types of partnerships uh that we've been working through on spec uh have really helped us work with smaller companies who might not have the background or expertise in dealing with the government or in working with cyber security uh for their systems both their developmental systems and the systems that they're designing and trying to build we want to provide ways for companies large and small to partner together and support um uh kind of mutually beneficial uh relationships between all um recently uh at the annual air force association uh conference that i mentioned earlier i moderated a panel with several space industry leaders uh all from big traditional defense contractors by the way and they all stressed the importance of building bridges and partnerships uh between major contractors in the defense industry and new entrants uh and that helps us capture the benefits of speed and agility that come with small companies and startups as well as the expertise and specialized skill sets of some of those uh larger contractors uh that we rely on day in and day out advanced cyber security protections and utilization of secure facilities are just a couple of things that i think we could be prioritizing more so in those collaborations as i mentioned earlier the spec has been very successful in awarding a number of different prototyping contracts and large dollar values and it's just going to get better right there's over 400 members of the space enterprise consortium 80 of them are non-traditional kinds of vendors and we just love working with them another thing that many people in the audience may be familiar with in terms of our outreach to innovators uh if you will and innovators that include uh cyber security experts is our space pitch day events right so we held our first event last november in san francisco uh where we awarded over a two-day period about 46 million dollars to 30 different companies um that had potentially game-changing ideas these were phase two small business innovative research efforts uh that we awarded with cash on the spot uh we're planning on holding our second space pitch day in the spring of 2021. uh we're planning on doing it right here in los angeles uh covent 19 environment permitting um and we think that these are you know fantastic uh uh venues for identifying and working with high-speed startups startups and small businesses who are interested in uh really truly partnering with the us air force it's a as i said before it's a really exciting time to be a part of this business uh and working with the innovation economy uh is something that the department of defense uh really needs to do in that um the innovation that we used to think was ours you know that 80 percent of the industrial-based innovation that came from the department of defense uh the the script has been flipped there and so now more than 70 percent uh particularly in space innovation uh comes from the commercial sector not from uh not from the defense business itself and so um that's a tsunami of uh investment and a tsunami of uh capability and i need to figure out how to get my surfboard out and ride it you know what i mean yeah i mean it's one of those things where the flip the script has been flipped but it's exciting because it's impacting everything are you talking about systems architecture you're talking about software you're talking about a business model you talk about devsecops from a technical perspective but now you have a business model innovation all the theaters of uh are exploding in innovation technical business personnel this brings up the workforce challenge you've got the cyber needs for the u.s space force there's probably a great roi model for new kinds of software development that could be priced into contracts that's a entrepreneurial innovation you got the the business model theater you've got the personnel how does the industry adopt and change you guys are clearly driving this how does the industry adjust to you yeah so um i think a great way to answer that question is to just talk about the kind of people that we're trying to prioritize in the u.s space force from a from an acquisition perspective and in this particular case from a from a cyber security perspective as i mentioned earlier it's the most exciting time to be in space programs uh really since the days of apollo um uh you know just to put it in terms that you know maybe have an impact with the audience uh from 1957 until today approximately 9 000 satellites uh have been launched from the various space faring countries around the planet uh less than two thousand of those nine thousand are still up on orbit and operational and yet in the new space regime um players like spacex have plans to launch you know 12 000 satellites for some of their constellations alone it really is a remarkable time in terms of innovation and fielding of space capabilities and all of those space capabilities whether they're commercial civil or defense are going to require appropriate cyber security uh protections it's just a really exciting time uh to be working in stuff like this and so uh folks like the folks in this audience who have a passion about space and a passion about cyber security are just the kind of people that we want to work with because we need to make sure our systems are are secure and resilient we need folks that have technical and computing expertise engineering skills to be able to design cybersecure systems that can detect and mitigate attacks uh but we also as you alluded to we need people that have that business and um you know business acumen human networking background so that we can launch the startups and work with the non-traditional businesses uh help to bring them on board help to secure both their data and our data and uh and and make sure our processes and systems are are free as much as possible from uh uh from attack um for preparation for for audience members who are young and maybe thinking about getting into this uh trade space um you gotta be smart on digital networking uh you gotta understand basic internet protocols concepts uh programming languages uh database design uh learn what you can from penetration or vulnerability testing and and uh risk assessment i will tell you this and i don't think he will i know he will not mind me telling you this but you've got to be a lifelong learner and so two years ago i'm at home one evening and i get a phone call on my cell phone and it's my boss the commander of air force space command uh general j raymond who is now currently the chief of space operations and he is on temporary duty flying overseas he lands where he's going and he first thing he does when he lands is he calls me and he goes jt um while i was traveling um i noticed that there were e-books available on the commercial airliner i was traveling on and there was an e-book on something called scrumming and agile devsecops and i read it have you read it um and i said no sir but if you tell me what the title of the book is i will read it and so i got to go to my staff meeting um you know the very next week the next time we had a staff meeting and tell everybody in the stab meeting hey if the four star and the three star can read the book about scrumming then i'm pretty sure all of you around this table and all our lieutenants and our captains our gs13s all of our government employees can get smart on uh the scrumming development process and interestingly as another side i had a telephone call with him last year during the holidays where he was trying to take some leave and i said sir what are you up to today are you are you you know making eggnog for the event tonight or whatever and the chief of space operations told me no i'm trying to teach myself python i'm at lesson two and it's not going so well but i'm i'm gonna figure this out and so that kind of thing if the chief of staff or the you know the the the chief of space operations can prioritize scrumming and python language and innovation in his daily schedule then we're definitely looking for other people who can do that and we'll just say lower levels of rank uh throughout our entire space force enterprise um look i i we don't need to need people that can code a satellite from scratch but we need to know we need to have people that have a basic grasp of the programming basics and cyber security requirements and that can turn those things into into meaningful actions obviously in the space domain things like basic physics and orbital mechanics are also important uh space is not an intuitive uh domain so under understanding how things survive uh on orbit is really critical to making the right design and operational decisions and you know i know there's probably a lot because of this conference i know there's a probably a whole lot of high-speed cyber security experts out in the audience and i need those people in the u.s space force the the country is counting on it but i wouldn't discount having people that are just cyber aware or cyber savvy right i have contracting officers and logisticians and program managers and they don't have to be high-end cyber security experts but they have to be aware enough about it to be able to implement cyber security protections um into our space system so the skill set is is really really broad um our adversaries are pouring billions of dollars into uh define designing uh and fielding offensive and destructive space cyber security weapons right they've repeatedly shown really a blatant disregard of safety and international norms for good behavior on orbit and the cyber security aspects of our space systems is really a key battleground going forward so that we can maintain that as i mentioned before peaceful uh global commons of space we really need all hands on deck if you're interested in helping in uniform if you're interested in helping uh not in uniform uh but as a government employee a commercial or civil employee to help us make cyber security more important uh or more cape more able to be developed for our space systems then we'd really love to uh to work with you or have you on the team to build that safe and secure future for our space systems lieutenant general john thompson great insight thank you for sharing all that awesome stories too and motivation for the young next generation the united states space force approach of cyber security really amazing talk thank you for your time final parting question is as you look out and you had your magic wand what's your view for the next few years in terms of things that we could accomplish it's a super exciting time what do you hope for so um um first of all john thanks to you and and thanks to cal poly uh for the invitation and and thanks to everybody for uh for their interest in cyber security especially as it relates to space systems that's here at the conference um uh there's a quote and i'll read it here uh from uh bernard schriever who was the uh the founder if you will uh a legend in uh dod space the founder of the western development division which was a predecessor organization to space and missile systems center general shrever i think captures the essence of what how we see the next couple of years the world has an ample supply of people who can always come up with a dozen good reasons why new ideas will not work and should not be tried but the people who produce progress are breed apart they have the imagination the courage and the persistence to find solutions and so i think if you're hoping that the next few years of space innovation and cyber security innovation are going to be a pony ride at the county fair then perhaps you should look for another line of work because i think the next few years in space and cyber security innovation are going to be more like a rodeo um and a very dynamic rodeo as it goes it is a an awesome privilege to be part of this ecosystem it's really an honor for me to um to be able to play some small role uh in the space ecosystem and trying to improve it uh while i'm trying to improve the chances of uh of the united states of america in a uh in a space war fighting uh uh environment um and so i thank all of you for uh participating today and for this little bit of time that you've allowed me to share with you thank you sir thank you for your leadership and thank you for the for the time for this awesome event space and cyber security symposium 2020 i'm john furrier on behalf of cal poly thanks for watching [Music]

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering >>space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly >>Over On Welcome to this Special virtual conference. The Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly with support from the Cube. I'm John for your host and master of ceremonies. Got a great topic today in this session. Really? The intersection of space and cybersecurity. This topic and this conversation is the cybersecurity workforce development through public and private partnerships. And we've got a great lineup. We have Jeff Armstrong's the president of California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly Jeffrey. Thanks for jumping on and Bang. Go ahead. The second director of C four s R Division. And he's joining us from the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for the acquisition Sustainment Department of Defense, D O D. And, of course, Steve Jake's executive director, founder, National Security Space Association and managing partner at Bello's. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for this session. We got an hour conversation. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you. >>So we got a virtual event here. We've got an hour, have a great conversation and love for you guys do? In opening statement on how you see the development through public and private partnerships around cybersecurity in space, Jeff will start with you. >>Well, thanks very much, John. It's great to be on with all of you. Uh, on behalf Cal Poly Welcome, everyone. Educating the workforce of tomorrow is our mission to Cal Poly. Whether that means traditional undergraduates, master students are increasingly mid career professionals looking toe up, skill or re skill. Our signature pedagogy is learn by doing, which means that our graduates arrive at employers ready Day one with practical skills and experience. We have long thought of ourselves is lucky to be on California's beautiful central Coast. But in recent years, as we have developed closer relationships with Vandenberg Air Force Base, hopefully the future permanent headquarters of the United States Space Command with Vandenberg and other regional partners, we have discovered that our location is even more advantages than we thought. We're just 50 miles away from Vandenberg, a little closer than u C. Santa Barbara, and the base represents the southern border of what we have come to think of as the central coast region. Cal Poly and Vandenberg Air force base have partner to support regional economic development to encourage the development of a commercial spaceport toe advocate for the space Command headquarters coming to Vandenberg and other ventures. These partnerships have been possible because because both parties stand to benefit Vandenberg by securing new streams of revenue, workforce and local supply chain and Cal Poly by helping to grow local jobs for graduates, internship opportunities for students, and research and entrepreneurship opportunities for faculty and staff. Crucially, what's good for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for Cal Poly is also good for the Central Coast and the US, creating new head of household jobs, infrastructure and opportunity. Our goal is that these new jobs bring more diversity and sustainability for the region. This regional economic development has taken on a life of its own, spawning a new nonprofit called Reach, which coordinates development efforts from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the South to camp to Camp Roberts in the North. Another factor that is facilitated our relationship with Vandenberg Air Force Base is that we have some of the same friends. For example, Northrop Grumman has has long been an important defense contractor, an important partner to Cal poly funding scholarships and facilities that have allowed us to stay current with technology in it to attract highly qualified students for whom Cal Poly's costs would otherwise be prohibitive. For almost 20 years north of grimness funded scholarships for Cal Poly students this year, their funding 64 scholarships, some directly in our College of Engineering and most through our Cal Poly Scholars program, Cal Poly Scholars, a support both incoming freshman is transfer students. These air especially important because it allows us to provide additional support and opportunities to a group of students who are mostly first generation, low income and underrepresented and who otherwise might not choose to attend Cal Poly. They also allow us to recruit from partner high schools with large populations of underrepresented minority students, including the Fortune High School in Elk Grove, which we developed a deep and lasting connection. We know that the best work is done by balanced teams that include multiple and diverse perspectives. These scholarships help us achieve that goal, and I'm sure you know Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a very large contract to modernized the U. S. I. C B M Armory with some of the work being done at Vandenberg Air Force Base, thus supporting the local economy and protecting protecting our efforts in space requires partnerships in the digital realm. How Polly is partnered with many private companies, such as AWS. Our partnerships with Amazon Web services has enabled us to train our students with next generation cloud engineering skills, in part through our jointly created digital transformation hub. Another partnership example is among Cal Poly's California Cybersecurity Institute, College of Engineering and the California National Guard. This partnership is focused on preparing a cyber ready workforce by providing faculty and students with a hands on research and learning environment, side by side with military, law enforcement professionals and cyber experts. We also have a long standing partnership with PG and E, most recently focused on workforce development and redevelopment. Many of our graduates do indeed go on to careers in aerospace and defense industry as a rough approximation. More than 4500 Cal Poly graduates list aerospace and defense as their employment sector on linked in, and it's not just our engineers and computer sciences. When I was speaking to our fellow Panelists not too long ago, >>are >>speaking to bang, we learned that Rachel sins, one of our liberal arts arts majors, is working in his office. So shout out to you, Rachel. And then finally, of course, some of our graduates sword extraordinary heights such as Commander Victor Glover, who will be heading to the International space station later this year as I close. All of which is to say that we're deeply committed the workforce, development and redevelopment that we understand the value of public private partnerships and that were eager to find new ways in which to benefit everyone from this further cooperation. So we're committed to the region, the state in the nation and our past efforts in space, cybersecurity and links to our partners at as I indicated, aerospace industry and governmental partners provides a unique position for us to move forward in the interface of space and cybersecurity. Thank you so much, John. >>President, I'm sure thank you very much for the comments and congratulations to Cal Poly for being on the forefront of innovation and really taking a unique progressive. You and wanna tip your hat to you guys over there. Thank you very much for those comments. Appreciate it. Bahng. Department of Defense. Exciting you gotta defend the nation spaces Global. Your opening statement. >>Yes, sir. Thanks, John. Appreciate that day. Thank you, everybody. I'm honored to be this panel along with President Armstrong, Cal Poly in my long longtime friend and colleague Steve Jakes of the National Security Space Association, to discuss a very important topic of cybersecurity workforce development, as President Armstrong alluded to, I'll tell you both of these organizations, Cal Poly and the N S. A have done and continue to do an exceptional job at finding talent, recruiting them in training current and future leaders and technical professionals that we vitally need for our nation's growing space programs. A swell Asare collective National security Earlier today, during Session three high, along with my colleague Chris Hansen discussed space, cyber Security and how the space domain is changing the landscape of future conflicts. I discussed the rapid emergence of commercial space with the proliferations of hundreds, if not thousands, of satellites providing a variety of services, including communications allowing for global Internet connectivity. S one example within the O. D. We continue to look at how we can leverage this opportunity. I'll tell you one of the enabling technologies eyes the use of small satellites, which are inherently cheaper and perhaps more flexible than the traditional bigger systems that we have historically used unemployed for the U. D. Certainly not lost on Me is the fact that Cal Poly Pioneer Cube SATs 2020 some years ago, and they set the standard for the use of these systems today. So they saw the valiant benefit gained way ahead of everybody else, it seems, and Cal Poly's focus on training and education is commendable. I especially impressed by the efforts of another of Steve's I colleague, current CEO Mr Bill Britain, with his high energy push to attract the next generation of innovators. Uh, earlier this year, I had planned on participating in this year's Cyber Innovation Challenge. In June works Cal Poly host California Mill and high school students and challenge them with situations to test their cyber knowledge. I tell you, I wish I had that kind of opportunity when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the pandemic change the plan. Why I truly look forward. Thio feature events such as these Thio participating. Now I want to recognize my good friend Steve Jakes, whom I've known for perhaps too long of a time here over two decades or so, who was in acknowledge space expert and personally, I truly applaud him for having the foresight of years back to form the National Security Space Association to help the entire space enterprise navigate through not only technology but Polly policy issues and challenges and paved the way for operational izing space. Space is our newest horrifying domain. That's not a secret anymore. Uh, and while it is a unique area, it shares a lot of common traits with the other domains such as land, air and sea, obviously all of strategically important to the defense of the United States. In conflict they will need to be. They will all be contested and therefore they all need to be defended. One domain alone will not win future conflicts in a joint operation. We must succeed. All to defending space is critical as critical is defending our other operational domains. Funny space is no longer the sanctuary available only to the government. Increasingly, as I discussed in the previous session, commercial space is taking the lead a lot of different areas, including R and D, A so called new space, so cyber security threat is even more demanding and even more challenging. Three US considers and federal access to and freedom to operate in space vital to advancing security, economic prosperity, prosperity and scientific knowledge of the country. That's making cyberspace an inseparable component. America's financial, social government and political life. We stood up US Space force ah, year ago or so as the newest military service is like the other services. Its mission is to organize, train and equip space forces in order to protect us and allied interest in space and to provide space capabilities to the joint force. Imagine combining that US space force with the U. S. Cyber Command to unify the direction of space and cyberspace operation strengthened U D capabilities and integrate and bolster d o d cyber experience. Now, of course, to enable all of this requires had trained and professional cadre of cyber security experts, combining a good mix of policy as well as high technical skill set much like we're seeing in stem, we need to attract more people to this growing field. Now the D. O. D. Is recognized the importance of the cybersecurity workforce, and we have implemented policies to encourage his growth Back in 2013 the deputy secretary of defense signed the D. O d cyberspace workforce strategy to create a comprehensive, well equipped cyber security team to respond to national security concerns. Now this strategy also created a program that encourages collaboration between the D. O. D and private sector employees. We call this the Cyber Information Technology Exchange program or site up. It's an exchange programs, which is very interesting, in which a private sector employees can naturally work for the D. O. D. In a cyber security position that spans across multiple mission critical areas are important to the d. O. D. A key responsibility of cybersecurity community is military leaders on the related threats and cyber security actions we need to have to defeat these threats. We talk about rapid that position, agile business processes and practices to speed up innovation. Likewise, cybersecurity must keep up with this challenge to cyber security. Needs to be right there with the challenges and changes, and this requires exceptional personnel. We need to attract talent investing the people now to grow a robust cybersecurity, workforce, streets, future. I look forward to the panel discussion, John. Thank you. >>Thank you so much bomb for those comments and you know, new challenges and new opportunities and new possibilities and free freedom Operating space. Critical. Thank you for those comments. Looking forward. Toa chatting further. Steve Jakes, executive director of N. S. S. A Europe opening statement. >>Thank you, John. And echoing bangs thanks to Cal Poly for pulling these this important event together and frankly, for allowing the National Security Space Association be a part of it. Likewise, we on behalf the association delighted and honored Thio be on this panel with President Armstrong along with my friend and colleague Bonneau Glue Mahad Something for you all to know about Bomb. He spent the 1st 20 years of his career in the Air Force doing space programs. He then went into industry for several years and then came back into government to serve. Very few people do that. So bang on behalf of the space community, we thank you for your long life long devotion to service to our nation. We really appreciate that and I also echo a bang shot out to that guy Bill Britain, who has been a long time co conspirator of ours for a long time and you're doing great work there in the cyber program at Cal Poly Bill, keep it up. But professor arms trying to keep a close eye on him. Uh, I would like to offer a little extra context to the great comments made by by President Armstrong and bahng. Uh, in our view, the timing of this conference really could not be any better. Um, we all recently reflected again on that tragic 9 11 surprise attack on our homeland. And it's an appropriate time, we think, to take pause while the percentage of you in the audience here weren't even born or babies then For the most of us, it still feels like yesterday. And moreover, a tragedy like 9 11 has taught us a lot to include to be more vigilant, always keep our collective eyes and ears open to include those quote eyes and ears from space, making sure nothing like this ever happens again. So this conference is a key aspect. Protecting our nation requires we work in a cybersecurity environment at all times. But, you know, the fascinating thing about space systems is we can't see him. No, sir, We see Space launches man there's nothing more invigorating than that. But after launch, they become invisible. So what are they really doing up there? What are they doing to enable our quality of life in the United States and in the world? Well, to illustrate, I'd like to paraphrase elements of an article in Forbes magazine by Bonds and my good friend Chuck Beans. Chuck. It's a space guy, actually had Bonds job a fuse in the Pentagon. He is now chairman and chief strategy officer at York Space Systems, and in his spare time he's chairman of the small satellites. Chuck speaks in words that everyone can understand. So I'd like to give you some of his words out of his article. Uh, they're afraid somewhat. So these are Chuck's words. Let's talk about average Joe and playing Jane. Before heading to the airport for a business trip to New York City, Joe checks the weather forecast informed by Noah's weather satellites to see what pack for the trip. He then calls an uber that space app. Everybody uses it matches riders with drivers via GPS to take into the airport, So Joe has lunch of the airport. Unbeknownst to him, his organic lunch is made with the help of precision farming made possible through optimized irrigation and fertilization, with remote spectral sensing coming from space and GPS on the plane, the pilot navigates around weather, aided by GPS and nose weather satellites. And Joe makes his meeting on time to join his New York colleagues in a video call with a key customer in Singapore made possible by telecommunication satellites. Around to his next meeting, Joe receives notice changing the location of the meeting to another to the other side of town. So he calmly tells Syria to adjust the destination, and his satellite guided Google maps redirects him to the new location. That evening, Joe watches the news broadcast via satellite. The report details a meeting among world leaders discussing the developing crisis in Syria. As it turns out, various forms of quote remotely sensed. Information collected from satellites indicate that yet another band, chemical weapon, may have been used on its own people. Before going to bed, Joe decides to call his parents and congratulate them for their wedding anniversary as they cruise across the Atlantic, made possible again by communications satellites and Joe's parents can enjoy the call without even wondering how it happened the next morning. Back home, Joe's wife, Jane, is involved in a car accident. Her vehicle skids off the road. She's knocked unconscious, but because of her satellite equipped on star system, the crash is detected immediately and first responders show up on the scene. In time, Joe receives the news books. An early trip home sends flowers to his wife as he orders another uber to the airport. Over that 24 hours, Joe and Jane used space system applications for nearly every part of their day. Imagine the consequences if at any point they were somehow denied these services, whether they be by natural causes or a foreign hostility. And each of these satellite applications used in this case were initially developed for military purposes and continue to be, but also have remarkable application on our way of life. Just many people just don't know that. So, ladies and gentlemen, now you know, thanks to chuck beans, well, the United States has a proud heritage being the world's leading space faring nation, dating back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Today we have mature and robust systems operating from space, providing overhead reconnaissance to quote, wash and listen, provide missile warning, communications, positioning, navigation and timing from our GPS system. Much of what you heard in Lieutenant General J. T. Thompson earlier speech. These systems are not only integral to our national security, but also our also to our quality of life is Chuck told us. We simply no longer could live without these systems as a nation and for that matter, as a world. But over the years, adversary like adversaries like China, Russia and other countries have come to realize the value of space systems and are aggressively playing ketchup while also pursuing capabilities that will challenge our systems. As many of you know, in 2000 and seven, China demonstrated it's a set system by actually shooting down is one of its own satellites and has been aggressively developing counter space systems to disrupt hours. So in a heavily congested space environment, our systems are now being contested like never before and will continue to bay well as Bond mentioned, the United States has responded to these changing threats. In addition to adding ways to protect our system, the administration and in Congress recently created the United States Space Force and the operational you United States Space Command, the latter of which you heard President Armstrong and other Californians hope is going to be located. Vandenberg Air Force Base Combined with our intelligence community today, we have focused military and civilian leadership now in space. And that's a very, very good thing. Commence, really. On the industry side, we did create the National Security Space Association devoted solely to supporting the national security Space Enterprise. We're based here in the D C area, but we have arms and legs across the country, and we are loaded with extraordinary talent. In scores of Forman, former government executives, So S s a is joined at the hip with our government customers to serve and to support. We're busy with a multitude of activities underway ranging from a number of thought provoking policy. Papers are recurring space time Webcast supporting Congress's Space Power Caucus and other main serious efforts. Check us out at NSS. A space dot org's One of our strategic priorities in central to today's events is to actively promote and nurture the workforce development. Just like cow calling. We will work with our U. S. Government customers, industry leaders and academia to attract and recruit students to join the space world, whether in government or industry and two assistant mentoring and training as their careers. Progress on that point, we're delighted. Be delighted to be working with Cal Poly as we hopefully will undertake a new pilot program with him very soon. So students stay tuned something I can tell you Space is really cool. While our nation's satellite systems are technical and complex, our nation's government and industry work force is highly diverse, with a combination of engineers, physicists, method and mathematicians, but also with a large non technical expertise as well. Think about how government gets things thes systems designed, manufactured, launching into orbit and operating. They do this via contracts with our aerospace industry, requiring talents across the board from cost estimating cost analysis, budgeting, procurement, legal and many other support. Tasker Integral to the mission. Many thousands of people work in the space workforce tens of billions of dollars every year. This is really cool stuff, no matter what your education background, a great career to be part of. When summary as bang had mentioned Aziz, well, there is a great deal of exciting challenges ahead we will see a new renaissance in space in the years ahead, and in some cases it's already begun. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Richard Branson are in the game, stimulating new ideas in business models, other private investors and start up companies. Space companies are now coming in from all angles. The exponential advancement of technology and microelectronics now allows the potential for a plethora of small SAT systems to possibly replace older satellites the size of a Greyhound bus. It's getting better by the day and central to this conference, cybersecurity is paramount to our nation's critical infrastructure in space. So once again, thanks very much, and I look forward to the further conversation. >>Steve, thank you very much. Space is cool. It's relevant. But it's important, as you pointed out, and you're awesome story about how it impacts our life every day. So I really appreciate that great story. I'm glad you took the time Thio share that you forgot the part about the drone coming over in the crime scene and, you know, mapping it out for you. But that would add that to the story later. Great stuff. My first question is let's get into the conversations because I think this is super important. President Armstrong like you to talk about some of the points that was teased out by Bang and Steve. One in particular is the comment around how military research was important in developing all these capabilities, which is impacting all of our lives. Through that story. It was the military research that has enabled a generation and generation of value for consumers. This is kind of this workforce conversation. There are opportunities now with with research and grants, and this is, ah, funding of innovation that it's highly accelerate. It's happening very quickly. Can you comment on how research and the partnerships to get that funding into the universities is critical? >>Yeah, I really appreciate that And appreciate the comments of my colleagues on it really boils down to me to partnerships, public private partnerships. You mentioned Northrop Grumman, but we have partnerships with Lockie Martin, Boeing, Raytheon Space six JPL, also member of organization called Business Higher Education Forum, which brings together university presidents and CEOs of companies. There's been focused on cybersecurity and data science, and I hope that we can spill into cybersecurity in space but those partnerships in the past have really brought a lot forward at Cal Poly Aziz mentioned we've been involved with Cube set. Uh, we've have some secure work and we want to plan to do more of that in the future. Uh, those partnerships are essential not only for getting the r and d done, but also the students, the faculty, whether masters or undergraduate, can be involved with that work. Uh, they get that real life experience, whether it's on campus or virtually now during Covic or at the location with the partner, whether it may be governmental or our industry. Uh, and then they're even better equipped, uh, to hit the ground running. And of course, we'd love to see even more of our students graduate with clearance so that they could do some of that a secure work as well. So these partnerships are absolutely critical, and it's also in the context of trying to bring the best and the brightest and all demographics of California and the US into this field, uh, to really be successful. So these partnerships are essential, and our goal is to grow them just like I know other colleagues and C. S u and the U C are planning to dio, >>you know, just as my age I've seen I grew up in the eighties, in college and during that systems generation and that the generation before me, they really kind of pioneered the space that spawned the computer revolution. I mean, you look at these key inflection points in our lives. They were really funded through these kinds of real deep research. Bond talk about that because, you know, we're living in an age of cloud. And Bezos was mentioned. Elon Musk. Sir Richard Branson. You got new ideas coming in from the outside. You have an accelerated clock now on terms of the innovation cycles, and so you got to react differently. You guys have programs to go outside >>of >>the Defense Department. How important is this? Because the workforce that air in schools and our folks re skilling are out there and you've been on both sides of the table. So share your thoughts. >>No, thanks, John. Thanks for the opportunity responded. And that's what you hit on the notes back in the eighties, R and D in space especially, was dominated by my government funding. Uh, contracts and so on. But things have changed. As Steve pointed out, A lot of these commercial entities funded by billionaires are coming out of the woodwork funding R and D. So they're taking the lead. So what we can do within the deal, the in government is truly take advantage of the work they've done on. Uh, since they're they're, you know, paving the way to new new approaches and new way of doing things. And I think we can We could certainly learn from that. And leverage off of that saves us money from an R and D standpoint while benefiting from from the product that they deliver, you know, within the O D Talking about workforce development Way have prioritized we have policies now to attract and retain talent. We need I I had the folks do some research and and looks like from a cybersecurity workforce standpoint. A recent study done, I think, last year in 2019 found that the cybersecurity workforce gap in the U. S. Is nearing half a million people, even though it is a growing industry. So the pipeline needs to be strengthened off getting people through, you know, starting young and through college, like assess a professor Armstrong indicated, because we're gonna need them to be in place. Uh, you know, in a period of about maybe a decade or so, Uh, on top of that, of course, is the continuing issue we have with the gap with with stamps students, we can't afford not to have expertise in place to support all the things we're doing within the with the not only deal with the but the commercial side as well. Thank you. >>How's the gap? Get? Get filled. I mean, this is the this is again. You got cybersecurity. I mean, with space. It's a whole another kind of surface area, if you will, in early surface area. But it is. It is an I o t. Device if you think about it. But it does have the same challenges. That's kind of current and and progressive with cybersecurity. Where's the gap Get filled, Steve Or President Armstrong? I mean, how do you solve the problem and address this gap in the workforce? What is some solutions and what approaches do we need to put in place? >>Steve, go ahead. I'll follow up. >>Okay. Thanks. I'll let you correct. May, uh, it's a really good question, and it's the way I would. The way I would approach it is to focus on it holistically and to acknowledge it up front. And it comes with our teaching, etcetera across the board and from from an industry perspective, I mean, we see it. We've gotta have secure systems with everything we do and promoting this and getting students at early ages and mentoring them and throwing internships at them. Eyes is so paramount to the whole the whole cycle, and and that's kind of and it really takes focused attention. And we continue to use the word focus from an NSS, a perspective. We know the challenges that are out there. There are such talented people in the workforce on the government side, but not nearly enough of them. And likewise on industry side. We could use Maura's well, but when you get down to it, you know we can connect dots. You know that the the aspect That's a Professor Armstrong talked about earlier toe where you continue to work partnerships as much as you possibly can. We hope to be a part of that. That network at that ecosystem the will of taking common objectives and working together to kind of make these things happen and to bring the power not just of one or two companies, but our our entire membership to help out >>President >>Trump. Yeah, I would. I would also add it again. It's back to partnerships that I talked about earlier. One of our partners is high schools and schools fortune Margaret Fortune, who worked in a couple of, uh, administrations in California across party lines and education. Their fifth graders all visit Cal Poly and visit our learned by doing lab and you, you've got to get students interested in stem at a early age. We also need the partnerships, the scholarships, the financial aid so the students can graduate with minimal to no debt to really hit the ground running. And that's exacerbated and really stress. Now, with this covert induced recession, California supports higher education at a higher rate than most states in the nation. But that is that has dropped this year or reasons. We all understand, uh, due to Kobe, and so our partnerships, our creativity on making sure that we help those that need the most help financially uh, that's really key, because the gaps air huge eyes. My colleagues indicated, you know, half of half a million jobs and you need to look at the the students that are in the pipeline. We've got to enhance that. Uh, it's the in the placement rates are amazing. Once the students get to a place like Cal Poly or some of our other amazing CSU and UC campuses, uh, placement rates are like 94%. >>Many of our >>engineers, they have jobs lined up a year before they graduate. So it's just gonna take key partnerships working together. Uh, and that continued partnership with government, local, of course, our state of CSU on partners like we have here today, both Stephen Bang So partnerships the thing >>e could add, you know, the collaboration with universities one that we, uh, put a lot of emphasis, and it may not be well known fact, but as an example of national security agencies, uh, National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber, the Fast works with over 270 colleges and universities across the United States to educate its 45 future cyber first responders as an example, so that Zatz vibrant and healthy and something that we ought Teoh Teik, banjo >>off. Well, I got the brain trust here on this topic. I want to get your thoughts on this one point. I'd like to define what is a public private partnership because the theme that's coming out of the symposium is the script has been flipped. It's a modern error. Things air accelerated get you got security. So you get all these things kind of happen is a modern approach and you're seeing a digital transformation play out all over the world in business. Andi in the public sector. So >>what is what >>is a modern public private partnership? What does it look like today? Because people are learning differently, Covert has pointed out, which was that we're seeing right now. How people the progressions of knowledge and learning truth. It's all changing. How do you guys view the modern version of public private partnership and some some examples and improve points? Can you can you guys share that? We'll start with the Professor Armstrong. >>Yeah. A zai indicated earlier. We've had on guy could give other examples, but Northup Grumman, uh, they helped us with cyber lab. Many years ago. That is maintained, uh, directly the software, the connection outside its its own unit so that students can learn the hack, they can learn to penetrate defenses, and I know that that has already had some considerations of space. But that's a benefit to both parties. So a good public private partnership has benefits to both entities. Uh, in the common factor for universities with a lot of these partnerships is the is the talent, the talent that is, that is needed, what we've been working on for years of the, you know, that undergraduate or master's or PhD programs. But now it's also spilling into Skilling and re Skilling. As you know, Jobs. Uh, you know, folks were in jobs today that didn't exist two years, three years, five years ago. But it also spills into other aspects that can expand even mawr. We're very fortunate. We have land, there's opportunities. We have one tech part project. We're expanding our tech park. I think we'll see opportunities for that, and it'll it'll be adjusted thio, due to the virtual world that we're all learning more and more about it, which we were in before Cove it. But I also think that that person to person is going to be important. Um, I wanna make sure that I'm driving across the bridge. Or or that that satellites being launched by the engineer that's had at least some in person training, uh, to do that and that experience, especially as a first time freshman coming on a campus, getting that experience expanding and as adult. And we're gonna need those public private partnerships in order to continue to fund those at a level that is at the excellence we need for these stem and engineering fields. >>It's interesting People in technology can work together in these partnerships in a new way. Bank Steve Reaction Thio the modern version of what a public, successful private partnership looks like. >>If I could jump in John, I think, you know, historically, Dodi's has have had, ah, high bar thio, uh, to overcome, if you will, in terms of getting rapid pulling in your company. This is the fault, if you will and not rely heavily in are the usual suspects of vendors and like and I think the deal is done a good job over the last couple of years off trying to reduce the burden on working with us. You know, the Air Force. I think they're pioneering this idea around pitch days where companies come in, do a two hour pitch and immediately notified of a wooden award without having to wait a long time. Thio get feedback on on the quality of the product and so on. So I think we're trying to do our best. Thio strengthen that partnership with companies outside the main group of people that we typically use. >>Steve, any reaction? Comment to add? >>Yeah, I would add a couple of these air. Very excellent thoughts. Uh, it zits about taking a little gamble by coming out of your comfort zone. You know, the world that Bond and Bond lives in and I used to live in in the past has been quite structured. It's really about we know what the threat is. We need to go fix it, will design it says we go make it happen, we'll fly it. Um, life is so much more complicated than that. And so it's it's really to me. I mean, you take you take an example of the pitch days of bond talks about I think I think taking a gamble by attempting to just do a lot of pilot programs, uh, work the trust factor between government folks and the industry folks in academia. Because we are all in this together in a lot of ways, for example. I mean, we just sent the paper to the White House of their requests about, you know, what would we do from a workforce development perspective? And we hope Thio embellish on this over time once the the initiative matures. But we have a piece of it, for example, is the thing we call clear for success getting back Thio Uh, President Armstrong's comments at the collegiate level. You know, high, high, high quality folks are in high demand. So why don't we put together a program they grabbed kids in their their underclass years identifies folks that are interested in doing something like this. Get them scholarships. Um, um, I have a job waiting for them that their contract ID for before they graduate, and when they graduate, they walk with S C I clearance. We believe that could be done so, and that's an example of ways in which the public private partnerships can happen to where you now have a talented kid ready to go on Day one. We think those kind of things can happen. It just gets back down to being focused on specific initiatives, give them giving them a chance and run as many pilot programs as you can like these days. >>That's a great point, E. President. >>I just want to jump in and echo both the bank and Steve's comments. But Steve, that you know your point of, you know, our graduates. We consider them ready Day one. Well, they need to be ready Day one and ready to go secure. We totally support that and and love to follow up offline with you on that. That's that's exciting, uh, and needed very much needed mawr of it. Some of it's happening, but way certainly have been thinking a lot about that and making some plans, >>and that's a great example of good Segway. My next question. This kind of reimagining sees work flows, eyes kind of breaking down the old the old way and bringing in kind of a new way accelerated all kind of new things. There are creative ways to address this workforce issue, and this is the next topic. How can we employ new creative solutions? Because, let's face it, you know, it's not the days of get your engineering degree and and go interview for a job and then get slotted in and get the intern. You know the programs you get you particularly through the system. This is this is multiple disciplines. Cybersecurity points at that. You could be smart and math and have, ah, degree in anthropology and even the best cyber talents on the planet. So this is a new new world. What are some creative approaches that >>you know, we're >>in the workforce >>is quite good, John. One of the things I think that za challenge to us is you know, we got somehow we got me working for with the government, sexy, right? The part of the challenge we have is attracting the right right level of skill sets and personnel. But, you know, we're competing oftentimes with the commercial side, the gaming industry as examples of a big deal. And those are the same talents. We need to support a lot of programs we have in the U. D. So somehow we have to do a better job to Steve's point off, making the work within the U. D within the government something that they would be interested early on. So I tracked him early. I kind of talked about Cal Poly's, uh, challenge program that they were gonna have in June inviting high school kid. We're excited about the whole idea of space and cyber security, and so on those air something. So I think we have to do it. Continue to do what were the course the next several years. >>Awesome. Any other creative approaches that you guys see working or might be on idea, or just a kind of stoked the ideation out their internship. So obviously internships are known, but like there's gotta be new ways. >>I think you can take what Steve was talking about earlier getting students in high school, uh, and aligning them sometimes. Uh, that intern first internship, not just between the freshman sophomore year, but before they inter cal poly per se. And they're they're involved s So I think that's, uh, absolutely key. Getting them involved many other ways. Um, we have an example of of up Skilling a redeveloped work redevelopment here in the Central Coast. PG and e Diablo nuclear plant as going to decommission in around 2020 24. And so we have a ongoing partnership toe work on reposition those employees for for the future. So that's, you know, engineering and beyond. Uh, but think about that just in the manner that you were talking about. So the up skilling and re Skilling uh, on I think that's where you know, we were talking about that Purdue University. Other California universities have been dealing with online programs before cove it and now with co vid uh, so many more faculty or were pushed into that area. There's going to be much more going and talk about workforce development and up Skilling and Re Skilling The amount of training and education of our faculty across the country, uh, in in virtual, uh, and delivery has been huge. So there's always a silver linings in the cloud. >>I want to get your guys thoughts on one final question as we in the in the segment. And we've seen on the commercial side with cloud computing on these highly accelerated environments where you know, SAS business model subscription. That's on the business side. But >>one of The >>things that's clear in this trend is technology, and people work together and technology augments the people components. So I'd love to get your thoughts as we look at the world now we're living in co vid um, Cal Poly. You guys have remote learning Right now. It's a infancy. It's a whole new disruption, if you will, but also an opportunity to enable new ways to collaborate, Right? So if you look at people and technology, can you guys share your view and vision on how communities can be developed? How these digital technologies and people can work together faster to get to the truth or make a discovery higher to build the workforce? These air opportunities? How do you guys view this new digital transformation? >>Well, I think there's there's a huge opportunities and just what we're doing with this symposium. We're filming this on one day, and it's going to stream live, and then the three of us, the four of us, can participate and chat with participants while it's going on. That's amazing. And I appreciate you, John, you bringing that to this this symposium, I think there's more and more that we can do from a Cal poly perspective with our pedagogy. So you know, linked to learn by doing in person will always be important to us. But we see virtual. We see partnerships like this can expand and enhance our ability and minimize the in person time, decrease the time to degree enhanced graduation rate, eliminate opportunity gaps or students that don't have the same advantages. S so I think the technological aspect of this is tremendous. Then on the up Skilling and Re Skilling, where employees air all over, they can be reached virtually then maybe they come to a location or really advanced technology allows them to get hands on virtually, or they come to that location and get it in a hybrid format. Eso I'm I'm very excited about the future and what we can do, and it's gonna be different with every university with every partnership. It's one. Size does not fit all. >>It's so many possibilities. Bond. I could almost imagine a social network that has a verified, you know, secure clearance. I can jump in, have a little cloak of secrecy and collaborate with the d o. D. Possibly in the future. But >>these are the >>kind of kind of crazy ideas that are needed. Are your thoughts on this whole digital transformation cross policy? >>I think technology is gonna be revolutionary here, John. You know, we're focusing lately on what we call digital engineering to quicken the pace off, delivering capability to warfighter. As an example, I think a I machine language all that's gonna have a major play and how we operate in the future. We're embracing five G technologies writing ability Thio zero latency or I o t More automation off the supply chain. That sort of thing, I think, uh, the future ahead of us is is very encouraging. Thing is gonna do a lot for for national defense on certainly the security of the country. >>Steve, your final thoughts. Space systems are systems, and they're connected to other systems that are connected to people. Your thoughts on this digital transformation opportunity >>Such a great question in such a fun, great challenge ahead of us. Um echoing are my colleague's sentiments. I would add to it. You know, a lot of this has I think we should do some focusing on campaigning so that people can feel comfortable to include the Congress to do things a little bit differently. Um, you know, we're not attuned to doing things fast. Uh, but the dramatic You know, the way technology is just going like crazy right now. I think it ties back Thio hoping Thio, convince some of our senior leaders on what I call both sides of the Potomac River that it's worth taking these gamble. We do need to take some of these things very way. And I'm very confident, confident and excited and comfortable. They're just gonna be a great time ahead and all for the better. >>You know, e talk about D. C. Because I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a political person, but I always say less lawyers, more techies in Congress and Senate. So I was getting job when I say that. Sorry. Presidential. Go ahead. >>Yeah, I know. Just one other point. Uh, and and Steve's alluded to this in bonded as well. I mean, we've got to be less risk averse in these partnerships. That doesn't mean reckless, but we have to be less risk averse. And I would also I have a zoo. You talk about technology. I have to reflect on something that happened in, uh, you both talked a bit about Bill Britton and his impact on Cal Poly and what we're doing. But we were faced a few years ago of replacing a traditional data a data warehouse, data storage data center, and we partner with a W S. And thank goodness we had that in progress on it enhanced our bandwidth on our campus before Cove. It hit on with this partnership with the digital transformation hub. So there is a great example where, uh, we we had that going. That's not something we could have started. Oh, covitz hit. Let's flip that switch. And so we have to be proactive on. We also have thio not be risk averse and do some things differently. Eyes that that is really salvage the experience for for students. Right now, as things are flowing, well, we only have about 12% of our courses in person. Uh, those essential courses, uh, and just grateful for those partnerships that have talked about today. >>Yeah, and it's a shining example of how being agile, continuous operations, these air themes that expand into space and the next workforce needs to be built. Gentlemen, thank you. very much for sharing your insights. I know. Bang, You're gonna go into the defense side of space and your other sessions. Thank you, gentlemen, for your time for great session. Appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. >>I'm John Furry with the Cube here in Palo Alto, California Covering and hosting with Cal Poly The Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. 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)

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

>> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCUBE covering space in cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020 hosted by Cal Poly where the intersection of space and security are coming together. I'm John Furrier, your host with theCUBE here in California. I want to welcome our featured guest, Lieutenant General, John F. Thompson with the United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. That's the topic of this session. And of course he's the commander of the space and missile system center in Los Angeles Air Force Base. Also heading up Space Force. General, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate to you kicking this off. Welcome to the symposium. >> Hey, so thank you very much, John, for that very kind introduction. Also very much thank you to Cal Poly for this opportunity to speak to this audience today. Also a special shout out to one of the organizers, Dustin Debrun, for all of his work, helping get us to this point. Ladies and gentlemen as a John mentioned, I'm JT Thompson. I lead the 6,000 men and women of the United States Space Force's Space and Missile System Center, which is headquartered here at Los Angeles Air Force Base and El Segundo. If you're not quite sure where that's at, it's about a mile and a half from LAX. This is our main operating location, but we do have a number of other operating locations around the country. We're about 500 people at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an about another 500 people on the front range of the Rockies between Colorado Springs and Denver plus a smattering of other much smaller operating locations nationwide. We're responsible for acquiring, developing and sustaining the United States Space Force's, critical space assets. That includes the satellites in the space layer and also on the ground layer our ground segments to operate those satellites. And we also are in charge of procuring launch services for the US Space Force and a number of our critical mission partners across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. Just as a couple of examples of some of the things we do, if you're unfamiliar with our work we developed and currently sustain the 31 satellite GPS constellation that satellite constellation, while originally intended to help with global navigation, those GPS signals have provided trillions of dollars in unanticipated value to the global economy over the past three decades. GPS is everywhere. I think everybody realizes that. Agriculture, banking, the stock market, the airline industry, separate and distinct navigation systems. It's really pervasive across both capabilities for our Department of Defense and capabilities for our economy and individuals, billions of individuals across our country and the planet. Some of the other work we do for instance, in the communications sector, secure communications satellites that we designed and build that link America's sons and daughters serving in the military around the world and really enable real time support and comms for our deployed forces. And those of our allies. We also acquire infrared missile warning satellites that monitor the planet for missile launches that provide advanced warning to the US Homeland and to our allies in case some of those missile launches are nefarious. On a note, that's probably a lot closer to home, maybe a lot closer to home than many of us want to think about here in the state of California. In 2018, SMC jumped through a bunch of red tape and bureaucracy to partner with the US Forest Service during two of the largest wildfires in the state's history, the Camp and Woolsey fires in Northern California. As those fires spread out of control, we created processes on the fly to share data from our missile warning satellites. Those are satellites that are systems that are purpose built to see heat sources from thousands of miles above the planet. And we collaborated with the US Forest Service so that firefighters on the ground could track those fires more in real time and better forecast fires and where they were spreading, thereby saving lives and property by identifying hotspots and flareups for firefighters. That data that we were able to working with our contractors pass to the US Forest Service and authorities here in California, was passed in less than an hour as it was collected to get it into the hands of the emergency responders, the first responders as quickly as possible and doing that in an hour greatly surpassed what was available from some of the other assets in the airborne and ground-based fire spotters. It was really instrumental in fighting those fires and stopping their spread. We've continued that involvement in recent years, using multiple systems to support firefighters across the Western US this fall, as they battled numerous wildfires that unfortunately continue. Working together with the US Forest Service and with other partners we'd like to think that we've made a difference here, but there's still a lot more work to go. And I think that we should always be asking ourselves what else can space data be used for and how can we more rapidly get that space data to stakeholders so that they can use it for purposes of good, if you will. How else can we protect our nation? How else can we protect our friends and allies? I think a major component of the discussion that we will have throughout this conference is that the space landscape has changed rapidly and continues to change rapidly. Just over the past few years, John and I were talking before we went live here and 80 nations now have space programs. Nearly 80 space faring nations on the planet. If you just look at one mission area that the Department of Defense is interested in, and that's small launch, there are currently over 100 different small launch companies within the US industrial base vying for commercial DoD and civil payload capabilities, mostly to lower earth orbit. It's truly a remarkable time. If you factor in those things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, where we're revolutionizing really, the ways that we generate process and use data. It's really remarkable. In 2016, so if you think about this four years ago, NASA estimated that there were 28 terabytes of information transiting their space network each day. And that was four years ago. Obviously we've got a lot of desire to work with a lot of the people in the audience in this conference, we need to work with big thinkers, like many of you to answer questions on how best we apply data analytics to extract value and meaning from that data. We need new generations of thinkers to help apply cutting edge theories of data mining, cyber behaviorism, and Internet of Things 2.0, it's just truly a remarkable time to be in the space business and the cyber aspects of the space business are truly, truly daunting and important to all of us. Integrating cyber security into our space systems, both commercial and government is a mandate. it's no longer just a nice to have as the US Space Force and Department of the Air Force leadership has said many times over the past couple of years, space is becoming congested and contested. And that contested aspect means that we've got to focus on cyber security in the same way that the banking industry and cyber commerce focus on cybersecurity day in and day out. The value of the data and services provided is really directly tied to the integrity and availability of that data and services from the space layer, from the ground control segments associated with it. And this value is not just military, it's also economic and it's not just American, it's also a value for the entire world, particularly our allies, as we all depend upon space and space systems. Your neighbors and friends here in California that are employed at the space and missile system center work with network defenders. We work with our commercial contractors and our systems developers, our international allies and partners to try and build as secure and resilient systems as we can from the ground up that keep the global comments of space free and open for exploration and for commerce as John and I were talking earlier, before we came online, there's an aspect of cybersecurity for space systems, especially for some of our legacy systems, that's more, how do we bolt this on? Cause we fielded those space systems a number of years ago, and the challenges of cybersecurity in the space domain have grown. So we have a part that we have to worry about, bolting it on, but then we have to worry about building it in as we field new systems and build in a flexibility that realizes that the cyber threat or the cybersecurity landscape will evolve over time. It's not just going to be stagnant. There will always be new vulnerabilities and new threat vectors that we all have to look at. Look, as Secretary Barrett, who is our secretary of the air force likes to say most Americans use space before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning. The American way of life really depends on space. And as part of the United States Space Force, we work with defense leaders, our Congress joint, and international military teammates and industry to ensure American leadership in space. I really thank you for this opportunity to address the audience today, John, and thanks so much to Cal Poly for letting me be one of the speakers at this event. I've really looked forward to this for several months. And so with that, I look forward to your questions as we kind of move along here. >> General, thank you very much for those awesome introductory statement. For the folks watching on the stream, Brigadier General Carthan's going to be in the chat, answering any questions, feel free to chat away. He's the vice commander of Space and Missile System Center, he'll be available. A couple of comments from your keynote before I get to my questions. Cause it just jumped into my head. You mentioned the benefits of say space with the fires in California. We're living that here. That's really realtime. That's a benefit. You also mentioned the ability for more people launching payloads into space. I'm only imagined Moore's law smaller, faster, cheaper applies to rockets too. So I'm imagining you have the benefits of space and you have now more potential objects flying out sanctioned and maybe unsanctioned. So is it going to be more rules around that? This is an interesting question cause it's exciting Space Force, but for all the good there is potentially bad out there. >> Yeah. So John, I think the basics of your question is as space becomes more congested and contested, is there a need for more international norms of how satellites fly in space? What kind of basic features satellites have to perhaps de orbit themselves? What kind of basic protections should all satellites be afforded as part of a peaceful global commons of space? I think those are all fantastic questions. And I know that US and many allied policy makers are looking very, very hard at those kinds of questions in terms of what are the norms of behavior and how we field, and field as the military term. But how we populate using civil or commercial terms that space layer at different altitudes, lower earth orbit, mid earth orbit, geosynchronous earth orbit, different kinds of orbits, what the kind of mission areas we accomplished from space. That's all things that need to be definitely taken into account as the place gets a little bit, not a little bit as the place gets increasingly more popular day in and day out. >> I'm super excited for Space Force. I know that a new generation of young folks are really interested in it's an emerging, changing great space. The focus here at this conference is space and cybersecurity, the intersection. I'd like to get your thoughts on the approach that a space force is taking to cybersecurity and how it impacts our national goals here in the United States. >> Yeah. So that's a great question John, let me talk about it in two basic ways. At number one is an and I know some people in the audience, this might make them a little bit uncomfortable, but I have to talk about the threat. And then relative to that threat, I really have to talk about the importance of cyber and specifically cyber security, as it relates to that threat. The threats that we face really represented a new era of warfare and that new era of warfare involves both space and cyber. We've seen a lot of action in recent months from certain countries, notably China and Russia that have threatened what I referred to earlier as the peaceful global commons of space. For example, it threw many unclassified sources and media sources. Everybody should understand that the Russians have been testing on orbit anti-satellite capabilities. It's been very clear if you were following just the week before last, the Department of Defense released its 2020 military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China. And it was very clear that China is developing ASATs, electronic jammers, directed energy weapons, and most relevant to today's discussion, offensive cyber capabilities. There are kinetic threats that are very, very easy to see, but a cyber attack against a critical command and control site or against a particular spacecraft could be just as devastating to the system and our war fighters in the case of GPS and important to note that that GPS system also impacts many civilians who are dependent on those systems from a first response perspective and emergency services, a cyber attack against a ground control site could cause operators to lose control of a spacecraft or an attacker could feed spoofed data to assist them to mislead operators so that they sent emergency services personnel to the wrong address. Attacks on spacecraft on orbit, whether directly via a network intrusion or enabled through malware introduced during the system's production while we're building the satellite can cripple or corrupt the data. Denial-of-service type attacks on our global networks obviously would disrupt our data flow and interfere with ongoing operations and satellite control. If GPS went down, I hesitate to say it this way, cause we might elicit some screams from the audience. But if GPS went down a Starbucks, wouldn't be able to handle your mobile order, Uber drivers wouldn't be able to find you. And Domino's certainly wouldn't be able to get there in 30 minutes or less. So with a little bit of tongue in cheek there from a military operations perspective, it's dead serious. We have become accustomed in the commercial world to threats like ransomware and malware. And those things have unfortunately become commonplace in commercial terrestrial networks and computer systems. However, what we're seeing is that our adversaries with the increased competition in space these same techniques are being retooled, if you will, to use against our national security space systems day in and day out. As I said, during my opening remarks on the importance of cyber, the value of these systems is directly tied to their integrity. If commanders in the field, firefighters in California or baristas in Starbucks, can't trust the data they're receiving, then that really harms their decision making capabilities. One of the big trends we've recently seen is the move towards proliferated LEO constellations, obviously Space X's Starlink on the commercial side and on the military side, the work that DARPA and my organization SMC are doing on Blackjack and Casino, as well as some space transport layer constellation work that the space development agency is designing are all really, really important types of mesh network systems that will revolutionaries how we plan and field war fighting systems and commercial communications and internet providing systems. But they're also heavily reliant on cybersecurity. We've got to make sure that they are secured to avoid an accident or international damage. Loss of control of these constellations really could be catastrophic from both a mission perspective or from a satellites tumbling out of low earth orbit perspective. Another trend is introductions in artificial intelligence and machine learning, onboard spacecraft are at the edge. Our satellites are really not so much hardware systems with a little software anymore in the commercial sector and in the defense sector, they're basically flying boxes full of software. And we need to ensure that data that we're getting out of those flying boxes full of software are helping us base our decisions on accurate data and algorithms, governing the right actions and that those systems are impervious to the extent possible to nefarious modifications. So in summation, cybersecurity is a vital element of everything in our national security space goals. And I would argue for our national goals, writ large, including economic and information dimensions, the Space Force leadership at all levels from some of the brand new second lieutenants that general Raymond swore in to the space force this morning, ceremonially from the air force associations, airspace and cyberspace conference to the various highest levels, General Raymond, General DT Thompson, myself, and a number of other senior leaders in this enterprise. We've got to make sure that we're all working together to keep cyber security at the forefront of our space systems cause they absolutely depend on it. >> You mentioned hardware, software threats, opportunities, challenges. I want to ask you because you got me thinking of the minute they're around infrastructure. We've heard critical infrastructure, grids here on earth. You're talking about critical infrastructure, a redefinition of what critical infrastructure is, an extension of what we have. So I'd love to get your thoughts about Space Force's view of that critical infrastructure vis-a-vis the threat vectors, because the term threat vectors has been kicked around in the cyberspace. Oh you have threat vectors. They're always increasing the surface area. If the surface area is from space, it's an unlimited service area. So you got different vectors. So you've got new critical infrastructure developing real time, really fast. And you got an expanded threat vector landscape. Putting that in perspective for the folks that aren't really inside the ropes on these critical issues. How would you explain this and how would you talk about those two things? >> So I tell you, just like, I'm sure people in the security side or the cybersecurity side of the business in the banking industry feel, they feel like it's all possible threat vectors represent a dramatic and protect potentially existential threat to all of the dollars that they have in the banking system, to the financial sector. On the Department of Defense side, we've got to have sort of the same mindset. That threat vector from, to, and through space against critical space systems, ground segments, the launch enterprise, or transportation to orbit and the various different domains within space itself. Like I mentioned before, LEO, MEO and GEO based satellites with different orbits, all of the different mission areas that are accomplished from space that I mentioned earlier, some that I did mention like a weather tactical or wide band communications, various new features of space control. All of those are things that we have to worry about from a cyber security threat perspective. And it's a daunting challenge right now. >> Yeah, that's awesome. And one of the things we've been falling on the hardware side on the ground is the supply chain. We've seen, malware being, really put in a really obscure hardware. Who manufactures it? Is it being outsourced? Obviously government has restrictions, but with the private sector, you mentioned China and the US kind of working together across these peaceful areas. But you got to look at the supply chain. How does the supply chain in the security aspect impact the mission of the US space Force? >> Yeah. Yeah. So how about another, just in terms of an example, another kind of California based historical example. The very first US Satellite, Explorer 1, was built by the jet propulsion laboratory folks, not far from here in El Segundo, up in Pasadena, that satellite, when it was first built in the late 50s weighing a little bit, over 30 pounds. And I'm sure that each and every part was custom made and definitely made by US companies. Fast forward to today. The global supply chain is so tightly coupled, and frankly many industries are so specialized, almost specialized regionally around the planet. We focus every day to guarantee the integrity of every component that we put in our space systems is absolutely critical to the operations of those satellites and we're dependent upon them, but it becomes more difficult and more difficult to understand the heritage, if you will, of some of the parts that are used, the thousands of parts that are used in some of our satellites that are literally school bus sized. The space industry, especially national security space sector is relatively small compared to other commercial industries. And we're moving towards using more and more parts from non US companies. Cybersecurity and cyber awareness have to be baked in from the beginning if we're going to be using parts that maybe we don't necessarily understand 100% like an Explorer one, the lineage of that particular part. The environmental difficulties in space are well known. The radiation environment, the temperature extremes, the vacuum, those require specialized component. And the US military is not the only customer in that space. In fact, we're definitely not the dominant customer in space anymore. All those factors require us along with our other government partners and many different commercial space organizations to keep a very close eye on our supply chains, from a quality perspective, a security perspective and availability. There's open source reporting on supply training intrusions from many different breaches of commercial retailers to the infectious spread of compromised patches, if you will. And our adversaries are aware of these techniques. As I mentioned earlier, with other forms of attack, considering our supply chains and development networks really becomes fair game for our adversaries. So we have to take that threat seriously. Between the government and industry sectors here in the US. We're also working with our industry partners to enact stronger defenses and assess our own vulnerabilities. Last fall, we completed an extensive review of all of our major contracts here at Space and Missile System Center to determine the levels of cyber security requirements we've implemented across our portfolio. And it sounds really kind of businessy geeky, if you will. Hey, we looked at our contracts to make sure that we had the right clauses in our contracts to address cybersecurity as dynamically as we possibly could. And so we found ourselves having to add new language to our contracts, to require system developers, to implement some more advanced protective measures in this evolving cyber security environment. So that data handling and supply chain protections from contract inception to launch and operations were taken into account. Cyber security really is a key performance parameter for us now. Performance of the system, It's as important as cost, it's as important as schedule, because if we deliver the perfect system on time and on cost, it can perform that missile warning or that communications mission perfectly, but it's not cyber secure. If it's doesn't have cyber protections built into it, or the ability to implement mitigations against cyber threats, then we've essentially fielded a shoe box in space that doesn't do the CA the war fighter or the nation any good. Supply chain risk management is a major challenge for us. We're doing a lot to coordinate with our industry partners. We're all facing it head on to try and build secure and trusted components that keep our confidence as leaders, firefighters, and baristas as the case may be. But it is a challenge. And we're trying to rise to that challenge. >> This is so exciting this new area, because it really touches everything. Talk about geeking out on the tech, the hardware, the systems but also you put your kind of MBA hat on you go, what's the ROI of extra development and how things get built. Because the always the exciting thing for space geeks is like, if you're building cool stuff, it's exciting, but you still have to build. And cybersecurity has proven that security has to be baked in from the beginning and be thought as a system architecture. So you're still building things, which means you got to acquire things, you got to acquire parts, you got acquire build software and sustain it. How is security impacting the acquisition and the sustainment of these systems for space? >> Yeah. From initial development, through planning for the acquisition, design, development, our production fielding and sustainment, it impacts all aspects of the life cycle, John. We simply, especially from the concept of baking in cybersecurity, we can't wait until something is built and then try and figure out how to make it cyber secure. So we've moved way further towards working side by side with our system developers to strengthen cybersecurity from the very beginning of a systems development, cyber security, and the resilience associated with it really have to be treated as a key system attribute. As I mentioned earlier, equivalent with data rates or other metrics of performance. We like to talk in the space world about mission assurance and mission assurance has always sort of taken us as we technically geek out. Mission assurance has always taken us to the will this system work in space. Can it work in a vacuum? Can it work in as it transfers through the Van Allen radiation belt or through the Southern hemisphere's electromagnetic anomaly? Will it work out in space? And now from a resiliency perspective, yeah, it has to work in space. It's got to be functional in space, but it's also got to be resistant to these cybersecurity threats. It's not just, I think a General D.T Thompson quoted this term. It's not just widget assurance anymore. It's mission assurance. How does that satellite operator that ground control segment operate while under attack? So let me break your question a little bit, just for purposes of discussion into really two parts, cybersecurity, for systems that are new and cybersecurity for systems that are in sustainment are kind of old and legacy. Obviously there's cyber vulnerabilities that threatened both, and we really have to employ different strategies for defensive of each one. For new systems. We're desperately trying to implement across the Department of Defense and particularly in the space world, a kind of a dev sec ops methodology and practice to delivering software faster and with greater security for our space systems. Here at SMC, we have a program called enterprise ground services, which is a toolkit, basically a collection of tools for common command and control of different satellite systems, EGS as we call it has an integrated suite for defensive cyber capabilities. Network operators can use these tools to gain unprecedented insight to data flows and to monitor space network traffic for anomalies or other potential indicators of a bad behavior, malicious behavior, if you will, it's rudimentary at this point, but because we're using DevSecOps and that incremental development approach, as we scale it, it just becomes more and more capable. Every product increment that we feel. Here at LA Air Force Base, we have the United Space Force's West Coast Software Factory, which we've dubbed the Kobayashi Maru. They're using those agile DevOps software development practices to deliver a space awareness software to the combined space operations center. Affectionately called the CSpock that CSpock is just on the road from Cal Poly there in San Luis Obispo at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They've so securely linked the sea Spock with other space operation centers around the planet, our allies, Australia, Canada, and the UK. We're partnering with all of them to enable secure and enhanced combined space operations. So lots of new stuff going on as we bake in new development capabilities for our space systems. But as I mentioned earlier, we've got large constellations of satellites on orbit right now. Some of them are well in excess of a decade or more or old on orbit. And so the design aspects of those satellites are several decades old. But we still have to worry about them cause they're critical to our space capabilities. We've been working with an air force material command organization called CROWS, which stands for the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapon Systems to assess all of those legacy platforms from a cyber security perspective and develop defensive strategies and potential hardware and software upgrades to those systems to better enable them to live through this increasingly cybersecurity concerned era that we currently live in. Our industry partners have been critical to both of those different avenues. Both new systems and legacy systems. We're working closely with them to defend and upgrade national assets and develop the capabilities to do similar with new national assets coming online. The vulnerabilities of our space systems really kind of threatened the way we've done business in the past, both militarily and in the case of GPS economically. The impacts of that cybersecurity risk are clear in our acquisition and sustainment processes, but I've got to tell you, as the threat vectors change, as the vulnerabilities change, we've got to be nimble enough, agile enough, to be able to bounce back and forth. We can't just say, many people in the audience are probably familiar with the RMF or the Risk Management Framework approach to reviewing the cyber security of a system. We can't have program managers and engineers just accomplish an RMF on a system. And then, hey, high five, we're all good. It's a journey, not a destination, that's cybersecurity. And it's a constant battle rhythm through our weapon systems lifecycle, not just a single event. >> I want to get to this commercial business needs and your needs on the next question. But before I go there, you mentioned agile. And I see that clearly because when you have accelerated innovation cycles, you've got to be faster. And we saw this in the computer industry, mainframes, mini computers, and then we started getting beyond maybe when the internet hit and PCs came out, you saw the big enterprises, the banks and government start to work with startups. And it used to be a joke in the entrepreneurial circles is that, there's no way if you are a startup you're ever going to get a contract with a big business enterprise. Now that used to be for public sector and certainly for you guys. So as you see startups out there and there's acquisition involved, I'm sure would love to have a contract with Space Force. There's an ROI calculation where if it's in space and you have a sustainment view and it's software, you might have a new kind of business model that could be attractive to startups. Could you share your thoughts on the folks who want to be a supplier to you, whether they're a startup or an existing business that wants to be agile, but they might not be that big company. >> John, that's a fantastic question. We're desperately trying to reach out to those new space advocates, to those startups, to those what we sometimes refer to, within the Department of Defense, those non traditional defense contractors. A couple of things just for thinking purposes on some of the things that we're trying to highlight. Three years ago, we created here at Space and Missile System Center, the Space Enterprise Consortium to provide a platform, a contractual vehicle, really to enable us to rapidly prototype, development of space systems and to collaborate between the US Space Force, traditional defense contractors, non traditional vendors like startups, and even some academic institutions. SPEC, as we call it, Space Enterprise Consortium uses a specialized contracting tool to get contracts awarded quickly. Many in the audience may be familiar with other transaction agreements. And that's what SPEC is based on. And so far in just three years, SPEC has awarded 75 different prototyping contracts worth over $800 million with a 36% reduction in time to award. And because it's a consortium based competition for these kinds of prototyping efforts, the barrier to entry for small and nontraditional, for startups, even for academic institutions to be able to compete for these kinds of prototyping has really lowered. These types of partnerships that we've been working through on spec have really helped us work with smaller companies who might not have the background or expertise in dealing with the government or in working with cyber security for their systems, both our developmental systems and the systems that they're designing and trying to build. We want to provide ways for companies large and small to partner together in support kind of mutually beneficial relationships between all. Recently at the Annual Air Force Association conference that I mentioned earlier, I moderated a panel with several space industry leaders, all from big traditional defense contractors, by the way. And they all stressed the importance of building bridges and partnerships between major contractors in the defense industry and new entrance. And that helps us capture the benefits of speed and agility that come with small companies and startups, as well as the expertise and specialized skill sets of some of those larger contractors that we rely on day in and day out. Advanced cyber security protections and utilization of secure facilities are just a couple of things that I think we could be prioritizing more so in those collaborations. As I mentioned earlier, the SPEC has been very successful in awarding a number of different prototyping contracts and large dollar values. And it's just going to get better. There's over 400 members of the space enterprise consortium, 80% of them are non traditional kinds of vendors. And we just love working with them. Another thing that many people in the audience may be familiar with in terms of our outreach to innovators, if you will, and innovators that include cyber security experts is our space pitch day events. So we held our first event last November in San Francisco, where we awarded over a two day period about $46 million to 30 different companies that had potentially game changing ideas. These were phase two small business innovative research efforts that we awarded with cash on the spot. We're planning on holding our second space pitch day in the spring of 2021. We're planning on doing it right here in Los Angeles, COVID-19 environment permitting. And we think that these are fantastic venues for identifying and working with high-speed startups, and small businesses who are interested in really, truly partnering with the US Air Force. It's, as I said before, it's a really exciting time to be a part of this business. And working with the innovation economy is something that the Department of Defense really needs to do in that the innovation that we used to think was ours. That 80% of the industrial base innovation that came from the Department of Defense, the script has been flipped there. And so now more than 70%, particularly in space innovation comes from the commercial sector, not from the defense business itself. And so that's a tsunami of investment and a tsunami of a capability. And I need to figure out how to get my surfboard out and ride it, you know what I mean? >> Yeah, It's one of those things where the script has been flipped, but it's exciting because it's impacting everything. When you're talking about systems architecture? You're talking about software, you're talking about a business model. You're talking about dev sec opsx from a technical perspective, but now you have a business model innovation. All the theaters are exploding in innovation, technical, business, personnel. This brings up the workforce challenge. You've got the cyber needs for the US Space Force, It's probably great ROI model for new kinds of software development that could be priced into contracts. That's a entrepreneurial innovation, you've got the business model theater, you've got the personnel. How does the industry adopt and change? You guys are clearly driving this. How does the industry adjust to you? >> Yeah. So I think a great way to answer that question is to just talk about the kind of people that we're trying to prioritize in the US Space Force from an acquisition perspective, and in this particular case from a cybersecurity perspective. As I mentioned earlier, it's the most exciting time to be in space programs, really since the days of Apollo. Just to put it in terms that maybe have an impact with the audience. From 1957 until today, approximately 9,000 satellites have been launched from the various space varying countries around the planet. Less than 2000 of those 9,000 are still up on orbit and operational. And yet in the new space regime players like Space X have plans to launch, 12,000 satellites for some of their constellations alone. It really is a remarkable time in terms of innovation and fielding of space capabilities and all of those space capabilities, whether they're commercial, civil, or defense are going to require appropriate cybersecurity protections. It's just a really exciting time to be working in stuff like this. And so folks like the folks in this audience who have a passion about space and a passion about cybersecurity are just the kind of people that we want to work with. Cause we need to make sure our systems are secure and resilient. We need folks that have technical and computing expertise, engineering skills to be able to design cyber secure systems that can detect and mitigate attacks. But we also, as you alluded to, we need people that have that business and business acumen, human networking background, so that we can launch the startups and work with the non traditional businesses. Help to bring them on board help, to secure both their data and our data and make sure our processes and systems are free as much as possible from attack. For preparation, for audience members who are young and maybe thinking about getting into this trade space, you got to be smart on digital networking. You got to understand basic internet protocols, concepts, programming languages, database design. Learn what you can for penetration or vulnerability testing and a risk assessment. I will tell you this, and I don't think he will, I know he will not mind me telling you this, but you got to be a lifelong learner and so two years ago, I'm at home evening and I get a phone call on my cell phone and it's my boss, the commander of Air Force Space command, General, J. Raymond, who is now currently the Chief of Space Operations. And he is on temporary duty, flying overseas. He lands where he's going and first thing he does when he lands is he calls me and he goes JT, while I was traveling, I noticed that there were eBooks available on the commercial airliner I was traveling on and there was an ebook on something called scrumming and agile DevSecOps. And I read it, have you read it? And I said, no, sir. But if you tell me what the title of the book is, I will read it. And so I got to go to my staff meeting, the very next week, the next time we had a staff meeting and tell everybody in the staff meeting, hey, if the four star and the three star can read the book about scrumming, then I'm pretty sure all of you around this table and all our lieutenants and our captains our GS13s, All of our government employees can get smart on the scrumming development process. And interestingly as another side, I had a telephone call with him last year during the holidays, where he was trying to take some leave. And I said, sir, what are you up to today? Are you making eggnog for the event tonight or whatever. And the Chief of Space Operations told me no, I'm trying to teach myself Python. I'm at lesson two, and it's not going so well, but I'm going to figure this out. And so that kind of thing, if the chief of staff or the Chief of Space Operations can prioritize scrumming and Python language and innovation in his daily schedule, then we're definitely looking for other people who can do that. And we'll just say, lower levels of rank throughout our entire space force enterprise. Look, we don't need people that can code a satellite from scratch, but we need to know, we need to have people that have a basic grasp of the programming basics and cybersecurity requirements. And that can turn those things into meaningful actions, obviously in the space domain, things like basic physics and orbital mechanics are also important spaces, not an intuitive domain. So under understanding how things survive on orbit is really critical to making the right design and operational decisions. And I know there's probably a lot, because of this conference. I know there's probably a whole lot of high speed cybersecurity experts out in the audience. And I need those people in the US Space Force. The country is counting on it, but I wouldn't discount having people that are just cyber aware or cyber savvy. I have contracting officers and logisticians and program managers, and they don't have to be high end cybersecurity experts, but they have to be aware enough about it to be able to implement cyber security protections into our space systems. So the skill set is really, really broad. Our adversaries are pouring billions of dollars into designing and fielding offensive and destructive space, cybersecurity weapons. They repeatedly shown really a blatant disregard of safety and international norms for good behavior on orbit. And the cyber security aspects of our space systems is really a key battleground going forward so that we can maintain that. As I mentioned before, peaceful global comments of space, we really need all hands on deck. If you're interested in helping in uniform, if you're interested in helping, not in uniform, but as a government employee, a commercial or civil employee to help us make cyber security more important or more able to be developed for our space systems. And we'd really love to work with you or have you on the team to build that safe and secure future for our space systems. >> Lieutenant General John Thompson, great insight. Thank you for sharing all that awesome stories too, and motivation for the young next generation. The United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. Really amazing talk, thank you for your time. Final parting question is, as you look out and you have your magic wand, what's your view for the next few years in terms of things that we could accomplish? It's a super exciting time. What do you hope for? >> So first of all, John, thanks to you and thanks to Cal Poly for the invitation and thanks to everybody for their interest in cybersecurity, especially as it relates to space systems, that's here at the conference. There's a quote, and I'll read it here from Bernard Schriever, who was the founder, if you will, a legend in a DoD space, the founder of the Western development division, which was a predecessor organization to Space and Missile System Center, General Schriever, I think captures the essence of how we see the next couple of years. "The world has an ample supply of people "who can always come up with a dozen good reasons "why new ideas will not work and should not be tried, "but the people who produce progress are breed apart. "They have the imagination, "the courage and the persistence to find solutions." And so I think if you're hoping that the next few years of space innovation and cybersecurity innovation are going to be upon a pony ride at the County fair, then perhaps you should look for another line of work, because I think the next few years in space and cybersecurity innovation are going to be more like a rodeo and a very dynamic rodeo as it goes. It is an awesome privilege to be part of this ecosystem. It's really an honor for me to be able to play some small role in the space ecosystem and trying to improve it while I'm trying to improve the chances of the United States of America in a space war fighting environment. And so I thank all of you for participating today and for this little bit of time that you've allowed me to share with you. Thank you. >> Sir, thank you for your leadership and thank you for the time for this awesome event, Space and Cyber Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, I'm John Furrier on behalf of Cal Poly, thanks for watching. (mellow music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCube with digital coverage of MIT, Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is the seventh year of theCubes coverage of the MIT, Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium. We love getting to talk to these chief data officers and the people in this ecosystem, the importance of data, driving data-driven cultures, and really happy to welcome to the program, first time guests Eileen Vitrine, Eileen is the Chief Data Officer for the United States Air Force, Eileen, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you Stu really excited about being here today. >> All right, so the United States Air Force, I believe had it first CDO office in 2017, you were put in the CDO role in June of 2018. If you could, bring us back, give us how that was formed inside the Air force and how you came to be in that role. >> Well, Stu I like to say that we are a startup organization and a really mature organization, so it's really about culture change and it began by bringing a group of amazing citizen airman reservists back to the Air Force to bring their skills from industry and bring them into the Air Force. So, I like to say that we're a total force because we have active and reservists working with civilians on a daily basis and one of the first things we did in June was we stood up a data lab, that's based in the Jones building on Andrews Air Force Base. And there, we actually take small use cases that have enterprise focus, and we really try to dig deep to try to drive data insights, to inform senior leaders across the department on really important, what I would call enterprise focused challenges, it's pretty exciting. >> Yeah, it's been fascinating when we've dug into this ecosystem, of course while the data itself is very sensitive and I'm sure for the Air Force, there are some very highest level of security, the practices that are done as to how to leverage data, the line between public and private blurs, because you have people that have come from industry that go into government and people that are from government that have leveraged their experiences there. So, if you could give us a little bit of your background and what it is that your charter has been and what you're looking to build out, as you mentioned that culture of change. >> Well, I like to say I began my data leadership journey as an active duty soldier in the army, and I was originally a transportation officer, today we would use the title condition based maintenance, but back then, it was really about running the numbers so that I could optimize my truck fleet on the road each and every day, so that my soldiers were driving safely. Data has always been part of my leadership journey and so I like to say that one of our challenges is really to make sure that data is part of every airmans core DNA, so that they're using the right data at the right level to drive insights, whether it's tactical, operational or strategic. And so it's really about empowering each and every airman, which I think is pretty exciting. >> There's so many pieces of that data, you talk about data quality, there's obviously the data life cycle. I know your presentation that you're given here at the CDO, IQ talks about the data platform that your team has built, could you explain that? What are the key tenants and what maybe differentiates it from what other organizations might have done? >> So, when we first took the challenge to build our data lab, we really wanted to really come up. Our goal was to have a cross domain solution where we could solve data problems at the appropriate classification level. And so we built the VAULT data platform, VAULT stands for visible, accessible, understandable, linked, and trustworthy. And if you look at the DOD data strategy, they will also add the tenants of interoperability and secure. So, the first steps that we have really focused on is making data visible and accessible to airmen, to empower them, to drive insights from available data to solve their problems. So, it's really about that data empowerment, we like to use the hashtag built by airmen because it's really about each and every airman being part of the solution. And I think it's really an exciting time to be in the Air Force because any airman can solve a really hard challenge and it can very quickly wrap it up rapidly, escalate up with great velocity to senior leadership, to be an enterprise solution. >> Is there some basic training that goes on from a data standpoint? For any of those that have lived in data, oftentimes you can get lost in numbers, you have to have context, you need to understand how do I separate good from bad data, or when is data still valid? So, how does someone in the Air Force get some of that beta data competency? >> Well, we have taken a multitenant approach because each and every airman has different needs. So, we have quite a few pathfinders across the Air Force today, to help what I call, upscale our total force. And so I developed a partnership with the Air Force Institute of Technology and they now have a online graduate level data science certificate program. So, individuals studying at AFIT or remotely have the opportunity to really focus on building up their data touchpoints. Just recently, we have been working on a pathfinder to allow our data officers to get their ICCP Federal Data Sector Governance Certificate Program. So, we've been running what I would call short boot camps to prep data officers to be ready for that. And I think the one that I'm most excited about is that this year, this fall, new cadets at the U.S Air Force Academy will be able to have an undergraduate degree in data science and so it's not about a one prong approach, it's about having short courses as well as academe solutions to up skill our total force moving forward. >> Well, information absolutely is such an important differentiator(laughs) in general business and absolutely the military aspects are there. You mentioned the DOD talks about interoperability in their platform, can you speak a little bit to how you make sure that data is secure? Yet, I'm sure there's opportunities for other organizations, for there to be collaboration between them. >> Well, I like to say, that we don't fight alone. So, I work on a daily basis with my peers, Tom Cecila at the Department of Navy and Greg Garcia at the Department of Army, as well as Mr. David Berg in the DOD level. It's really important that we have an integrated approach moving forward and in the DOD we partner with our security experts, so it's not about us doing security individually, it's really about, in the Air Force we use a term called digital air force, and it's about optimizing and building a trusted partnership with our CIO colleagues, as well as our chief management colleagues because it's really about that trusted partnership to make sure that we're working collaboratively across the enterprise and whatever we do in the department, we also have to reach across our services so that we're all working together. >> Eileen, I'm curious if there's been much impact from the global pandemic. When I talk to enterprise companies, that they had to rapidly make sure that while they needed to protect data, when it was in their four walls and maybe for VPN, now everyone is accessing data, much more work from home and the like. I have to imagine some of those security measures you've already taken, but have there anything along those lines or anything else that this shift in where people are, and a little bit more dispersed has impacted your work? >> Well, the story that I like to say is, that this has given us velocity. So, prior to COVID, we built our VAULT data platform as a multitenancy platform that is also cross-domain solution, so it allows people to develop and do their problem solving in an appropriate classification level. And it allows us to connect or pushup if we need to into higher classification levels. The other thing that it has helped us really work smart because we do as much as we can in that unclassified environment and then using our cloud based solution in our gateways, it allows us to bring people in at a very scheduled component so that we maximize, or we optimize their time on site. And so I really think that it's really given us great velocity because it has really allowed people to work on the right problem set, on the right class of patient level at a specific time. And plus the other pieces, we look at what we're doing is that the problem set that we've had has really allowed people to become more data focused. I think that it's personal for folks moving forward, so it has increased understanding in terms of the need for data insights, as we move forward to drive decision making. It's not that data makes the decision, but it's using the insight to make the decision. >> And one of the interesting conversations we've been having about how to get to those data insights is the use of things like machine learning, artificial intelligence, anything you can share about, how you're looking at that journey, where you are along that discovery. >> Well, I love to say that in order to do AI and machine learning, you have to have great volumes of high quality data. And so really step one was visible, accessible data, but we in the Department of the Air Force stood up an accelerator at MIT. And so we have a group of amazing airmen that are actually working with MIT on a daily basis to solve some of those, what I would call opportunities for us to move forward. My office collaborates with them on a consistent basis, because they're doing additional use cases in that academic environment, which I'm pretty excited about because I think it gives us access to some of the smartest minds. >> All right, Eileen also I understand it's your first year doing the event. Unfortunately, we don't get, all come together in Cambridge, walking those hallways and being able to listen to some of those conversations and follow up is something we've very much enjoyed over the years. What excites you about being interact with your peers and participating in the event this year? >> Well, I really think it's about helping each other leverage the amazing lessons learned. I think that if we look collaboratively, both across industry and in the federal sector, there have been amazing lessons learned and it gives us a great forum for us to really share and leverage those lessons learned as we move forward so that we're not hitting the reboot button, but we actually are starting faster. So, it comes back to the velocity component, it all helps us go faster and at a higher quality level and I think that's really exciting. >> So, final question I have for you, we've talked for years about digital transformation, we've really said that having that data strategy and that culture of leveraging data is one of the most critical pieces of having gone through that transformation. For people that are maybe early on their journey, any advice that you'd give them, having worked through a couple of years of this and the experience you've had with your peers. >> I think that the first thing is that you have to really start with a blank slate and really look at the art of the possible. Don't think about what you've always done, think about where you want to go because there are many different paths to get there. And if you look at what the target goal is, it's really about making sure that you do that backward tracking to get to that goal. And the other piece that I tell my colleagues is celebrate the wins. My team of airmen, they are amazing, it's an honor to serve them and the reality is that they are doing great things and sometimes you want more. And it's really important to celebrate the victories because it's a very long journey and we keep moving the goalposts because we're always striving for excellence. >> Absolutely, it is always a journey that we're on, it's not about the destination. Eileen, thank you so much for sharing all that you've learned and glad you could participate. >> Thank you, STU, I appreciate being included today. Have a great day. >> Thanks and thank you for watching theCube. I'm Stu Miniman stay tuned for more from the MIT, CDO IQ event. (lively upbeat music)

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. Everyone welcome back to the Cube's virtual coverage of AWS Public sector online summit, which is also virtual. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube, with a great interview. He remotely Jennifer Cronus, who's the general manager with the D. O. D. Account for Amazon Web services. Jennifer, welcome to the Cube, and great to have you over the phone. I know we couldn't get the remote video cause location, but glad to have you via your voice. Thanks for joining us. >>Well, thank you very much, John. Thanks for the opportunity here >>to the Department of Defense. Big part of the conversation over the past couple of years, One of many examples of the agencies modernizing. And here at the public sector summit virtual on line. One of your customers, the Navy with their air p is featured. Yes, this is really kind of encapsulate. It's kind of this modernization of the public sector. So tell us about what they're doing and their journey. >>Sure, Absolutely. So ah, maybe er P, which is Navy enterprise resource planning is the department of the Navy's financial system of record. It's built on S AP, and it provides financial acquisition and my management information to maybe commands and Navy leadership. Essentially keep the Navy running and to increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of baby support warfighter. It handles about $70 billion in financial transactions each year and has over 72,000 users across six Navy commands. Um, and they checked the number of users to double over the next five years. So essentially, you know, this program was in a situation where their on premises infrastructure was end of life. They were facing an expensive tech upgrade in 2019. They had infrastructure that was hard to steal and prone to system outages. Data Analytics for too slow to enable decision making, and users actually referred to it as a fragile system. And so, uh, the Navy made the decision last year to migrate the Europe E system to AWS Cloud along with S AP and S two to s AP National Security Services. So it's a great use case for a government organization modernizing in the cloud, and we're really happy to have them speaking at something this year. >>Now, was this a new move for the Navy to move to the cloud? Actually, has a lot of people are end life in their data center? Certainly seeing in public sector from education to modernize. So is this a new move for them? And what kind of information does this effect? I mean, ASAP is kind of like, Is it, like just financial data as an operational data? What is some of the What's the move about it Was that new? And what kind of data is impacted? >>Sure. Yeah, well, the Navy actually issued a Cloud First Policy in November of 2017. So they've been at it for a while, moving lots of different systems of different sizes and shapes to the cloud. But this migration really marked the first significant enterprise business system for the Navy to move to the actually the largest business system. My migrate to the cloud across D o D. Today to date. And so, essentially, what maybe Air P does is it modernizes and standardizes Navy business operation. So everything think about from time keeping to ordering missile and radar components for Navy weapon system. So it's really a comprehensive system. And, as I said, the migration to AWS govcloud marks the Navy's largest cloud migration to date. And so this essentially puts the movement and documentation of some $70 billion worth of parts of goods into one accessible space so the information can be shared, analyzed and protected more uniformly. And what's really exciting about this and you'll hear from the Navy at Summit is that they were actually able to complete this migration in just under 10 months, which was nearly half the time it was originally expected to take different sizing complexity. So it's a really, really great spring. >>That's huge numbers. I mean, they used to be years. Well, that was the minicomputer. I'm old enough to remember like, Oh, it's gonna be a two year process. Um, 10 months, pretty spectacular. I got to ask, What is some of the benefits that they're seeing in the cloud? Is that it? Has it changed the roles and responsibilities? What's what's some of the impact that they're seeing expecting to see quickly? >>Yeah, I'd say, you know, there's been a really big impact to the Navy across probably four different areas. One is in decision making. Also better customer experience improves security and then disaster recovery. So we just kind of dive into each of those a little bit. So, you know, moving the system to the cloud has really allowed the Navy make more timely and informed decisions, as well as to conduct advanced analytics that they weren't able to do as efficiently in the past. So as an example, pulling financial reports and using advanced analytics on their own from system used to take them around 20 hours. And now ah, maybe your API is able to all these ports in less than four hours, obviously allowing them to run the reports for frequently and more efficiently. And so this is obviously lead to an overall better customer experience enhance decision making, and they've also been able to deploy their first self service business intelligence capabilities. So to put the hat, you know, the capability, Ah, using these advanced analytics in the hands of the actual users, they've also experienced improve security. You know, we talk a lot about the security benefits of migrating to the cloud, but it's given them of the opportunity to increase their data protection because now there's only one based as a. We have data to protect instead of multiple across a whole host of your traditional computing hardware. And then finally, they've implemented a really true disaster recovery system by implementing a dual strategy by putting data in both our AWS about East and govcloud West. They were the first to the Navy to do those to provide them with true disaster become >>so full govcloud edge piece. So that brings up the question around. And I love all this tactical edge military kind of D o d. Thinking the agility makes total sense. Been following that for a couple of years now, is this business side of it that the business operations Or is there a tactical edge military component here both. Or is that next ahead for the Navy? >>Yeah. You know, I think there will ultimately both You know that the Navy's big challenge right now is audit readiness. So what they're focusing on next is migrating all of these financial systems into one General ledger for audit readiness, which has never been done before. I think you know, audit readiness press. The the D has really been problematic. So the next thing that they're focusing on in their journey is not only consolidating to one financial ledger, but also to bring on new users from working capital fund commands across the Navy into this one platform that is secure and stable, more fragile system that was previously in place. So we expect over time, once all of the systems migrate, that maybe your API is going to double in size, have more users, and the infrastructure is already going to be in place. Um, we are seeing use of all of the tactical edge abilities in other parts of the Navy. Really exciting programs for the Navy is making use of our snowball and snowball edge capabilities. And, uh, maybe your key that that this follows part of their migration. >>I saw snow cones out. There was no theme there. So the news Jassy tweeted. You know, it's interesting to see the progression, and you mentioned the audit readiness. The pattern of cloud is implementing the business model infrastructure as a service platform as a service and sass, and on the business side, you've got to get that foundational infrastructure audit, readiness, monitoring and then the platform, and then ultimately, the application so a really, you know, indicator that this is happening much faster. So congratulations. But I want to bring that back to now. The d o d. Generally, because this is the big surge infrastructure platform sas. Um, other sessions at the Public sector summit here on the D. O. D is the cybersecurity maturity model, which gets into this notion of base lining at foundation and build on top. What is this all about? The CME EMC. What does it mean? >>Yeah, well, I'll tell you, you know, I think the most people know that are U S defense industrial base of what we call the Dev has experienced and continues to experience an increasing number of cyber attacks. So every year, the loss of sensitive information and an election property across the United States, billions each year. And really, it's our national security. And there's many examples for weapons systems and sensitive information has been compromised. The F 35 Joint Strike Fighter C 17 the Empty Nine Reaper. All of these programs have unfortunately, experience some some loss of sensitive information. So to address this, the d o. D. Has put in place, but they all see em and see which is the Cybersecurity Maturity Models certification framework. It's a mouthful, which is really designed to ensure that they did the defense industrial base. And all of the contractors that are part of the Defense Supply Chain network are protecting federal contract information and controlled unclassified information, and that they have the appropriate levels of cyber security in place to protect against advanced, persistent, persistent threats. So in CMC, there are essentially five levels with various processes and practices in each level. And this is a morton not only to us as a company but also to all of our partners and customers. Because with new programs the defense, investor base and supply take, companies will be required to achieve a certain see MNC certification level based on the sensitivity of the programs data. So it's really important initiative for the for the Deal E. And it's really a great way for us to help >>Jennifer. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the phone. I really appreciate it. I know there's so much going on the D o d Space force Final question real quick for a minute. Take a minute to just share what trends within the d o. D you're watching around this modernization. >>Yeah, well, it has been a really exciting time to be serving our customers in the D. And I would say there's a couple of things that we're really excited about. One is the move to tactical edge that you've talked about using out at the tactical edge. We're really excited about capabilities like the AWS Snowball Edge, which helped Navy Ear Key hybrid. So the cloud more quickly but also, as you mentioned, our AWS cone, which isn't even smaller military grades for edge computing and data transfer device that was just under £5 kids fitness entered mailbox or even a small backpacks. It's a really cool capability for our diode, the warfighters. Another thing. That's what we're really watching. Mostly it's DRDs adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning. So you know, Dear D has really shown that it's pursuing deeper integration of AI and ML into mission critical and business systems for organizations like the Joint Artificial Intelligence. Enter the J and the Army AI task force to help accelerate the use of cloud based AI really improved war fighting abilities And then finally, what I'd say we're really excited about is the fact that D o. D is starting Teoh Bill. New mission critical systems in the cloud born in the cloud, so to speak. Systems and capabilities like a BMS in the airports. Just the Air Force Advanced data management system is being constructed and created as a born in the cloud systems. So we're really, really excited about those things and think that continued adoption at scale of cloud computing The idea is going to ensure that our military and our nation maintain our technological advantages, really deliver on mission critical systems. >>Jennifer, Thanks so much for sharing that insight. General General manager at Amazon Web services handling the Department of Defense Super important transformation efforts going on across the government modernization. Certainly the d o d. Leading the effort. Thank you for your time. This is the Cube's coverage here. I'm John Furrier, your host for AWS Public sector Summit online. It's a cube. Virtual. We're doing the remote interviews and getting all the content and share that with you. Thank you for watching. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

>> Announcer: From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE studios, in Palo Alto, California for another CUBE conversation where we go in depth with though leaders driving innovation across tech industry. I'm your host, Peter Burris. The whole concept of self service analytics has been with us decades in the tech industry. Sometimes its been successful, most times it hasn't been. But we're making great progress and have over the last few years as the technologies matures, as the software becomes more potent, but very importantly as the users of analytics become that much more familiar with what's possible and that much more wanting of what they could be doing. But this notion of self service analytics requires some new invention, some new innovation. What are they? How's that going to play out? Well, we're going to have a great conversation today with Stephanie McReynolds, she's Senior Vice President of Marketing, at Alation. Stephanie, thanks again for being on theCUBE. >> Thanks for inviting me, it's great to be back. >> So, tell us a little, give us an update on Alation. >> So as you know, Alation was one of the first companies to bring a data catalog to the market. And that market category has now been cemented and defined depending on the industry analyst you talk to. There could be 40 or 50 vendors now who are providing data catalogs to the market. So this has become one of the hot technologies to include in a modern analytics stacks. Particularly, we're seeing a lot of demand as companies move from on premise deployments into the cloud. Not only are they thinking about how do we migrate our systems, our infrastructure into the cloud but with data cataloging more importantly, how do we migrate our users to the cloud? How do we get self-service users to understand where to go to find data, how to understand it, how to trust it, what re-use can we do of it's existing assets so we're not just exploding the amount of processing we're doing in the cloud. So that's been very exciting, it's helped us grow our business. We've now seen four straight years of triple digit revenue growth which is amazing for a high growth company like us. >> Sure. >> We also have over 150 different organizations in production with a data catalog as part of their modern analytics stack. And many of those organizations are moving into the thousands of users. So eBay was probably our first customer to move into the, you know, over a thousand weekly logins they're now up to about 4,000 weekly logins through Alation. But now we have customers like Boeing and General Electric and Pfizer and we just closed a deal with US Air Force. So we're starting to see all sorts of different industries and all sorts of different users from the analytics specialist in your organization, like a data scientist or a data engineer, all the way out to maybe a product manager or someone who doesn't really think of them as an analytics expert using Alation either directly or sometimes through one of our partnerships with folks like Tableau or Microstrategy or Power BI. >> So, if we think about this notion of self- service analytics, Stephanie, and again it's Alation has been a leader in defining this overall category, we think in terms of an individual who has some need for data but is, most importantly, has questions they think data can answer and now they're out looking for data. Take us through that process. They need to know where the data is, they need to know what it is, they need to know how to use it, and they need to know what to do if they make a mistake. How is that, how are the data catalogs, like Alation, serving that, and what's new? >> Yeah, so as consumers, this world of data cataloging is very similar if you go back to the introduction of the internet. >> Sure. >> How did you find a webpage in the 90's? Pretty difficult, you had to know the exact URL to go to in most cases, to find a webpage. And then a Yahoo was introduced, and Yahoo did a whole bunch of manual curation of those pages so that you could search for a page and find it. >> So Yahoo was like a big catalog. >> It was like a big catalog, an inventory of what was out there. So the original data catalogs, you could argue, were what we would call from an technical perspective, a metadata repository. No business user wants to use a metadata repository but it created an inventory of what are all the data assets that we have in the organizations and what's the description of those data assets. The meta- data. So metadata repositories were kind of the original catalogs. The big breakthrough for data catalogs was: How do we become the Google of finding data in the organization? So rather than manually curating everything that's out there and providing an in- user inferant with an answer, how could we use machine learning and AI to look at patterns of usage- what people are clicking on, in terms of data assets- surface those as data recommendations to any end user whether they're an analytics specialist or they're just a self- service analytics user. And so that has been the real break through of this new category called data cataloging. And so most folks are accessing a data catalog through a search interface or maybe they're writing a SQL query and there's SQL recommendations that are being provided by the catalog-- >> Or using a tool that utilizes SQL >> Or using a tool that utilizes SQL, and for most people in a- most employees in a large enterprise when you get those thousands of users, they're using some other tool like Tableau or Microstrategy or, you know, a variety of different data visualization providers or data science tools to actually access that data. So a big part of our strategy at Alation has been, how do we surface this data recommendation engine in those third party products. And then if you think about it, once you're surfacing that information and providing some value to those end users, the next thing you want to do is make sure that they're using that data accurately. And that's a non- trivial problem to solve, because analytics and data is complicated. >> Right >> And metadata is extremely complicated-- >> And metadata is-- because often it's written in a language that's arcane and done to be precise from a data standpoint, that's not easily consumable or easily accessible by your average human being. >> Right, so a label, for example, on a table in a data base might be cust_seg_257, what does that mean? >> It means we can process it really quickly in the system. >> Yeah, but as-- >> But it's useless to a human being-- >> As a marketing manager, right? I'm like, hey, I want to do some customer segmentation analysis and I want to find out if people who live in California might behave differently if I provide them an offer than people that live in Massachusetts, it's not intuitive to say, oh yeah, that's in customer_seg_ so what data catalogs are doing is they're thinking about that marketing manager, they're thinking about that peer business user and helping make that translation between business terminology, "Hey I want to run some customer segmentation analysis for the West" with the technical, physical model, that underlies the data in that data base which is customer_seg_257 is the table you need to access to get the answer to that question. So as organizations start to adapt more self- service analytics, it's important that we're managing not just the data itself and this translation from technical metadata to business metadata, but there's another layer that's becoming even more important as organizations embrace self- service analytics. And that's how is this data actually being processed? What is the logic that is being used to traverse different data sets that end users now have access to. So if I take gender information in one table and I have information on income on another table, and I have some private information that identifies those two customers as the same in those two tables, in some use tables I can join that data, if I'm doing marketing campaigns, I likely can join that data. >> Sure. >> If I'm running a loan approval process here in the United States, I cannot join that data. >> That's a legal limitation, that's not a technical issue-- >> That's a legal, federal, government issue. Right? And so here's where there's a discussion, in folks that are knowledgeable about data and data management, there's a discussion of how do we govern this data? But I think by saying how we govern this data, we're kind of covering up what's actually going on, because you don't have govern that data so much as you have to govern the analysis. How is this joined, how are we combining these two data sets? If I just govern the data for accuracy, I might not know the usage scenario which is someone wants to combine these two things which makes it's illegal. Separately, it's fine, combined, it's illegal. So now we need to think about, how do we govern the analytics themselves, the logic that is being used. And that gets kind of complicated, right? For a marketing manager to understand the difference between those things on the surface is doesn't really make sense. It only makes sense when the context of that government regulation is shared and explained and in the course of your workflow and dragging and dropping in a Tableau report, you might not remember that, right? >> That's right, and the derivative output that you create that other people might then be able to use because it's back in the data catalog, doesn't explicitly note, often, that this data was generated as a combination of a join that might not be in compliance with any number of different rules. >> Right, so about a year and a half ago, we introduced a new feature in our data catalog called Trust Check. >> Yeah, I really like this. This is a really interesting thing. >> And that was meant to be a way where we could alert end users to these issues- hey, you're trying to run the same analytic and that's not allowed. We're going to give you a warning, we're not going to let you run that query, we're going to stop you in your place. So that was a way in the workflow of someone while they're typing a SQL statement or while they're dragging and dropping in Tableau to surface that up. Now, some of the vendors we work with, like Tableau, have doubled down on this concept of how do they integrate with an enterprise data catalog to make this even easier. So at Tableau conference last week, they introduced a new metadata API, they introduced a Tableau catalog, and the opportunity for these type of alerts to be pushed into the Tableau catalog as well as directly into reports and worksheets and dashboards that end users are using. >> Let me make sure I got this. So it means that you can put a lot of the compliance rules inside Alation and have a metadata API so that Alation effectively is governing the utilization of data inside the Tableau catalog. >> That's right. So think about the integration with Tableau is this communication mechanism to surface up these policies that are stored centrally in your data catalog. And so this is important, this notion of a central place of reference. We used to talk about data catalogs just as a central place of reference for where all your data assets lie in the organizations, and we have some automated ways to crawl those sources and create a centralized inventory. What we've added in our new release, which is coming out here shortly, is the ability to centralize all your policies in that catalog as well as the pointers to your data in that catalog. So you have a single source of reference for how this data needs to be governed, as well as a single source of reference for how this data is used in the organization. >> So does that mean, ultimately, that someone could try to do something, trust check and say, no you can't, but this new capability will say, and here's why or here's what you do. >> Exactly. >> A descriptive step that says let me explain why you can't do it. >> That's right. Let me not just stop your query and tell you no, let me give you the details as to why this query isn't a good query and what you might be able to do to modify that query should you still want to run it. And so all of that context is available for any end user to be able to become more aware of what is the system doing, and why is recommending. And on the flip side, in the world before we had something like Trust Check, the only opportunity for an IT Team to stop those queries was just to stop them without explanation or to try to publish manuals and ask people to run tests, like the DMV, so that they memorized all those rules of governance. >> Yeah, self- service, but if there's a problem you have to call us. >> That's right. That's right. So what we're trying to do is trying to make the work of those governance teams, those IT Teams, much easier by scaling them. Because we all know the volume of data that's being created, the volume of analysis that's being created is far greater than any individual can come up with, so we're trying to scale those precious data expert resources-- >> Digitize them-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> It's a digital transformation of how we acquire data necessary-- >> And then-- >> for data transformation. >> make it super transparent for the end user as to why they're being told yes or no so that we remove this friction that's existed between business and IT when trying to perform analytics. >> But I want to build a little bit on one of the things I thought I heard you say, and that is that the idea that this new feature, this new capability will actually prescribe an alternative, logical way for you to get your information that might be in compliance. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, that's right. Because what we also have in the catalog is a workflow that allows individuals called Stewards, analytics Stewards to be able to make recommendations and certifications. So if there's a policy that says though shall not use the data in this way, the Stewards can then say, but here's an alternative mechanism, here's an alternative method, and by the way, not only are we making this as a recommendation but this is certified for success. We know that our best analysts have already tried this out, or we know that this complies with government regulation. And so this is a more active way, then, for the two parties to collaborate together in a distributed way, that's asynchronous, and so it's easy for everyone no matter what hour of the day they're working or where they're globally located. And it helps progress analytics throughout the organization. >> Oh and more importantly, it increases the likelihood that someone who is told you now have self- service capability doesn't find themselves abandoning it the first time that somebody says no, because we've seen that over and over with a lot of these query tools, right? That somebody says, oh wow, look at this new capability until the screen, you know, metaphorically, goes dark. >> Right, until it becomes too complicated-- >> That's right-- >> and then you're like, oh I guess I wasn't really trained on this. >> And then they walk away. And it doesn't get adopted. >> Right. >> And this is a way, it's very human centered way to bring that self- service analyst into the system and be a full participant in how you generate value out of it. >> And help them along. So you know, the ultimate goal that we have as an organization, is help organizations become our customers, become data literate populations. And you can only become data literate if you get comfortable working with the date and it's not a black box to you. So the more transparency that we can create through our policy center, through documenting the data for end users, and making it more easy for them to access, the better. And so, in the next version of the Alation product, not only have we implemented features for analytic Stewards to use, to certify these different assets, to log their policies, to ensure that they can document those policies fully with examples and use cases, but we're also bringing to market a professional services offering from our own team that says look, given that we've now worked with about 20% of our installed base, and observed how they roll out Stewardship initiatives and how they assign Stewards and how they manage this process, and how they manage incentives, we've done a lot of thinking about what are some of the best practices for having a strong analytics Stewardship practice if you're a self- service analytics oriented organization. And so our professional services team is now available to help organizations roll out this type of initiative, make it successful, and have that be supported with product. So the psychological incentives of how you get one of these programs really healthy is important. >> Look, you guys have always been very focused on ensuring that your customers were able to adopt valued proposition, not just buy the valued proposition. >> Right. >> Stephanie McReynolds, Senior Vice President of Marketing Relation, once again, thanks for being on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> And thank you for joining us for another CUBE conversation. I'm Peter Burris. See you next time.