2024 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System worldwide conference keynote address

Gen. Anthony Cotton: Man, ain't nothing like that kind of walkout music 8 o'clock in the morning, right? Half of y'all don't even know who that is. McFadden and Whitehead, Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now. Demetri Henry knew what song that was.

Hey, first of all, I was able to see Senator Fischer as she left, but what an incredible advocate for my mission portfolio, but for the Department of Defense as a whole. So I'm glad that she was able to have an opportunity to speak to this forum this morning.

So good morning.

Welcome to Omaha. It's great to have DODIS back in Omaha for the first time since 2018. This city is truly one of America's hidden gems, and I hope you'll have some time while you're here to explore Old Market, the Riverfront Park, and some other great attractions nearby.

You know why I say that? It's because I'm recruiting. I'm always recruiting at STRATCOM. You know, the average citizen, and even many of us, have become accustomed to our information technology systems always being there when we need them.

But those who know better understand that networks built and managed by the people in this room are a critical part of our national security strategic enterprise. Our adversaries know we will always be able to maintain communications and command and control in any contingency, and that persuades them to avoid taking action against us. We must maintain that edge.

Before we get to the specific role of information technology and strategic deterrence, I thought I'd briefly discuss today's strategic situation, and I think I heard the senator talk a little bit briefly about that. Our strategy and a few steps that we're taking to implement that strategy, and why you play an important role in its implementation. We are in a pivotal moment in history.

Secretary Austin said it best when he said, these next few years will set the terms of our competition with the People's Republic of China, and they will shape the future of security in Europe. And they will determine whether our children and grandchildren inherent an open world of rules and rights, or whether they face emboldened autocrats who seek to dominate by force and fear. For the first time in our history, we confront two nuclear-near-peer adversaries.

Russia is bent on restoring its former policy of glory and rising China that seeks to replace a stable and open international system that has served the world well for over 80 years. Now I add to this an aggressive and nuclear-armed North Korea, and of course, Iran.

China is rapidly expanding all aspects of military power, including land, sea, and air-based nuclear delivery systems.

The PRC is likely to have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, and is supporting Russia's war on Ukraine. Russia already has the largest and most diverse nuclear arsenal in the world, and continues to expand and modernize that arsenal. Moscow has dramatically expanded the percentage of its GDP devoted to the military, and is clearly poised for a long war in Ukraine.

North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, as well as its active support for Russia in Ukraine. Most recently, we see that North Korean troops are being deployed to Russia for further deployment to the Ukraine. And finally, Iran continues its aggression in the Middle East with support from Russia.

In fact, Russia even recently warned Israel against attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. I can go on, but in brief, we live in challenging times, to say the least, and the work that you do has never, never been more important. Maintaining deterrence requires all hands on deck.

In this new, most complicated environment, integrated deterrence is imperative. The Secretary defined integrated deterrence as using existing capabilities and building new ones, and deploying them all in new and networked ways, all tailored to a region's security landscape, to include growing in partnership with our friends. This involves more than just a military force.

It employs all the levers of national power. Every single one of those levers, however, is reliant on the information technology infrastructure whose care is entrusted in many of you. Despite the security environment I described a few minutes ago, it's not all doom and gloom.

In fact, our competitors emphasize their transactional relationships. The U.S. and our allies are trailblazing upgrades and capitalizing on new technologies to maintain credible and effective deterrence. The U.S. Nuclear Command Control and Communication System, known as NC3, is essential to the President's ability for command and control of the nation's nuclear forces.

This system, like the platforms that make up the nuclear triad, remains assured, reliable, and resilient across the full spectrum of conflict. But to retain the competitive edge, we are exploring all possible technologies, techniques, and methods to assist with the modernization of our NC3 capabilities. STRATCOM and the entire enterprise are upgrading our legacy NC3 systems to modern IT infrastructure.

These upgrades keep us in the fight today and ensure we maintain the advantage in the future to include EMP hardening of the IT infrastructure supporting our nuclear forces. Furthermore, we're investing in innovative IT solutions to develop the next generation of NC3 capabilities, as well as secure cloud computing for our mission-critical applications. We are also developing artificial intelligence or AI-enabled human-led decision support tools to ensure our leaders are able to respond to complex, time-sensitive scenarios.

All of these actions underpin our strategy, support integrated deterrence, and ensure we maintain IT superiority. AI will not replace leadership. In fact, human relationships, growth, engagement, and connection will matter more than ever.

The next key pillar in our strategy is the electromagnetic spectrum, or EMS. I don't need to tell this audience that EMS is a critical maneuver space in modern warfare. STRATCOM's Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Center was established in 2023 and serves as an operational lead for the EMS enterprise for the department.

We established an analytic division to focus on current and future threats to our NC3 capabilities and also established a future technology division to identify and integrate novel technologies into intelligence processes and workflows. Additionally, STRATCOM carved out resources to establish intelligence support to the Joint Electromagnetic Support Operations Team, known as JEMSO. Along with DIA, this team co-led a defense intelligence enterprise-wide study to identify gaps and shortfalls in DIA's ability to support JEMSO intelligence requirements across the DoD.

Finally, STRATCOM prioritizes planning for survivable and enduring intelligence operations prior to, during, and after any potential nuclear exchange to ensure I and the National Command Authority continue to receive critical strategic intelligence support through all phases of a strategic conflict. A significant part of this planning effort is to ensure reliable, resilient, and redundant IT capabilities. So, that's a quick look at today's world and a little bit on what we're doing about it.

Now, let me turn to the role of information systems as well as what my command needs from the people in this room. As I said, our networks are a critical part of deterrence. STRATCOM requires IT networks that are always, always functional, resilient, and defended.

Our adversaries must know that our nuclear command and control and other capabilities that provide decision advantage are at the ready 24-7, 365, and cannot be compromised or defeated. I cannot stress too strongly that the IT systems you design and maintain are as critical in a nuclear fight as they are in the conventional. They form the backbone of our command and communications infrastructure.

In order to enable AI and machine learning efforts, data needs to be readily available at the speed of decisions. Those who own the data need to push beyond the banner of ownership and move towards data as communal assets for the whole of government. In future conflicts, no combatant command will act alone.

It will be a collaborative effort in which data must flow freely and securely between IT systems. Without common trusted data, senior leaders may not have all the information required to make truly informed decisions. Even worse, data could be contradictory or disjointed.

Reliable, secure, and resilient IT networks are essential for maintaining situational awareness and decision-making capabilities in both conventional and nuclear scenarios. Moreover, advanced IT enables real-time intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination, which are all crucial to strategic deterrence. The modernization of our IT capabilities is essential to maintaining our deterrence edge.

Upgrading legacy NC3 systems with modern IT infrastructure is a top priority. To be effective, these systems must be hardened. They must be secure.

And they must be redundant to function in both conventional conflicts or nuclear ones. Robust cybersecurity measures are critical to protect NC3 systems from adversary attacks or manipulation. Maintaining technological superiority in IT systems creates uncertainty in the calculus of our adversaries.

That enhances deterrence. Advanced AI and robust data analytics capabilities provide decision advantage and improve our deterrence posture. IT and AI superiority allows for a more effective integration of conventional and nuclear capabilities, strengthening deterrence.

IT superiority is crucial in this new paradigm, enabling us to deter aggression across physical and virtual realms. IT superiority provides combat credibility, the ability to fight and win through all domains, fundamental to deterrence. Advanced technologies allow for better integration across domains, regions, and the spectrum of conflict.

AI ML capabilities offer unique deterrence effects that complement traditional military power. It enables seamless coordination with our global networks of allies and partners. Interoperability and information sharing are vital to presenting a united front against potential adversaries.

And our shared technological capabilities enhance our collective deterrent posture. To achieve and maintain this superiority, we need continuous investments in cutting-edge technologies and we must continue to collaborate with industry, academia, allies for innovation and technological advancement. You know, the linchpin of IT superiority is cybersecurity, which is foundational to all new investments and must be retrofitted into legacy systems.

AI ML is a force multiplier and an imperative to meeting these goals. Proliferation of commercial information devices, wearables, devices, medical uses, et cetera, will continue to expand at scale. Most Americans, including my own workforce, our workforce, now view these systems not as luxuries, but as necessities of modern life.

And we have to find workable policies to deal with that reality. The character of integrated deterrence is changing due to technological advances in data, analytics, and AI ML. AI and autonomous systems provide strategic advances in military operations, but these advances or advantages must be balanced against risks and unattended consequences.

By processing vast amounts of data, providing actionable insights and enabling better informed and more timely decisions, AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities, but we must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us. Advanced systems can inform us faster and more efficiently, but we must always maintain a human decision in the loop. To maximize the adoption of these capabilities and maintain our edge over our adversaries, we must become a data-centric organization.

This will require moving quickly to achieve the seven goals identified by the Voltus framework set out in the 2020 DoD Data Strategy. To ensure data is visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable, and secure. We are already leveraging our university-affiliated research centers to make our data more accessible and help with decision-making, but at this point, we still have a long way to go.

We still struggle to access and fully utilize as effectively as we could. All of our data sources is needed for maintaining decision advantage is still that one step away. In particular, we are hindered by disparate data formats and lengthy timelines to achieve authority to operate.

If we don't have fully informed information, we're not making fully informed decisions. Aided by AI and ML, we must shift away from manual entry or hand-jamming efforts to the maximum extent possible and utilize machine-enabled analysis and visualization to enhance time-critical decision-making. We need to direct research efforts to understand risks of cascading effects of AI models, emergent and unexpected behaviors, and indirect integration of AI into nuclear decision-making processes.

In a data-centric organization where automated connections to real data sources enable greater efficiencies, data are foundational for the AI application and research. For STRATCOM, we must maintain the advantage over our adversaries by enabling faster and better decisions. Effective data management will help ensure we maintain decision advantage by enabling rapid and informed decision-making across the enterprise.

STRATCOM will transform to a data-centric organization that leverages high-quality data, the application of advanced analytics, and AI and ML. Data-centricity requires all warfighters to understand applications, account for risk, and detect unexpected behavior to utilize these emerging capabilities responsibly. The rapid pace of technological change presents challenges and opportunities for deterrence.

Our adversaries are also advancing their AI and ML capabilities, requiring constant vigilance and adaptation. We're ahead of them, and we simply must maintain and expand that lead. Balancing offensive and defensive cyber capabilities is crucial for effective deterrence in this digital age.

As we move forward, STRATCOM is committed to taking charge of integrating IT superiority into our deterrence strategy. We need your continued support to innovate, to adapt, and collaborate to stay ahead of emerging threats through the modernization of current NC3 systems, implementation of our AI and ML to assist human decision-making, and securing all aspects of the NC3 IT environment. I also urge you to continue working to expand understanding of the importance of cyber IT, of data, of AI and ML skill set development within academia, industry, and the DoD.

The bottom line is that we need to be prepared to fight in any domain at a time and place of our choosing, and we must ensure that our adversaries recognize this strength. We need not only to retain our existing talent, but we also need to recruit new talent, and then recruit more new talent, and then recruit more new talent. All aspects of modern warfare are more complex than they were a few decades ago.

Finding people capable of integrating AI and ML into combat today requires unique specialization and currency, and this is vitally more complex than integrating a technological advancement of the past. We cannot compete with industry salaries to retain personnel, but the nature of our work and having the most advanced capabilities to carry out missions that only the U.S. government can conduct is in itself a retention tool. Our strategic nuclear deterrent is required to be four things, safe, secure, effective, and credible.

Well, as it turns out, the more I think about it, the more I realize that in order to maintain our IT superiority, in order to continue to maintain deterrence through IT superiority, our information systems must also be four things. They must be safe. They must be secure. They must be effective, and yes, they must be credible.

I know we can successfully meet the coming challenges as well, but it will not be easy. Our nation's historic strengths, innovation, and flexibility will be critical to success.

Within the Department of Defense, we need to transform into a data-centric and AI-enabled guarantor of strategic deterrence. Few people have the opportunity to engage in such consequential work, work that could very easily determine the course of history. Your country is depending on you, and that's not something that anyone can say.

We are, each of us, fortunate to have this chance. Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a great conference.