What's up? Test, test. What's going on, people? Hey, I think we're missing something. Oh, y'all bringing a week in the AV booth. Let's start that over. Can we start it over? So General Brown says something about a theme song. I need y'all to get that right. Let's start it over. I mean, this Kansas City Chiefs team, we don't, we don't, come on, man. Talk about y'all later in the booth. But hey, I've never seen the gym here so packed. You got a bunch of brand new chiefs, and so everybody decides to go to the gym this morning. Good to see everybody here. Before I begin, there was a whole lot of people who made this happen during COVID, so that 390 something of y'all could be here.  What I also want to say is, and I'll reiterate what some of your senior mentors shared, which is like, this week is all about you. This is so that you can take time to reflect and think about it. I also want you to know that everything was designed on purpose. So day one is about readiness. Day two is about people. Day three is about culture. So this is our opportunity, and every speaker who you're talking to was designed here on purpose. We brought some of our best. We're certainly going to hear from the A1. We're going to hear from two. We'll have some discussions in the two lane. We're going to hear from our A3 general Gus who's going to be here. The A5 is here. We don't have to go out and pay a whole bunch of speakers because we have great talent within the United States Air Force and stuff that you need to know. We also have some retired chiefs who lend a whole lot of credibility to our United States Air Force, and I couldn't be more excited for them to be here as well. But every person who's speaking to you this week is on purpose for your growth. And so with that, let me see if I can work this thing out. Y'all know I don't do slides that much. So not so long ago, I was sitting in your seats. Only I grew up in the School of Hard Knocks, so I don't think we had a chief. I don't know what we had when I came up, but we didn't have this. I was in USAFE at the time, and I think there was 20 of us sitting in a room doing, I don't know what we did, but what we didn't do was this. And so not so long ago, I was sitting in your seats. Not so long ago, when I made chief, I remember being told that I was gonna go be the next group chief in the 86 Operations Group. And I didn't even really know what that meant, right? Like, you know, you're just excited to make chief, and then all of a sudden you get thrust in, and you're a group chief, and then what did my career field do to me? They divorced me. Yeah, that was a little hard. I got a phone call from my career field manager. When I made chief and they said, what's your ex, what are your plans? How many of y'all got a phone call from your crew field manager saying, what's your plans? And so again, I was in this, I was a naive chief. Like, I didn't know, I'm like, and guess what I said? Bloom World Planet? Right, like, I don't know, you know? I'm gonna go wherever the Air Force sends me, but not so long ago, I was sitting in your seats, trying to navigate and figure out life. And if you look back at my career, when I made chief, and if I had to look at it from a learning graph perspective, I might offer that that graph throughout my career was a steady incline, you know, from airman basic all the way to chief. And then when I made chief, that incline went skyrocket. And so who you are today, pales in comparison to who you're gonna be in two years from now. I want y'all to let that soak in, y'all staring at me. Who you are today pales in comparison to who you're gonna be in two years from now. So enjoy this moment while you have it and just get ready to learn. So some things that were extremely helpful to me during this growth journey is foundation. Like, why do we even serve? Why do we do what we do? Like, what's this all about? You all could be doing anything that you wanna do. We serve in an all volunteer force. Some of y'all are over 20 years. Some of y'all look a little young. But some of y'all are over 20 years and you could be doing anything that you wanna do. And some of y'all could be making way more money than what you're doing today. But these foundational documents are really what helped shape it moment. When that, when my growth chart skyrocketed, it was because I'll be honest with you. For the first time in my career as a chief I actually now had to pay attention to these foundational documents. I don't know that I even read foundational documents before I became a chief. I was busy doing what I do. Taking care of airmen, right? I would offer like, what's gonna help you succeed these things? General Brown spoke about them a little bit. I'll tell you what keeps me going. When we talk about the NDS, and oh by the way, there's another NDS that's gonna come out probably in the next few weeks due to current events. It's a little, it's slowed up, delayed a little bit. But the NDS, actually I'm just gonna go there and talk about it now. How many y'all read the 2018 version of the NDS that Secretary Matt has penned? So back, I'm gonna start to get in KP's lane a little bit. He's gonna come and talk to you all about some strategic competition. But back into that, actually let me just rewind that. Who's been in the longest? Who's been in over 20 years? Over 25. All right. A couple y'all like, hold on. Over, I'm not gonna do the over 29, 23rd, you know. It's always back there, right? Like, but normally they'd be sitting up here. Let me just share a little bit from when I joined the Air Force. Because I think chronologically, right? General Brown was talking about why we've got to accelerate change or lose. Let me just share from my seat. When I joined our Air Force almost 29 years ago, we had at that time almost 600,000 active duty members serving at that time. Y'all know how many we have today? About 334,000. You guys will get a brief from DC, but about 300, about half. Now certainly it's a little bit of a different landscape. We have a whole lot of contractors that are helping us do our business or so they say, but we have, but in any case, y'all know I just keep it real, right? So they say, but we have about half the amount of people serving in today's Air Force. Back then we were focused on one AOR, primarily the SENTCOM AOR. It's where we deployed. It's where we did what we did. Back then we had to be strong in air, land and sea. Fast forward to today, fast forward to 2018. All of a sudden Secretary Mattis penned out the National Defense Strategy and what I appreciated about that foundational document was he spoke truth to power. And I'll paraphrase it for those y'all who didn't read it, but when I read that NDS, what it said to me is, hey, America, you've been slipping. You've been so focused on this VEO fight that now all of a sudden we have near peer competitors. That was 2018. I would argue today we don't have near peer competitors. We have full-on competitors. General Brown talked about that. That's why he pushed out his Action Order C for competition. And all today you're gonna hear a whole lot about competition, but that's why we wear this uniform. As our chiefs in our Air Force, that's what we need you to understand your why of why you still wear this uniform. And I'm fully convinced and I appreciated the question to General Brown on, hey, where do you think we are? Where do you think our airmen are? I'll be honest with you. You know, when I first got into the seat of myself in Diamond One, we're traveling around, talking to hundreds of our airmen, asking about how many of y'all understand our strategic competition? How many of you understand why we've got to modernize and accelerate change so that it's just not a buzzword? Maybe five hands out of 500 will go up. I'm pleased to say that we've been getting after it the last year and a half and our intel community has been getting after it after the last year and a half and now maybe 40 hands go up. But because we haven't been focused on some of these foundational documents and the why we do what we do, we have airmen more focused on beards than they are about China. Real talk. So we got a whole lot of things we got to get after. But these are the things that I need every one of you guys to be tracking. We'll talk about some of them later. Well, we didn't compare notes. So you heard General Hecker talk about truth. You heard General Brown talk about truth. I will tell you as a chief, nothing's changed. So to my defenders and maintainers, y'all like, what's all this truth talk? They don't have a problem telling the truth. Don't change that. In fact, again, especially as a chief, nobody will tell their boss the truth. Like you will. And that doesn't change whatever level you're in. Even today, with the chief of staff being my boss, the secretary of the Air Force being my boss, even the undersecretary, who y'all are gonna have the privilege to hear from today. Like during our first immersions together, I'm like, if you wanna hear truth of what's going on in our Air Force, I need y'all to go find my door. The goodness at this level is, defenders and maintainers, is you actually learn a little bit of grace and wisdom and how you share that truth. And when, right? Sometimes you just don't need to. But anyway, you'll learn that. The other thing I'll leave and share and then we'll move on to another slide is surround yourself by truth tellers. Especially now. So when I look at my teammates, my tribe, the Air Force Senior Enlisted Leader Council, the other MAGCOM chiefs, sometimes they tell the truth too damn much. But you've got to surround yourself by truth tellers. Greater is the sum than that person by themself. And so surround yourself. And I know this sounds like basic. I mean, man, y'all heard it from General Hecker, you heard it from General Brown, you're hearing it from me like, for some reason this gets a little bit tougher for people. They just don't want to share bad news. No, again, have the grace and the wisdom and know how. Some guiding principles. If you go into my office, you'll see a framed picture that I have. Right there, my dad, a retired warrant officer is re-enlisting me. And the plaque underneath it says, I'm sorry, he's enlisted me in the Air Force. And the plaque underneath it says, never forget where you came from.  See, some of y'all aren't telling the truth. But anyway, like how am I sitting, some of your supervisors are like, how in the world did this person make chief? Hey, y'all need to remember that. Stay grounded and never forget where you came from. You didn't just arrive. I loved where, I can't remember who said, hey, your name is chief. One of y'all said that. Somebody said, hey, your name is chief, right? How many y'all started getting called chief before you even became chief?  I'll never forget. Some of the seniors called me up and said, hey, Joe, like as soon as they got promoted, I'm like, hey, you're not there yet. So but, but, but that was cute. But that was cute. They got excited, right? That was cute. You're not there yet. Guiding principles, never forget where you came from. The second one for all of our defenders in here who know, like that's Liz Jacobson. I keep her picture there to, so that I'm always reminded of my why. Like we serve for those who can't serve. And so for those who paid the ultimate price, you are going to have some challenging days. Like that's just life. You have to have some guiding principles on what's your why. And then the third picture, anybody know what that is? It's a little hard to see. That's a barn center. Where's a barn center folks at? So that's a barn center. And underneath it says, never quit learning. Again, who you are today pales in comparison to who you're gonna be in two years from now, three years from now, four years from now. Never quit learning. It's gonna be a steep curve. So as I got into the seat, a year and a half ago, General Brown in the seat a week longer than I have. Again, I stayed true to those foundational principles in my career, but I also stayed true to the things that I've always been focused on, which is people, readiness and culture. And they nest up quite well with where General Brown is focused on with his four action orders. When it comes to the people piece, he said it best, right? Like it doesn't matter how many B-21s we have, what our new ISR platform is, none of those things matter if we don't have the people. And the people are truly our most competitive advantage. So I will spend the majority of my time as your chief master on the Air Force in action order A in the people piece, because that matters. And I will tell you that when I think about the people piece, when I think about talent, when I think about the airmen that we need in 2030, I don't think short game. Like, man, we have to start thinking long game. Our competitors have been thinking long game. In fact, China's thinking long game where they talk about their 100 year marathon. How many of y'all know that they believe they're in a 100 year marathon? They talk about it. And they're actually pretty. What I love about China, are there any Intel folks in here? I'll keep all this a whole lot Intel folks. I'll keep all this on class open source. But what I love about China, they actually share their long game strategy with us. They actually share with us their Belt Road Initiative. And they actually have put a stake in the ground and every chief needs to know this. They put a stake in the ground and they've said in the year 2049 that they will take their rightful stand as a world dominant power because they're tired of living in a century of humiliation. If you don't know that, you need to. It gets back to understanding the way your competition thinks. And if you talk to most of your Intel analysts, what they'll tell you is they're actually about 15 to 20 years ahead of time. Do the math. 2029, if we're talking 20 years. So everything that we're focused when it comes to people, we're focused on the long game. And that's just basic talent management stuff. What does fitness need to look like? How do we assess fitness in the United States Air Force? What does it need to look like in 2030? And how do we start to backward plan? What's promotions look like? What's evaluations look like? How do we do assignments in 2030? And is what we're doing today what it needs to look like? On all things I would offer, it's a no. I don't think that all things are hard broken either. But I don't think that a lot of the stuff we do is optimal. And so to that end, oh, you're gonna see change. General Brown talks about change. You're gonna see more change. I venture in the next four years and I've seen in my entire 29 year career and it's about time. Because we cannot expect that we're gonna have the right people, the right airmen in 2030 if we don't get after these changes. And so we've got a lot to do. Readiness, culture, we'll talk about those things later. Here's what I need from you. I need you to help us develop the force. I need the folks, I need the force to actually be more concerned about strategic competition than they are about Beards. That happens with you all. What I don't need is every E4 to be steeped in China. Like I don't need that. But I do need them to have a foundational truth of what's going on in life. And you'll get a whole lot of that this week. But I need your help growing the force. Like it's just not gonna happen half-hazardly. I need your help. We pushed out the Enlisted Force Development Action Plan and hopefully you guys have all seen that. Hopefully you all have printed it out and it's sitting there right by your desk. Let me just share a little bit of history on that one. So when we first got in the seat and I'm sitting there with Dival 1 and I'm sitting in the office and we were reading some doctrine because that's what you do in the Pentagon. So we should read us something and it referred to the Enlisted Force Development Strategy. And remember I'm focused on the long game. So I was like, how are we developing airmen in 2030? Like what's our strategy? Like let me see the strategy. And oh, by the way, this is a shame that I'm sitting in the office for the first time and I haven't read our strategy. We do an RFI, we don't have one. We're like, okay, so we got this. So we do some talent management, get some people in the right positions. You're gonna hear from some of those folks but we get some people in the right positions. And so for the past year and a half we've been focused on what is our deliberate strategy, not half hazard on how we're gonna grow the force that we need to be the air force that our nation needs. But we have this strategy. So a few months ago last fall, we finally briefed this strategy to General Brown. And we're like, okay, sir, here's how we're gonna get after making sure that our force, that's half the size that we were before, strategic competitors, here's how we're gonna be what we need to be. And General Brown says, hey, love it, Chief. But guess what?   And so that right then and there we change it from enlisting force development strategy to enlisting force development action plan. It has 28 objectives that I need you guys to be tracking. Much of it is what our staff is gonna hold ourselves to. But some of it is which all are gonna do. And that first objective, make sure that every airman understands the threat that's going on. We've got to get that into our heads. And if you don't know what it is, then you've gotta make sure that you have that foundational truth so that you can do what we need. So first one, help us grow the force. Second one, help us instill some trust in our institution. Probably one of the most surprising things that I've experienced as a Chief Master in the Air Force is how many people reach out to my office. It's shocking. Like, I mean, it could be a full-time job.  Actually, it is a full-time job. It is a full-time job. It is a full-time job. All the number of people who email, message, we even get cute phone calls that reach out to the, like, and so why in the world? What's interesting is, me and my husband were talking about this one day. I was like, how do all these people feel comfortable? Like, reaching out to the office of the Chief Master, and y'all know I'm married to an Army guy, by the way. 27 years, retired as a First Sergeant, you know? And he's like, I don't know what's going on with y'all Air Force people. He's like, he was like, never in my 27 years did I ever think I should email the Sergeant Major of the Army. I was like, I know. And oh, by the way, don't say, hey, is this young stuff? Most of people who email us are Master Sargeants. Like, reach out to us on Facebook. And oh, by the way, I have a great PA who you guys are also gonna meet. So Chief Master in the Air Force is not on Facebook. Like, that's my PA. But why would they reach out to my office? Why would they reach out? Trust. Somehow they feel more trust reaching out. Maybe it's, you know, the anonymity, I don't know. Somehow they feel more trust reaching out that way. Or maybe it's just the way it is with the no information domain that we're in. I don't know, but somehow they feel more trust to reach out to my office. That should never be the case. Your airmen, your wingmen should never feel more comfortable reaching out to my office or their office more than they feel like reaching out to their own supervisor. Or their wingmen to their right and left. So we need some help talking about that trust piece. We need some help in that trust in the chain of command. And we all own that. So I need your help in that. And the third thing that I need your help in is reminding people to control what they can control. Again, it gets back to, I don't need every E4 steeped into what's going on in China. But I do need them to have that foundational piece. And I need us to trust our chains of command. Trust our most senior leaders that they're doing those things and control what you can control. When I go and I talk to your wing commanders and group commanders and the group chiefs at their courses, I come out every month here at Air University to talk to them. I remind those wing commanders, do only what you can do and delegate the rest to the chiefs. Do only what you can do that it requires a chief to do and delegate the rest. Empower your folks and somehow we're gonna have to re-teach that empowerment piece. I don't know when it changed, but I'll tell you when I joined our Air Force, my first supervisor was a senior airman, Brian Hurley. He ran 74 fighter squadron ops. Was empowered as a senior airman to do that. Then somehow in the late 90s, early 2000s, we started to become risk averse and that became a buzzword. And now you can look around and you see chiefs doing what E7 should be doing and senior NCOs doing what their NCOs should be doing and NCOs doing what their airmen. No, we've got to reverse that back. We have got to teach empowerment again. We have to let our folks go, like let them go. They're gonna make mistakes. I'll host stuff up, we did, but we've got to empower and we've got to again control what we can control.  How many of y'all feel like your career's already gone by so fast? So I'll tell you when it comes to what's winning for us, whether it's what's winning, sitting in this seat, what's winning as I end my Air Force career at some point because all of us are gonna take this uniform off. Like what's winning? I have a picture of my family here, largely in part because winning for us is that the family's gonna be there when we take this uniform off, like period. But two, I share this picture because you know, I think it was General Brown who talked about a fishbowl. You're in a fishbowl now. Like all eyes are always on you. You're forever chief in the commissary. You're forever chief.  You're in a fishbowl. So we got this picture taken probably 2016 timeframe. We were new there at Second Air Force and we were on the beaches of Biloxi. How many of y'all been to the beaches of Biloxi? So we're there and I don't know about y'all, but like family pictures to the Bass family is like an emotional significant event. Like nobody likes to take pictures in my family but me. Like nobody gets excited about taking family pictures. So we only do them about once every two years. It's a big deal. Like we had to get a photographer. The photographer's gotta be there. They tell us where to show up, when the lighting's good on the beach. So we get our pictures.   Oh, what a beautiful family. Heart, heart, love you guys. You look amazing, right? What that picture doesn't show is reality. So like probably about one hour before that picture, I'm at work, like I'm in a meeting and the meeting's lasting long. And I'm like, all right, man, like I gotta, we're supposed to be here at this place. Photographer's coming. The sun's going down. Like so what it doesn't show us a chaos is I leave work and I throw out, you know, on the clothes and the family's in the car and I have two kids. I don't know about y'all but they're always fighting with each other. I'm like, everybody finds something blue and we get in the car and I look over at my husband and what do retired people do? They're always on the golf course so he's bearded out. And so, and I look at him, I'm like freaking, I have three kids in here. And so nobody's happy. Nobody's happy. We get to the photo shoot and I'm like, what do you need us to do?  And I'm like, all right. And I literally look at my family at that time and I said, everybody hold hands and act like you love each other. And that was, like that was the picture. Real life. Like we're still folks, you know, so you are in a fishbowl but life happens. Don't forget to make sure you're winning. So with that, I have some other things that I'll share with you before I open it up to questions and answers. But let me just, you know, share, here's a few other tips or general Brown calls them leadership nuggets that I have for you guys. One of them is balance. Sometimes as leaders, we can be the biggest hypocrites when it comes to balance. We tell our troops to balance. We tell those around us to balance, but we don't balance. Like I actually am a big believer in the calf pillars. Sometime when I came in the Air Force, I had a briefing about comprehensive airman fitness and it showed the pillars and the roof that was out of line. If one of the pillars was off, like you have got to find balance. If you weren't disciplined before, like I would ask you, discipline your schedule because you don't get more time in it. You'll have to figure out what your battle rhythm is. I'll tell you, I love to sleep. And I love the snooze button. But what I learned is if I hit that snooze button as much as I love to hit it, I hose myself for the rest of the day. And who really gets hosed is our airman because I'm on react mode. So I discipline myself to wake up at about 4.30 every day and it sucks. But 4.30 every day and get my PT in because for years and years and years, what do you do?  And it doesn't happen. So discipline yourself to make sure you get those things and balance and take care of you. You can't be who you need to be if you don't take care of you. Man as a chief, as a senior leader, some of my first sergeants in here appreciate this. Shifting gears as a leader is tough. You might be in the fourth gear and all of a sudden you go to reverse. I can remember times where I was getting ready to go to the base theater and congratulate airman and give out awards. And 30 seconds before we're walking up on the stage, we get a phone call from Presidio Monterey that says, hey, an airman jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Like how do you process that stuff? Shifting gears is extremely tough. And because of that, I would ask that you keep a good tribe around you. Like you need to have good people. Small tribe, but a good tribe. And so keep a good tribe around you. Go to the money meetings. How many of y'all have access to your boss's calendar? If you don't, you need to. How many of y'all, when you see your boss go into the money meetings, you don't go? Y'all are lying. Listen to me. So some of y'all aren't telling the truth. Here's, so for those of y'all, like learn from me. Here I am a group chief and I would see my boss's calendar and my boss would go to these FM meetings. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to that. Like, you know, that's boring, right? Like, so I never, I mean, this is real talk. Maybe y'all are better than me then. Like I never went to a budget meeting until I was a command chief. They're way better than me. Like never went to it. When my boss would go to the budget meeting, what I do? I'm going to see troops. Like I'm going to do what it, so I didn't understand colors of money. I wasn't in the room to help make a difference and advise my boss on, oh, some fallout money just happened. So here's what we really need to buy that wouldn't have made the cut. You're not in the room. You gotta be at the budget meetings, man. That's why you guys have a briefing from our A-8. By the way, Chief Ross, first senior enlisted leader in the A-8 who's going to brief you guys, I couldn't be more excited because previously we've never had an enlisted member in the A-8. Can you believe that? When I had my immersion with the A-8, they're like, yeah. Like enlisted folks never come to the engine room. Enlisted folks, you know, like you're the first chief master on the Air Force who ever got an immersion with us. And I was like, that's because I like money. Like, and oh, by the way, I realized what General Brown said, like everything is about the budget. I need chiefs in here. I need 389 chiefs in here to understand a foundation about the budget. Because just maybe if you do, you'll be able to communicate for all things. Communicate when things go south. Communicate when things are good. Let me tell you, things aren't that great when it comes to budget. There is so much we want to do for our United States Air Force. So much we want to do. But anyway, go to the money meetings. We'll talk a little bit about budget later. It gets really depressing. Mentor all, sponsor few. Y'all know what that means. Like, again, mentor all, sponsor few. General Brown talked about, what are we a two out in the Air Force? And man, I love that question when I heard it. We have too many airmen who don't know how to share what the Air Force brings to the table. Which is why you're gonna hear from Jay France later this week. We have too many, I've been in too many courses where airmen can't effectively share what they bring to the table.   I don't care. You need to be able to be steeped and understand what the Air Force brings to the table. Like, that's gotta be part of who you do. You have to understand where we're headed. You have to have some foundational knowledge of why we wear this uniform and why your service today, why the service of our airmen matters more than it ever did. And with that, hey, I wanna open it up for real talk. So what's on your minds? And don't be shy like y'all were initially with the boss, especially today. I mean, I do see it online. Y'all have a whole lot of questions and opinions, but then it gets quiet normally when I'm here. What's on your minds, y'all? Good morning. Senior Burge from Bowling Air Force Base. So I wanna talk about, ask about DEI real quick. I'm very passionate about the DEI stuff. I'm involved in several initiatives, but I've been getting really discouraged over the last couple of years because I feel like we're stuck in the same loop of conversation. People tend to lose sight that the Air Force definition of diversity doesn't only focus on race, ethnicity, and gender, but that's the only conversation happening. So how and when do we take that conversation to the next level to build the airmen and the capability that we need to get after our objectives? Yeah, Catherine, I think that's a great question. What I would offer is, I think we have to look at diversity wholly different and not that, and we can't look at diversity as a moral imperative. Well, I would agree that it is a moral imperative. It's more of a war fighting imperative, but I think what we all have to understand is what you just said, right? Diversity is three things. Diversity is diversity in demographics, certainly. You know, the details about you, gender, race, sexual orientation, all those things, but diversity is also diversity of experiences, and we all have a whole lot of different experiences, and diversity is also of the cognitive piece. We were all brought up differently. We all have a different level of education, like in when you value those three different diversities and you're trying to create success for your organization, then diversity looks something differently depending on the organization and what you're looking for, and you're not so much focused on the demographic piece. We have a new ODI office, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and I couldn't be more excited that we pulled it from where it was sitting previously on the air staff where it was buried underneath the two letter, and now it actually works for the secretary of the Air Force, and they have some momentum. And so let's see if the efforts they have are getting after it, and then if you have some ideas, we'd love to hear them. All right, we'll go right here. Good morning, Chief. Senior West from Hill Air Force Base. So, you talked truth, and I know it's been a platform that's reached your level of visibility, but, and no offense to the calm people in the room, but... Why'd I know this was about to be a calm question? Because we talk about mission versus airmen, and we talk about focusing on our airmen and don't sit behind your desk. But to the point of the author who wrote, fix our computers, and I know that's made it to your level, I just wanna hear from you directly. Where are we at with that? Because last week, for example, literally to the author's point, it took a good two hours for me to get logged into my computer, and as leaders, knowing that the majority of our administrative duties are focused on those platforms, Adobe Outlook, and not being able to get into, knock those types of tasks out in order to then turn our focus to taking care of our airmen. Where do you see us focusing those efforts to eliminate some of those issues so that we can get back to focusing on what is really important? Hey, where's our calm folks at, by the way? All right, so I don't speak calm. I'm an ops girl, but I'm gonna share that we are, like it is clear, it is evident by your senior leaders, we are not where we need to be from an IT cyber perspective, and that all falls back to budget and prioritization and risk. Long story short, and I'll share the long story piece in a minute, but I will tell you that I have a whole lot of faith in our staff CIO, Chief Information Officer. She has a strong strategy on how we are going to get the United States Air Force because it's not just the Air Force, it's the entire DOD, it's the entire whole of government. We have a strong strategy on how we're gonna get after this, but what do we need? You need the money. So yes, we're gonna get out of it. Some of it though, when I reached out to her, by the way, over the weekend, when that released and my PA sent me this and it got embarrassing and all our airmen got real clever and started doing memes, right? Like I actually have her on speed dial, so I sent her some of the memes. I said, we're memes now. This is the embarrassing, right? Like what do you say? And she actually, we laughed. She's like, hey, some of them are true, some of them are not. Some of them are, you just need to get better hardware and the hardware is already there. Like you need to reach out to your comm squadron because there's a whole lot of hardware out there.  Real talk, like the money piece. I'm the only enlisted member who gets to sit in Corona and be there with our four stars and our three stars, talking about where their force is going in life. And I'll tell you a little bit about the first day. The first day is kind of like today, except for you go into threat briefings for the most part and you start off in the unclass level, you go to unclass, to secret, to TS, to sap, to sap, to sap, to sap. And our Intel folks know that the higher in classification you go, the worse it gets. So it's depressing as hell. On day two, when you think it can't get any more depressing, on day two we go to budget. And it really is depressing. Jeremiah's going to press you all in a little bit. But it goes to that. But what I want to share with you from the IT infrastructure piece is, man I can appreciate what our three and four stars have to do because they have to make some really tough decisions for the enterprise. And the tough decisions they are is, how do we modernize and make sure that we're the air force that our nation is going to need in 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, with the war gaming that they know that we're doing. How can we do that on a budget? Who gives us our budget? Congress. Like, I mean, how do we do that when we never get the budget that we need? And the IT piece that we're talking about is foundational. Like, the IT piece is foundation. We have never been resourcing the foundation of the things that we need as a force appropriately because we just don't have the budget. So it's painful decisions. I'm confident we're going to get there. All right, back there. Morning, Chief Senior Wessing from Ramstein Air Base. So that senior stole a little bit of my thunder.  Yeah. Over the course of the past two years, we've done COVID and the Air Force made DOD writ large, made huge investments in teleworking. And I would argue that that's probably one of the success stories of COVID. In your opinion, as is SimSaf, what does the future of work look like given that we've proved that we can do a lot from the house? Yeah. If there's almost anything I can't do as a senior enlisted leader from the house, what does the future of work look like and do we need to be tethered to brick and mortar and office chairs to get after it? Yeah. Thanks. Like, right to your point, I think we've already given the authorities to commanders to be able to make the best decisions for their people and their workforce. There are some career fields that are never gonna be able to telework.  It's hard to telework if you're a defender, right? And then while I appreciate telework, like I appreciate telework with the best of them, although I feel like I work more when I telework. I don't know about y'all. I feel like I work more. The reality is what you're not getting teleworking scares me. And that's the second and third order impacts the lack of eyeball to eyeball leadership, that lack of connection. We can't underestimate that value. So we've given the authorities now today to commanders to be able to decide who in their workforce needs to telework. I would offer COVID also revealed to us some jobs that we probably just need to get rid of. So time will tell. We need all leaders to get back to what our slide talked about, tell the truth. It's not personal. But if for the smallest we've ever been, man, we need every person to do their piece and commanders will have to make decisions on what's best for their workforce. Oh, okay, back there. Y'all help me figure this out. We'll do like around Robin, okay? And good morning. Since after that senior require A26 at the Pentagon. Oh, what? So I'm in cell, full transparency, brought up maintenance. So we're gonna get some real talk here. What is your vision for enlisted talent marketplace as we try to essentially develop our airmen and effectively manage their talent as we put them in the right positions in these, in our jobs. Because as of right now, our current assignment system, we just put them at a base, right? And if you look at the exit surveys, the main reason airmen are getting out is because of misutilization, assignment processes, things like that. And Intel, we've already gone to using enlisted talent marketplace for assignment cycles and not just equal plus ads. Is that your vision moving forward for all of the enlisted airmen? Or are we looking at only using that for equal plus ads? Nope. Hey, so I have two priorities that if I had money today, here's where they would go to today. I have more priorities, but the top two that I've shared with the team broadly is the first one is I need every senior NCO in talent marketplace. Like I need every senior NCO and I think we'll get there this year, right? I wanted every enlisted person in talent marketplace. Our officers are currently doing it, but at scale, that's something bigger than we could bite off on for. Lots of reasons. So I said, okay, great, let's get our, and I don't know that we need every senior airman to be matched in and handled from an assignment piece the way I need our senior NCO. So my goal is by the end of this year that we're all in talent marketplace. Y'all ask Chief Meckel Roy when she's here talking at AFPC. But anyway, so that'll be one of the other goal for money is, and I don't ask for much, y'all. Like I don't. But I'm like, it is 22, like 2022. If we can't get to digital WAPS testing, we are a sad state. Like don't hold me to it. Don't tweet that out, because we may not get to it. But why? Because of the money. So I'm on speed dial with Jeremiah. I'm like, hey bro, find me the money. But here's the challenge. When we find the money for stuff like that, guess what's happening? Something else in getting funded. Y'all need to know, I mean like, this is real talk that you all need to know. And oh by the way, it's not the man taking your money. Like again, this is why I think it's important for at this level, you know, because I didn't go to the money meetings, I didn't know. So when sequestration happened, who was I mad at? I was mad at the folks who was leaving our Air Force. Like so yes, I think we're gonna get there. The other good news story I'm gonna tell you is we actually had an enlisted assignment working group huddling. They sent me the executive summary, which was 35 pages. I don't know how that's 35 pages, but I'm actually having the out brief by them. We had a group of airmen led by a NAF command chief, who's a defender by the way, lead the charge on this enlisted assignment working group. We haven't looked at assignments holistically since 1991. Like holistically. And oh by the way, if you don't know me by now, like I love free. Anything that's free, and it helps get after action order A and people, I'm down with. Like I will look at everything that's free. And what I know for certain is we have a whole lot of assignment policies that we can change for free that just don't make sense. And so we're gonna move out on those things first. We're gonna get some low bills in, and then we'll push some money into talent marketplace, but we're evolving our enlisted assignments. And the officers will benefit too, because we're gonna change some of those things. All right. Good morning chief. I'm Sergeant Parrish from Joint Base San Antonio. My question is a policy related question in regards to I would say readiness and medical as well. So it comes down to what opportunities currently exist that you may be aware of when it comes to allowing service members the option to have their own privatized health insurance in addition to tri-care. And if we're not looking at that, why not? I'm gonna call a friend on that one. Let us get back to you on that. Can somebody take a note on that one? What I do think for certain when I talk about why are we limited in some of the benefits when it comes to medical healthcare benefits, it's because from a tri-care perspective, or from an insurance perspective, tri-care doesn't pay enough. So nobody wants tri-care. So we are sharing those concerns with DHA who's elevating and doing that. But let me, let's phone a friend and then we'll get back to you on that. All right, we're gonna start speed dating right now because I see D1 standing up. Good morning, Senior Master Sergeant Ida Lees Lagu from Langley Air Force Base. My question is, we have an increasing number of airmen who are arriving to their first duty station. And then we quickly find that they're struggling through some mental health, some adjustment issues to the Air Force. And they've gone through tech school for so long that by the time they get to their first base, they've already surpassed the 180 day initial entry airmen timeframe. Have we considered either having a mental health assessment while the members are in tech school or extending the 180 day mark from when they arrive to their first duty station as opposed to when they enter the Air Force? I'm looking over at AUTC. I don't know, is ET around? I don't know that he can, I don't know that I can say for certain that we haven't looked. What I will tell you is, we've actually looked at getting even more left of that, which is providing a mental health, a solid mental health assessment like in MEPS. They get one to some degree, but it's very cursory. And when I talk to most of our mental health folks, they're like, hey, we're buried, especially in our tech training organizations. They're like, we're buried, like we needed to do this a long time ago. And so the discussions that I've had with our service SELs, cause MEPS is not like owned by us. It's a joint piece. Certainly, the Army has a whole lot of say, what I'm trying to get them to reason is like, they presented me, I think a $15, like every person can take this mental health assessment. I'm like, we need to pay the $15 for everybody. I don't care how many people it is, because we will reap the benefits if we do it ahead of time instead of after the time. So we are looking at that. Yeah, all right, real quick. Chief senior Aaron from Kadina. You talked about empowerment and that we need to get airmen doing airmen work and NCOs doing NCOs work. So my question is, and I talked through experience of what I've experienced in my career is, chiefs worrying about that first term airmen and spending a lot of time with them versus spending time with the senior NCOs and developing them to be chiefs. So my question to you is, what mentorship would you give us as new chiefs on how we make sure we spend the time with those senior NCOs versus with that first term airmen? I say just do it, right? When I was a group chief, I had to focus on again and that's why I talk about, you don't get more time in the world. Like, so when I was a group chief, I'm like, what am I going to in the limited time that I have, who will I pour my time into? It wasn't the airmen. I'm like, let me make sure that I'm spending time with these squadron, at that time, we called them squadron superintendents, now they're senior enlisted. Let me spend time with this group. Let me make sure that I know, even beyond the squadron senior enlisted leaders that I understand are strong E-8s so that when needed, right? We're pouring that time. We just have to do it. Again, I don't need chiefs that are doing what it, that doesn't mean that you're not going to come and have an opportunity to connect with folks. Like, that's just human nature. But man, if your chief is doing what your staff sergeants are doing, like, that's just wrong. So we just gotta do it. By the way, man, I love seeing you, chief. Erin, like, this talks about the small Air Force we're in. She came up to me and she said, I don't know if you remember, I used to coach your daughter. So I'm like, yeah, well, she's like, what happened to your daughter? I said, she's a senior in college. She said, wow, I feel old. I'm like, yeah, that's it. Are we done? I thought there was one more. One more, okay. I'll take it, chief. See, I'm starting to raise her from CR over at Joint Base McGuire. So when I look at the EPR system, knowing that there's been a bunch of changes in the past, changes coming in the futures, the officers are following some of that model. When I look at our model, it seems unbalanced in the year. We've got annual awards right on top of staff sergeant EPRs, airman EPRs, the biggest workload happening right around the time in which we are supposed to be balancing out family and work. Has there ever been a conversation about trying to shift some of that in order to be able to balance that out? Yeah, there's always a conversation about it. In fact, there was a conversation about it this week and I shot a note to Chief Crowder who again is gonna brief you later this week with one of the students in the chief leadership course now sent me an email spinning off of a conversation and a question that she had had. Like, here's what it would look like if we adjusted our scots and here's how we get after this. And so of course I took that and I said, huh, here's a thought. I want the folks in A1P at the Pentagon to just like marinate on this and tell me what you say if we adjusted scots. So then of course the answer is like, hey, yeah, we're gonna look into it, but scots are aligned to testing cycles, right? So then, where's a personelist by the way? I don't speak personalities either, but so then they're like, hey, but it's aligned to testing cycle. And I'm like, and? Right, like so here's what I asked them to do. Like just again, we have to think unconstrained and this gets after design implementation. Like think differently about this. If we're gonna roll out a new digital WAPS system, that's probably the best time that if we're gonna ever realign scots and testing cycles, do it at that time. So we need to take a holistic look at our enlisted evaluation system, which we are. And that's probably one of the things that we've gotta look after. There's a whole lot of things that we're focused on. I will be with you guys all week. You're gonna have those three senior mentors, part of your Air Force Senior Enlisted Leader Council, that will be mentoring you each different day. I'll be here, I'm glad to share some things on my mind and then I'll close it up on Thursday prior to you guys getting broken off to your MagComs. There is a lot of things we're getting after. And as I've shared before, there's probably not one thing that matters to you or matters to your families that my team's not looking at. I have this thing called things to get after list. And this stuff isn't just made up. This is stuff that myself and your MagComs chiefs are like, what can we realistically do to move the ball and start to evolve for the Air Force that we need to prepare for? What are the things that we can actually do? There's a whole lot of stuff and I wanna be able to share those things with you because I don't want you to leave here and you don't know. But I guarantee you, if it's important to you, we got a working group that is meeting up, talking about it. PME, Enlisted Assignments, Promotions, Evaluations. I'm actually okay pushing something out and it's maybe the 80% solution. I'm okay with that because we gotta move. Like we can't wait until something's perfect. We have to be really thoughtful in what the second and third order effects are because we don't wanna hose ourselves. We rolled out and changed promotion points, right? Where we are adding points for experience. I don't know if that's a ticket. I'm excited to see the data that comes back from that. What I knew is we had to do something because we were promoting people with no experience faster than we were promoting people with two to three to four years experience and it was almost criminal to me. So we're gonna roll things out and we're gonna press levers and we need your support and we need to make sure that you help us with that trust in the system. We have a lot of things to get after y'all and we're gonna do it. Because like draconian policies from the 90s and 2000s are not what's gonna help us win in 2030 and we've got to. So with that, hey man, it's an honor to serve with you guys. It's an honor to serve as the chief master in the Air Force. It's an honor to serve with General Brown who actually lets us be us.  And so thanks for what you all do every single day. I look forward to chatting with you throughout the week and look forward to hearing the next briefer that comes up. Whoop, awesome. Thanks y'all. Woo!


Welcome to the latest Long Distance Low Institute event. We're focused on Australia's decision to cancel its French submarine contract in favour of partnering with the US and the UK on nuclear-powered boats, and indeed on much closer military and technological cooperation generally. Rarely has an Australian foreign policy decision sent so many ripples around the world. The announcement has implications for US, Chinese, European and Southeast Asian diplomacy and defence policies. I'm Richard McGregor, a Senior Fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute. Tonight, I'm delighted to be speaking with Bilahari Kausakan, the former head of the Singaporean Foreign Ministry, Yun Sun of the Stimpson Centre in Washington DC, and Ades Roland of the National Bureau of Asian Research in the United States. None of our guests obviously speak for any government, but they do have a great deal of knowledge about what the respective governments think. Yun, I want to start with you. America's relations with China, Australia's relations with China were already poor before this decision. Against that background, how would you characterize the reaction in Beijing so far? Has this decision fundamentally changed anything? Well, Richard, thank you for the invitation to be here, first of all. I think you're absolutely right. The relationship between China and the United States and also between China and Australia have already in a pretty bad shape. And this announcement of the nuclear-powered submarines to be provided to Australia certainly has led to the deterioration of the relationship further. I would say in China, the Chinese see the severity of the challenge from Australia obtaining the nuclear-powered subs as high, but the urgency of the threat has moderated so far, because the high threat perception is due to the fact that nuclear-powered submarines will be armed with US cruise missiles, and even the United States may not have the ability to deploy that many nuclear submarines to the region, for example, in the South China Sea. But on the other hand, I think Beijing also maintains a wait-and-see attitude about the assessment, because the details are not yet worked out, and the consultations will take time. So the Chinese are not yet sure whether the submarines will be built in Australia or they will come from a retired US fleet. To build the submarines will require five to ten years, which means the threat is not immediate. But in terms of the official reactions, we have seen two focuses, basically. The first one is focused on the geopolitical impact of the deal and the attack on the United States, UK, and Australia for their so-called Cold War mentality. So some have equated this alcove as an Asian version of NATO, with the potential to expand to include other like-minded countries. The second and the most significant reaction is focused on the nuclear non-proliferation issue. The Chinese permanent representative to UN in Vienna has already made a statement on the second day accusing the deal as, quote-quote, undisguised nuclear proliferation activities. He also called for IAEA to publicly condemn alcoves, which demonstrates a double standard US and UK pursue on the nuclear export control. So these are primarily the Chinese reactions so far. And I would say that all the signs and signals are pointing into a pretty dark and abysmal direction. Just a quick follow-up. I mean, China has had a very large military build-up in the last couple of decades, Navy, cyber capability, missiles and the like. Public statements are one thing.  That's a very good question. So where did this regional arms race really start? And the Chinese have been modernizing their military capability, they have been expanding their fleets. So using that criteria, other countries' reaction would be natural and normal. But unfortunately, that's hardly a perception that Chinese will share because the Chinese feel that their military build-up has always and will always be a response to the US predominance militarily in the region. So they were not anticipating that other countries in the region would follow suit. But in my view, that is the negligence on the Chinese part, not to understand or expect the reaction to their military modernization. Okay. Thank you. Nadezh, if I could move to you now. Now you live in the US, but you worked previously in the French Defense Ministry. The French reaction has been furious on many levels, that's clear. But to quote a French journalist, is this a spat or is it a crisis? How big a deal is it for France and of course for Europe more generally? Yeah, I think the past week really has been, France has been in shock, I think first, shocked by the lack of consultation, shocked by the unconscionable behavior of two very strong allies, and a lot of anger after that shock coming up. And a lot of puzzlement also about the logic behind this, because it seemed like what the French had been trying to build with Australia was responding pretty much to what Australia wanted and made perfect strategic sense. So a lot of emotions, as everybody can see it, I think things are going to calm down a little bit. Obviously, French leaders are not just moved by their emotions, they're also state leaders. And so they're starting to reconsider what is the best position that they're going to take out of this. But I think it's not just a spat. Obviously, France has been one of the strongest American allies for a long time, and I don't think that this is going to change anytime soon. We've been through various crises over the past few decades. I think one of my friends who's a diplomat told me recently that I think it's Lee Kuan Yew who said that the Americans are betraying one of their friends every 10 years, but that seems for the French that it's more often than that nowadays. So this is not a great position to be in. At the same time, I think there are things that will not change, and we're going to try to find ways to go through this crisis. In the longer term, this agreement with Australia was really seen by the French authorities as the backbone of their Indo-Pacific presence together with the strategic partnerships that they have built over the last decade, both with Japan and India in particular, but also other countries in the region, Singapore, Malaysia, among others. But this one was really a strong commitment, political one, strategic one, and now we're going to have to recalibrate a little bit of that, keeping in mind that our national interests have not changed. China is still a nation in the Pacific. We have territories. We have economic zones. We have citizens. We have lots of strategic interests, economic and others, and so we're not going to go away. It's just how is it that we're going to translate this presence militarily and in other terms with partners in the region. So that's the big next question, I think, keeping this focus on the region, finding other ways to do it. A quick follow-up. President Biden, he angered many in Europe with his handling of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan withdrawal. I think the French foreign minister described him as Trump without the tweets. Is there a sort of a hardening view of Biden in France and Europe? I'm not sure. There's a hardening view. I think there's a lot of interrogation really about who was behind this decision because the Biden administration really came in with this idea that they're going to rebuild the fractured relationship with American allies in Europe and in Asia. And so this doesn't bode well for this kind of policy if this is how you're going to treat your allies. And so I think it's possible that in the next few months we're going to perhaps have some many more elements about what happened inside of the US and also inside of Australia because it seems like this has been an agreement that has been kept very, very secret and perhaps even inside of the administrations in the US and in Australia, not everybody has been included in making that decision or perhaps not really seeing the potential damage that this could do in other areas, including in the relationship with France. So there's going to be a lot of things coming up, I suppose, in the coming weeks and months. So yeah, everything is a little bit up in the air right now. Okay, Billahari, let me bring you in if we can turn to Southeast Asia. Now, that's obviously a diverse region. There's been a variety of reactions. Are there any threads out of those reactions that you can pull together for us so far that are meaningful? Yeah, well, you're right, Richard. There have been a variety of reactions. Indonesia and Malaysia have not been very positive about it, Singapore more so. Philippines has been positive about it. Vietnam hasn't said anything that I know of, but I don't think they will be upset by this decision for the obvious reasons. Myanmar has its own problems and Thailand is preoccupied with its own issues. But that said, I think over the last 15, 20 years maybe, there has been a growing understanding in Southeast Asia that a position that Singapore has never been shy about publicly stating that the US presence is a vital and irreplaceable element of any balance in the region is not just an eccentric Singaporean attitude, but a strategic reality. And what is driving this realization is concern over certain aspects of Chinese behavior. Nobody wants to shun China, but everybody has some degree of concerns about Chinese behavior. Not just about the South China Sea, my new, but more generally. You can see in the reaction in 1990 when Singapore signed the MOU with the US to allow the use of some facilities, our neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia reacted hysterically almost. But when we renewed that MOU in 2019, there was no reaction. And when we concluded a strategic partnership agreement with the US in 2005, there was no reaction. I think Southeast Asia is diverse. You will always have a variety of diverse public reactions, but privately in all, but maybe one or two countries, what I have just described is the general attitude and this new agreement between the US, UK, Australia, and the agreement to provide nuclear submarines must be seen in that context. Yes, I guess one of the themes that comes through in discussions with Southeast Asian countries is that they don't want to be drawn into great power competition between US and China. Is that for ASEAN, for Southeast Asia, is that a realistic position?  In the 1970s, we had this idea of zone of peace, freedom, and neutrality based on the idea that all the world's ills came from the major powers and you keep the major powers out, everything milk and honey will flow.  That undercurrent is there. It is considerably weakened by events, particularly since Mr. Xi Jinping came to power, but that undercurrent is there, but it is not the main undercurrent. In fact, the way ASEAN conceives original security is fundamentally changed from thinking that if we just keep all the major powers out, everything will be wonderful. We now want to engage all the major powers so as to create a kind of omnidirectional balance to try to enhance the natural multipolarity of this region that maximizes maneuver space. That's the fundamental underlying purpose of things like the ADMM plus the East Asia Summit and even the ARF, which was our first experiment in that direction. But the old attitudes still linger on because the hardest things to change, as you know, is somebody's mind. And old ideas, antiquated ideas linger on. In fact, I think the new relation Prime Minister in responding to this new deal between US, Australia and the UK actually referred to Zofan. I could barely stop myself laughing. Excellent. We'll move on from that point of humor. You and I have come to you now. One of the criticisms in Australia is that Australia has basically bet the house, doubled down all in with the United States at a time when the US domestic politics is highly unstable and when the US is in relative decline, not decline, relative decline compared to China. What do you think about that? I mean, you're looking on it as an outsider. Is that a smart foreign policy decision for a country like Australia? Well, whether it is smart, we'll leave it to the Australian people to decide in their next election and also for the history to decide. Because in at least the Chinese narrative, there are a lot of people who predict that Australia in the end will cry in despair. And that's in Chinese pronunciation also equates to alcus. So alcus means Australia will eventually cry in despair. So I think you have to take into multiple factors into consideration. For example, this deal is extremely expensive and is potentially going to cost Australia an arm and a leg. Of course, if Canberra believes it is necessary, then strategically speaking, there's no there's no price tag for it. But on the other hand, there's also the impact because these are nuclear powered submarines and US is the one who possesses the technology. So coming to the maintenance, the training, the staffing, the equipment to sustain these nuclear powered submarines is going to be a permanent deal for as long as Australia keeps them, Australia will have to rely on the United States to provide those support. So the question then is that, well, is Australia really willing to be forever bound to the US strategic agenda in the region? And is that a smart move for middle power? And I think, at least from what I read on Australian media, the former three prime ministers of Australia also have very different views as for whether this is indeed a smart move. But I will say that looking from the perspective of Sino-Australia relations since last year, the Chinese has done significant amount of hard bashing of Australia, especially in terms of the diplomatic interaction, in terms of the rhetoric and in terms of the some of the trade issues. So I would say that Morrison's decision is did not come out of nothing, did not come out of sin air. And there is a significant background of deterioration of relations between China and Australia. And this deal is part of the reaction or part of the consequences to that reality. Yes, I mean, that's an interesting point. I wonder whether that has any impact inside China at all. It's hard to tell that there's let me ask you the similar question. You obviously have criticism of how this was handled diplomatically by both Australia and the United States and the damage on the French position on a strategy on Indochina. But from where you said, does this look like a full, hardy bet to go all in with the United States in a project like this, which binds us to them in sovereign ways for decades? I think I will have the same response as you in soon. It's really it. This is a sovereign it's a sovereign choice. It's a sovereign decision from from Australia's part. And I think I want to give the Australian government the benefit of the doubt deeply inside of me thinking, okay, this is a this is a deeply thought through decision that has been made. And the overarching strategy answers a worsening security environment that supersedes every other consideration. And perhaps Australia has decided that it is a middle power and that befriending or getting closer in terms of new security partnerships with other middle powers is not going to be enough in the face of the challenge that is at stake. So if this is the calculation, I mean, this again, this is this is Australia's decision. And I am not going to go against it. I'm just wondering, really, whether abandoning something that has already been going on with a lot of progress being made with an extremely important transfer of technologies component in the long run is going to be easily replaced by a by something that we don't really know about yet. They're saying that they're going to have an 18 month period of consultations. How what is it going to happen exactly what kind of agreements at what level is are going to to be made. This is really a big black box right now. So when everything is in place, perhaps we can come back and discuss about it and saying is it was that the right decision to make. Right now, I still have really questions that I suppose the Australian internal debate is going to be about as well. I would think so in terms of budget, in terms of human resources, in terms of implications for transfer of technologies, implications for the building that industrial base that Australia doesn't have right now in terms of guarantees. I don't know. Yes, well, that's certainly true. I think I mean the French contract was difficult enough. This is of dimensions, which is even more complex. Bilahari, I mean in the past you've praised Australia's toughening of its policy on China, but more recently, I think you were a little wonder whether the pendulum had swung too far. How does the decision look from where you sit? Okay, let's not be hypocritical about this. The US has always been an Australia's major security partner. There is no alternative. Who's going to be your security partner if not the US? Russia, China, Singapore? We are your security partner, but we're insignificant, right? So this is a continuation. It's not a new situation except for the nuclear submarine deal. And that's one part, but the overall strategic situation for Australia has not changed. When I was in the US recently and I was constantly asked in different ways, is the US reliable? That was vis-à-vis Afghanistan. And my answer was always the same. The US is, of course, not reliable. Every four years, worse sorts like me when I was in government had to go to the US and tell them the same thing over and over again. How can that be reliable? But that's the wrong question. Is there an alternative to the US to maintain a balance in our region? The answer is obviously no. So if the answer is no, there is no alternative. You adapt yourself to the reality of the US. And that is a new adaptation. Now, how this submarine deal will work out, I don't know. It's now just an idea. But let's not lose sight of the fact that Australia has no other alternative for a major security partner. Japan, South Korea, these are allies like Australia is of the US. And that, by the way, is true of France too. I think French are understandably upset for a variety of reasons. If I was them, I would be upset too. But I think the French are not, despite the reputation of being emotional, you are also very pragmatic. And I just have read in the South China Morning Post today that France has decided to send its ambassador back to Washington. Because the hard fact is France, since I think Nadine will know better, I think four or five times a year is naval vessels to its specific territories. And that's very welcome by everybody, particularly in the current circumstances. But the hard fact is without the Seventh Fleet, you cannot maintain your access to those specific territories by yourself. And in time, as China builds up its blue-water navy capability, that will be also true of your Indian Ocean Territories. So nobody has very much choice in the matter. And that's the fact of the that's the hard strategic reality of where we are now. And how did we get here? We got here because China, for no doubt, very good, probably mainly domestic reasons in my view, has decided to adopt a certain foreign policy posture in this region. All right. And therefore, it has elicited various reactions. And this is just the latest reaction. Yes. Speaking of those reactions, Jun, if I could go back to you, we discussed Southeast Asia and ASEAN. Perhaps more important are the Quad countries, India and Japan. Again, they seem to have welcomed this. Well, China doesn't seem to be too worried or, at least in public, about criticism from any of these countries these days. If you've got India and Japan, the US, Australia meeting a first in-person Quad summit this week, we've got the Sub's decision. Do you sense any, plus, of course, Chinese domestic politics, the party Congress next year, etc., etc. Do you sense any recalibration on China's part? You might wonder why China would recalibrate, particularly as China is still growing and adding to its military weight and the like. I mean, can you give us any sense of that? Sure. I will try. I think for China, one of the most important criteria in evaluating whether China should adopt a different position is that whether these countries' policy towards China can be influenced. In other words, if China adopts a softer or a more conciliatory approach to Australia, would Australia still insist on the tracing of the origin of COVID, which has been identified by the Chinese as a major irritant? And in the case of India, if China adopts a more conciliatory position towards India on, for example, the issue of the border dispute, would India stop regarding China as a security threat? And coming to other countries like Japan that will Japan ever feel that China's rise is good news for Japan? So I think when the Chinese put things in that comparative perspective and try to understand to what extent these countries' China policy is really subject to Chinese influence, I think they realize that India will always see China as a threat and Australia will not stop blaming China or insisting on tracing the origin of COVID-19 in China. And the Japan will always identify U.S.-Japan alliance as a pillar of the regional security and that sees itself as U.S. most loyal, the best partner, the best ally. And therefore, a Sino-Japan improvement of relations will never exceed the level of the security alliance Japan has with the United States. So I understand this is quite a binary black-out-white perception on the Chinese side, that whether in the end we could really influence these countries' policy, and when they determine that the answer is negative, that these countries are going to see China as a threat regardless, then for China, the answer seems to have become easier, that okay, then we will just adopt the most direct approach to pursue our national interest. Then of course, there's also subject to debate as for whether things like AUKUS or Quad is indeed in China's national interest. But I think a key point that I have observed in the Chinese policy community is that this is inevitable and it has to happen anyway. That's, I must say, that's a very fatalistic view of things that China is going to rise whether we like it or not.  I mean, can China reassure its neighbors in any fashion at all? Or is this just the way it is? I think we've passed that point a while ago already. The charm offensive dates back several years now. And this is about rejuvenation. It's about raising, like it or not, China is going to rise. I think what we're seeing is just, it's an illustration of how those tensions are going to be more and more difficult to manage. For a while, I think people were in the region, were thinking, you know, in economic integration or interdependence with China and balancing either between ourselves or, as Bilahari just mentioned, under the American umbrella to guarantee the security, is this going to be perpetually possible? It's going to be, this is its fundamental question. I don't have any answer to that. But maybe if I can just for a second go back to what Bilahari just said about, you know, let's face it, the only security guarantor in the region is going to be the US. I think this is very true. What I wanted to point out is that it's not either only the US or nothing. There is still a lot of mini-lateral or a web of corporations among regional partners that can supplement and complement the American presence without conflicting against each other. And I think the problem with the, it's not the problem of AUKUS, it's the problem of the way AUKUS was born and delivered to the world. That makes it much more difficult, I think, in the future to restart the trust that we had with each other very quickly. And this is going to take some time to, I think, to recover from this. And this is not because of China. This is the damage we're doing to ourselves. And I think this is really detrimental. Bilahari, you were the representative in the United Nations. You've had a lot to do with the Middle East in recent years. Are there any genuine issues of proliferation, nuclear proliferation that are concerning about this latest deal? I will answer that. But before that, can I say a word about the other issue you raised with Sun and Nadine? I think when the history of this period is going to be written, an objective historian will conclude that Mr. Xi Jinping spawned a great advantage that China had, maybe 10 years ago or so. China's rise was not perceived as threatening until relatively recently, 10 years, 15 years. And the Chinese themselves were very careful to ensure it was so. But sometime towards the end of the Huzhidau era, and certainly under Mr. Xi Jinping, the old approach of hiding your light and biding your time of reassuring countries that the rise or the development of China, because even rise was considered too provocative a word, would be peaceful. That seemed to have gone out of the window. And recently, Mr. Xi Jinping, a few months ago anyway, told a group of I think Communist Party cadres that they should look to make China more lovable, look to make China more respectable, more credible, and expand China's circle of friends. It seems to me that that is a remarkable implicit recognition that Chinese foreign policy has failed. Because the purpose of foreign policy is to complement your strategic interests by making sure your strategic interests are accepted as widely as possible, but China has not succeeded in that. That said, look, let's again not be hypocritical. The NPT regime is effectively dead and only awaits a decent funeral. None of us is prepared to say so, governments I mean, but the fact is that it died quite some time ago, and it was a lingering death, but we need to understand that reality. I don't think we should discard the pre-T because there are other positives in it that we should preserve, but nuclear proliferation is a reality. All right. The last nail in that coffin was actually when between the US and India's civilian nuclear deal in 2008, despite the India's acquisition of nuclear weapons. The Middle East is seething with countries that want to emulate Israel's undeclared nuclear capability. Iran, Saudi Arabia, even Egypt, Turkey. I think the trajectory is set. The trajectory has been set in East Asia, Japan, South Korea have that idea. I mean, I don't think it's going to be easy for any of them. Not going to be easy for Australia, but unless there is a fundamental change in Chinese behavior, which is the main driver of this, which I think is unlikely, that we are on that trajectory. The Middle East, and it's not necessarily a very dangerous trajectory, is going to be a very fraught trajectory. But in the end, if I am right, and I hope I'm not right, but if I am right, and there will be more independent nuclear deterrence under the overall nuclear umbrella of the US, it will be a fairly stable situation. The same thing happened in Europe many decades ago, almost 70 odd years ago, once the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons. China is improving its nuclear second strike capability, and there is nothing sinister about this. In fact, it is the correct thing to do for any nuclear power. It will be irresponsible not to try to improve your second strike capability. But once you have done that, the question will arise as it did in Europe before, will New York or San Francisco be sacrificed to save Tokyo or so? The answer is obviously no. And many things follow from that. So the Middle East is a bit different because East Asia, these are coherent states, these are rational states, even North Korea whose only goal is regime survival, and that's a relatively limited goal. Middle East, you have a whole host of rather unstable countries, intrinsically unstable, internally unstable countries with nuclear ambitions. That is another matter. But I'm afraid it's too late. The genie is out of the bottle long ago. We just don't want to omit it, that's all. Okay. If I could go back to a point that Billahari made before claiming that China had squandered a strategic opportunity or a strategic leverage. You spoke a little bit about this before, but there's a lot's been happening in China recently, mainly on domestic policy, but also foreign policy as well to do with the United States, everything from military issues to management of data and the like. But to go to Billahari's point, how would a Chinese official explain that in private in terms of the domestic politics of China that perhaps to counter that claim? Those are very interesting questions, Richard. First off, I agree with Billahari. I think the Chinese certainly has squandered a lot of good will that it was able to accumulate throughout the, I would say the 30 years between 1979 and somewhere around 2008. But how was that this year made and whether that was a predestined direction that China would go into? Yes, people do talk about China was hiding its strengths and biting its time, but don't forget, hiding your strengths and biting your time is not the end. It's a means to an end. It was a process, but the end game through that process eventually is some sort of China regaining its status in the world. Deng Xiaoping did not say that. Deng Xiaoping only said that, hey, well, we should hide our strengths, but hide our strengths to do what? Hide our strengths by itself is not a goal per se. So I think that partially or in a major part provided the justification was the legitimacy for Xi Jinping changing China's foreign policy posture. Because before Xi Jinping took over, Chinese people some of the nationalists were sending calcium pills to foreign ministry for the Chinese diplomats to grow some backbones. You'll probably remember that there was also this view that China was rich, but China was weak. So therefore, the narrative goes that even small countries like Vietnam and the Philippines could even bully China in the South China Sea. So I think Xi Jinping's assertive turn his foreign policy certainly has a historical and has a, I would say, a popular justification to it. So he successfully catered to a certain opinion in China. But coming to Chinese domestic policy today, we always hear this version or this view that while China has to be assertive in its foreign policy in order for the Chinese leader to gain is to protect his domestic agenda so that he can extract popularity and legitimacy to push forward his domestic agenda. Well, that might be the case, but today I think the things have certainly got a little out of hand, but probably not from Beijing's perspective. In Beijing's view, everything in China should be under the party's control. And there should not be groups of people or groups of business that would be so strong and so powerful that would put the government in defense. So a lot of the recent domestic changes that we have seen, including the structural and regulatory changes that we're seeing, I think is a very clear sign that the state is reclaiming its dominance of the national economy and of the Chinese society in a holistic manner. I think that's pretty clear. The days before we go to audience questions, just let me ask you about Europe. France, it's a collection of different countries, but also with an attempt to build a foreign policy. There's no European military in the like, but there's greater interest in the Indo-Pacific and certainly urging from many countries for the Europe to be more greatly involved. There's also talk about how this decision sets that back. The so-called pro-American factions, whatever in the French foreign ministry have been damaged by this, and people who want to engage with China more intensely will be empowered in Germany as well. What's your sense on Europe? China, Europe relations have been difficult, but not fractured. Where are we going for Europe's China policy in a security sense from here? The announcement of AUKUS coincides with the publication of Europe's Indo-Pacific strategy, which is very ironic and has been completely sidelined by the other news. I think, yes, it's fractured, but also in Europe, I think the perception of China has dramatically changed over a very short period of time, perhaps three, four years. There's more doubts also about the way to conduct our diplomacy with China nowadays. It used to be seen as an economic opportunity more than anything else. Now, it's more, it's seen as a, and I'm using the words of the EU, a systemic challenge. So, and I think these appreciations of where China's trajectory are not going to change anytime soon. The decisions that are being made at the level of Brussels are also here to stay. They have been long matured and they're going to continue to, I'm not sure it's, this is in other words, sorry for being not so clear, but I'm not sure this is going to change, radically change anything in any direction. In other words, it's not going to be suddenly that all the Europeans are going to turn their back on America and it's not going to be the case that they're going to radically go embrace Beijing. They're going to find their own strategic autonomy. That's the best word today in Europe, meaning something that it's not aligned neither to Beijing or to Washington, knowing perfectly well that to take Bilahiri's word, let's not be hypocritical, knowing perfectly well that both our values and our interests are actually coincide better with Washington's vision than with Beijing's. So that's the current discussion in Brussels. Okay, so I want to go to some questions which were sent to us. The first I'll go to is John Moore from the ANU. Just the second part of his question, I'll ask Bilahiri this first and others can chime in. The headlines have all been about submarines. The first actual submarines won't arrive unless we borrow some or have some based here until 2040, but there's also talk about more US military being based or in Australia and about missiles, missile technology transfer and the like. I wonder if those issues are more proximate and more important than submarines in the short term and might have a bigger impact? Well, yeah, I think it will have a bigger impact because it's going to be more immediate. As you said, I think it takes at least a decade or so if you're going to build these submarines yourself before they are actually floating around or anywhere. But I think it's all in the same ballpark. I think we should not lose sight of what is driving this. I think much of it is Chinese domestic politics, the need to justify a certain approach domestically, validate a certain approach domestically by showing it externally. Now that it's done, it's not going to be easy to be reversed. I think soon it's right, sooner or later, soon it's right that this idea of hiding your capabilities, hiding your life is a tactic to an end. Mr. Teng Xiaoping no less than any other China leader wants to see China reclaim its place in the world. But as we had talked about America in Afghanistan and this written decision, how you do it is very important too. Both the Afghanistan decision and the AUKUS decision are I think correct decisions, but the manner in which they were carried out could have been much better. Similarly, I think nobody would deny that China's rise and its reclamation of its place in the region of the world is going to be a fact, whether anybody likes it or not. But how you carry it out is important. So I don't think, these are all details to me. How many troops are going to be stationed in northern Australia? Are you going to put missiles? What kind of missiles? These are technical operational details of a certain trajectory, a certain framework that has already been set and set rather quickly and it was not inevitable, by the way. It's not inevitable. Soon dated it from 2008, I would say maybe a bit later, but that's another detail, right? Maybe 2010. But since then a certain trajectory has been set and it's driven by two factors. China is one factor, but the other factor, don't forget, is a more transactional America. In this sense, Mr. Biden may be more polite than Mr. Trump, but I don't think his fundamental attitudes are any different. As I have told some of my former colleagues in the ASEAN countries, you want to be consulted, but you're not going to be consulted because of your good looks and natural charm. You're going to be consulted to see what you are prepared to do with the US. That is the purpose of consultation. It's not just you're such a charming person, people love your company and they will come into your meetings and talk to you for the sake of talking to you. I think we should not forget that. Jung, let me ask the same question of you. At the start, you said, for example, China can afford to study this agreement a little first because nothing changes overnight, but if it does also involve the transfer of other military technologies, if they start talking about missiles based in Australia, missile technology, cyber technologies, will China respond much more quickly? Submarines are way off in the never-never. Yeah, I think the question is what those responses will look like and whether they will be limited to military domain and to the security domain because I have seen plenty of analysis in the Chinese narrative that in terms of bilateral, economic and trade relations, China hasn't really done the critical damage that it could inflict on Australia. So I think moving forward as a part of the Chinese reaction to this Australia strategic move, I think there are plenty of voices in China calling for a harsher trade and economic policy towards Australia. So that's one aspect of the Chinese reaction that has already been discussed. And the other one is what people, I mean, strategic thinkers are all thinking about, which is the regional arms race, that if Australia is boosting, is a cyber security capability and boosting its missile capability, and even if this nuclear power to submarine would not be delivered in the immediate future, but inevitably Australia's security capability will be enhanced as a result of this trilateral security cooperation pact, then China inevitably will have to enhance its own military development in order to match what Australia has achieved. Because Australia might see, well, from the US, UK and Australia's perspective, China is a single target. But if you are sitting in Beijing, you are looking at multiple countries trying to build up their security forces, and China will have to respond to all of them simultaneously. So that's a real danger, I think, for China in terms of the regional arms race. It's not China versus another country. It's China versus probably the rest of the region. It's a real danger here. That's certainly the case. That brings me to another question from Mark Arons, which I'll direct to you, Nadesh, on this regional arms race. Japan or South Korea, could they now decide to pursue a nuclear submarine program? And of course, they may be able to do it by themselves. Well, that's what we're discussing about earlier, the possibility of opening that Pandora box and that other countries in the region are going to push for something that they've been more or less been coveting for quite a while. But for a set of reasons didn't really, couldn't, wouldn't do it. So hard to say. This is certainly something that both countries have thought about for quite some time. Yes, Billahari, it's very interesting if you look, for example, at the debate in Germany amongst the candidates to succeed Angela Merkel, there's very little foreign policy discussion. If you look at the race for the new head of the LDP to succeed Mr. Suga, there's been a lot of very public discussion about China, Taiwan, you know, very security focused.  Do you see any major changes perhaps triggered by this agreement in Japan? I think, as I mentioned before, it's triggered approximately by North Korea and secondly by China's modernization of nuclear forces to improve its second strike capability, especially his SLBMs. And that has for some years now triggered quiet debates in Japan about what should be the response. But you know, I think, all of you know, I think that the US-Japan nuclear cooperation agreement is unique in that since 1988, it has allowed for automatic authorization for Japan to reprocess American supplied nuclear material. And it's unique in that sense. And that is, and there's only, well, there are several reasons, but you know, if you need to, if you have any ambitions of becoming a nuclear weapon state, the most difficult thing is to get the fissionable material. I don't think that's an obstacle for Japan. They've got quite a lot of plutonium stashed away. They always talk about it being stashed away in France and UK, but they forget to mention or say very quietly, that quite a lot of it is stashed away in Japan too. So I think they can be if they want. And a few years ago, 2016, I believe, there was an open public debate in the South Korean National Assembly about, among other things, whether South Korea should acquire a domestic nuclear weapon capability. As I said, these thoughts that arise are inherent in the logic of the situation. That is why these things arose in Europe maybe 70 years or so ago, and they are now coming to the fore in our own region. I don't think you can stop this, except if there is a fundamental change in the strategic environment, which I don't see. Question from Michael Wellman. It says, what effect might this pact have on the probability of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? Now, I'm not suggesting, by the way, we're looking at that in the short term, and I doubt this pact one way or another has any immediate effect on that issue. But Yun, give us your view on where Chinese thinking is at at the moment on Taiwan, because it's a question that we're asked all the time, because people seem to think China's about to invade, quote unquote. But of course, the regaining Taiwan or gaining Taiwan is absolutely baked into the cake in Chinese domestic politics. Where is Beijing at the moment on the Taiwan issue? Sure, Rita, that's a great question. So is this going to have an impact over China's policy, or China's posture towards Taiwan? Actually, interestingly, in the Chinese policy community, there is this voice saying that, well, since Australia's nuclear power submarine will be delivered somewhere down the future, then between now and that future is a strategic window of opportunities that China should seize, that China should capture Taiwan before these submarines are delivered. I don't think this is a mainstream view, but I would like to point out that this view certainly exists. If we look at China's official statement about Taiwan and China's unification policy, currently peaceful unification is still advocated as the official policy. So China does not give up to use our force, but it doesn't mean they prefer to use our force at this current stage. The thing for the Chinese, the question always lies in, towards the extent that US will intervene, US and its allies are going to intervene in Taiwan contingency. And as a result of that intervention, is China still going to prevail? I think there's no clear answer on that question. The Chinese would like to believe that because of the geographical advantage that China enjoys, that Taiwan Strait is only that close to mainland China, China is going to prevail in Taiwan contingency regardless. But I don't think that answer is so certain coming out of the PLA strategic assessment, because it eventually depends on how much resources US is willing to allocate and how much mobilization US is willing to conduct and how many allies will be siding with the United States in that contingency. Just think about a naval blockade imposed on China through the South China Sea or in the Indian Ocean. There are consequences that will be severe even for China. Thank you, Nadesh. Now, this is a rather backward-looking question, but it's in a lot of the press coverage in the last week. It's from Patrick Fair. Would the French have sold Australia nuclear-powered subs? Would they have been willing to share that capability? People are saying, well, why didn't we simply have a bidding contract for nuclear-powered subs? The French could have bid for that. What's your response to that? I think I won't betray anything if I say that during the negotiations, I think at some points the French party has realized that this might be a possibility for the Australian party. They talked about it and said, do you want to change the contract and have something nuclear instead of conventional? The response from Australia wasn't really clear, apparently. This is also why this has come with such a huge surprise for the French, because Australia didn't seem to envisage this because of domestic politics. I'm not going to tell you, Richard, the difficulties inside of Australia with the anti-nuclear lobby. It really came as a surprise. I don't think that the French government would have immediately said no. I think it would have taken some time to ponder a little bit further, especially with the implications for nonproliferation in particular, but it was never on the table. Okay, thanks. This is the final question to Billahari on my Excel spreadsheet. The name has been cut off, I'm afraid. They don't print out very well, but I think there's been a general view on Australia that we've been very active diplomacy with Quad countries, with the UK, with the US, with the Pacific countries, but light on, relatively speaking, with Southeast Asia, which is a real gap for us or somewhere we've lagged on. Do you agree with that? And what advice would you give the Australian government? So all I don't agree. I don't agree. The two most important partners, apart from China and US of ASEAN, have always been Australia and Japan. What Australia does in Southeast Asia doesn't grab the headlines, but you have been doing it and doing it consistently for a very long time and it's very welcome. So I don't agree with the statement in the first place. Okay. Well, on that negative, positive note, we'll conclude this cast. Thank you very much, three of you. Nadej Rolon, Billahari, Kasakan and Yunsun. Really great to have you on. Thanks to Josh Gooding and Andrea Pollard at Lowy for helping pull this together on short notice. Thank you very much.