Welcome to the U.S. Naval War College lecture of opportunity, who is joining us today is Lieutenant General Michael Groen. Lieutenant General Groen is the recently confirmed director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. As a member of the JPEG team, he leads the transformation of the U.S. Joint Warfighting and Deployment Processes through the integration of artificial intelligence. Additionally to coming to Jake previously, he was at the National Security Agency and served as the Deputy Chief of Computer Network Operations leading this premier Computer Network Exploitation Organization. He's also served the chair of the Joint Chiefs. He has an interesting bio. I encourage you to go online and look at it at the Jake website. He does have several master's degrees, advanced degrees, but the most important degree that he has among all of his degrees is the U.S. Naval War College degree. General Groen, we welcome you back to the Naval War College and look forward to giving us some insights about Jake. Great. Thanks, Dr. Creely. It really is great to be virtually back. I guess virtually gives me the advantage of not having to feel the January wind blowing through my uniform as I'm trying to get to class. There's a lot to be said for this virtual stuff, but I do remember for everybody. Thanks for having me. I remember clearly, once you pass the Christmas New Year's holidays, and suddenly you're looking, now you can actually see graduation on the horizon. Suddenly everything becomes a lot more real and you realize how much work you have to do before you're ready to leave Newport. So I wish you all the best. I know you're getting danger close now, and so I appreciate the time that you're spending with us today. Okay, thank you. Let's get right on into some of the questions that we have looked at and have thought about at the War College. A number of people have submitted some questions, and then later on we will take questions from the chat for Q&A at the near the end. So with the basics of Jake, what should a War College student who's graduating in 2021 know about artificial intelligence? How important is this at this point in time? Yeah, great question to get us started here. And I think it's critical, obviously. I do think there's a magic mix of skill sets that's required in leadership in the military and in the Pentagon today. It's fed by, I think, three things that all of us need to be experts in. And if we're not, then we have to study hard to get there. And that is the graduate education that you're getting at the Naval War College and the other service colleges that allows you to think outside the lines and figure out where are those lines and why are they there? The second piece is war fighting understanding.  And so if you take those two things and you add technical literacy to that, now you've got the mix that really is gonna make somebody successful in 21st century war fighting and starting now, right? We struggle with this every day is this balance between, we have tech literate people, we have great thinkers, we have war fighting experts. We need those skill sets in one person. And I think, just to talk about like, okay, what does a graduate in 2021 need to think about? I would say, first, the temple of war fighting, the temple of war fighting is in for dramatic acceleration and it has a huge impact on the way we, not only the things that we do, the equipment we buy, that sort of thing, but how we think about our operations. I always think about Yamamoto in 1941. I'm afraid we've only awakened a sleeping giant. And that was true. And over the course of years, the US industrial capacity, defeated dictators on multiple continents. But here's the thing, today, a threat actor can have effects almost instantaneously at intercontinental ranges, at hypersonic speeds in multiple domains, cyber attacks, a space denial. I mean, all of these things are real artifacts of the modern war fighting age. And so to be able to respond in that age, industrial capacities are not gonna be sufficient, or industrial capabilities. I mean, you have to be thinking about how you can succeed in a digital environment. So artificial intelligence itself, it's a general purpose technology. Its value is really measured in everything it touches, right? So it's hard to talk about artificial intelligence about talking about the applications of artificial intelligence. And so you have to understand the applications of artificial intelligence and how it's transformed by commercial technology. AI is largely about predictions and decision-making, certainly in the state of the art today. And so it takes what you know from past experience and from structured problem, it help you understand what's likely to come next, right? The prediction machines is kind of what artificial intelligence is an anomaker that's labeled on artificial intelligence. Here's what I will tell all of you. Look, AI is not something that will happen in the future. AI exists today. It exists in the world that we live in. Every, when you leave the office, or you leave the Pentagon and you pick up your cell phone, you are immersed in a modern digital environment that runs at great speed because it's enabled by artificial intelligence. But then on the flip side, when you turn your phone off and walk into the Pentagon or walk into the SCIF or walk into your CP, suddenly you're back in the industrial age, right? And so artificial intelligence has integrated defense to a much lesser degree than it has the rest of our lives, right? And that's partly because of what I would call a tech inversion, right? So historically the Department of Defense would create capabilities and that technology would trickle out into the commercial environment. Today we have an inversion of that, right? But we have very advanced digital technology that's driving our social and commercial environments. Yet we haven't, that hasn't trickled in to the Department of Defense. It's not a lack of technology that's our problem, obviously, because it exists everywhere else. It's our problem is, I think two things, imagination and implementation. And so when you get back out to the fleet, you get back out to wherever you're going, looking at problems through a technologically informed lens and a war fighting lens is gonna be the difference maker for your units, your services. Okay. Yeah, I would think that I've heard several people talk about the issues of imagination and that is expanding people's capacity of thinking and through education that is going to help with that and implementation is obviously dealing with a bureaucracy meetings with the did demonstrated that and how did you move things within the bureaucratic government given the speed of artificial intelligence. Now, recently you've spoken, I've read in Defense one about transformation. So what do you mean by transformation? How, what is the means of transforming the Department of Defense and the impact of future military operations and artificial intelligence? Yeah, so great question. Because the distinction, why would we call this a transformation? I think of it in the same way I think about the transformation to industrial age warfare, where it really came to a head in World War I, right? So, if you like me were binge watching Netflix, World War I documentaries during the height of the COVID months, if you saw Lancers riding into battle against machine guns, massed artillery fire, barbed wire, chemical agents, how could that be, right? How could it be that somebody who lived or a force or a commander who lived in the industrial age was very familiar with all the artifacts and the technology, still think that Lancers had a place on the battlefield, literally, men with wooden sticks, with iron spikes on the end, riding into machine guns, right? This is where the realities of industrial age warfare, all of the industrial age artifacts that these people were very familiar with in their daily lives suddenly became magnified into a complete transformation of warfare into something that, honestly, we still, think a lot the same way today. So, now think about where we are today. Think about all of the information age artifacts that we're surrounded with, every component of our life. Hundreds of times a day, we touch an artificial intelligence agent, we just don't necessarily realize it. So, how do you not just feel the piece of equipment or field an AI into the Department of Defense, but how do you transform the Department of Defense, right? So, I think a transformation in kind of three broad areas. One is warfighting. So, clearly our warfighting, still industrial derived in places we've incorporated the artifacts of the industrial or the information age, but we haven't yet achieved information age warfare. So, warfighting is by far our number one priority, but there are two other broad enterprises that I think we should talk about. One is the support enterprises. So, this is things like the Defense Logistics Agency and the Logistics Enterprise, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Intelligence Enterprise, or the Health Agency or pick your favorite agency or activity in the department. There are 28 of them, I believe, in addition to the services. So, to really change, and then the third category is business practices, right? So, the Department of Defense, five services, 28 agencies, about 3 million people, about $700 billion a year. If there's one place on this planet that needs to be transformed using artificial intelligence, from everything from bringing fires quickly to bearing a target to matching, unmatched receipt transactions in the comptroller's office and everything in between requires broad transformation. This is not something we're gonna poke at and call it done. It can't be that way. The entire world has transformed around us and we're behind the power curve. So, when I talk about transformation, that's what I'm talking about. We have, and specifically, I think the officers in the war colleges today, you have a generational opportunity here to transform the department in ways it's never been done before. And I think digital modernization and being, being the individual, the leader who can combine military expertise, warfighting expertise and technical familiarity and technical skills is really gonna be a valuable proposition going forward from this point. Yeah, I agree with you. I know last year, UD came out with the ethics principles guidelines. I worked with the Defense Innovation Board on that as well, we've made some input. And in respect to ethics and AI, is the intention to eventually have AI capable moral agency, including moral deliberation, acting autonomously on those deliberations, being able to evaluate and defend their actions and moral terms to other moral agents and being held responsible accordingly? Yeah, important question. So moral agency. So we're, we are certainly nowhere near moral agency. We're not even, we can't even see it from where we are. So it is a question that we have to continue to consider. Honestly, from where I sit, I don't know that we would ever go there, right? By definition, this requires the ability, I guess not only to understand what's legal and what's illegal, but what's right and what's wrong. And we don't even allow human agency in that space in many areas.   And so I cannot foresee a day when we do that and that's not to say that this technology moves fast and as it integrates across the rest of our lives, maybe people will become more comfortable with it. To me, it's really, that's a question of philosophy. But that doesn't mean that we, that doesn't mean that we can, oh good, thank God we don't have to worry about that anymore. No, no, actually the integration of artificial intelligence under human moral agency brings with it a plethora of moral and ethical arguments that we have to think through, right? So probably closer to the barn here is, what kind of tasks can we delegate to an AI system? What kind of decisions are we willing to make from an AI recommender? So the preponderance, the vast preponderance of use cases for artificial intelligence in the department today are decision support, right? And so making decisions faster, making decisions data-driven. And then the next biggest trance is man-machine teaming. So when you think like where the departments focus and when I say the department, all the services, the agencies that have their own AI efforts, the Jake of course, others, you know, our focus right now is enabling humans to make better decisions and make them faster. So this is things like, you know, how do you do integrated fires, command and control and intelligence so that you can understand what's going on around you, you can make sense of it quickly and make good decisions and then execute, right? So that's kind of, you know, that moral agency remains clearly with the commander in that case. And so that's where most of our work is now, some of the technical work, you know, with things like, you know, autonomous drones and swarms and stuff like that, loyal wingman kind of concepts. Most of those are still conceptual, but we're doing a lot of good work to figure out, okay, how do people and machines now operate together as a team much more effectively? And we're, you know, obviously we're all very comfortable with machines with some degree of autonomy currently, you know, controlled under human judgment, right?  So many of these have automated components, but they still remain under a human moral agency. Yeah. Well, that's important. That's exactly what we do with the ethics and emerging military technology graduate program at the War College is to take the philosophy of technology, the philosophy of ethics and apply it to technology and our students wrestle with these hard questions that are not easy.  Looking a little bit of a head, do you intend to participate in the discussions with other top AI experts and gain collaboration with think tanks to mitigate the high state's risk associated with AI? Yeah, so I guess first I would say that, I mean, the Jake is not a policy shop. So we are an implementation organization. And so this is a distinction that we, you know, that we try to make across the department because we have great partnerships with organizations like DARPA with the research and engineering organizations in the service labs. So there's a lot of our R&D enterprises that are looking carefully at artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence applications. Our niche is to the right of that, right? So we are taking, we are transitioning things from the research and development environment and turning them into real implemented capabilities. So instead of think tanks, we have do tanks, right? So we are focused on getting things accomplished. So, but again, that doesn't excuse us from the ethical, the set of ethical questions.  And especially because of the high consequence missions that the Department of Defense operates that nobody else does, right? So life and death decisions at scale even are things that every military officer has got to take very closely to heart and have a really sound moral sense to think about this. When, one thing that does strike me, when some of the think tank publications, of course we read them and we take a look at that and we use that to kind of adjust our moral compass, but there's a lot of coulds there. You know what I mean? There's a lot of hype in that space. So I think we've gone through periods where the hype was associated with the technology and what could accomplish. I think that there's a lot of hype associated with, oh my God, you know, this kind of thing could happen. And when I read that kind of stuff, I think of a couple of different things. Like I said before, no officer is off the hook for having a strong moral and ethical foundation, especially when it applies to the use of technology. But there are things, there are moral imperatives, there are technical or legal imperatives like the law of armed conflict. And then I would say there are comparatives. And when I say comparatives, I think in a lot of cases, when we talk about what could happen or what dangers could be present, we always have to compare it to what dangers do we have today, right? So things like collateral damage assessment. So, you know, we do collateral damage assessment today with humans, you know, and it's part of our targeting process. And I'm actually, so I'm a recovering target here. You know, I'm really proud of the way the U.S. military does this, right? We pay really close attention. We do everything we can to minimize the loss of life, sometimes going to just extraordinary lengths. It's really motivating to be part of an institution with that kind of moral grounding. So, but machines can do collateral damage estimation much better than humans can, right? We've built algorithms for, you know, doing like typhoon damage assessment, right? So one of the first things if you're going to do typhoon relief is you want to understand this block of homes, should we just bulldoze them or can they be repaired? We've got AI tools now that we've developed to help responders do that kind of stuff. And it takes the place of lots of people with clipboards walking down the, walking down wet streets. And so that's the kind of stuff that we can put into place. So let's go back to the moral questions about targeting and collateral damage assessment. Well, if machines can do that much better than humans can, at what point is it immoral to have humans doing that and moral to have a machine do that? You know what I mean?   So we, you know, today we put young men and women, you know, against steel, right?  At what point does that become immoral? At what point does it become more moral to have an autonomous weapon system or, you know, a remote control weapon system to actually take the line of fire? At what point do you make the decision that, yeah, you know what, it's better for me to not put humans into that space at all.  And you have to ask yourself from a moral agency question, is it more acceptable to have a strategic escalation risk or is it more, or is it more acceptable to have humans in the line of fire on a ship in the South China Sea, for example, under the range of, you know, a host of forest of DF-21s. So those are the kinds of things that our officers have got to be able to reconcile.  You know, things like when you, now when you start talking about, you know, real applications of AI in the department today. I mean, you know, there's always, you know, when you're building an AI algorithm, for example, especially one that's forward deployed, well, you have to worry about latency, right? Because of your bandwidth limitations. And so there's generally a trade-off, an engineering trade-off between latency and accuracy, right? So you, the more bandwidth you have, the more time your model has to think about a problem, the better solution that's going to give you. Right now somebody has to make that decision on the technical scale. Do I design my algorithm so it can make decisions quickly in a low latency environment? Or do I design my AI so that it can take all the time it wants but it gives me a better answer? That's a moral question that if military leaders don't engage on that sort of question, then it's up to an engineer somewhere. And I love our engineers, they're great Americans. But you know what, I don't know that I'm comfortable leaving a decision with moral impact on the engineering team, you know what I mean? So that's the kind of moral questions that our folks have to think about, right? So here's another one, so training data. So we train our machine learning algorithms on training data. Well, if I train a machine learning algorithm on data that I collected in the Middle East, say, and now I'm going to use that algorithm in the Pacific or in Europe or something like that. Now, okay, am I, I don't know what that performance is going to look like necessarily. I don't know if there will be second or third order effects from that machine to its decision-making. So, you know, the moral requirement to ensure the responsible application of your AIs into the, you know, into the situations that they're being exposed, that falls on commanders. That falls on military leaders who are part of this decision-making process. Now, ethics is becoming more and more prominent in making the decisions from the operator in the enlisted level all the way to the four stars and even the secretaries in the Pentagon. The next question I would ask you is, partnerships with tech and corporate sector are obviously critical to ensuring DOD can benefit from artificial intelligence. What are the challenges that private sector partners cite to working with DOD? And I've heard some of these and working with some of the private sector and talking with them about these challenges. Yeah, I think there was, you know, there was maybe some tension, you know, some years ago. Honestly, today, I don't see it, right? Today, it's not an issue for us. AI vendors are beating down our doors to want to work with the Department of Defense. I mean, there's a couple of different reasons for that, I think. One is that, you know, the small, aggressive innovative companies, I mean, the AI space is a really competitive space now, right? So almost every company is an AI company in one way, shape, or form. I mean, there's this vertical market segmentation where what used to be broad AI companies have now established niches, right? And so they're, you know, the AI market is so segmented. You have specialized companies in all these different areas. And so that makes it a really competitive environment. And so I think that might be an aspect. There are, you know, we've seen the emergence of specifically defense-oriented AI companies. So there are some AI companies that have been formed, some very successful ones, and really great to work with, you know, specifically to work on defense problems because they're driven by the value challenge, right? So there are many great Americans who don't serve in uniform, but yet who want to be part of defending America, right?  We have, you know, we have sound relationships. We have relationships with all of the major vendors, you know, all of the major vendors that you, that, you know, that you would come off the top of your tongue. So we, you know, we've got those vendors on board. So we've got relationships across the industry. So what we're, you know, what our focus is now in that space, you know, we're trying to get more small innovative companies into the department of defense business, right? And the sort of the defense industrial complex is not really designed for small companies. It's designed for major defense contractors. And so we, you know, we use our major defense contractors as primes. We help them bring in, you know, small innovative subs or subcontractors. And then we also have in this latest appropriations bill in the NDAA, we're authorized acquisition authority within the JAG. So now we can reach directly to some of those small innovative companies and create mechanisms that makes them easier for them to work with the department of defense. So we're, I think, I think we've got a good relationship with the tech industry.  And I think, I think one of the features of that for our relationship with the industry is you can kind of pick, you know, if you're a company, you can kind of pick how close to the fire you want to be, right?  Well, that's fairly benign, right?  So all the way to no kid now is helping, you know, to automate or provide, you know, some degree of autonomy into a weapon system and everything in between. And so I think that there's a broad range where AI companies can now kind of pick where they want to be on that spectrum. We do a lot of humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, for example. So most companies are very, you know, very comfortable working with the Department of Defense on that kind of activity. So generally, I mean, just to sum it up, I think we're, I think we have a good relationship with the tech industry now. That's good. And getting that acquisition authority is quite important. That gives you a lot more flexibility to respond to the immediate needs of there. The next question is with the push to deepen systems integration to enhance battle space and awareness in operational units, describe the role AI will play in the cyber security protect decision maker sensor shooter network. Yeah, so great question.  You know, and AI is certainly not immune from that kind of interference.  That is, you know, really there's no better machine to watch the activity on the net than a machine, right? You know, humans can do it, but machines can actually do that much better whether you're talking about detecting patterns and data or whatever that is that AI can play a key role in cyber security. But the flip side of that is cyber security has to play a key role in artificial intelligence because your data and the risk of corruption of your data, your algorithms, the risk of corruption of your algorithms, the risk of adversarial AI that is specifically trying to defeat your artificial intelligence capability. So like any emerging tech environment, you know, you see this sort of race between capability and counter capability and counter capability. And you know, and so as the threats mature and manifest, you see the tech industry mature and manifest as well. And so we in the Jake, for example, have a very well, you know, well-connected research arm that really watches the, especially the academic research and then the commercial research where we can have access to it to really keep an eye on, to make sure that we are aware of and following the maturity and the emergence of risk in our space and then our ability to defend against that. So, you know, we've taken that sort of sensitivity and created very secure environments for our AI data, you know, our training data and our algorithms.  Yet every time you share, you expose new risks. And so building the right kind of enclaves, building the right kind of, you know, containerization so that you can have trusted code that can move from one service to another service or from one place in the department to another is it takes a lot of our time now to try, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about, okay, how do we secure this AI enterprise? Okay, I know that Jake has engaged with NATO and now you're facilitating a forum called the AI Partnership for Defense with a host of partner nations. Can you discuss how the Jake is coordinating with allies on various AI initiatives? Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a couple of points here. One I think I would start with, you know, that the US has been at the forefront. And again, I'm very proud of this.  You know, the US Department of Defense has been forward leaning in establishing ethical baselines. So we, you know, we've done it with autonomy, for example, in the DOD 3000.09, right? And so I'm sure that's a topic of discussion. But so we have, you know, we laid down a set of principles for the use of autonomy and what we're willing to do and what we're not willing to do as a military. And that's a powerful statement. We've done the same sort of thing with AI ethical principles. And so the DOD, you know, the US DOD was a leader in actually, okay, publishing a set of principles that would guide a development of our AI. And it stands in market contrast in what we observe for AI development in some of our threat nations, you know, clearly. So that's actually a very strong attraction for countries who think the same way we do. And so we, you know, we did some work here with General Shanahan, my predecessor did some work with NATO, you know, a year or so ago. And, you know, and they actually discovered that there was, we actually, you know, there was a 13 nations, including the United States who kind of put their heads together and said, you know what, we actually want to think together and work together on this. And so we've established the AI partnership for defense, those 13 nations. We have, as a matter of fact, we have our next summit, I think in two weeks, two or three weeks. So we have all of those nations coming together virtually.  We actually now are thinking through the elements of development of an AI capability. So when we talk in a couple of weeks, we're going to talk about data strategies and data protection. We're going to talk about algorithm protection and algorithm testing and evaluation. And so some of these things that have ethical implications, you know, applied ethical implications into developing technology, they want to be right where we are. And we want to be right where they are, quite frankly. So in many cases, there are very mature models of AI development and integration in our partners, just like we have here. And so we want to take advantage of that. So I'm really looking forward to our session here in a couple of weeks. And we meet about quarterly. So this is not kind of the old school, you know, a conference where, you know, you get people into the United States and the Americans talk for a day and then it's done. Like that's not what this is, right? This is a real partnership. We're working together. We're learning from them. They're learning from us. And we're sharing across that community. So I'm really excited about it, if you can tell. Because I think it's a really powerful message and it gives us strength, right? It helps make our efforts stronger. It does create some awful lot of synergy in the relationships across the different cultures and regulations and rules. Over the next five years, what will be some noticeable impacts of DOD's employment of AI? How will we know your time as director was successful? Well, yeah, yeah. I guess they say if the band's playing when you come into office and the band's playing when you leave from office, then you did pretty well. But I am such a believer in the necessity for transformation in the department, right? So I think anything that we do has to be measured against the transformational goal. And so, I mean, for me, so there's, right now, each of the services has an AI development effort. Some of them are very mature. Some of the defense agencies have AI developments in different levels of maturity as well. There are many areas in the department where there's no AI at all and there needs to be. And so, when we look at that environment as a Jake, and we think through like, okay, what does broad transformation look like? How do we really get the department to change? Our focus has become here in the last couple of months, really focusing on broad enablement, right? So we want to enable people who are on the cusp of using AI, we want to help them make that leap. People who have AI already, but haven't implemented it at scale, we wanna help them implement that at scale. And so the Jake's primary function is enablement, right? We want to make other people successful. And so, if we can make other people successful to the degree that we start to have recognizable scale across the department, then I will be very happy, right? And because that gives us a baseline to build from. The other thing, one of the tools that we're building to enable that broad enablement is something called the Joint Common Foundation. So here we're working with multiple parties, we're working closely with the Air Force, we're working closely with the department's Chief Data Officer with the Secretary Defense Office that uses a system called ADVANA that gives data-driven decision-making or data-driven briefings, for example. Just a note, the Secretary's Office or the Deputy Secretary's Office is in a really good place here. They don't use PowerPoints in their briefings, they use live data. So if you want to brief something and you want to show your numbers, you show your numbers, right? You don't show the PowerPoint presentation of your numbers. You show the numbers that are there every day. And this creates an environment of not just episodic, hey, let me go run a survey or ask a question, but constant knowledge, right? Like we're continuously, if you need to access the data, it's there for you. That's the kind of environment that we're trying to build across the department. So if we can get a joint common foundation that enables AI development, that can securely store data, that can securely store algorithms and contains the tools that people can use to develop algorithms, then that will be another really great success here for the Jake in a few years. The third thing I would say, and this is important, the Department of Defense is fantastic and it's known for its segmentation and its stove piping, right? Given a challenge, every service will go do their own thing. Every agency will go do their own thing. Sometimes individuals within services do their own things. And so that's okay in an industrial age kind of environment where you're building technology that might drive one particular weapon system or something like that. When you're trying to stitch together an integrated warfighting capability across all the services and all the domains, that stove piping is not acceptable, right? It cannot work. And so to move beyond stove piping, you have to have a degree of governance. And I'm not talking about governance, that's the dead hand of governance that slows everything down, but I'm talking about creating capabilities that are so good, so virtuous that everybody wants to be part of them. That's the direction we're taking, right? So we're trying to build really solid enterprise level capabilities that any AI owner would be foolish to turn their back on, right? And so if we can collectively, working with the services, working with the agencies, pull together an integrated capability, then I think we will really have something to be proud of. And then we will start to see real transformation. Right. Well, a year ago, in April, been three and a half million gallons of milk was being poured down the drain, produced with being plowed under and livestock protein meats being euthanized because the farmers had no place to put it. Yet at the same time, there were peoples in the lines who were hungry looking for food. At that time, I called my good friend who was on this Zoom, Dr. Molly John, the John Research Group former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, is what can we do about this? And the first person we called, a group we call was Jake to help in food insecurity, national security and mitigating the waste and redirect that. And of course, certainly you have Project Salus, the Roman goddess of safety and well-being. In what ways was AI used to mitigate the disruption in the supply chain and the food distribution and COVID-19? And y'all have just happened to set up the Food Source USA, but it's a bigger problem than just that. Yeah, exactly. So Salus came about in support of Northcom. So Northcom has the domestic disaster responsibility. It's always good for the students, you have a couple of months left. Get to know all of the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods because you'll see all of those names in the, so it's an OPSEC issue perhaps, but Salus was a great opportunity for us. This was really when we had several hurricanes in succession and then we had the COVID crisis on top of that. Northcom had some real challenges planning for, okay, how do you track, what mechanisms do we use to track where potential shortages are? And if you can track demand, then you can track, then you can estimate potential and you can track supply, well, then you can estimate future shortages, for example. So in that environment, we developed a number of algorithms working with Northcom and others, things like being able to forecast, demand on critical food supplies, for example, or other release supplies, medical supplies, PPE, that sort of thing. At the same time, we were working on algorithms to help the California firefighters to fight wildfires. So that one is just a fantastic example to me because it's so easy, right? And it's just a great example of imagination. So the way firefighters have dealt with massive wildfires is at the end of the day, all of the command posts get together and the chiefs get together and they look at a map and they'll draw a line. And when I said draw a line, I mean, literally some dude is looking at a picture of a fire and then trying to figure out where that is on the map. And then they reproduce that map and then they quickly rush that out to all of the other, the fire planners and the commanders so that the force can continue to fight the fire. Why in the world would we do it like that, right? Why don't we use imagery to automatically map the fire line, make that data available through an app that a firefighter can have on his or her tablet, right? And so that's what we did, right? So we worked with the National Guard to do some overhead sensing and to be able to image fires and then autonomously then with an AI identify where the fire line is and give it a true geo-reference and then make that data available for firefighters. It's not magic. And this is what I say the challenge to implementation of AI in the department is largely due to imagination, right? We have to imagine the use of these technologies in all of our problems. It's easy to go from firefighting to warfighting, right? You can see the parallels and it's easy to go from the distribution of COVID supplies to the distribution of logistics on a theater battlefield, for example. And so there's so much goodness and a lot of people, honestly, there's a lot of focus from outside on warfighting AI. Hey, you need to build swarming UASs and that sort of thing. All of that's really important. But I think for everybody who's listening, look, whatever your warfighting function is, whatever your process is, AI can do enormous things, right? If you're a comptroller, we still have people looking at spreadsheets, like physical spreadsheets and looking for dollar signs, trying to match this spreadsheet with that spreadsheet. No company in the United States does that, right? Of any scale, anyway. And so why is that okay in the Department of Defense? It's not, right? And so in all of these warfighting areas, the opportunity to just take a white board and just think through how AI might facilitate your warfighting function, whatever it is. We've started doing these actually as a precursor to doing AI readiness evaluations. So we've started doing imagination sessions, right? Where we'll take a service or a component or a particular warfighting function and we'll sit down with a blank sheet of paper and say, okay, let's talk through from garrison to deployment, to employment in a combat environment, to integrating support from whatever other warfighting functions to win the battle and coming home. And we're asking folks to think through their processes and so that you can actually map your processes, right? AI starts with commanders and leaders who can think through their processes and know that, hey, I could make this process much better. I could make a much better decision if I knew X, right? So if you can map your process to the degree that you can say, I would make a better decision if I knew X, holy cow. Now all you have to do is go get X, right? And X is usually readily available or you can make it readily available. You can make it readily available through an app. You can make it in a broadcast that goes into a command and control system.  I wonder how Amazon would do that. I wonder how Uber would do that. I wonder how pick your AI company, pick your successful commercial environment, how would they do that? And that is the key to opening the door to, oh, I see how we should do this process. We should do it like this, right? If you do that, you will be driving transformation in the department. The next question is AI education in training. And I'd like to emphasize the whole education aspect, too much of our training is click the button and move on. How do we get into a much deeper, richer AI education and ethics education in DOD? And how is that going to be implemented? Because I think it is absolutely critical that we move in that direction with full force, plenty of funding. Yes, I agree. And I would ask you to tell Congress the same thing. So we've gotten a start here on the AI education challenge. And as we kind of dipped our toes in the water here, some months ago, we find the same challenges across the digital workforce at large, right? Because our network spokes need advanced technology grads. And so there's lots of people. We have a thing called the Defense Digital Service. I don't know many of you may have heard about it, where we actually have some kind of IT troubleshooters, if you will, they're more than just IT. They can actually come in and look at how you're addressing the technological problem, and then just give you some help with, hey, you know what, you might want to leverage this technology instead of that one, for example. So there's a lots of these little disparate elements across the department. And so we're trying to build an AI education pipeline specifically, and so we have a strategy for that that we're starting to execute. But importantly, I would just say this on the front end. So we recognize that it's not just about the Jake and producing an AI training course, if you will. It has to be more than that, as I imply from your words. So we're working with programs and resources, for example, in the department. So OSD has a department whose job it is is to do schoolhouses and education pipelines and training. Every service has their own approach to technical, for technical education and technical training. And so what we want to do is work together. We have an executive steering group for AI in the department here. We use that ESG to figure out what's best practice and what makes sense for training and education for AI. And the solution set ranges from making some online courses available to integrating it into the service academies to creating a separate academy for tech skills or something like that. I mean, there's a wide range of things that get put on the table. We've approached that with our education pilot. So we recognize that in the AI space, there are a lot of different roles with respect to AI. So some people build AIs. Some people use AIs. Others lead organizations that do either one of those things. Some people play a very technical role. Some play a policy and strategy role. So we're building a customized pilot program for each one of these archetypes. And so as those, and we just did our first one here a few months ago. And what we did was, because I like in your question, the idea of, well, I clicked through a bunch of buttons and so now I'm trained, right? So what we did with our drive AI pilot, we linked together, first of all, we did link together several courses from Coursera and Udemy and a couple of these other, online training venues that we could make available to a cadre of students. And then we, so we took those courses and then we interspersed them with in-person training from expertise that we either have in the Jake or we could bring into the Jake to give a specific training course. Just to talk about how this type of algorithm works or to talk about adversarial AI or talk about data standards and that sort of thing. And then at the end though, you'll like this. So we, the Jake is an interesting organization because it's, we've got a CTO who's a serial entrepreneur and lots of sort of entrepreneurial experience that have come to the Jake because they wanna serve, which is a story in its own right. But we made the teams, the students that are going through the training course, develop an AI proposal and pitch it, as if they were looking for an investor, for class A investment, or whatever prize that we could come up with. But we made it, we made students work in teams, we made them actually put their money where their mouth is. We actually assessed them and gave them feedback on their ideas and it was fun. It was a really good course. And so I think we'll probably stick to that, something like that as we go forward. Right, I look forward to seeing more from that development. As a Marine, leading a unique and flat organization such as Jake, what has surprised you? Yeah, that is a really great question. We could talk for an hour on this because leadership of organizations in the department of defense is a fascinating study in and of itself. I've been fortunate to have a very varied experience here, working with lots of different types of units. All of us, you joined the military and you're trained and you're kind of guided by a hierarchical model, a very industrial age model, built for mass formations and that sort of thing.  I think after a while, you kind of come to the level of maturity when you're thinking about, okay, I'm serving. And so what is the nature of my service? How can I serve best? Can I serve best in an environment with large numbers? Can I serve best in an environment with lots of dollar signs because I'm really good at accounting or whatever your skill set is. Do I serve best in an engineering capacity? And so this is a real important thing for every military officer is to think through service. What does it mean to you? And then if you think about that, then you will, one, you'll be happier, right? Because you'll understand all of everybody that's on this call has committed their professional careers for some period of time, some of us for a really long time to service, right? To service to the nation, to service to the constitution. You can never let that stray too far from your heart, right? Because that's what matters here. It's not the organization. It's not the numbers. It's you and it's your service. And so I think it's really important for every officer to do that introspection. And the reason I bring this up is because I think while you're at the War College is a great time to do that, right? Sit outside the War College in the withering wind and think about your service and it will make you stronger in a lot of different ways. So leading tech organizations is different, right? And if the transformation of the department means that we transform some of those industrial age bureaucracies and organizational models, nobody should be threatened by that. Leading technical organizations is different, but it's not different in a way. So the Jake is an interesting place to work. I describe it as running a unicorn farm. So, and I say that in the most affectionate terms for any of my Jake sirs who are listening here. The Jake is full of fantastic performing individuals, brilliant people who largely are doing this because they want to do this. They want to serve. Many of them could make a lot more money just going across the street, Amazon web services or somebody else. So they're doing it for all the right reasons, right? And they bring just enormous skill sets. And so for just a plain old Marine like me, this becomes a challenge, right? Because, or it could become a challenge, right? You just have to think through. You have to lead with both humility and confidence, right? And so in a tech organizations, you have to know what you don't know and accept that, right? And value the expertise of the people that you have. But you have to lead with confidence too, because your role is to drive the organization to its organizational objectives. And so you can't, you know, that's why you are there. And so you have to have both the humility and confidence as, you know, as you go through this. And I will tell you, unicorns just like sailors, just like Marines, just like soldiers, they want good leadership, right? They want to be led.  So be one, right?  Commit yourself, be a good leader. That's why you're here. That validates your service.  And so, you know, obviously I'm fairly passionate about this. I think every military officer should be like, this is the nature of the service. This is why we wear this uniform and we go to places like the war college. So I'll leave it at that. You know, it's, I think it was Teddy Roosevelt, life's greatest reward is to work hard at work worth doing, right? If you're in a tech organization, you're gonna work hard. If you're transforming the department or transforming your service, it's work worth doing. So I challenge you all, do it, right? And do it with a smile on your face because it's fun if you're doing it right. Obviously of calling.


r presentation you'll now move on to the debate The local member has confirmed that he doesn't wish to speak on this so I think we do then move on to the debate Does anyone have any views on whether we should accept the recommendation? Councilor Dr Martin Carman This is a site which were it to be applied for as an agricultural development nowadays information provided would not be considered a viable development I think one would probably also be concerned about the fact that it were it to operate as an agricultural development as a piggery there would be quite a lot of food feed brought in and so there would be traffic heavy coming along that access which is of clearly small access not very heavily not of a statutory one the so it doesn't seem to me that on the basis of the use that had been used on the site there is now an agricultural need that seems to be clear the fact that it was the applicant bought the site with a regulated tendency and therefore would not be likely to be able to develop it to me seems to me not a relevant planning issue the fact that you've been lucky the tendency to move has become available and he takes the opportunity that arises so in planning terms I don't see that that's an relevant issue so the relevant issue to me is whether so we know from that it's an existing development on the countryside the building that's going to be that would be built while larger would be probably more attractive and less less of an impact than say the the current one which is not a particular attractive building so the general development I would normally approve it as a replacement dwelling on the countryside so the only question is whether we I cannot see the argument for retaining the agricultural use on that site and I don't see that in this particular case there really will be a precedent if it were proposed now we would not want it to be an agricultural dwelling there so therefore there's no real justification therefore I'm quite happy in fact to approve this application I think in terms of what they recommend thank you councillor Heather Williams thank you chair so in relation to the agricultural tie which does seem to I know we've dwelled quite a bit but it seems like a significant part of this application the fact that it hasn't been important looked into I think we have to separate I think that's as councill is concerning and I think I would ask that officers take a look and make sure that we can you know be safeguarded from this in the future but the agricultural need for it was the pigory it was the livestock the pigory is now gone so whether or not it applies it can't be used it can't be done really they've lost that ability so that then makes me look at this proposal and go okay it can't be an agricultural dwelling it can't keep the tie on so what harm is replacing one for one which is essentially what this is there's nothing at the moment stopping this dwelling being used unless we were to take enforcement action to get them to enforce something that is not applicable to actually meet and we gave permission for that we gave the permission that meant that it could no longer be an agricultural tied residence so and I do hear the concerns from the parish council in relation to they've mentioned precedent but we know very well that every case is on its own merits precedent is not something in planning there can be precedence a procedure but not on determination of application so I appreciate that won't help the parish council potentially but I hope it does reassure that if this is approved then that's not everything else goes with it as well because there is no precedent and balancing balancing it up having the current building there or the new building there I don't think establish is much harm if I'm honest it's just it's one for one were this going to multiple were it going to three or four or five absolutely the size of the scale of it is sensible it's not a seven, eight bedroom mansion that's been put there and I think it's disappointing that the advice wasn't taken you'll have heard from what I said at the start I am anxious of that process but I'm having to sit here and try and separate that out for myself if I'm just looking at the merits of the application then you know I think it's going to establish very little harm in the change and potentially has some benefits on environmental levels so I'll be going with the officer recommendation Do we have any other views on this? Members? Members online? Yes Councillor Helen Lee Thank you I'm just wondering if I could ask a question of the officer at this point or has that moment passed I'm sure you can cover it Thank you There are various parcels of information that we have about this situation the point about building outside to the envelope of the village settlement I I'm not particularly concerned about that because it's replacing one property with another and it's not on a bigger scale so there was a residential house there and it's being proposed to be swapped for a different one The critical thing that I think that makes this a thorny issue is the agricultural tie we've established that there isn't much need for that locally what I would like to ask the officer is if this is just a matter of sequencing if there is a way that we can process the agricultural tie issue first and then continue to giving prime commission to this development because my only concern about this is setting the precedent that we remove we just remove the agricultural tie based on usage and that is only that has happened because we didn't know about it it's not a conscious decision we haven't made a plan to not acknowledge the tie it's happened that way and I wonder whether we can deal with the legal issue remove the tie with transparency and then move to planning I'm not sure how that process would work You posed that as a question but I think in fact it is a proposal that we deal with the agricultural tie first which would have to be done separately and then if the applicant wishes to come back to the planning application do you want the officer to comment on that? Do you want to put that as a proposal?  Seeking advice at the moment about how we would do that I think you're still we'll refer that to Bill I think Through you chair there's no compulsion on the applicant to submit an application to remove an existing planning condition so whilst you may have the applicant to do so they may say no thank you of my applications in and this is what we've got and that's what we're asking you to assess on its merits now obviously we're aware of this the agricultural tie which has been debated and exists on the existing dwelling and there is provision in the local plan which discuss when that is appropriate to relax and we've got a slightly unusual situation here where it's effectively being relaxed and we've got a range of 30 plus years albeit unburnoed to ourselves as officers of the council and even the applicant themselves so it's a slight anomaly and so I hope that gives some comfort to members around enforcement procedures and as you've heard from the public speaker we have had applications in where we've sought to deal with other applications for relaxation agricultural ties so as I say it's a slightly unusual circumstance that we've got here but the weight that members want to give to that issue is down to your decision makers in terms of whether that's something that is material to the decision making process and the requirements set out in policy H14 which deal with relaxation of agricultural ties so it's within your gift to give that the weight you desire in terms of coming to decisions on this application but as we've heard there's policies which support replacement of one for one dwellings in the local plan policy H14 and again that's been debated as well so to answer your question I wouldn't advise that we can suggest to an applicant that they deal with that issue first because you can take any into consideration in determining this planning application Council leaning based on that answer do you wish to take a view on the application? No no I don't I think that that's answered that's answered my question I suppose my biggest concern was that this would open up grounds for appeals that if it's there in the law and we happen to dress it formally that it could it could make things difficult further down the line but I will accept the advice then Council adopt to Richard Williams I hope this is on the debate for other questions Yes Chair, just be brief just to say that I'm happy that we can proceed with this we will agree if we agree a new planning permission which will stand on its own merits and be unaffected by a previous planning permission so I'm perfectly content with us to proceed with this and I will probably vote in favour of it Thank you for that I would just state a brief view of my own which is the reason I asked for the red line plan to be put up again with that I was keen that we can find ourselves to the land in question of this application helpful we've also had explanation for the inclusion in that red line of the driveway I also I think would take from what our legal officer said earlier on that we are able to consider this application on its merits the question of whether there might be other measures in future cases it's for review at a later stage but I don't think we should hold the applicant responsible for that bearing in mind that the application on the neighbouring land which made it I would say unfeasible for any agricultural occupancy tied to be continued on this site was taken by ourselves as Councillor Heather when he was pointed out so in the light of that I personally am inclined to take the office of recommendation that we should approve this I fully appreciate the concern that the parish council had on whether this might create a precedent or in some way extend the village envelope I'm satisfied that it does neither of those things and therefore feel we should judge this on its merits I suggest we now proceed to a vote on this I'm not proposing to ask for a formal proposition I just say those who are in favour will go to an electronic vote if we may those who are in favour of the office of recommendation should press the green button those who are opposed to the red we have all voted we have all voted in favour of the office of recommendation this application is approved it's 20 past one I said we would break at half past one I've not been very good at keeping tiny at all today but I'm wondering whether it is worth our while starting the next item before I think the general advice isn't we do have members on line can I just check that those who are wanting to contribute to this item might be available later on if anyone isn't perhaps you could put that in the chat or you have two members online are you happy that we indeed unless you take a strong view on the matter I'm going to adjourn for lunch I can't hear anyone agreed indeed I think I'd have very great difficulty in persuading members here of any other conclusions so we will meet again at I suggest two o'clock right welcome back to this meeting South Cambridge District Council planning committee we're now moving to item nine land north of Pathfinderway Northstone this is on page one on five on of your printed papers so this is for the construction of a temporary modular community building for a period of three years in association parking landscaping and so on and the applicant of course is South Cambridge District Council the planning officer presenting to us is Luke Mills it's come to us of course for that reason because it is a development by the council but the recommendation of the planning services to approve subject to the conditions so Luke bear in mind we've all I'm sure read all the papers studied them carefully is there anything you wanted to say or updating us on the recommendation yes thank you chair can I just check that these slides are visible on the screen very clear thank you so yeah I do have a short presentation to introduce the item so before I begin the main presentation I should highlight that there's been one late representation since the agenda was published it clarifies that the existing one way access road I will seek to indicate it on the so I just get the pointer ready I know this is a common situation so you can't see my cursor can you yeah that's what I was just looking to do I'm sorry it's just a pointer can't see it there we go my apologies can you see that again yeah so this late representation it clarifies that the existing one way access road it's not entirely clear here but it's along here it moves in a one way direction from Stirling Road to Pathfinder Way and the reason that's important is because when we get on to the site they are to see some parking spaces that have been shown they're existing parking spaces so it doesn't actually affect the application but they're shown in the wrong orientation pointing out that they wouldn't work in that alternative orientation and I just reassure members that there'd be no proposal to reorientate those existing spaces more will probably make sense when we get to that site plan so please do feel free to ask questions if there's any confusion when we get to that point so moving on to the main presentation the site is located within phase one of north Stowe and measures 0.37 hectares it's outlined in red it includes vacant land that is currently laid to grass but will eventually form part of the phase one local centre it's on this broader square here as well as the access road between Pathfinder Way and Stirling Road completed residential development surrounds the sites to the east and the south and immediately to the west is the constructed formal square known as the green and to the north is vacant land that will eventually accommodate a further portion of the local centre and the enterprise zone the phase one outline planning permission confirms through its parameter plans that the site will form part of the future local centre which is due to comprise a range of uses such as the permanent community building this land use parameters plan on the screen shows the site in context with the remainder of the local centre in red so here's the site here or more specifically in this corner and then also this across the road that will be part of the local centre the green appropriately in green the enterprise zone in blue to the north and residential uses in yellow this plan is essentially a zoomed in version of the location plan so it's much the same information but it does indicate the position of the temporary building being proposed here we'll get into a bit more detail on the next slide the proposal includes change of use to a community facility on a three-year temporary basis erection of a temporary modular building erection of a covered cycle stand containing 12 spaces installation of hard and soft landscaping the proposed temporary community building will provide an interim arrangement that bridges the gap between the recent closure and the temporary community wing at the Pathfinder Primary School which was in July 2022 and the opening of the permanent phase 1 community building estimated by the applicant to be in 2025 a suite of application drawings and documents was included with the initial application further documentation has been submitted during the determination period including an updated transport statement travel plan, ownership certificate sign and access statement and drainage strategy the proposed development involves construction of a standardized modular building of a single story height and with a floor area of approximately 352 square metres an amenity area at the rear would include landscaping a play area and community herb garden the proposal includes no new car parking provision relying instead on its sustainable transport credentials and existing shared parking provision within the nearby car parks at Longstanton Park and Ride and Pathfinder Way a 500 metre and a 300 metre walk respectively slightly closer to the site there are six on-street parking basal on Pathfinder Way that could be used a total of nine shared spaces are also available off the one way access road and here I'll just point out those incorrectly orientated existing spaces are referred to earlier there actually is one space in that orientation the submitted travel plan includes measures to support a target of 90% of all journeys being made by sustainable transport modes in terms of cycle parking a cycle store would provide 12 new spaces in addition to the existing 50 shared spaces around the green the schedule of accommodation includes a flexible meeting space shown here with a movable partition in the middle three offices an NHS room and waiting area and a cafe and informal gathering area as well as ancillary facilities the external wall finish for the building would comprise green coloured vinyl wrap with blue grey columns and faces while a simple canopy at the front would provide a covered outdoor seating area overlooking the green this aerial photograph hopefully helps to put the site and proposal in context with Stirling Road so we're kind of flipped around now we're looking in the other direction so south is at the top of the screen so we have Pathfinder Way there Stirling Road, Lynx Lane and then the Access Road that I referred to there so access is one way from this direction through there now a few photos of the site taken from approximately this corner just outside the site looking into it further context as well so that's looking directly down the wrong way down the access the one way access road then panning round overlooking the vacant plot then all the way round sharing the connection to adjacent footpaths and then I'll just leave on screen for a moment the artist impression of the building finally just to know it should be noted that the reports concise summary of one of the third party objections perhaps misses an extra layer to their comment so the summary at Paragraph 7.2 of my report is impacts on delivery of the permanent community building however related to this is the resident's point that there is a more suitable site elsewhere specifically land at the council lanes to the north of Stirling Road nevertheless as explained in section 10.1 the application site is considered an appropriate location for the proposed development it would only be appropriate for the planning authority to require consideration of alternative sites if this were not the case now just moving to the officer recommendation through the use of appropriate conditions it is considered that any potential harmful effects arising from the appearance of the development surface runoff non sustainable transport choices and construction activities could be suitably mitigated it's therefore concluded that the significant positive social benefits arising from addressing a recognised need for community facilities means the balance is in favour of the proposal therefore officer's recommendation is for approval subject to the conditions in section 11 of the report thank you we have the opportunity for questions of clarification if that is needed just one brief one from me Luke you mentioned there are various updates that have been received without going into the details of them can you just list them to make sure we have received them if we need to see them sorry chair I slightly missed that updates are there any updates to the information that we have seen in this plan that we need to be aware of no so I covered them sort of integrated within the presentation I suppose is a late representation that we received and then there was reference to documentation that has been revised during the determination period so okay yeah thank you for that does anyone have any questions of clarification right I then plan to proceed direct to our public speakers I think I'm right in saying that we have no one speaking as an objector now is that correct so we then come to our first speaker Peter Cope if you are there online are you there Peter yes hello hello yes we can hear you you have three minutes I can be far more brief than that but just to really stress the importance to members how important this planning commission is for this community as a local residence so I've experienced firsthand the negative impact the loss of the community wing last summer had on this community and the many developing groups in this town the need for this interim community building is great for the continued development of this community and even more so for some of those who are more vulnerable amongst us for instance since the wing closed the local food bank distribution centres had to relocate into Willingham which has negatively impacted access to those vulnerable in this community we also know similar to other developments since that has Cambridge here the local census has indicated these large numbers of children and young families for which these sorts of facilities are really critical for groups and also addressing issues of loneliness particularly in our communities post Covid the proposed building management structure should ensure that the community is met while also ensuring that those most local to that facility it doesn't have a great impact on them so I'd just like to stress how important it is that we get planning permission for this. Thank you Thank you for that. If you'd like to just hold on and just in case any members have clarification on the points you just made I think not. No, thank you very much for coming online. Thank you Thank you. Well next if you're there we have Councillor Paul Littlemore on behalf of Northstone Town Council. Are you there Paul? I think you should be able to see me now We can and we can hear you, thank you Can you just confirm just formality that you have the consent of the Town Council to speak on their behalf? I can confirm that. Yes, thank you Yes, you have three minutes Please go ahead. Excellent, thank you very much So the Town Council supports this application and as you've just heard its primary purpose is to bridge that gap of provision from the closure of the community wing in June 2022 until the construction and opening of the permanent community facility which is now expected in 2025. Since the closure of the community wings many groups have found it difficult to secure access to appropriate space for use of a wide range of activities including but not limited to community events, meeting space for community groups and operation of a previously very popular community cafe This space is essential to getting those activities back up and running located within the heart of our community. Earlier in the planning process we provided comments on three areas, hours of construction not being in line with the site-wide conditions of Monday to Friday 8 till 5 8 till 1 on Saturdays and no working on Sundays and mandatory use of white noise reversing alarms on construction vehicles associated with the construction of the facility. These items have been included in the officer's report and are covered by condition in the recommendation. We also sought assurance with the two parking bays proposed in the plans and that this would not inhibit any future installation of an EV charging point in the adjacent area. We have since had such an assurance. I hope the committee will accept the officer's recommendation and approve this application today to give our community the space that it needs to flourish. Thank you for that presentation. If you'd like to just hold on does anyone have questions or councillor a little more on the basis of that? I see none. I have one question for you councillor. Hi, thank you. I just wondered we've seen that there's lower car parking provision than might necessarily be required. Do you think that could cause any problems in the area? Do you hear that right? Yes, I did hear. Thank you. So the green does actually provide a significant number of car parking spaces which doesn't seem to be sort of or wasn't included in the original application. So there is actually a rate of a row of car parking spaces there which is where we were querying the layout which your officer has indicated that a late submission has shown them in the correct orientation. So actually there's more parking provision than what's described but I believe the event management plan has appropriate controls around it to manage any issue around parking that may arise in the future. I was just saying I don't think we have any other questions for you so thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you very much chair. And then I think we have online also the local member councillor Natalie Warren Green. Are you there Natalie? Yes, just turning on my camera Mike. Welcome the floor is yours. Still showing poor little more at the moment I think. Yes, I just want to add to the two people who have supported so far. I'm in full support of the development of the information community facility and I'm found it reassuring that the vast majority of public comments received were supportive and today we have full support at this meeting. The north stone communications and community team working with SCDC especially the COO and Ainsworth have tirelessly consulted closely with the community. The planning team including Kirstin Donaldson has also ensured that while the permanent building is being developed a wide variety of community groups will have a facility located in a convenient location with the basics of what is required to run organised sessions for the community. Opening this interim facility late in spring or early summer would be excellent timing. I'm a regular volunteer in north stone including the market where they are looking forward to making use of the area near the interim community facility. Also community groups operating like the warm hub who have found themselves inaccessible to many of the current locations since it means a long walk on cold dark evenings and also the food bank I met in the same location before they moved to Willingham and they were looking for a central home in north stone so the facility has space for multifunctional activity including yoga, sustainability group activity, the youth hive and all activities that are being planned will be a really good opportunity for people to be in a centralised location. It also located next to where the permanent facilities will be built this offers a sense of visible progress for north stone and also feedback loop to ensure that permanent building caters for the needs of various groups that will be using the permanent community centre. All the feedback while people are using the interim facility will be really valuable in ensuring that north stone has a centre that is fit for purpose. I'm in fully support. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions for the local member on that presentation? I think not. Natalie, thank you very much. It's very clear. Thank you. So now we move to the debate on the merits of this. I'm sure all members will appreciate you're wanting to contribute to the debate I think I'm saying yes. I think all members will appreciate that we consider this objectively regardless of the source of the application on the merits as we see it as a planning committee. Councillor Richard Williams. Thank you very much chair. I'm happy to say on the get go for all the support of this. Obviously take account of the fact that north stone needs these community facilities obviously the design is a temporary structure it's not not a beautiful design but it is a temporary installation so I think on that basis I'm happy with this application. Any other views on this application on the merits of the application? Ah, Councillor Helen Lee. Thank you chair. I would like to raise the question of cycling facilities on the site. I'm wondering whether this would be an opportunity to well concerned, the one concern I have about the plan is to do with encouraging people to have green and sustainable transport options to access the site and I wondered whether it would be an opportunity to increase the number of cycling storage places available on the site. So there are 12 new spaces included in the plan. There are 50 on the site already and I wondered whether we could consider increasing the 12 new ones that are visible from the building. That I think is a question directly from the case officer. Has that been considered? Yes, thank you. So yes, as you described the figures there, the 50 shared spaces existing at the green and there will be 12 new ones. So that's set against a requirement of as we calculate based on our parking standards a minimum of 28 spaces for the development. So there will be 12 dedicated but then access to 50 shared spaces and for the duration of this temporary permission based on the remainder of the local centre and to an enterprise only nearby that is still forthcoming. There is probably not the competition for those spaces on the existing green at the moment so we deem that the provision is sufficient. I mean there is a condition that is being recommended to clarify the design citing of the cycle store not least to address a concern of the design up crime officer to make sure that they are a bit more visible from within the building. So the applicant will be needing to submit a revised cycle store location there. So if the applicant was so minded they could at least in theory increase the provision but as a planning authority we wouldn't require it because we deem or as officers we deem that it's sufficient as it stands. Ynso Llymi you happy to leave it on that basis or do you want to come back on that? I'm happy to leave it at that basis that chance comes perhaps we should make the best of that opportunity. Thank you. Point taken thank you. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you chair. On that note as has just been said on page 124 there is opportunity around the cycle storage and we know that the applicant has been available for us to take questions and things today I'm sure they are listening very carefully to what members are saying and very carefully that members would like to see more cycle storage if when that is addressed they can provide it and so just offering my support to what Councillor Leaming has said but overall much needed facilities it is temporary as Councillor Richard Williams says about would it be the ideal landmark building that we hope we will get there no temporary basis I think it's suitable it does what it says on the tin essentially and I hope that it will be well used and looked after. So you're recommending approval. Thank you and I'm sure that the applicant in this case will be listening carefully to comments. Any other views on this proposal? In that case I think we come to the recommendation which is on page 132 paragraph 1060 approve subject to the planning conditions as set out below because of the nature of the proposal I will be taking an electronic vote on this. Does anyone else want to contribute to the debate before we take a vote on that? I see none let's move to the vote then. If you're in favour obviously press the green button and if you're against press the red one. Right we are unanimous that is approved as recommended. We then move on to thank you to look for that very clear presentation. We then move on to item 10 which is an application at number 19 Foxton Road Barrington for the installation of solar panels on a rear flat roof page 137 of your papers. This is brought to us because the application is submitted by the relative of an officer of the council. It's worth noting that this would be just outside I believe the permitted development rights on this but we have the recommendation is to approve and we have best part with us as presenting officer.  Beth welcome and please let's hear your presentation. It's unusual for members to say the challenge we kept on talking a bit longer usually it's the other way around but we will get there very shortly. While we're waiting we could just note the position of the local member who's not I think able to be with us but do you have a note to that effect are you able to read that out to us? No need to read it out the local member, Councillor Aidan van der Waier has confirmed that he supports this application and that's it approved. Thank you. Thank you chair. Can everyone here and see my presentation? Yes. So the application before members today seeks planning permission to install 12 solar panels on a roof black roof. The application site is located at number 19 Foxton Road, Barrington and it's located within the development framework founded. The site is not located in a conservation area or within the green belt and the property is one and a half stories detached dwelling house. The proposal has come before members today as the applicant is a member of the council. There is an update so the measurement for the height total height of the solar panel stated within the officers report is incorrect. It was noted that the measurement of the height is 22 centimetres but it is in fact 45 centimetres at their tallest point and this is referenced in paragraphs 3.2 and 10.7 of the officers report. So this is the location plan this is it in the context of Barrington and here's the red line. This is it on google maps. So the plan considerations as I said the application has been submitted by a member of the councils that's what's coming for and the considerations are the impact on character and appearance of the area and of neighbouring amenity. Here's the proposed roof plan and block plan. Here you can see the solar panels 12 of them on the rear flat roof. Here's elevations and you can see from the side the solar panels what their profile would be and this is the view from the garden of 19 Fortson Road and back towards the property. Here's some photos from a site visit and they would be located on this flat roof here and this is the outlook if you're standing at the house towards the neighbouring property at the rear. You can see the neighbours either side from the context of the flat roof where the solar panels would be located. On planning balance we're recommending this for approval as we don't believe it will cause any harm to the character and appearance of the area it will not unduly impact upon the residential amenity and it supports renewable and low carbon energy generation. There have been no objections to the scheme from neighbours, parish or ward members and the application as I said is being recommended for approval subject to planning permission. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Do any members want to ask any questions or comment on the application? I'm not keeping the questions on the debate separate. Do any members want to comment on that? Ah, Vice Chair has a comment. I was planning to comment in the agenda in the description that in the planning balance really the contribution to renewable energy wasn't mentioned so I was glad to see that it was explicitly mentioned in the slide so thank you very much. Right. Any views on this application? Are we ready to move to a vote? Which for reasons the reason for this application being submitted to us I will take that vote electronically. So if you're in favour of this press the green button if you're opposed the red. We have eight members in favour. Sorry. There's always someone who takes a bit of catching up probably best in the circumstances. Right. We are unanimous even the chair has voted for that. So that is approved. Thank you very much. We now move on to item number 11 which is an application at 64 Gables Clothes from Naldrith for our single story rear extension with a raised rear garden to ground level removal of a shed and insulation of a ramp. Page 143 of your papers. The applicant is Mr Nathan Lund. The reason it's come to us is because some are all of the land that will become clear to us is within the ownership of the council and the recommendation is to approve the conditions that are set out. I don't know whether Dominic Bush is yes, Dominic Bush. Dominic, where the floor is yours. Thank you. Is there a presentation? Can I just confirm if you can see the presentation? We can. Perfect, thank you. So, as you said, this application is at 64 Gables Clothes in Naldrith for a single story rear extension raised garden to ground level the removal of the brick shed within the rear garden the insulation of an external ramp on the southern side of the house and internal alterations. As you also mentioned, the application is before committee as the site includes an area of land within the ownership of South Cambridge District Council which I'll come on to later. There are no amendments or updates to report on the application. This is the site plan of the application site as well as an aerial view on the right to the right. You can see the application site is borded by Gables Close to the south and to the west and there is a small area of parking also located to the south here. The adjoining property to the north here is number 62 Gables Close and there is an area of public amenities based to the east. The area of land within the ownership of South Cambridge District Council is this area of land surrounding the car parking area here. This is a proposed site plan for the application. It can be seen here and the proposed access ramp to the south can be seen here. It should also be noted that this access ramp steps in around half way along to avoid the kerbs around in the car parking space here. This is the existing floor plans of the property. The adjoining neighbourhood property can be seen to the left here while the existing access ramp within the rear garden property can be seen here. The shed to be demolished can also be seen here in the corner here. The property, the footprint of the proposed road extension can be seen here while the proposed access ramp to the southern side is seen to the right hand side of the property here. It provides access in the rear of the garden as well as access into the property through the side elevation. Here we have the existing elevations to the property. Again, the neighbouring property can be seen here and the proposed elevations to the property. As you can see the ridge height of the proposed road extension is set down from the ridge height of the existing property and also set away from the boundary with the neighbouring property here. The entrance again within the side elevation of the property that's proposed can be seen here as well as the access ramp that runs towards the rear garden. Here we have some photos of the site so this is looking towards the southern elevation where the access ramp resided. It's noted that the ramp would likely not require the removal of this shrub within the land however if it needs pruning back any of this can be agreed with the council following the planning process. This is a view from the rear of the property looking along the southern elevation to the front elevation and this is the existing access ramp into the front of the property currently used for access. This is a view into the rear garden. The brick shed which is to be demolished can be seen here as well as the existing access ramp which will be removed and the garden leveled out within the proposal. Finally, the make consideration is application or its design, layout and scale as an impact on residential amenity. As you mentioned, the officer recommendations for approval, subject to the conditions laid out in the officer report. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dominic. Again, no need to separate questions from debate. Any comments on this or questions for clarification to Dominic? I see none. Shall we move straight to a vote on this? Again we'll take it electronically. That's everybody's vote. So we've all voted and we approve that unanimously. So that ends that session. We can now move on to consider the enforcement report which is on page 151 and I think we have Chris Braybrooke with us in case of any questions. Chris, welcome. Good afternoon. I have one. Did you want to speak to this or are you happy for us to just note it? That's entirely up to you. I think there's not a lot in there to be honest, Chair, that's changed. There was one new enforcement notice which has been issued in January which is reflected in this report in the appendix but otherwise the figures speak to themselves. Unfortunately just because of when I had to put this report together it was just before getting the February figures in. So this is reflective of January even though we're in March. Hopefully with the dates of the next committee we should be back up to date again with the figures hopefully. So the only other thing I would like to do and I've just noted it in the report is just to thank John Shutterwood and the compliance team and basically the compliance team wishing well in the future with his new role. Thank you for that. Any questions on this report? Or comments? No. Well Chris, thank you very much for that report and yes if you would pass on our thanks to John for his period in handling all this work and wish him best in his move. Certainly will. Thank you chair. So we then move on to appeals against planning decisions and enforcement action on page 155. The report was put together by Ian Papworth. Does anyone want to speak to this? Chair I need to say that I'm happy to take any questions on the appeals that are listed now and for questions I can't answer now I'm happy to take them away but the usual list of summaries of the appeals is there before members to know. Councillor Dr Richard Williams. Thank you chair. It's just a quick point about the way the information is laid out which is obviously very useful but I was just wondering in future if it would be possible to flag up committee decisions which are subject to an appeal because I sometimes go to this trying to work out if it was a committee decision or not but it would be really helpful. Yes. It's very helpful to know when we've got it wrong. Any other legitimate comments on this? Yes, Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you. It's just referring to page 166 and 168. I don't think I saw any others. Those are for termination within the framework. Is this a case of potentially is there any twin tracking going to go on with those? Or how are we dealing with those? Are we going to be making a decision and then representing that? And if so will there be any planning committee involvement required and a bit of how that's come about please chair. Thank you. Three chair. I don't know the specific details of those two applications that Councillor Williams has referred to and again without looking into that and speaking of the case officer I don't know what our might have minded to recommendation would be on the applications but we can only submit to the planning spectrum how we would have been minded to deal with the applications and the authority to do so that's now resting with the planning spectrum and to say how it again got to that point again I don't have the specific details. Would it be possible to pass on to, forgive me, would it be possible to pass on to the case officers in each of those cases that the committee were interested to know why these had been not been determined anymore? There may be very valid reasons for that. Councillor Williams. There may have been, we know these things happened but there was a couple so felt it needed to be raised but also what would be helpful when it comes back is once it's been decided how this will be defended as it were whether we would have approved or refused if we can include that rather than just it was non-determination here was the outcome so we can see if the outcome is contrary to what we would have done if that's agreeable Chair. If that's possible. That's a lot Dr Martin Cohn. It's like a bit of context on the appeals on Byways Station Road in Haarston. Page. Page. Page 160. There's two appeals and there was also I noticed enforcement notice. A little background to what happened was in fact that you had an enforcement notice and they therefore submitted appeals against refusal and operational development and what exactly is operational development what's the difference between operational development in this big context when there's more about it. Can you throw any light on that if not perhaps... Operational development will be a building or extension to an existing building and that's what the enforcement notice will be doing more work than it originally did the refusal of planning applications. I gave without knowing the full context I don't know if the commission has been granted in excess of that or something done without planning of missions in the first instance. This has been going on for a long time so I just wanted to see if there's still in the process. I'd have to refresh my memory on the history but I can certainly come back to you and give some more context on that. You have on the bottom of page 169 of course the listing of the former hotel Felix which was hearing recently. That will be one which in future will be listed following a committee decision of course. But I assume we haven't heard the other way yet, yes. Right. Any other questions? I think we can take appendix 5 page 173 under the same heading. Any questions or comment on that? No. In that case members I think we can bring our consideration to an end and close this meeting to 240.


Welcome to the Purtis Made Simple Kitchen. I'm Fallin and today we're going to bust some big myths on mushrooms. A lot of people think that mushrooms are grown in poo and in a dirty environment but really they aren't. Recently I visited an Ontario mushroom farm and I was amazed to see how clean the environment was kept. We are so lucky in Ontario to be able to enjoy fresh mushrooms all year round. There are so many great varieties available. There are white button, Cremini, Portobello, Oyster, King Oyster and Inoki. Did you know that Cremini mushrooms are baby Portobello's? Why do I? It's because I think I'm saying it wrong. That's why. Did you know that Cremini mushrooms are actually baby Portobello's? They're just harvested before they're fully grown.  Well that's a myth. If they're really dirty just quickly rinse them under cold water and pat dry. If you prefer something else just tap like tap on with a damp wipe. Wipe. Wipe. That's as I couldn't think of a word. Why is my brain right now? You can also gently wipe them with a damp cloth.  Just cut off the end if it's dry. Check out PurtisMadeSimple.ca for some tasty Ontario mushroom recipes. We have barley risotto with mushrooms, Portobello and Walnut salad, homemade mushroom soup, and vegetarian mushroom cannoli. I think you'll also enjoy our simple sides like creamy twice cooked mushrooms and our mushroom sliders. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to check out all our other fruit and vegetable videos. See ya. Many people think that mushrooms are grown in a dirty and poo-filled environment, but really they aren't. Recently, yeah that did not go poo-filled as soon as I left I was like hey don't stop maybe and then I looked over and I could see you laughing I was a gas stop.


The study examines concerns and arguments raised by individuals opposed to Italy's green pass, which requires proof of vaccination or recovery from COVID-19 to enter certain indoor public places. The main opposition stems from legal and personal freedom issues, rather than doubts about the effectiveness of vaccines. The research suggests that public health institutions should provide a legal explanation for the use of the green pass and continue focusing on vaccine communication to inform hesitant individuals. This article was authored by Giovanni Spattali, Nicola Billorandorno, and Federico Germani.