Did we enable the general chat? Yes, I'm going to go to do that right away. And sorry for disabling the chat. Let me just start with the webinar, and then I will also enable the chat as we go. So good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, everybody, depending where in the world you're zooming in from. Thank you for joining us today. We are delighted to share with you our next Hyperledger in-depth webinar with Indicio on scaling verifiable digital credentials using open source technology. We are very excited about today's presentation. My name is Tomar Sadej, and I'm an ecosystem manager at the Hyperledger Foundation. Today, I will have a chance to introduce the panelists and also take you through some housekeeping. And as usual, if you attended some of our other Hyperledger in-depth webinars, we first have some housekeeping rules. First, everybody is welcome in our Hyperledger global community. We are striving to create a safe and welcoming environment for all. So please follow the Hyperledger Code of Conduct when interacting with each other and while talking to other in the community as well. You can find our Code of Conduct on our wiki and also on our web page. All Hyperledger Foundation member webinars are held under the Linux Foundation Antitrust policy, which you can find on our wiki and on our event page as well. We are recording this webinar, and the recording will be available within our webinar library along with the slides. So you can always go back and review whatever has been discussed today. We are also live on YouTube and welcome to everybody also joining us there. Now, we encourage these sessions to be as active and engaging as possible. So please raise the hand button to an S to get unmuted and I will do so. And of course, the more activity and participation we will have, the better experience everyone will have. You can also post questions in the chat while I enable it and the Q&A box and this will be then relate to our panelists at the end of the session. For those of you whose questions will not get answered, we will also encourage you to join our Discord channel, which I will also share at the end of the presentation and ask your questions there. Now, without further ado, I'm very happy to introduce our panelists, which is James, who is the Vice President of Business Development in DCM and also Mike, who is an Enterprise Software Lead. We are looking very much forward to this webinar and James and Mike, over to you. All right, thank you, Thomas. Thank you everyone for joining today. We're very excited to be here. Let me go ahead and share my screen and we'll get started. So yeah, thanks for joining today. We're very excited to be here to demo DCO Proven. As Thomas had mentioned, this is a solution that we recently released. It's built on open source technology and can be used by enterprises, by organizations, by individuals to get started with verifiable credentials and decentralized identity technology. It can be used to create a complete open source trusted digital ecosystem and can be configured to specific use cases or pain points that your organization or your customers are dealing with. We are very excited and proud and membered of the Hyperledger Foundation and are thankful to the support that we get from the foundation as well as other contributors in the community. We happily contribute back to the community as well. And we think that collaboration and the open source contributions from individuals and organizations in the space is really what's leading to the adoption and driving forward of this technology. And so a lot of those in the audience today are members of the community. And so we thank you for your active participation as well. So I'm sure most of you are familiar or have at least heard of Hyperledger Indie areas in Ursa and maybe have somewhat of an understanding of the underlying technology that makes verifiable credentials possible. Today we'll see in action how it all comes together. To give a little bit of background context, the problem that this solves regarding digital identity stems from the well-known fact that originally the internet was created without that critical identity layer for people, entities and things.  And for interactions to happen online, there needs to be trust between people, places and things. So as that massive digital scaling has happened, it's become difficult for organizations to tackle the authentication challenges while protecting the privacy of those involved and doing it in a secure manner. So it's a major pain point. Not only is it painful, it costs a lot of money for businesses, for enterprises and for customers, it just makes for a cruddy experience. For businesses, for example, dealing with the hacks and breaches that come as a result of not being able to verify who it is on the other side that you're dealing with. The loss of productivity of employees having to change their passwords or deal with cumbersome, two-factor authentication, three-factor authentication. And just earlier today, I saw four-factor authentication. So hopefully it doesn't go beyond that, but this is where verifiable credentials come in and make it a lot more streamlined for people to be able to interact online. There was a recent report that the annual cost for the global economy as a result of digital identity-related fraud, hacks, breaches, all those sorts of things is 5.38 trillion. Here in the United States alone last year, it was upwards of $52 billion for businesses and enterprises, private organizations dealing with identity-related challenges. So it's a major pain point. It costs lots of money. And so it's something that organizations are looking to figure out. So there's a better way to the way that digital identity has been managed so far through federated ID or through traditional identity providers which are convenient and are very useful in a lot of situations, but have struggled to manage the challenges of increasing threats online and more complicated systems of ID spoofing or complicated hacks and breaches. So this is where trusted digital ecosystems come in. Creating ecosystems where trust is an intrinsic part of what occurs, being able to trust all the parties involved in the interactions. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with what some refer to as the trust triangle. We think this is a basic diagram of what a trusted digital ecosystem looks like. So you have the main participants being issuers here on the left. You have your holder or the person receiving the credential up at the top. And then you have your verifying organizations down at the bottom. Involved in that is a form of a registry for verifiable data. Some call it a verifiable data registry. Some call it the ledger decentralized identity network. There's a couple of different terms for it, but the concept is the same. So in this relationship, there's the issuer organization who has taken efforts to establish identity and through some manner either performing KYC or having proved some sort of aspect about an entity or a person and packaged that into a verifiable credential. And then anchoring the schemas and the dids of those entities down to the ledger and then issuing that credential to the holder where it's then held in some sort of digital wallet, whether that's a cloud hosted wallet or on device or a community type wallet, there's different variations of it. The holder with that credential can now present that to a verifying organization who can with the surety know that the information they're in truly did come from that issuer and has not been tampered with in the process. Checking the keys on the network, verifying that the original location of the issuer is a trusted organization in their opinion or according to their ecosystem rules can know that the information being presented to them is correct and that allows for the holder to make some sort of transaction or participate in some service or get access to some type of thing. So let's take a bank, for example, issuing a customer credential to customer. That customer can take that credential either back to the bank to be verified or if the bank has partnering organizations who have chosen to accept that credential and trust that bank as an issuer can allow that customer to participate in some activity on their end as well. So that's the gist of a trusted digital ecosystem. Now, the software behind it is what we're gonna see today with proven that makes all of this possible based on open source. But right now we'll do a little context on currently the landscape of the verifiable credential, the space. Some of the challenges have been one-off type solutions or the lack of interoperability between wallets or ecosystems or providers that focus on one thing. And so we noticed that a lot of enterprises were struggling to find a complete ecosystem that they could implement and use right off the bat. So this is where NDCO proven comes in based on the Hyperledger Indie areas and URSA protocols based on that open source technology. It's a complete ecosystem that comes with all of the components needed to issue, hold and verify digital credentials based on a Hyperledger Indie network and using an areas based wallet which we'll see demonstrated today. So it's a complete starter kit so organizations can pick it up and integrate it into the systems that they already have. They don't need to spin up their own or create their own issuing agents or verifier agents. Everything in the package comes with what they need. It comes with what they need to start issuing credentials right away based on their credential needs. It's capable of being customized and you can add new functionality into it as needed and as you scale up your use case. So how does proven create a trusted digital ecosystem? As mentioned, it comes with the different software components needed to issue, hold and verify credentials. So what we're about to see in the demo, we're gonna see the proven issuer where an organization and enterprise can not only create but issue credentials to the correct individuals who will receive that credential in their holder agent or their mobile wallet. And today we'll be looking at the holder plus digital wallet which in DCO we announced yesterday which we're excited to do a little showcase as part of this demonstration to show how it can receive credentials as part of the proven ecosystem. The holder who now has that credential can present it and then use the proven verifier to verify the credential that they received. Today's demonstration is based on the DCO test network or a demo network and showcases how a hyperledger indie network can be used for this. In general, the proven ecosystem can be connected with any hyperledger indie network of choice any of the existing networks or a private network can be spun up to be connected to it as well because it is based on those open source protocols indie areas in Ursa. It's interoperable with other areas wallets other areas related ecosystems and other indie networks. So looking down at the proven issuer agent as well as the proven verifier agent or what we call enterprise agents they're based on the hyperledger areas protocols. So they're using Acapai areas cloud agent Python their server-based agents with a JavaScript controller. The wallet, so holder plus is an areas framework JavaScript with the hyperledger areas byfold UI on top of that. And the ledger as mentioned is a hyperledger indie instance. So what can you do with proven and why would you need it? It can be used to verify who your organization is interacting with. So let's say you're an HR manager for example and you're onboarding a new employee and prior to the hiring process you need to be exchanging sensitive information with them. So establishing trust between you and between them using proven to issue them credentials to either access your system or to message with them to exchange information in a way in which you can verify their information. The nice thing about it is that it allows for organizations to interact with individuals in a way that doesn't violate their privacy. So respecting HIPAA regulation, GDPR, CPR in California and the pending IATIS 2.0 out of the European Union which hasn't officially been ratified yet. There are amendments in the works but this puts you in a great position to be able to accommodate those coming regulations and the sensitivities and liabilities that are involved with those. Between the issuers and verifiers there doesn't need to be a direct database integration on the backend. So let's say you as an organization or registering a credential to your individual or entity that you're identifying and they take that credential to either be issued by another organization or internally within your own they can do that without having to connect into some sort of database on your end to they don't have to phone home and create another layer of friction there. It uses secure encrypted peer to peer communication and we'll also see that in the demo today with the holder wallet how communication can occur between two wallets but there's also that secure transfer of information between the enterprise agents and the agent itself. So it's a very, very light ecosystem that's easily scalable because there aren't those complicated spaghetti noodle integrations on the backend. So as mentioned, easy to integrate in it's built on interoperable components open source, open standards. And so the model that this works off of is that when an organization uses proven they can purchase it as a package that they can then own as their own solution. It's not a proprietary platform that they're locked into as much as we love working with organizations and we would love for them to continue to work with us they're not stuck with a single provider. So they could continue to either work on it internally on their own, we can support it or they can work with other vendors to continue to build out the functionality. So that's the beauty of working on the Hyperledger open source protocols. As mentioned, we're gonna see a small showcase of Holder Plus, which is a digital wallet based on the Hyperledger areas bifold project which the NDCO team has been contributing heavily to and we're excited to have a few members of the community here today that have also contributed to that. So thank you to the community for making the interoperability of these wallets possible. We're also gonna see a new feature of this wallet where you can communicate between wallets using didcom messaging. So we'll show how the Holder wallet fits inside inside the proven ecosystem as a whole. We'll go ahead and yeah, as I mentioned we'll be showing the messaging capability between wallets which we're really excited about and there's additional functionality and capabilities that will be coming shortly in the future that we're also excited to showcase. But as mentioned, we'll go ahead and we'll do a demo of proven, Mike will share a screen and walk through that. And as you're watching this presentation think of the use cases you have in mind where verified identity could be useful to either reduce friction, reduce cost, solve for liability in your particular use case. So Mike, I'll hand it off to you to show proven. All right, so there are two pieces to this proven demo that I wanna go through. One is a brief discussion of some of the technical aspects and then another is a walk through of a simple use case, simple workflow. So besides the stuff that James has already mentioned proven takes care of a bunch of things for you that can be a pain when you're trying to get a digital ecosystem up and running. So for example, proven comes with a Docker compose setup with various containers. So you can post your solution on any server that supports Docker or have it run reliably on a local development environment includes some proxy mediators for all of the agents involved so that when you lose connectivity or whatever you can get a reliable connection back and it helps improve security for server-based agents that have to be behind the firewall. It comes with the MDCO public mediator and test net setup by default. Comes with keys for various encryption points already preconfigured or easy to set up. There's a first time setup script so that instead of having to walk through a lot of different steps manually you can run the first time setup script and it will help you get everything set up as you go. It includes an initial schema, an email schema and comes with a database system that includes migrations. It's got a controller and a UI written in Node.js with Express on the back end and React on the front end. It manages agent state. So ACAPI does a good job of being an agent but sometimes it's tricky to get the state of your connections or your list of credentials, et cetera, out of ACAPI.  Okay, so that's kind of some of the technical server related et cetera stuff that comes out of the box. Let's do a little walkthrough. So here is the proven issuer home screen and includes a help section and then allows you to configure the agent in some ways. So for example, you can change the display names of the agent here. You can change the logo and icons that are displayed. Some applications that refer to a web application, some operating systems or devices use a web app manifest so you can configure those settings here. Some of the workflows around the email involves sending an email and there's also a user management system so you can configure an email account for sending email and you can white label the agent by adjusting either those logos or icons for any of these common colors that are in the application. So for example, if we want our buttons to be red, we could pick a nice red color and change them. Oh, that's a orange color. I know red, there's red. So you can configure the color settings. Some other things that takes care of for you is you can set up user accounts that would allow you to administer the system and add, edit and remove users, resend their information, reset their passwords, things like that so that you can control who is managing your system and without having to set that all up yourself, Provenal will help you get that running. Let's see what else is in here. Okay, so we mentioned that it helps you manage your state so it includes a list of contacts. So there we go. So we have a couple of testing contacts in here and you can go ahead and view more information about a particular contact. So for example, we can see that when I was testing the system, I was able to issue myself a credential. You can view the credentials issued to a particular individual. You can also view the full list of credentials and go to fill into any particular one. So here's one that I issued to myself earlier. Right now this list of credentials only shows email credentials, but if you had other types in your system, those would all be shown in one place. So Proven is not limited to just email credentials but that's what it comes with configured out of the box for proof and concept and demonstration purposes. So you can get a feel for how things work. The code includes what you need to manage browser sessions and WebSocket connections and we're working on an HTTP API. So some of the calls already exist. So for example, you can create invitations, you can issue credentials and you can request presentations at the moment. We're working on adding additional protocols such that you have access to the full power of Acropy but through an API that helps make it easy. All right, so those are some of the technical details to what Proven offers. So next we're gonna go through a simple workflow and for those of you who are familiar with identity applications, this one may seem trivial and rather simple but it shows that the whole ecosystem out of the box is ready to do things and it should be understandable for everybody to follow. So we're gonna take three main steps. We're going to prove that I control a particular email address. We're going to issue myself an email credential and then we're gonna take that email credential from my holder to our verifier and present that credential to verify that it's correct and accurate and came from the issuer. So we're gonna simulate being just me and the demonstration comes with a self-serve email credential system. So I'm gonna type in my email address here and once I submit this, it's going to send me a personalized invitation. Okay, capture, stairs, don't miss any. Okay, I sent it quickly. Let's hit the button more than once. Okay, so I sent myself an invitation with a unique code. I'm gonna stop sharing for just a second so I can get in my email without exposing everything. All right, I'll show the screen again. So you can see here that there's an invitation in my email account. We'll zoom in a little bit. Text does not want to set scale. All right, so we'll follow that link and you can see my unique code in the URL and now I have a unique invitation for receiving an email credential. So the next thing to do is use holder to connect to our enterprise issuer and receive a credential offer. So on the right here, you'll see holder plus. It's like James mentioned, it's built on AFJ and Byfold and it can be white labeled. So you could swap out this logo and icon and text, et cetera.  Go ahead and get started and scroll through these terms and the privacy policy. All right, asks me to pick a name that I'd be comfortable sharing with financial or legal institutions, et cetera. So put my name in here, pick a pin number and initialize our wallet. All right, so here we are ready to connect. So I'm gonna press our connect button here and we're gonna scan this to our code. All right, so now we're connected to proven and we've received our credential offer. So you can see the pieces of my email address. So they have them separated and combined and a verified timestamp. So I'm happy to receive this credential. Some, you know, this is a basic credential but you could use it in various contexts. Like so, for example, if you were trying to communicate with a customer, if you were trying to have one part of your business prove to another system in your business that someone has legitimate participation in your business accounts and systems, you could use it with some extension to set up a login system, a number of things like that. So I'm gonna accept my credential and it's been added to my wallet. So our next step would be to go to the verifier and show that we've got a real credential. So we're gonna go over to the verifier screen. I'm gonna make sure that I've got a good invitation here and we're gonna connect. All right, so we can see we've got two contacts, proven and the proven verifier and there's some information requested. So the verifier is asking for my email. You'll notice that it's a selective disclosure. It's not asking for all of the fields. So that's an example that shows that you can do things to help preserve privacy only ask for the information that you need. So I'm gonna go ahead and share that. And on both screens, it shows the information was received and the credential was verified. So like we said earlier, this is just a simple demonstration but with the APIs that are available, for example, the verifier has an API where you could link with an external system and send a notification that says, yeah, the verification occurred and this email is kosher. So go ahead and trigger additional actions that are part of your existing systems. You could do things like logins or so on once this verification occurs. And this is a nice simple use case where once you set proven up, you can see that the whole, the entire ecosystem is up and running. So that's our demo of the trust triangle and the full ecosystem with the issuer, the holder, the verifier and then the underlying technology like the mediators and the network did come in a non creds. Next, we're gonna do some secure communications. So we're going to connect to this other wallet here toward John Doe wallet. So John Doe is gonna display a QR code on his wallet and then Mike Ebert is gonna scan his QR code from his. And so now I have a new contact of John Doe here. So I'm gonna do hand this here. One phone in each hand. And so John is gonna type me a message and say hi. And since I'm feeling a little bit mischievous, I'm gonna switch and I'm gonna send him a response in Russian. By Fold supports UTF-8 for messaging. So I can send Russian characters. And John's confused by this.  And this is cool because these two wallets have generated an invitation and exchanged their pairwise dids. They're communicating over did come and the messages are encrypted. So we have a peer to peer connection here and it's all secure and happy. They're each using their own mediator and all the exchanges is going just fine and now they can chat in a secure context. So that's a cool feature that Holder includes that we've recently added that we're pretty excited about. One of the examples here is you could, for example, say we're going to connect to an agent. We're gonna request their email credential and then the server-based agent could also have a messaging box like this and you could communicate securely between a customer or an employee over secure channels and not worry about your information getting lost. So with that, I'm gonna turn some time back over to James here because the demo is complete. All right, thanks, Mike. Okay, let me pull this up here. Okay, so yeah, as Mike just demonstrated what comes in the box, here's a quick summary of what you just saw. So it comes with a verifiable credential schema so a flexible cloud hosted template for creating a verifiable credential. Comes with the issuer and verifier agents and it also comes along with the mobile app, the digital wallet and the mediator agent or agents that are needed to support the mobile apps. Also comes with machine readable governance capability and this is crucial for scaling your use case as you bring on different issuing and verifying organizations and creating the governance rules needed for your ecosystem to operate in a way that satisfies your organization's needs and accepting certain type of credentials or requesting certain types of information from the holders of credentials. It also comes with as default a connection to a distributed ledger network, an Indeed network of choice. Comes with support and training offered by our team along with maintenance and updates to make sure that you have the most up to date system especially as the open source community and standards evolve. Having that ongoing support is a good way to stay interoperable with other systems as well. As mentioned, all these components are based off of publicly available standards models and repos that I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with. So I saw in the chat the question about what are some of the top B2B use cases or customers? Who needs this? Who's asking for this and who's looking for this? Proven as come as a result of the open source work that we've done along with our experience working with our clients and customers who need a way to issue credentials to people or things in their ecosystems. So some of the top use cases as you can imagine are in industries where it's highly regulated and there's a lot of liability if identity can't be established. So banking and finance, for example, satisfying those KYC requirements needed for customers to be able to do certain things with them or interact with them, transfer money, open up new accounts, those sorts of actions. Travel, obviously, there's a lot of different areas where identity comes into play before you board an airplane. There's an identity component to that, crossing a border, identity checks that happen. With healthcare, for example, consenting to information being released or shared between organizations, a lot of HIPAA-related healthcare privacy implications that come with health data being transferred. Interestingly enough, in the healthcare space, there are organizations that don't want anything to do with a customer's healthcare information but have to in some way interact with it. This is where verifiable credentials are nice because that information remains with the holder of the credential and doesn't have to be stored by a third party in some sort of centralized database, putting them at some sort of risk of breach of that information. So those are some examples of organizations that are using it and those organizations have approached us and the feedback that we've gotten that led to proven was they're looking for a way to quickly set up an ecosystem. They wanna start issuing credentials and they wanna start verifying credentials and they don't want to have to do all the dirty work of figuring out how to make it interoperable, having to dig through all the repos. They just wanna solve their pain point. They just wanna be able to make it easier for their customers or internally for whichever department needs to handle that. So I hope that answers the question but it's across many industries where identity plays a role, not just with people but also with devices, being able to identify a machine or an IoT device and allowing for secure access to that device as well. So we're seeing traction with IoT, the spatial web area too. I'm sure you might be familiar with one of the use cases where components of proven and the open source underlying technology has been put into action with CEDA, Aviation IT Technology Provider along with the government of Aruba using verifiable credentials for passenger health information as well as digital travel credentials, being able to have a essentially a passport represented in the form of a verifiable credential and connected to the holder of that credential through biometrics and facial recognition at the airport. So lots of different ways to use proven and integrate into your system and DCO provides support options to install it, to help integrate it or we can simply provide training on how to do that and provide instructions. We can help configure. There's any customized capability that you need that could be added on top of that. It can be a white labeled solution rebranded how for you or for your customers, however you need it and we can help, yeah, curate it in a way that solves not only your problems but your partners and anyone who you add into your ecosystem. You have that basic ecosystem of issuers, holders and verifiers. And then as it expands there will be other organizations that want to consume the credentials that your organization offers that opens up new revenue opportunities to be a credential provider, new opportunities for your customers to interact with partnering organizations or within a consortium of some sort or within an ecosystem where you have interest in being involved. So lots of flexibility with proven and what you can do with it. So we wanna invite everyone to go ahead and get your first verifiable credential today. And Mike, if you have a link to the on our website we have where you can start using proven issuer to receive your credential in your holder wallet and connect to the proven verifier to have that verified. And you can download a holder with the discount code that we're gonna be providing here in the chat in just a second. So feel free to go ahead and try it out and get started and we're happy to answer any questions. So feel free to reach out and we can help get you going on a use case or a project where you could use verifiable credentials. But yeah, I think we can go ahead and open up for Q&A. I know we have some questions coming through here in the chat. Let's see. So I'm gonna read off a couple that we that were typed and answered a little earlier just in case people haven't read those and if they have subsequent questions. So one of the questions was why are we still using an email and a password for the user authentication system? And could we pivot to DIDS? And the answer there is that, yes, we absolutely could pivot to DIDS or credential-based login for just to get started. We thought let's focus on issuing and verifying the credentials that are important to the business use case first. And we'll just go with a simple existing flow for users but we're working on making DIDS or credentials the default for logging into the proven admin screens as well. So that's coming, it's a good thought. Another question was, is there a way to see the DID which is generated for the user? So in the enterprise agent in the list of contacts it would be relatively straightforward to display that DID and then I don't know if we would want to in a mobile agent for making it user friendly for end users as much but theoretically that's possible as well if it's something that you wanted to do. And then finally, Kyle asked, is proven a hosted service run by Indicio? If so, is there a different service for the issuer and the verifier? And the answer to that one is right now it's not a SaaS platform. Indicio offers hosting and you can also use your own hosting. Eventually we'll have a SaaS platform where you can sign up and provision an agent and specify a type set of payment, et cetera without having to interact with either the hosting config yourself or with needing Indicio to assist you with that but that's coming down the road while we focus on some other functional priorities in the short term. And that's a read through the questions that were already typed out. Let's see if there are any others. Yeah, thank you James and Mike very much for this very interesting presentation and for the attendees so feel free to also raise your hand and I can unmute you and you can also ask your question live. Oh, Mike, I think we got something coming in. Looks like question about web 3.0. Web 3.0 is supposed to have blockchain slash security built in admittedly my understanding of 3.0 is weak. Could you talk about your relationship to web 3.0? Is it competition or does it facilitate Indicio? So often when people think of web 3.0 they think of all of the use cases that have to do with the common blockchains that people are familiar with like Bitcoin and Ethereum, cryptocurrencies and smart contracts and things like that. And that technology is really useful for things that need to be verified publicly and that you're okay with being out on a ledger that everyone can read. And those solutions put all of their data out on those blockchain ledgers. The identity use case that we have here relies somewhat on some of the same technology. So the did and the keys and the relationship of an issuer to a particular schema and the schemas those are stored on a ledger where everyone can view them and get at them at any time. And that's the public component of the solution that helps make this work really smoothly. But all of the sensitive private data that is issued by the issuer lives in just inside the credential that the holder has and it's secure and under their control. So in some ways they utilize some of the complimentary technology, some of the same things but because the use cases private versus public it's managed differently for some parts of it. And Daniel Buckner and Block and are looking at they've branded this a kind of a web 5.0 solution where you take the best of web 3.0 with these public ledgers and cryptocurrencies and smart contracts and you pair them with the privately held identity information that is in self-sovereign identity or verifiable credentials and you put the two of those together and you can manage both your public and your private data in the way that makes sense for each use case and security is part of both solutions. You have keys and encryption top to bottom all over the place. And so you put the two together and then you get what they call web 5.0. Hopefully that's a good answer to that question. And what's interesting here with the blockchain the blockchains involvement in a trusted digital ecosystem it is really the most boring part about it. The really cool stuff is happening at the agent level between the organizations that are able to verify identity on the end. The ledger's purpose is obviously just for the anchoring some called a trust anchor of sorts. So a lot of the enterprises that we work with when they hear the term blockchain there's a lot of misconceptions or preconceived notions they have that come from the crypto world where there's the speculative aspect of it where cryptocurrency involved in this case it's not like that. So sometimes we avoid the term blockchain because it could be confusing or go down a tangent that we wouldn't necessarily want to go down. So decentralized identity network or ledger because in this case there's not any sort of proof of work or mining going on. It's just a check of a verification of a transaction that's very, very energy efficient. So I guess you could say a lot of differences from the traditional web 3 understanding but involves some common aspects of it if that makes sense. So one of the questions was what are some of the top B2B use cases our customers are asking for? So I suppose we could talk a little bit about some of those. Most of the information that people need a verifiable credential solution for are pieces of information that they want to have the held privately not exposed to the whole universe and that requires verification and security. And so for example, in some of the banking use cases you need to go through a KYC I know your customer process. And once you go through that process it's really nice to use a non-creds and Aries wallets for recording that information because you can record it in a way where you can verify who issued it and prove that it wasn't tampered with. So you can rely on the issuing party to say I can trust this KYC to data because someone already looked into it someone reliable proved that this data was there. And using a non-creds and Aries wallets there's a level of holder binding. So you know that that credential was issued to this particular wallet originally and has not been fiddled with or moved to another wallet. So as long as you trust the wallet, perhaps the wallet uses a fingerprint or a face scan or something like that to tie this to the individual then you can rely on that KYC to verify data to still be relevant. So you don't have to go through the KYC process over and over again. So that's a case with like say banking with the travel use case it's public knowledge that we're doing work on the digital travel potential and making that work with a non-cred equivalent so that you can travel and prove your identity based on your passport. So those are most of the use cases are starting with identity but there are some other use cases that go beyond that to say there's perhaps accounting data where you want the data to be verifiable but for a private organization shouldn't be published broadly. We're also working on some mixed use cases where someone asked about the oil and gas. There's one use case where we're working on some emissions data where we're helping some organizations publish and then share and then have their emissions data verified so that they can show the world that they're keeping track of their emissions and report what their emissions or their offsets are. So those are a couple cases but generally speaking it's information that needs to be privately held but also verifiable and mostly to do with identity. I just saw a question come in from Jacques. I noticed hyperledger areas in India's code bases would the credentials meet European and Union's privacy requirements or a non-creds code base could be used instead? Mike that might be a better question for you but one thing that comes to mind is one of the amendments in AIDIS 2.0 that is calling for a ZKP capability as well as selective disclosure. That's one of the reasons that we use a non-creds as a way to satisfy those requirements although they're not officially ratified or AIDIS isn't officially in place yet but that's the power of a non-creds shows how that can be handled. So some of the European privacy concerns and legislations are to, they want people to be able to privately hold their data. They are asking for a selective disclosure so you only disclose what you need to disclose. There are some situations that require zero knowledge proofs and there are lots of potential formats. Some of them are not, they're working towards but aren't ready to do selective disclosures or predicate or non-disclosing proofs like that, zero knowledge proofs. And then the holder binding is another thing that some other solutions struggle with a little bit. So if the latest European privacy legislation that's being considered, if it were ratified right this second, as far as I'm aware a non-creds are the only credential format that meets all of those privacy concerns. So if you have European privacy concerns a non-creds are a very good solution because they meet those requirements. So real quick for the discount codes for the holder app I believe it's one discount code is available per email address in case you're having an issue getting that. So just a heads up. So in the last three minutes here Helen has prompted me to talk about, she's reminded me that I should talk about my work with machine readable governance. And we're proud of that work. That's some data formats, some code and some agreements or precedents or best practices for encoding the laws and the rules, the processes that are agreed upon by participating organizations and individuals taking that and encoding it in a way that our agents and our software can help us to obey and follow and understand those procedures. And proven is going to include decentralized ecosystem governance. So we're gonna make available code that will be able to read those governance files and interpret what's encoded there to look at we're starting with who are the trusted issuers and verifiers and eventually we'll be adding other roles and the ability to script some workflows, some actions and we'll be working on how to publish, discover, share ingest, export, et cetera, work with those files that make those workflows trustworthy and understandable for ecosystems and overlapping and interconnected ecosystems. Well, thank you very much, Mike and thank you very much James. We are at a time, so I think we need to wrap up but thank you very much. You covered a lot of very interesting and useful information and thank you to everybody joining us. If you have any questions for either us or in DCO team please feel free to reach out to us or the DCO team. And as mentioned all of the recording and also the slides will be available on the Hyperledger webinar library. Now, before we say goodbye I would also like to invite you to join our Discord channel join our Discord community where you can explore or the channel is related to our projects special interest groups, working groups and more. We have a very active Discord community and you are very welcome to join us there. We have some other upcoming webinars and workshops and you can find those on our events website and there was some questions from the YouTube today. So the best way to stay up to date is go to our event website. So one particular workshop that I would like to highlight is within DCO and it's about building your identity solution using Hyperledger Aries. It's gonna be held on November 10th. Again, thank you everybody for watching and thank you so much again James and Mike for this wonderful presentation. And again, feel free to reach out to us if you need any other information. Thank you for watching and see you next time. Thank you everyone, thank you Thomas. Thanks.


Instructional settings. Folks, you're in one. Wherever you're sitting right now, we've got some emails from people that sat in bed and watched videos. That was their instructional setting. I suppose you could sit in the bathtub and watch videos, which might be kind of fun for yourself.  Where else might you have an instructional setting? Anywhere in which you learn whatever it is you're trying to learn. So if you're trying to learn from us, wherever you're watching this video right now is your instructional setting. My instructional setting, our instructional setting, is wherever we learn. I don't know where we learn. Where do you learn? Here and there. Here and there. And everywhere. Over the hill and through the woods to Grand Mother's house we go, because we have some learning to do in an instructional setting. And trust me, if you go to my grandmother's house, you'll get some instruction. All sorts of behaviors. I learned to play poker with my grandmother. She took all my pennies. Actually, that was Blackjack. She took all my pennies. That wasn't fair. I couldn't think. She was mean. I couldn't count. And she took all my pennies. 21. She called it Blackjack. It was really 21. That was sneaky. I miss Grandma. She was awesome. See you guys.


So, while we plan writing course effectively, we will have to keep in view the goals of the writing course and how to materialize those goals into practice. And these goals, while putting them into practice, we will have to take care of the institutional constraints. The institution wants us to do, for instance, for example, we have long term goals, but the institution wants our students to be trained for a board exam. So that might come into our goals, might come into conflict with the institutional constraints. So, within this module, we will have to, we will look at how we can make the balance between the goals set forth for writing course and while taking into view the institutional constraints. So writing as a skill is considered the most anxiety provoking skill. I have also observed when I taught writing course, especially scientific writing or technical writing to BS engineering students, what I came to hear was a number of stories like that gives us butterflies in the stomach and sweaty palms and that this gives us a lot of anxiety. So when we plan a writing course, we'll have to look at this element, how to lower the effective filters by effective filters, I mean anxiety, feelings of ill will or demotivation. So we'll have to take these into view while planning goals for a writing course. We'll have to take into view like how we can create a learner's conducive environment. So planning a writing course is all about making choices and then taking decisions according to those choices. So there can be, for example, constraints by the institution, by the ministry that they want their students. For instance, if we look at our ninth and tenth class students or intermediate students, they are there with the teacher for a couple of years and they are there for the teacher to appear in the board exam. So while planning a writing course, our purpose is to ask ourselves as language teachers whether our students want to pass the exam or want to develop writing skills. So especially in the Pakistani context, we are faced by sort of double challenge where we have not only to develop writing skills as well, but also we want our students pass the exam as well. So this is kind of a tricky balance which a language teacher will have to take care of. So let me clarify here that there is no magic formula with English language teachers which they can like give a magic pill to the students which will work and teach them writing now. So while planning the goals of a writing course, we'll have to articulate whether we want to focus on the accuracy of grammar, spelling and punctuation or if as compared to this one we have the notion of fluency. So whether we will have to develop student skills into fluent writer and they will have to compose or write sentences or pick from MCQs. So this is how planning a writing course demands careful craft of goals. So while crafting goals, we'll have to keep in view our learners, their educational context, their cultural context, their sociopolitical context as well. And remember even the religious one. So do we want our students to write or demonstrate mastery of form? I'm not in favor of this one because I'm in favor of making a balance between form and meaning which is accuracy and fluency. Form stands for accuracy and meaning stands for fluency. So remember as language teachers, we'll have to experiment with the language with our students. So we'll have to ask them to record their experiences and reactions and how they generate or communicate ideas. So this is how I always have been emphasizing throughout this course that we'll have to treat students as a community with diverse needs and where we will have to bring in such an environment which encourages, which makes them think writing positively and which raises their confidence. So as a language teacher, we'll have to sort of be eclectic in terms of adopting any method and I would suggest when you become as language teachers to adopt those methods which suit the political, sociocultural, religious contexts of your students. So we cannot treat writing as a product, not as ends as means. So we cannot force students produce texts within 30 minutes on a prescribed topic. On the other hand, we can allow students to brainstorm ideas, put those ideas into words, link the words into ideas, write the first draft and send it for feedback or get the peer feedback, then revise, then edit and then think of writing the final draft.


All right, good afternoon, everyone. I know it's surprising, but you got quite a bit to cover today. So I'm going to jump right in, and I'll get to your questions. Earlier today, the Department's Office of Strategic Capital announced the release of its first investment strategy. Secretary Austin launched the Office of Strategic Capital in December 2022 to attract and scale private capital in support of national security. The investment strategy identifies priority component technology industries and describes how the OSC will catalyze private investment in these industries. It presents a guiding framework for OSC programs to complement existing Department of Defense and US government programs. And to read more, I'd ask you to visit the Department's website. Additionally, the Department publicly released today the first volume of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office's historical record report, which reviews the record of US government pertaining to an identified anomalous phenomena or UAP. In completing this report, Arrow reviewed classified and unclassified archives dating back to 1945, conducted dozens of interviews, and partnered with officials across the DOD and the interagency. To date, Arrow has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the US government or private companies have access to, or have been reverse engineering, extraterrestrial technology. Arrow has found no evidence that any US government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology. You can read the unclassified version of the historical record report volume one on defense.gov or on the Arrow website at aaro.mil. In other announcements, as many of you are aware, throughout his tenure, Secretary Austin has prioritized the development and rapid fielding of capabilities to counter the urgent and growing threat posed by uncrewed weapons systems. This week, the Secretary directed the establishment of a warfighter senior integration group to focus department-wide efforts to address this urgent operational challenge. This warfighter SIG will bring together the department's senior-most leaders to drive solutions that support US warfighters throughout our combatant commands. The group will help identify needed capabilities and associated solutions for rapidly delivering across all domains, with near-term focus on countering uncrewed aerial systems. As evidenced by the successes of other warfighter SIGs, such as those for Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, as well as the SIG Ukraine stood up in 2022, the establishment of this new warfighter SIG will bring the cross-department attention and speed the threat now demands. We look forward to the action this forum will drive and where possible will provide details on its work in the coming months. Separately, I have an update on the V-22's return to flight. Naval Air Systems Command issued a flight clearance today for the V-22 Osprey lifting the aircraft's grounding. The decision followed a meticulous and data-driven approach, prioritizing the safety of our air crews. It was accomplished in close coordination with the US Air Force-led Investigation, which identified the material failure that led to the mishap. The grounding provided time for the services to conduct a thorough review and formulate risk mitigation controls to safely return the V-22 to flight operations. Now I would refer you to NAV Air and the respective services for additional information. We do want to express again our condolences to the family members and loved ones of the eight airmen we lost in the November CV-22 tragedy in Japan. We'll not forget those service members as we apply lessons learned from that day. And our nation's service members and their families make extraordinary sacrifices to safeguard our freedom and our security, and in return we owe them an unwavering commitment to their safety and well-being. Shifting gears to the Middle East, US Central Command forces conducted their fourth airdrop of critically needed meals into Gaza this morning. The US Air Force C-130 delivered 11,500 meals today, bringing the total meals airdrop by the US to over 124,000 to date. These humanitarian airdrops contribute to ongoing US government efforts to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza and are part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza. Of note, press reports that US airdrops resulted in civilian casualties on the ground are false as we've confirmed that all of our aid bundles landed safely on the ground. In addition to US military humanitarian airdrops and the US government's efforts to continue sustaining and expanding assistance going in by land. As President Biden announced last evening, the Department of Defense will undertake an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in Gaza working alongside like-minded countries and partners. Now I'll provide an overview of the concept and then we'll be happy to take your questions. I'm gonna ask our control room to post the diagram we have on this. Now to carry out this mission, the department is moving quickly to deploy its joint logistics over the shore capability to provide the expeditionary pier and expeditionary pier to enable the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. JLOTS is a unique capability maintained by the Department of Defense, whereby US Army and US Navy forces are organized, trained and equipped to conduct joint ship to shore operations where fixed port facilities are inadequate or unavailable. Simply put, they'll establish a temporary offshore maritime pier that allows for shipping vessels to transfer cargo to smaller vessels to transport and offload cargo to a temporary causeway for the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Now we're in the process of identifying, sourcing and in some cases preparing forces to deploy, but I can confirm that elements of the seventh transportation brigade expeditionary out of joint-based Langley Eustis in Virginia have been tasked to support. Importantly, there will be no US forces on the ground in Gaza. The DOD maintains the ability to provide unique capabilities from offshore without a US military presence within Gaza, or coordinating with other nations to assist with operating the causeway and distributing aid into Gaza. The concept that is being planned involves the presence of US military personnel on military vessels offshore, but does not require US military personnel to go ashore. In terms of security on the ground, we're continuing to plan and coordinate with partners in the region. And as for aid distribution, we'll have more details in the future, but we are coordinating with ally and partner nations, the UN and humanitarian NGOs on the way ahead for distribution of assistance into Gaza. Finally, in terms of timing, we're working to set this up as quickly as possible, but we expect that it will take several weeks to plan and execute. Once operational, the actual amount of aid delivered will depend on many variables and will likely scale over time. However, we expect that deliveries via JLOTs could provide more than two million meals to the citizens of Gaza per day. With that, be happy to take your questions. We'll start with AP Lita Beldor. I'm sorry, it's our cop. Thank you. All right, a bunch of questions on JLOTs. We see pictures of their both being up here that looks like it's going on to a beach in a dock. Are you saying that there'll be a dock offshore and there'll be a separate pier, these two different structures or is it just one structure? Yeah, thanks Tara. So going to achieve a lifelong dream here and use a laser pointer from the podium. So let me just kind of walk you through the broad concept with the caveat that we're still conducting planning on this. But in essence, what you'll have here is a floating pier that is offshore that will be able to receive commercial vessels that have aid. That aid will be off-loaded onto the floating pier and then transloaded onto Navy support vessels, what we call logistic support vessels, LSVs. Those vessels will then take it to the floating causeway. For example, you can see here and then off-loaded onto the causeway in this case, which essentially is approximately 1800 feet or 500 meters long and it's two-lane and then transported onto land and then distributed into Gaza. The ability to do this without putting forces on the ground is due to the fact that the causeway is essentially, it's modular, built at sea, and then essentially driven into the ground from offshore. Again, as I mentioned, it will be working with partners in the region to of course be on the receiving end of that and to work through the security details, but at no time will we require U.S. forces to actually go on the ground. And so then among other places, Cyprus has been highlighted as a place where aid can be loaded onto ships and then taken to the floating pier, transloaded onto these logistic support vessels, transported over to the causeway and then again transported into Gaza. The other option that we have available to us as well is from the floating pier. Not only via the logistic support vessels, but also via a barge capability that can take additional aid to the floating causeway. Okay, and then just two follow-ups. Has Israel insisted on any restrictions on this pier such as no one can leave through the pier or no one can come on shore? Will Israel be providing security on the pier? Again, we're working through the details right now with partners in the region to include Israel in terms of the security aspect. And then as I mentioned in the top are working with ally and partner nations, working with the UN, working with NGOs to discuss the actual aid distribution piece. To be clear, it will not be U.S. military personnel that are transporting the aid off of the causeway into Gaza. Our role will be essentially to provide the service of getting it to the causeway at which point it will be then distributed. I know this is a pretty new idea, but what I meant on the restrictions is Israel putting any restrictions on what can come through this pier. I'm not tracking any. Yeah, let me go to fill in a little bit. So can you help me understand how is it that the military is gonna build this causeway going ashore but never get off onto the beach to drive it into the ground for starters? Yeah, so again, if you look at the causeway here, again, that's built out at sea. And then essentially just imagine pushing it, propelling it into the shore. And once it's ashore, it's anchored. It's anchored on the shore. Again, we'll be working with regional partners to conduct that aspect, but no U.S. forces will get off of it. So on that piece, have you ever seen before that U.S. forces are the ones who anchor it? Correct. So in this case, you're gonna accept the restriction where you won't do it. Someone else will anchor it. That's correct. And Israel would be asked to provide immediate security, but you had suggested that it might be other partners? Again, we're working through the coordination and planning of this right now, working with partners in the region to include Israel in terms of who will provide the specific security. Again, we'll have more details to provide in the future, but that is the concept. It's Israel's decision about who provides security or is it... Well, we're working with partners in the region. I'll just keep it that broad at this point. Louie. Can you tell us how large of a deployment this will be for all the components of JLODs? How long will it take them to begin operating? How long will it take them to transit to this location? And in addition to the ground security element, will there be a maritime security element for all of the forces that will be located offshore? Yeah, so on your first question, we anticipate that it'll take over 1,000 U.S. forces to participate in building this capability. As far as timeframe, as I mentioned, several weeks, likely up to 60 days in order to deploy the forces and construct the causeway and the pier. But again, we're starting immediately in terms of putting things into motion on that front. And then as far as security goes, for OPSEC reasons, I'm not gonna get into specifics other than to say security is taken into account for these capabilities. And so that's something that we, of course, will provide for our forces that's here. You're talking about partner nations on the ground, but you're talking about operational security. You can't discuss what will be on a maritime sector. Right, I mean, these forces will have the capability to provide some organic security. I'm just not gonna get into specifics of that. Jennifer. Pat, how much will this cost? And if Israel is going to be engaged in the security on land, why not just open the existing, there are ports just north of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and there are entrances into Gaza. Why not just use those existing ports and have Israel look at what's going through and bring it in? It seems like this is a lot of work for 60 days out when there are people starving, frankly. Yeah, well, as I highlighted at the top, I mean, this is part of a full court press by the United States to not only focus on working on opening up and expanding routes via land, which of course are the optimal way to get aid into Gaza, but also by conducting airdrops. And now, as the president has said, not enough aid is getting in. And so this is a capability that we have. It's a capability that we are going to execute and enable us to get, as I said, upwards of two million meals in a day. And why was the latest airdrop so small, 11,000 meals? Look, these are gonna vary over time, just depending on the mission and the aircraft that are available. So you will see those continue to fluctuate. If I could on the UFO report, this is an internal investigation required by Congress. Why will Americans believe that the Pentagon has investigated itself and found that there's no evidence of alien life? Well, look, the Arrow Office used a very rigorous analytical scientific approach to investigate all past U.S. government efforts, all claims by interviewees. They were granted access at the highest levels to all information. None of the agencies that they spoke with prevented them from getting any of the information that they needed to do. We understand that this is something that is of great interest to a significant number of people and organizations. And so they took this very seriously. They followed the evidence wherever it led them. And I think the results speak for itself. Jeff. Thank you. You had said that reports that an airdrop over Gaza had killed people are false. How did DOD determine that it's food drops all ended safely and is DOD using C-17s at all? Or is it just using C-130s? We have only used C-130s for our airdrops. And in terms of this particular airdrop, I would just note that the data minor alert that went out on this was five minutes before the airdrop actually occurred. So pretty confident that it wasn't us. And we also maintain the capability to observe our bundles actually hitting the ground. Do you know, was anyone actually killed? Is the Gaza Health Ministry saying five people are killed? Is this something DOD can confirm? I cannot. Thanks, Clara. Thank you. So on the pier, it seems like you're taking no boots on the ground awfully literally since the troops will be pretty close. They'll be in the water surrounded Gaza, right? So how far exactly, how far will they actually eat from the shore? I don't have a foot count for you, but again, they're not gonna go on the shore, is the bottom line. And it seems awfully literal. And also, is it actually service members that are going to be constructing the pier, or is it contractors? This is a U.S. military capability, so again, we'll have much more detail to provide. But as I mentioned at the top here, the Seventh Transportation Brigade Expeditionary maintains this capability, and so there will be an active military component to it. And then really quickly, just on the situation in Haiti, can you provide any information on what kind of support DOD is lending to the situation there? So what I can tell you, Lara, is we're exploring contingency options to ensure the security of our personnel at the embassy. No decisions have been made at this time about potential deployments. I know there's been some press reports about a fleet anti-terrorism security team. What I can tell you is that DOD will not send troops to Haiti to support Haitian National Police Security Operations. We have no intention of intervening, and we are not providing assistance to help the prime minister return to Haiti at this time. Konstantin. Thanks, Pat. What was the, on J-Logs, when was the last time this system was used in an operational setting? The last employment was last year as part of Exercise Talisman Sabre, so relatively recently. And I mean, can you speak at all as to what the DOD is assessing our risks to this plan or points of concern? Well, I don't want to get into potential vulnerabilities, obviously a complex operation here, all of things that we're going to work through. I think the key aspect here is that, again, we're working alongside partners and allies in the region, as well as NGOs to help implement this. But certainly, one of the key things that we're going to be focused on is the security of our personnel, and also working with partners in the region to ensure that aid that is delivered can be distributed in a safe and secure way. Thank you. John. Thank you, General. You've been supporting Israel from the beginning unconditionally. What is the exact disagreement that makes you to drop aid and send it by sea instead of sending them through the land since it's the same operation and it has the same security concerns? I mean, if they trust you with the help that you are sending to them through the sea and air, why don't they let them just go through the border? Yeah, I'm not going to speak for Israel. As I've highlighted, and the president has said, not enough aid is getting into Gaza. We continue to speak with our Israeli partners and others in the region about increasing the number of options for aid to get into Gaza via land. But we're also not going to wait around. And so this is why you see us doing airdrops and this is why you see us now implementing this capability. Thank you. Let me go over to Nancy and then I'll go to the phone. How much will the mission cost and who will command it? Nancy, I don't have a cost estimate right now. Again, that's something we can come back to you on. This will be operated under the command and control of central command. Again, we'll have more details in terms of the specific C2. Who will be the commander on the ground rather than the combatant commander? I don't have that for you right now. But again, we'll keep you updated. You said 60 days. And I'm trying to understand, is that 60 days from when all these issues are sorted out or is it 60 days from now? And conservatively, Gaza needs 6.6 million meals a day. US provided 11,500, that's a gap. And I want to know if there's any sort of effort between now and when this peer is built to increase the amount of aid going into Israel through these kinds of military operations given that the need is imminent and that many cannot survive 60 days at this clip of. Sure. Yeah, I mean, to your point, I mean, it is dire urgent need, which is why you see the department contributing in this way as part of a broader overall US government effort and part of an international effort. As we highlighted in our readout last night, and Secretary Austin's call with Minister Galant, part of the discussion was looking at increasing the aid routes into Gaza. And so those conversations continue not only at the Department of Defense, but also the Department of State. And USAID, of course, is leading the charge on that front. We want to see the amount of aid going via land increase significantly. And we understand that that is the most viable way to get aid in. But in the meantime, as I highlighted, we're not going to wait around. We have the capability to conduct this via airdrops, and we're doing that. And I'm certain that every single bit of aid helps, and it's saving someone's life on the ground. This will be another capability that will allow us to work with the international community to get additional aid in. But if I'm hearing you correctly, there won't be a major change in the number of airdrops between now and when the pier would be completed. So I'm not going to get into the specifics on timing other than to say that we're going to continue to do those for as long as we're able to, again, recognizing that there are other avenues that will enable us to get more aid in more quickly. Let me go to the phone. I'll come back to the room here. Helene Cooper from New York Times. Hi, Phil already asked my question. Thank you. Thanks, Helene. Tom? General. Just to clarify a little bit more on this floating pier. So does this mean that there will be no food deliveries by sea at all for at least 60 days? That's to include the efforts led by the European Union. And so this whole multinational approach, the first time we'll see any aid going to the shore, will be in maximum 60 days. So, Tom, I can only speak for the US Department of Defense and this particular capability. As you highlight, I am aware that there's a European effort to add for free to them in terms of their timelines and their mechanisms by which they're looking to deliver aid. What I'm talking to is the specifics as it relates to the temporary pier that DOD has been tasked to support. The US is part of those international efforts. So on that front, again, I'd refer you to USAID State Department. I'm only going to talk to the DOD aspects of it right now, because I just don't have those details. Talk about the food coming in, like who's going to be providing that and putting that on to the ships, which will then go to the floating pier? Again, much more to follow, but as I understand it, this is part of an international effort. You saw a statement come out earlier today from multiple nations in terms of how this could work. And so we will be a part of that effort. Our role in this is going to be helping to facilitate the delivery of that aid into Gaza. Yes, sir? Just a thought about the deaths that have been reported. Are you saying that five people were killed just now by US airdrops or by someone else's airdrop? Look, I can't confirm those deaths. I've seen those press reports. What I'm telling you is that the reports that the US, that our airdrops were responsible for any deaths are false. We were not. We've seen pictures of plummeting packages to the ground. I mean, were those yours? They were not. On distribution, who will distribute the aid once it has gone off the courseway or the pier? Again, as I highlighted at the top, we are talking with allies and partners, the United Nations, and other NGOs involved in humanitarian assistance in terms of how that process will work and how that aid will be distributed. Have you received assurances from the Israelis that they will not fire upon Palestinians as they seek to retrieve the aid? Look, our focus is on delivering the aid. I'm not going to speak for the Israelis. Obviously, the focus is to make sure that we're going to get the aid. Thank you. Ro. Thank you, General. I want to ask you about Osprey Aircraft. So is the Pentagon confident that you can gain support from the Japanese public on the safety of play flights? Yeah, thanks, Ro. So the United States and Japan have been in close coordination throughout this entire process at multiple levels to include the specific timeline on the return of flight of Osprey operations in Japan. As I highlighted at the top, the safety of our service members, our allies, and the communities that they're operating in is of paramount importance to us. And so we have, again, been very grateful for the support of Japan through this process, as well as very transparent with Japan in terms of the steps that we're taking. Does the Secretary intend to speak with the Japanese Defense Minister to convey his commitment to safety before returning aircraft to flight? Yeah, thanks, Ro. I don't have any calls to read out at this time. I can tell you that US forces Japan, again, has been in frequent contact to communicate the departments and the Secretary's commitment to safety. Thank you very much. Courtney. Two, what's the name of this mission? Did you say already? Courtney, there's no name at this time. If that changes, we'll be sure to let you know. OK, and then just following on Rio's question, I wonder if is the Secretary confident in the Osprey aircraft that it's safe? I think the Secretary is confident in the steps that have been taken to return it to flight. And so, again, as I highlighted, safety is the most important thing. He recently had the opportunity to receive an update from the service secretaries and chiefs on the steps that are being taken and, again, is confident in their decision. So Secretary Austin believes the Osprey is a safe aircraft for military members to fly? Correct. Thank you. Hi, I'm Mallory Schell, born with USNI News. What kind of lift do you need to get these forces over there to execute this mission? And where do the CVs fit into this? So it will require a variety of sea lift. Again, we'll have much more information for you in the future. Part of this is working with military sea lift command to get these capabilities. But as I'm sure you can appreciate multiple vessels from across the world that will come together. In terms of the CVs, I don't have an answer for you on that. So again, if we have any updates, we'll be sure to provide. Just a quick follow-up, so is it possible that you'll have to reactivate some sea lift vessels to get forces over there? Is that where you're at? I'm not tracking that that's the case. I think we have what we need within the inventory, obviously, as a capability that we maintain and have demonstrated. And so they should be good to go. Where is this pier right now? Well, the unit is based out of joint base, Langley Eustis. So it's on the east coast of the United States. Correct. So nothing in your position? There are aspects that are already in the region. So again, it will be a coalescing of capabilities to accomplish this specific capability. Is this an only of its kind? Do we have just one of these pier systems, or do we have multiple? Yes, for OPSEC reasons, I'm not going to go into the specifics other than to say it's a unique capability. And let me go to Jared here. I just want to clarify and make sure I understood this correctly. Have you received any commitments from any other nations on the security or the military aspect of this in terms of supporting this effort, or is the military component of this strictly unilateral by the US? As I mentioned, we're working with partners in the region. I'm not going to speak for them at this point in time. I'll let them speak for themselves. But again, we'll be sure to keep you updated. We fully recognize that there's a lot of interest in terms of the concept and how it will be executed, specifically with security on the ground and aid distribution. But we're confident that we will be able to execute this mission again in a way that prevents us from putting boots on the ground in Gaza, while at the same time ensuring that we can deliver and distribute aid securely and safely. Real. Thanks so much. I have one follow-up on Ospreys. Would you please confirm if any DOD officials or military officials traveled to Japan prior to this announcement to explain the US plan to reason the flights of Ospreys? Yeah, so I'd refer you to NAVAR on the specifics in terms of the extensive effort that went into ensuring that when the decision was made to return to fly, that it was done safely. I can tell you broadly that, yes, there has been a number of officials, as I understand it, that have, again, communicated and traveled to Japan as part of this process to include the investigation that I referenced. Have any specific timeline to reason the flights of Ospreys deployed in Japan? Yeah, so that's really a question for the services. That's a decision that they will make, so I'd refer you to them. That's one clarification on your answer to Jared. I just want to be sure when you guys talk about there's no boots on the ground in Gaza. I mean, is this a semantics thing, and they're going to be civilian Americans moving this stuff up a shore? Look, as I understand it, Courtney, I mean, it literally no US forces on the ground. Put civilians too? I'm not tracking any US military or DOD personnel going on the ground in Gaza. Again, you drive the causeway into the beach. There'll be others on the receiving end to secure it, to provide the security, to ensure that aid is distributed. Our forces will stay either on the causeway or operating those vessels out at sea to include the floating pier. OK, Anne. One of the reasons why Israel is holding up the ground convoys filled with aid is that they say that they don't want the aid to go to Hamas. Does that risk remain with this maritime solution? Or is this somehow more acceptable to the Israelis? And will they be inspecting any of the aid from Cyprus? So, Anne, again, much more to provide in the days ahead. But as part of this concept, the consideration is the screening aspect of aid being loaded onto any vessel, which would be standard procedure. And so we'll be working through all of that. In terms of Hamas receiving aid, again, we're going to work with NGOs, the UN, and others when it comes to the aid distribution piece and do everything we can, of course, without being on the ground to ensure that aid doesn't go to Hamas. But I think the key point here is that if Hamas truly believes that the people, the Palestinian people, are suffering, then why would they want to take this aid and use it for themselves to support their terrorist organization? Or do they truly care about the Palestinian people and want this aid to get to them? So one would hope that this aid will get to the people that are most deserving and in need. Just to confirm that that risk remains the same, whether these aid convoys come through via ship or ground. Well, it's a combat zone, right? And you've got an active combat operations going on with Hamas in the area. I mean, to your point, we've seen reports in the past about Hamas taking aid, as well as criminal elements that are attempting to hoard. But this mission is about getting aid to Gaza and then working with others for the delivery and distribution. Do you anticipate that Hamas will try to fire on the operation in the crossway? Look, I mean, that's certainly a risk, again. But if Hamas truly does care about the Palestinian people, then, again, one would hope that this international mission to deliver aid to people who need it would be able to happen unhindered. Tony? Aid, I didn't need to ask you. Aid to Israel, a precision-guided munitions. This came up last week at the hearing. Rokhan, the congressman from California, threw out a figure of the 21,000 PGMs the US has provided Israel. I asked his office where he'd get that, and he came back with a news story. But can you get a tally of some kind of rough tally of how many PGMs we've provided Israel since October 7? This comes up periodically. Lawmakers express outrage, but it's not hard data. I mean, I'm asking you five months into this if you can get a broad figure. Yeah, thanks, Tony. I'm not able to provide a figure to you right now. I'll take it as a question. Thanks. I'll take it. I'll take the question. I say this, Don, this is probably going to sound dumb. But when Kabul fell, the US and the Taliban reached an agreement to provide security for HKIA, although imperfect. Is it possible that one of the partners in this operation to provide security could be Hamas? No. Yeah, I mean, Hamas is a recognized terrorist group, and the United States is not going to work with Hamas to provide security. Constantine. Thanks again, Pat. So in terms of the ships involved in this operation, you mentioned working with military C-Lift command. Will the US Navy and US Navy destroyers, cruisers play a role in this operation at all? So for this specific capability, Constantine, the answer is no, right? This is not a combat capability. This is essentially a bridging capability, so to speak, that enables the delivery of humanitarian assistance in this case. So I'll just leave it there. Take a few more. Let me go to Jared. But one more. In terms of potential security partners on the ground, are we looking, is the United States looking to work with elements on the ground that the Israelis have sought to work with in the past contracting local businessmen? Yeah, so I'm going to kind of keep it open-ended right now. Jared, Ken, because I don't want to give you bad information. Again, we're going to work with multiple, look to work with partners in the region to include Israel. But again, we'll have more details on that for you in the future. Sir? Thank you, Pat. Building such a port is sometimes, I mean, Sikastitis is a long period. Does that mean you don't expect a new solution to the Gaza conflict, or an agreement is far away? Well, I think we can all agree that there's a significant need within Gaza for humanitarian assistance. As you've heard the White House say, they hope that a temporary ceasefire can be reached soon. Of course, that would help enable the conditions for aid delivery. But regardless, there are people who need aid in Gaza, and that's probably not going to change anytime soon. And so this capability will contribute to that effort. Can you go to Mike? Pat, the Navy has extensive amphibious capabilities, you know. It has LCACs that could drive right on the beach immediately. The reason the administration is going with this pretty rather complicated plan rather than something like that, like the amphibious movement, just because it doesn't want to have the picture of an American standing 10 feet off the water line in Gaza? Yeah, I mean, the big difference, you know, you're talking about like an LCAT, right? An LCAT drives on to the beach, and then it has to back up. It'd be like taking an individual pickup truck to the beach every day with some humanitarian assistance. So from a logistics standpoint, A, that's just not feasible. And what this essentially does is create a logistics distribution system that enables you to distribute, as I mentioned in my topper, upwards of 2 million meals, and do it in a way that you can wash, rinse, repeat. And the fact that you can get commercial vessels to come up to the floating pier and transload, and then so it's creating a system. It's a temporary system, but it's a mechanism by which we can start to rapidly get additional aid in a way that individual ships, to the point that was made earlier. The airdrops are important, and they're providing key aid to people right now. But we need to get more aid in. And so this will be part of a broader effort to make that happen. Is there a time limit for how long this is going to be? I can't imagine. I mean, again, this is going to be temporary. I'm not going to bound it right now. Our focus right now is on executing this mission and enabling aid to get in. But it's not intended to be a permanent facility, so to speak. And again, we're going to continue to look at options for, as we highlighted and as the president highlighted, to ensure that aid can get in via maritime route. And I understand other countries are looking at that as well. How long it will take to get from the east coast to this position? How long does it take to sail there? I don't have an answer for that. Jennifer, again, what we anticipate is that from today, 60 days from now, this will be up and operating. We'll screen the drivers and the trucks coming on to the pier. Again, I don't have those details right now, but we'll keep you updated on that front. Let me go back to David and then Louie. So all of those ships there and the causeway are now in Virginia? I do not know the answer to that, David. I can tell you that, again, they're going to aggregate and come together to implement this capability. What do you expect them to start deploying from Virginia? I mean, we're moving out now to finalize the planning and execute this mission, as I highlighted. This is going to involve a number of units, many of whom are being notified about a prepared deploy. You do these things in phases. And so I'm not going to have the specifics to provide today in terms of individual ship movements and timelines, nor would we put that out. We never talk about our ship timelines and when they're moving and where they're moving, other than to say, within 60 days, this capability will be up and running. Louie. When you mentioned it's a million meals a day, how many trucks is that equivalent to? And is that foreseen as being 24-hour operations or is it just during daylight hours for safety reasons? Yeah, I mean, this capability, obviously, can be up and running 24 hours. Again, we'll work with our partners in terms of the aid distribution aspect in the timeline. So, again, we'll have more to follow on that. You've had a lot of questions and you're taking a lot of them related to this. Can we kind of agree on a format in terms of how these will be answered? Can we get a daily summary? Is there going to be something in another briefing given how important this mission is and when the president announced? Yeah, so part of the effort is today, giving you additional insight into how this system will work, certainly in the days ahead, as we get more information, we'll provide that. We understand, again, the great interest on this. And so as we get new information and as we have answers to your question, we'll provide this. Can I ask that it be done much as during the secretary's hospitalization that we were getting regular updates, given the importance of the mission? Again, we will give you as much information as we can, recognizing the fact that there's going to be a lot of details in terms of the planning and the execution. And yeah, again, I understand the great interest. And we will keep you updated on that for a few more. Yes, sir? Yesterday, General Corrella during his hearing in the Senate, he said recently when he visited Rafa border, he found out there is 2,500 trucks loaded with aid are waiting to go inside Gaza. So first of all, how much you feel that it make difference if these trucks getting inside Gaza? And did Secretary Austin raise this issue, Rafa border, with his Israeli counterpart during his calls yesterday? Yeah, I mean, it would obviously make a huge difference if those trucks could get into Gaza. And this is why you see State Department and others working with officials in the region to try to facilitate that process. And as I highlighted earlier, Secretary Austin did talk with his counterpart about the importance of opening up these routes and expanding the number of routes to ensure that aid could get into Gaza. I'll leave it at that a couple more. Yes, ma'am?  OK, so on the UAP report, the Pentagon concluded that there is no evidence of UAPs being off-route technology. But it also said the government set up programs to reverse engineer such technology. Why did the government plan to study off-route technology if it says it doesn't have any proof? Yeah, so as you highlight, no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting represented extraterrestrial activity that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology or that any information was illegally or inappropriately withheld from Congress and alleged hidden UAP reverse engineering programs either do not exist or were misidentified authentic national security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial activity or technology exploitation. So what we found is that claims of hidden programs are largely the result of circular reporting by a small group repeating what they heard from others. And that many people have sincerely misinterpreted real events or mistaken sensitive US programs as UAP or being extraterrestrial exploitation. And this report is volume one. Should we be expecting more? Correct. Let's see here. There is another volume. Let me just look at my notes here real quick. Bear with me. Let me take that question for you. I'll come back to you. Yes, sir. It depends if you have an assessment of how long Israel could continue its assault on Gaza if there were no more US military aid shipments delivered to the country. Say that again. Could how long could Israel continue its assault on Gaza without more shipments of military aid from the US? Yeah, I'm not going to get into Israel's readiness. I mean, I think that's a question for them to talk about. Our focus, as we've said from the very beginning, is supporting Israel's inherent right to defend itself. And again, to belabor the point, they were attacked by Hamas on October 7th. They are still under threat of terrorist attack by Hamas, an organization that has said their stated express purposes to eliminate Israel as a country. And so we're going to continue to support Israel on that front. But again, I'm not going to get into their readiness. You were trying to convince a wavering congressman about sending more money and aid to Israel to continue the assault on Gaza. Would you have a tell me, say, look, you have to do this now. Otherwise Israel won't be able to defend itself anymore. Would that be a timeframe? Would you have one to give them? Again, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals. All right, thanks very much, everybody. Appreciate it.