Let me also say thanks very much to the sponsors of today's event, which is being held under the Rubik of the Ground Forces Dialogue, but is broader than that today. BAE and Northrop Grumman have both been very generous in their support of the program and have allowed us to do a lot of different things that both directly and indirectly affect ground forces. So we're very thankful for their support. And finally, one other little CSIS admin note, as you probably got those cool flyers when you came in about how we're moving to our new building. So in a couple of weeks, if you come here, I don't know what you'll find, but it won't be us. So if you want to keep attending CSIS events, and we hope that you will, we hope you'll do that in our new space, 1616 Rhode Island, Northwest. So we hope to see you there. So with that, let me kick it off. We're very honored today to have the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy. Sharon Burke and her colleague on the Joint Staff, Lieutenant General Bob Rark, and to talk with us about the whole plethora of issues around operational energy and logistics challenges and how to translate the activities that really Secretary Burke has been spearheading as the first Assistant Secretary for this issue set over the last four years in her position and where that goes from here. So you have their bios in your handout, but let me just say one of the pretty unique things about Secretary Burke is she's had a foot in three different parts of the government that don't necessarily communicate all that well or all that effectively at very senior levels, obviously in the Defense Department, but also in the State Department and in the Office of Technology Assessment, which is a somewhat little known, but very important office as well. And so I think she brings both a sort of a foreign policy angle, a technical angle, and energy markets and, again, technology angle to this whole discussion that's pretty unique. General Rark has spent his life in managing the stuff that really matters in everything that all of us do logistics. So he's recently come up here, we were talking earlier about how he fixed everything when he was at CENTCOM so that he could focus on other areas of the world when he got up to the Joint Staff, but had to do that in some other fairly challenging locations around the globe, has held command at multiple levels, and I think, again, well positioned to talk to us today about what the Joint Staff is trying to do to address the energy challenges and the logistics challenges that they face. So with that, I think we're going to start with Secretary Burke and then General Rark and then we'll try to have a conversation with all of you. So again, thanks for coming. Well, thank you very much, Marin, and I really appreciate, you know, some long before I was in this job, I appreciated the convening power of CSIS, but also your personal touch on this is really helpful and grateful to you for doing this. And of course, very honored to be here with my colleague, who I think you were one of the first people that I met with in this job. You were in a very different role at the time, but I certainly, for me, it was great to know that you as a great leader for the Marine Corps, for the warfighters in CENTCOM, and now for the Joint Force, and just a great public servant all around. So it's a real pleasure to be here with you today, especially you're so new in the seat, but I know that you know a lot about this issue. So I'm just going to give you a 10-minute overview of energy and defense and the future. And then I let Bob talk for 10 minutes about, I believe he's going to go into more specifics about defense priorities and capabilities, but I'll let him speak for himself. And then I know we've got a range of people here today from defense companies, energy companies, and think tanks and all over the place. So I think for us, we'll really look forward to the dialogue as much as anything else. So I want to talk about the two ways that we are in the department looking at the link between energy and defense in the next 10 years. And first is in a global sense, and energy as a geopolitical issue, and how that's changing. What it means for the defense mission. And then secondly, how energy supports the defense mission and how that's changing. Because both of those are very important for us to understand. And I'm just going to give a few thoughts on both of that. And it's a good time to have this kind of conversation, because of course I don't think it's lost on anybody here that the department is right now in the middle of its most important strategy exercise with the Quadrennial Defense Review. So understanding new influences and our old influences and what they mean in the new situation, it's a good time to be having this kind of conversation and as well as we're going through a lot of institutional change. So I welcome that opportunity. Now I wanted to start though by saying that as we look at the future, you have to do that by looking at the lessons learned over the last 12 years.  And it's hard for me to read this, and I know it's harder for Bob and others who've had to live it, but it's an illustration of that you stand where you sit. And this is a painful article that was in Vanity Fair in December 2011, although when I went to print it I found that the most popular article in Vanity Fair right now that's being forwarded is Kate Middleton's Post-Baby Routines, Musely Bars, Alameda Smoothies, and Nanny List's Time with George. So if you want to talk about that, maybe we can just talk about that instead. That's our next event. Right. This is a tough article by Mark Bowden about a combat outpost in Afghanistan that was overrun, and it's a really an article about accountability, but because I do energy in military operations, that's not the part of it that got my attention. So that's the part of it I want to read to you. They're talking about this base where Task Force Rock was, and they are saying, he writes, a single partially paved road wound south toward Camp Blessing. The headquarters for Task Force Rock, Second Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, which is important because later on maybe we can talk about some other things we've done. Subsequent to this with the 173rd. The battalion HQ was just five miles away in the lens of a drone, but on the ground it was a perilous journey of about an hour. Perilous because ambushes and IEDs were common, skipping ahead. We're talking about a guy that had just arrived, Captain Matthew Meyer, he had only arrived the day before, and he'd sketched out a basic plan for the combat outpost. So he sketched it out, and he left the supervision of the construction to First Lieutenant Jonathan Brostrom. After consultations with Meyer and the battalion commander, Brostrom had drawn up detailed maps of the new outpost on whatever scraps of paper he could find so that he could show his men sectors of fire for all of the vehicles, the placement of the Claymore mines, and the location of fighting positions, the latrine, and everything else. A small force of Afghan contractors with heavy equipment were to handle most of the construction, but they'd been delayed, awaiting the completion of a road clearing mission. In their interim, the platoon itself had begun building the outpost's preliminary defenses, toiling in 100 degree heat with limited water and resources, hacking away at the baked stubborn soil. They had to take the Heskos down to half of their height because they had to figure out how to fill them, Heskos being the barriers that you build around a perimeter of a combat outpost. All the fighting positions were makeshift. The command post was a sunken space about two feet deep, and I'm skipping around. Lacking enough men for both constructions is the key part. Lacking enough men for both construction and patrols, Brostrom had chosen to concentrate on construction. The platoon had conducted a perfunctory patrol to scout the immediate vicinity, but that was it. And the platoon had yet to establish a useful observation post. So you can get what happened. This is the opportunity cost of not thinking about how we resource operations with energy, because I can assure you that was part of the problem here, as these guys were on scraps of paper trying to figure out what their contingency base should look like. They probably had generators that were drastically oversized for the loads. They probably had one on every single load, which meant they were burning it out. They were burning through fuel. These roads were hard to access, and anybody that had to bring them that fuel was putting their lives at risk. Or if they were coming by helicopter, there was a very hot zone. It meant that anybody in the helicopter, these guys got attacked the next day with RPGs and other kinds of fire. You can hit a helicopter, even the Taliban can do that. So you get a picture right away of if we don't manage our resources as a platform or as a warfighting input. These are the people that pay the price. And this is not something that we necessarily capture in our statistics. It's hard to get at what the cost of this kind of problem is. So I'm not going to dwell on the lessons learned more than I think you get the point. That we have to see energy. We have to see the resources as inputs to warfighting capability, and take it seriously and not just assume that we'll have what we need, when we need it, where we need it, in a reliable, affordable way. And that's the central lesson learned that we're carrying forward. And you think about what this means in Afghanistan is one more thing on the lessons learned. We're the most sophisticated, capable fighting force in the world. And I have no doubt whatsoever that we can protect movements of fuel anywhere, but that there is an opportunity cost. And sometimes it looks like that. And so if there's something we can do to lower the risk and increase the capability at the pointy edge, at the tactical edge, then we should. It's our responsibility to do that. You know, we're putting, you know, it varies anywhere from 20 to 50 million gallons of fuel on the road every day in Afghanistan. And these are the conditions. These are not everywhere, but in a lot of places. And if we can take some of that risk out and make it more capable, that's what we have to do. Well, so if you take that forward going into the future, we're looking at a future threat environment where it's not just suicide bombers or IEDs that can target your combat forces and of course your supply lines, of course.  If you can get them, they're in play. And in distributed operations, they're in play. So it's not just going to be suicide bombers and homemade weapons, but it's also going to be precision weapons, precision guided munitions from mines to RPGs, to missiles, everything. So but also computer viruses, electronic warfare. We're going to face adversaries who are able to target us, both state and non-state. It's going to be a threat. It's also going to be a threat to our access, which is of course what the department is calling anti-access area denial, the ability to control where we go and keep us out in addition to actual war fighting. So that's how it looked in Afghanistan. That's how it looks going forward. This is about being able to project and sustain force for the global mission. And now let's see going forward what I actually said I was going to talk about the global energy picture and how it shapes the defense mission and then how energy actually supports the defense mission. Well, first that global energy picture is getting a lot more complicated in ways that are fascinating. So even as mature economies increase efficiency, switch fuels and reduce their petroleum demand, the thirst for energy and specifically for oil and natural gas has grown all over the world. And a lot of that growth is going to be in non-OECD countries. In total energy demand, it's China, India and the Middle East that are going to account for 60 percent of the increase in specifically for oil demand for oil over the next 20 years. That's going to, according to IEA, require some $37 trillion in new investment.  And you know, the good thing there is that no one consumes energy for its own sake. You consume energy for the services it provides and that means that this is all good news. It means that we're going to see countries develop. We're going to see people coming out of poverty. It's all good news. But it also means that the global energy landscape is changing quite a bit. And I think, you know, the country that's getting the most attention for redrawing the lines in this is, of course, the United States. We're the ones that are bucking the trend of more demand and less supply. And I think, you know, all the new production coming online in the United States was really unimaginable for a lot of people a decade ago. And I'm sure there are people here who knew that it was going to happen and you can take us all out to lunch. So I did not see it coming myself. But, you know, the understanding before was that our production peaked in 1970 and has been declining ever since, that our imports were increasing. And of course, you know, as recently as maybe five years ago, our imports hit 60%. That picture is just gone. Where I think the latest numbers from the Energy Information Administration is we're at 36% imports. So domestic oil and gas production, the increase, us as a major producer for these hydrocarbons is just a different picture altogether. I mean, in natural gas, the biggest problem at the moment is low prices, which, you know, go figure. Now, so does it matter? And is it good news? Is it bad news? Of course, it's good news. People are justifiably excited about it, about the implications for the U.S. economy and the manufacturing sector, about jobs coming home, about industry coming home or growing, about our balance of payments. I mean, just the trade deficit for oil alone, I think about five years ago, was about $42 billion. Give or take half a billion. You know, that's DOD speak. It's $17 billion today. I mean, that's a meaningful change for our economy, for our economic security. So this does mean something, and it is good. But there's an interesting question to ponder, which is, you know, so that's good. That's all well and good. But does it matter beyond that, from a national security point of view? And the answer is no, it doesn't. And yes, it does. So, and we don't know as part of it. So why doesn't it matter? I think there's a real danger that all the enthusiasm for the new production will mask for the public and for a lot of policymakers that even as we move towards self-sufficiency here in North America, we're still going to be part of a global energy market. I mean, we're talking about a market of 90 million barrels a day, consumed worldwide, and the trend is up, up, up. Not here, but everywhere else. So the world supply and demand trends, which are going to be driven by all of that about that global supply and that global growing demand, is going to continue to shape our own prosperity here at home. And again, I think that gets a little bit masked in what's happening in energy markets here at home. And there's every reason to believe that we're going to still see volatility in the markets and especially in the global oil market. So it does matter, so it doesn't matter in that sense. We're still going to see some of the same kinds of things we've always seen, maybe lower amplitude. Who knows? We'll see as that unfolds. But at the same time, I think it matters how these trends may affect geopolitics and regional stability. And I think we at the Department of Defense are still looking at how all these factors are going to come together and what it means. So it's a complicated world out there and certainly in energy security terms, that's true. You're hearing things like that Saudis might become net importers of oil by 2030 and of course Iran repeatedly threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz. Energy flash points in a number of places like the South China Sea, changes in the Arctic and what that means for global relationships. But just some new considerations taking place too that we need to understand better and take into account is the changing relationships between energy producers and energy consumers. So consider that the U.S. is no longer the largest energy consumer and is depending on who you talk to is no longer the largest oil consumer. China is, of course. They're the largest customer in the world and the largest consumer. And what does that mean for producer-consumer relations? And what does that mean for geopolitics? It's a good question. Russia is starting to look east and there's a producer-consumer relationship there along with a lot of defense sales, not necessarily to each other but to others. And the confluence of that and what that means is a very interesting question. You know, well, that's good enough on that. But also the way that these changing dynamics are changing stability. So that so-called social price of oil which is a lot of, we are one of the few countries in the world, maybe one of two, that has private ownership of the mineral rights. So everybody else that goes to the state, right? And the state uses oil revenues and natural gas revenues to support all kinds of social programs. In a lot of countries, that means they need a certain price to be able to support all those commitments. What happens when the price dips below there? What if it stays below? And, you know, you'll see a lot of different calculations on what various countries need the price to be. We may find out what they actually need it to be. And think about the different ways that this refracts through security. So you've got a situation in Libya right now where Libya's ability to stabilize is very much dependent on their ability to have oil revenue. But they need to stabilize in order to get oil revenue. That's going to be a tough one. That's not the only place we're going to see that. We're going to see that in Egypt. Someday you'll see that in Syria. These are not big global producers, but the energy they produce is essential for their own stability. I think you should keep your eye on Venezuela on that one for sure. And that one has got significance for the global markets. These things are changing. Mexico, I think, is a real bright spot there. You see, this is a nation that has some changes in place as a producer. And again, this reinforces that North American self-sufficiency is going to be an interesting dynamic in this. But also, you know, the issues of access to the global commons and who's most invested in that. If we're not buying directly from the Persian Gulf, say, but the Chinese certainly are, I think about 74% of the offtake from there right now is going to Asian countries. So that's an interesting question. How does that all play out? Lots of trends here that we need to take into account, which is now just make a quick move over to that's a policy issue and an influence on the defense mission that we need to understand and that we engage in with the interagency. But the other way that we engage in these discussions is unique, which we are a big consumer. So we're closer to one of those nations that has to look at the relationship between energy and what we need to be able to do as a consumer. In fact, we consume more than about two-thirds of the nations on Earth. So it's an apt, potentially apt comparison. So just as a country would be concerned about reliability and affordability of supplies, so are we. So what does that mean? Well, if you look at the defense mission right now, and again, global presence, global projection, we need the ability to disperse, maneuver, and operate over very long distances, conduct operations in remote places and a broad range of kinds of operations. That means we need to reduce our dependence on our supply lines. We need a lighter supply line to be able to support that kind of a defense mission. We need to, what that means also, I think in positive constructive terms in the defense world is we need more range. We need more endurance. We need resilience. We need more loiter time, less signature, all of those things. And those can all tie back to some degree to how we use energy. And again, you know, coming back to the lessons of the last 12 years, we're taking them on board, but so is the rest of the world. And any potential adversaries out there have certainly seen that asymmetric or anti-access approaches is one way to deal with the United States. So we have to be ready for that, too. And how energy affects our ability to be ready for that, our costs, our capabilities, our risks. So let me tell you a little bit more about what we're doing to deal with that. By, we are, I mean, essentially, this means we have a challenge. We have an energy challenge for our force and deploying our force, but we also have an opportunity. We can operate that force more efficiently. We can incorporate energy and sustainment considerations into our plans and our operations and get to a more lethal, agile, adaptable, effective combat force, reduce the risks and the costs in a time of declining budgets. Because if you do this right, you get more capability, you also get less cost. So we're investing in innovations that change our energy posture and improve it. Let me tell you a little bit more about some of the kinds of things we're doing. And, again, it's so important for me to have my joint staff colleague here because there are many ways where the joint staff and the J-4 has to lead the way if we're going to make this stick for military forces. And so just a couple of things that we're doing, together with Lieutenant General Roark and his predecessor, we've established a governance body, a new governance body within the department to manage operational energy issues because we didn't before. It was an assumption. Now we do. We manage it. The joint staff oversees the application of a key performance parameter for energy and they are enforcing it in the requirements process. I think you're going to say more about that. We have implemented changes in the guidance for the analysis of alternatives in the development of defense programs to show how differences in energy performance and energy flexibility give you more capability. When it comes to different kinds of energy and the way they support the mission, last year I signed out a policy for streamlining the qualification, certification, and procurement of alternative fuels. And as a department, we're focused on the goal of ensuring operational readiness, improving battle space effectiveness and increasing flexibility in military operations and the role of fuels and alternatives in doing that. The deputy secretary has taken a very particular interest in this and has convened a couple of his management action groups to focus on energy and put out interim guidance for how we're going to manage this issue as a department. And there is also an instruction, a DOD instruction, which will put formal lasting management infrastructure in place for how the department looks at energy. That's in process right now and will also guide, I believe, how the department as we are looking at institutional changes looks at energy. And then also my office oversees how the department's investing in innovation in this space and specifically I do have an operational energy capability fund. And to date, we've really focused on, you know, this is a bridge between programs of record and where we need to fix things like that contingency base. And so we've used that money to incentivize investments in the services and make sure they're getting into programs of record so that they'll permanent institutional advantages and then we use our budget certification authority to make sure it's getting in there to be a check on the back end. So I think that would be a good place for me to stop and let you take it over and then General Ruck and then get into the Q&A with the group. Thanks ma'am, I certainly appreciate that. I'm, if I have that deer and a headlight stare, just realize I came out of 25 months at Central Command and I was in the spin cycle down there for quite a bit so I'm discovering on the joint staff I have a little bit of time to think. So it's good to be here and read too. But ma'am, I also want to thank you for the generosity of you provided us a operational energy contractor retired Army Colonel who is quite in addition to the CENTCOM J-4 staff the last couple of years and I really needed that just to get the right focus on that and it really was good seeing the action and the accomplishments in Afghanistan. In a previous job where I met Assistant Secretary Burke a couple of years ago, I had responsibility for the Marine Corps facilities and installations energy and yes, the Marine Corps does have, has several pretty darn good installation initiatives for renewables, things like wind turbines, solar panels, a fleet of energy efficient vehicles, co-gen plants and even a landfill gas project. However, I quickly learned a couple of years ago this wasn't what sold in Congress. Notably with the staff members we briefed before our testimonies with the congressional committees. What the Congress was interested in was the operational energy piece. This is what sold them in terms of funding and support from what I could tell. Now that was two years ago. Directly supporting the soldier, sailor, marine, airman on the ground in either Iraq or Afghanistan to reduce their reliance on energy, notably fossil fuels and increase their survivability is what drew headlines. The Army Marine Corps has and has continued to have some very excellent small unit and base camp examples in this regard that do well today even in Afghanistan. In terms of operational effectiveness and clearly this is just common sense to any of us in here. I don't think any commander would ever compromise effectiveness in accomplishing his or her mission and taking care of his men and women on the battlefield. There's no, there's no equation for success in a conflict but years in military schools always noted the time tested ingredients and fundamentals for success in a conflict likely include overwhelming maneuver, tempo, the ability to outthink, out decide and out act before your opponent can to concentrate forces with decisive power at critical points in time and then redeploy for a variety of other missions. These are components that today's operational energy initiatives must work with. As far as the future, the U.S. military is transitioning from over a decade of war to a world that appears to be trending possibly towards greater stability overall but with things like the A2AD concepts and destructive technologies out there that can be acquired pretty easily by a wide range of actors. These technologies are not necessarily prohibitively expensive and they may not cost our enemies a lot in terms of dedicated personnel, training, material and facilities and they could be devastating to anyone. As a result, the world is potentially more dangerous than ever before. A concept for dealing with this new security environment is evolving to defend against a very wide range of security challenges from those in both space and cyberspace, from anti-access and aerial denial capabilities that you learned about. And this concept is called global integrated operations. So where I'm going with this thing is that part of Joint Forces 2020 is to be able to conduct something called global integrated operations. And it means that basically we can aggregate forces, we can deploy, we can employ and we can redeploy and then we can do it all over again. Now, the force size could be small, it could be small to large. As a logistician, when you're talking about forming, deploying, employing, redeploying and doing that possibly in smaller size units on a wide variety of geography, that concerns me and that should concern everybody that works with operational energy. The hardest units I've ever had to support in the past are the little isolated ones that aren't self-sufficient, that are out on their own on the wings on the flanks. That is very tough to do. So we have to be thinking about that and I know the commanders will think about that in their plans. To me, the coming fiscal austerity, the future points to a smaller, more capable force. I've recently read the phrase in some of the Joint Doctrine, we need to get smaller to get stronger and I think it's a bullseye. We just won't be able to afford all the necessary capabilities plus those we're bringing in between now and 2020 for today's larger force construct. So I think it's going to be not only smaller and stronger but much more capable. I think all the services, all the combatant commands want more of the operational efficiency on the battlefield. Less energy requirement is less risk to the mission which is measured and live saved. I think the younger service men and women get operational energy intuitively. It's the older ones, the folks that are my age, perhaps the older contractors that may have a harder challenge.   I led something called Logistics Modernization Years ago and I learned a lot about that. There are some very good stories about a Marine Infantry Battalion, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines who literally embraced operational energy initiatives in Afghanistan. 3-5 had the highest combat casualty rate of any unit at that time and to date in the Marine Corps and viewed anything that unleashed their tether to fuel and energy and the large logistics tail that resupplied them as something that increased their survivability. Their use of solar power and renewables, operating from small tactical patrol bases, helped provide the benefits and combat and that's documented. For my end in the J-4C just a couple of weeks here, the approach to December 14 and redeployment from Afghanistan and the coming fiscal austerity does have me thinking about the future of logistics. My concern is a very possible and likely target for budget cuts is logistics. Especially if manpower and health care costs are not touched. Another concern is that much of the joint logistics capability for ground combat operations is in the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard up to 85% by most accounts. That means it's challenging to activate and deploy and employ reserve water production, fuel distribution and inland distribution trucking capability within a short timeframe and I'm talking about 60 days for example. That makes aggregating, deploying, employing and redeploying challenging. Last I checked, we relied on contractors to do the line haul from door to door in support of Afghanistan and how much capability do we have in the military and is it enough and how do we fill the gaps in that capability? How do we reduce the tether to fossil fuels? That's enough for me. Thank you both very much for that wide-ranging tableau you've painted. I think it gives us lots and lots of opportunity to have a good conversation. So if people could walk around and pick up cards, I'm going to exercise the chairs prerogative and pose a couple questions first. Secretary Burke, I wanted to ask you a sort of an inside baseball kind of question about how your office is situated and some of the dynamics that General Rourke talked about and what that means for an evolving conversation. So you are part of acquisition technology and logistics. The whole front part of your conversation was essentially about broader defense policy issues that are typically not directly the purview of AT&L. And General Rourke, I think rightly pointed out that Congress tends to be supportive of most supportive of these operational energy directly tactically applicable to some kinds of initiatives. So if the opportunity for those kinds of initiatives is going down or what we hope it will go down, how do you position yourself, both of you, to influence that broader conversation about the value of some of the installation things that General Rourke has managed before and I think continues to have some hand in that you're clearly interested in but also the policy questions. How does that, how does your office handle that institutional shift and keep momentum? Cookies, cake, brides, no. Although I would say proselytizing has been a lot of our mission and making sure that we can document what the challenge here is and then show it to senior commanders. But one of the big challenges for the office from the beginning certainly we focused on fielding for Afghanistan and rapid fielding and Bob's been a great partner in that and making improvements in how we are actually operating. But at the same time we were very much aimed at the future force development from the very beginning and getting into how the department grows the force. And so being in acquisition technology and logistics was a very helpful place to be for that because it is where for the office of the secretary of defense some of those longer term issues are being chewed up and decided and overseen. So being part of those communities means that we get to play a part in the joint staff's requirements definition and we get to play a part formally on the defense acquisition board. We've been playing in title 10 service military department war games and bringing energy in as a consideration to those games. We're playing a part in how acquisition technology and logistics advises the quadranial defense review and the defense strategic guidance and the classified guidance that comes off of that. So in those longer term issues it's been extremely helpful and also for innovation and the acting head of the research and engineering department right now is a very good partner for us and we work with him very closely about the best ways to promote innovation in this area. And I think so being an AT&L has been very helpful. As Bob mentioned also I have put staff in a couple of the combatant commands and spent a lot of time working with them because of course their demand signal for capability their ability to incorporate energy as either a vulnerability or an advantage into their plans and into their exercises is a very important element. So pretty much by a full institutional engagement in all the key places where these kinds of decisions are being made we've either had a formal authority or interaction or have certainly engaged extensively so that we've been targeting the future force development from the very beginning. I'm sorry did you want to add to that? Sure I think that actually I think there is a tie-in with the installation side I think a lot of the good initiatives that we take into the operational world forward come from some sort of science and technology that breaks into the installation piece the renewables just bring something to the mind and I also think that something that we can do on the joint staff to influence some of the key performance parameters is just start rethinking some of the newer initiatives that are coming in newer vehicles like the joint light tactical vehicle or the ground combat vehicle or the replacement to the Bradley and things like that I think instead of just looking at it as one weapon system or one communication system or one piece of medical equipment at a time we really have to look at the entire in the logistics world I'd call it the supply chain because everybody's always out there trying to maximize the performance in their part of the supply chain let's say at the wholesaler level at the expense and they don't realize it at the expense of someone else and so I have this happen all the time when I was at SENTCOM and somebody has a better way to get food in the country and yet the people that have to fly and say wait a minute that's going to cost us three times the amount da da da da da so I think you have to look at the entire effect on fuel on fossil fuels on energy the entire range of supply quite frankly there are some things out there that that may appear that they use more fuel let's say KMAX an unmanned aerial vehicle it's an unmanned aerial helicopter a logging helicopter used in an RC Southwest and you may look at that and that's shuttling supplies unmanned by the way incredible distances in Helmand Province you may look oh that's just you know well it's using a lot of fuel well maybe it's not if you take it all the way back in the supply chain and then of course it's keeping convoys off the road and so I used to say in maintenance that we have more people tracking maintenance than actually doing maintenance now I didn't really mean that but in the field of energy I think we just need to add that training piece to our folks that work with fuels we have a lot of people working with fuels and with fossil fuels and tracking it moving it accounting for it every day and I think we just all we have to do is infuse with them training on how to think about it differently because they'll force us to think about it differently then I can go in and I say hey this concept of operations isn't necessarily a bad one look at what the whole supply chain is going to look like it's going to be better for fuel less fuel in the future so if I heard you correctly you're saying all you have to do is institute a culture change that's it large, old and tradition based that's going to go smoothly I'm sure what are you going to do next year? let me ask you General Worker a question about some of the things that you think are the most successful in the operational energy space and then if you could talk a little bit about the different kinds of initiatives that the different co-coms are pursuing like what is are there regional differences that matter in this space? obviously that's a important question I think the co-coms are thanks to Miss Burke and her visits and providing us with feet on the ground forward and lots of food and Marine will do anything for a good donut so let me but I think having people on board to force us to think about it is absolutely imperative we've already got for example on a typical co-com staff you've got environmental engineers that tell you about how important it is to get rid of burn pits and things like that the same thing with operational energy you have to push those initiatives forward she's also pushed experts out into Afghanistan so we have some we have some excellent successes out there beyond just the renewable energy for recharging communication batteries and lights and running command posts you have them actually if I recall right in Bodrum I think there's about 350 set camps that are built all about using more operational efficient tents camps messing showers things like that and it works and it's and it's it's the right thing to do because over the years well over the years our living standards for some reason in Iraq and Afghanistan once we got onto the forward operating bases and the maneuver phases were over they just kind of crept it was kind of like a mission creep but it the standards went up and we lived really well that the case case in point is that possibly our expeditionary housing sets weren't as energy efficient that they could be and I'm talking about our force provider and our harvest bear type sets the two of the services have so I think that's a great target and what happened we just took some good ideas from the commercial world and we implemented them the army implemented them and did a fine job same thing with some of their generators they have a new generator that you can take out a mobile generator that uses about 25% of the power or 25% savings on the power and when you get when you see the the base camps you know there's a lot of a lot of air conditioners and generators out there and it's a significant savings so I think that the other technology that comes to comes to mind is micro grids and the fact that and I have to be careful with some of these things they work really well when I was a base commander in Iraq of 8,000 people the most scary operation was not defending the base or or doing those ancillary things associated with security it was watching someone who I couldn't even talk to contractors from a you know different part of the world didn't speak English completely rewire an 8,000 person base camp and set up new generators that was scary that got my hair on fire not literally but actually but I think that that's that's all related there we're we're growing in leaps and bounds and what we can do we have to be a little cautious that some of these technologies that come in like micro micro grids and things like that we'll need some specially trained people and that'll that'll be a cause somewhere in our in our training pipeline but all right Scott Mann is going to help us with questions along with Andrew metric so Scott go ahead so I've got a number of questions here that deal with with natural gas but I want to start a little bit broader and look at the innovations that you see talk talk about innovation innovations you see in the next five to ten years that you think will be the most influential most important and then what role do you see for natural gas and and some of the platforms naval ships for example installations and then sort of on the innovation piece one example that's been put forward well as advanced batteries so so where will those where will those fall in yeah you know one thing that we've really tried to do that the joint staff has been very helpful on is is not so much put the technology as the you know the cart in front of the horse in that I don't want to fall in love with any given end-use or supplied technology or resource I wanted to be driven by what we have to do so the question is how do we incorporate this into our strategy development and our planning and our requirements how do we incorporate energy innovation into that so that there's a demand signal rather than I really love solar so therefore it's the answer to every question and I do love solar let me tell you um so that I realize that that's not a very satisfying answer and I'll give you a more direct one but that's the real challenge for us is to create a demand signal for that kind of innovation not to pick a winner and that is where DoD has its strongest innovation advantage is that kind of demand signal not by picking a technology winner but by picking a problem that we have to solve so you know in terms of that and the problems we have to solve we need better soldier power or warrior power right at the individual level so that means better batteries yes we're looking at battery innovation we're looking at other ways to generate power whether it's a kinetic sort of power generation but also how to need less how do you you know your your iPhone is pretty aggressive about how it manages energy we don't usually put that in our requirements so lo and behold we don't always get it or maybe never so we're going to look at the at the individual level and then at the contingency base level Bob talked about some of the changes there there's a lot of room for improvement there if we could get to a net zero capability where we can support certainly a combat outpost without having to truck in energy or out waste that would be highly advantageous for all kinds of missions and we've got a lot of innovation in that area that includes things like micro grids and tactical solar waste to energy lots of technologies there where we've got investments some which are near term and going in now some which are longer term my office even has some investments in there in in some very innovative cooling and heating technologies that'll really decrease the demand for for that kind of power so then there's the big movers so the airplanes and the ships and the combat vehicles today about 90% of the department's investments in improving operational energy are in that space they're in propulsion engine efficiency materials so about how you move those big movers better faster more efficiently and it doesn't take much to get big savings so those are very important investments and then I would characterize there's a fourth area and by the way there are things across here like energy storage where we have some investments that I think are very promising we have some weapons that require a lot of pulse power energy storage is going to be important part of that going forward and it's also part of the resilience at our bases but the last category is sort of I would say completely new systems so unmanned systems for example can be a really significant change in your energy profile both in terms of the amount of energy they require to operate as opposed to man systems performing those functions but they also sometimes have a lot more flexibility for the kind of energy so we're looking we're experimenting with fuel cells with solar panels with a range of different kinds of powering options for unmanned systems underwater on the surface in the air so that's the full range of kinds of things and we're seeing everything from energy storage to tactical solar to better batteries to better propulsion better airframes being pretty meaningful in that space I think a lot about deploying forces and there's and I think one of the biggest ways we can address operational energy and efficiency is to think hard about that and what can we do to ease the burden of rapidly deploying and aggregating and employing and then disaggregating and all that and I think there's I think all it has to do with preparing the theater whether in the European command central command Pacific command particularly the Pacific commands because of the rebalance there is such a broad theater and any and a lot of that has to do with key leader engagement and access access is so crucial in logistics and I used to love watching the transcom command or go into different parts of I can't tell you where but different parts of central command of the 20 countries he always came back with some sort of permission whether it was overflight or ground line of communication every time you went I tried to get him to go more but I think once a quarter would wear him out but he was just fantastic good things come with the key leader engagement and access things like ability potentially to preposition supplies and now a lot of the times when we we deploy to a country or we or we can can preposition of things or we can conduct exercises out of there maybe not have a permanent presence we we lie of course on host nation contracting I think we need to develop better skills in our contracting specialists and we've grown the capability a lot we're still not there yet but I mean you've read all the reports I read about contracting with the enemy in Afghanistan and we're we've got a full court press on that it nothing's a hundred percent perfect but there's a tremendous amount of attention with recent reports from the general accounting office commission on wartime contracting and special inspector for Afghan reconstruction that have driven us to do the right thing and are continuing to drive us the more we can preposition more we can write it into host nation contracts about things like operational energy let's face it if we've got a warehouse that's in a hundred and thirty degree weather in the middle of the summer there's a lot there's a lot of advantages to operational energy and we will pay less if we are paying the bill I natural gas you said you had a lot of questions on I didn't mean to duck it I just forgot natural gas as far as we get asked a lot is the department going to be switching over to natural gas for our vehicles or our airplanes you know again our big consumers our ships airplanes vehicles no here's why three reasons one is logistics of fuel is very important when we're buying about sixty percent of our fuel overseas we want to buy our energy as close as we can to the place where we're operating so we need something that's universally available natural gas is not and again a lot of our operations are not in the United States so logistics is one reason another reason is that our is the properties of natural gas compressed natural gas in a combat environment where it's going where it may be shot at or blown up not a great idea that's so the technologies right now that are in the civilian sector will not translate well to a combat environment however I will say that that pretty much all defense equipment at this point is certified to use gas to liquid as a potential fuel source we are able to use that blended with oil right now if someone can sell it to us at a price we can afford we can use it so that and that's the third answer is that our our force and a lot of our the volume of our consumption is in aircraft especially but also in ships and and vehicles combat vehicles we're talking about here our force is built to use liquid fuels it's designed to use liquid fuels modifying it to use something else would be extremely expensive but again gas to liquid is a possibility out there so that's the the natural gas story for us let me interject one quick question here for both of you since general work you alluded to it somewhat what is the role of operational energy and energy writ large in partner capacity building again general work you talked about the access issue but does it have a sort of a a unique role to play in that space that's become a real priority for us I I certainly think it does when we were operating on foreign soil whether we're doing just security cooperation we're doing perhaps exercises we're going to be in contact with the host nation logisticians won't necessarily just be the husband the agents work with the U.S. Navy when we pull in the port but it'll be a host of people and they're going to there's certainly what going to want to know what we want to do and and then they're going to offer to do it for us possibly hopefully if if possible so I think I think our role particularly in building capacity has to do with those relationships that's why we go to things like engagements and I think I was I spoke at several logistics conferences for our allies while I was at CENTCOM and I think it has a huge role because that's how you stab you establish the low level cooperation you know we have to have workarounds we have to have flexibility in our logistics pipeline and not just by air because as we mentioned earlier air is is incredibly expensive we bring you know we're like Afghanistan is a landlocked country so we use a lot air to get in there but we still go by the normal 90% sea lift is our objective to try to get things into theater when we can't when certain and CENTCOM quite frankly I think everybody knows that has three very strategic choke points as the Suez Canal Bob Elmendeb down by the Red Sea and Djibouti and it also has the Straits of Hormuz so if any of those are cut off we obviously have to have plans to work around that if you've ever tried to work through customs in some of these Gulf countries there we go it's a challenge if you don't practice it Ms. Burke mentioned war games that was one I kept pushing for to be practiced okay we have to force us to get on the roads and try to do these convoys within some of these countries that are that are landlocked or or linked together I should say and it's it's a capacity building exercise and we were able to do it we've you know in 2008 when all sudden the packed G-locks were closed on us I think that was the first time or getting very precarious let me put it that way because I think there was three different closures General Dempsey who is the acting CENTCOM commander at the time said let's establish a Northern Distribution Network now no one no one in my fields knew what a Northern Distribution Network was however everybody in Russia and everybody in Eastern Europe and everybody in Central Asia knew what it was because these were the Marco Polo routes the time-tested routes for sending logistics in so we we got a bunch of four stars and State Department personnel and people that were familiar with the countries on the road and they established that the initial beginnings of being able to use that incredible three four thousand mile Northern Distribution Network and by the way there's multiple routes on there and they go through multiple countries and so my biggest concern to be quite frank with you is all the good things that we've established in the relationships with countries that have happened because of operation enduring freedom could be at risk if we don't continue to move things and continue that transport strategy by ground particularly and by the way there's some aerial overflight airspace overflight permissions as well that and all this is I would say temporary in nature but we need to continue that and I think that's all about capacity building because once you can get those permissions then the other things come the security cooperation that the joint training the joint combined training and those kind of things and that's just crucial for relationships and establishing that so I learned a lot just watching that at CENTCOM and that's on the partnership front I'd say echo what Bob said that access for energy to move is often a common interest that we share with many partners all over the world and again as I said in my opening about the geopolitics of this that interest is growing for our partners they're more directly invested now than they've ever been before so that continues to be one and also I think one of the things that's certainly obvious is that there's a link between stability and energy both for consumers and producers and that is a partnership cooperation activity for us and then you know the the combatant commands all have their theater engagement strategies and they develop relationships with the countries in their areas and energy can be an avenue for developing those kinds of cooperative relationships whether it's you know showing what we can do with some of our new technologies with shelters with with energy efficiency with building some of those capabilities in our partners or just we often are I mean we are you know the great secret of US forces are not so secret sometimes it seems secret is is our we have a very strong comparative advantage in logistics so often if we're going to develop capability with our partner nations all over the world and that full range of partners that's an area where they're going to be very interested in what we can do together so this is energy logistics and energy as a stabilizer energy is as a force multiplier is something that partners are often in interested in and is part of the number of the theater engagement plans across the co-com universe so perfect that is a series of questions that have focused on the flashpoints and global forces for some of the energy markets so how is the DoD looking to mitigate some of the risks that comes from things such as closures of the Straits of Malacca or the Straits of Hormuz or potentially some of the risks that come from climate change well I do my best here on this one we I think I think what you mentioned is is very practical it's something that certainly we don't want to happen and I I have no idea what the future is but you have to be ready for it in our business otherwise you're in trouble so I think that you have to have that continual ability to have reliable and redundant lines of communications on that to do that it can be challenging in that in that world we live in where the relationships are may not be so good and even then like we have in Afghanistan we have customs challenges and so if you're moving between countries and you're trying to accomplish things that way it can be a real challenge but I think that if if there are plan if if any we lose any of those strategic chill points it's going to be an impact there's no question about it and so it's going to it's going to potentially force reliance on other ports other airfields other locations which I'm not about to go into and so I can stay out of trouble but I think that we absolutely have to have plans now along those lines I kind of mentioned earlier what what I think is is a part of preparing the theater if you those those strategic tool points you mentioned are not going to change straight to Malacca straight to order moves Bob and Bob will mend up Swiss canal those kind of things are just not going to change and so it's it's imperative upon us and I mean us mean in the interagency the U.S. government interagency to conduct those key leader engagements that have to be continual and we have to have a presence in those countries with embassy security cooperation those kind of things to establish the relationships the low level cooperation it could start with something as simple as an acquisition across servicing agreement or an equal value exchange agreement or mutual logistic support agreements but we have to have those established so if we have to deploy to those areas we can leverage host nation support particularly if we have some reserve capabilities that can't be called fast enough so probably my best shot I think for for the flashpoints and and whether it's you know freedom of movement of of energy through straight of four moves or the ways in which climate change is affecting security around the world you know you go back to what our title 10 mission is as a department which is you know to organize training equipped for the national defense and then the underlying assumption is to understand to understand what it is we're organizing training and equipping for so I think energy and and climate as well that that's what we need to do is we need to understand the way in which these resources and these consequences affect our security and global security and our interests and then organize and incorporate that understanding into how we are organized trained and equipped to deal with it and you know that's that's going to require it's it's not anything new in some ways we've always done that when we wage the Cold War we weren't just counting missiles right we were understanding the economics of the situation and the politics have to understand the whole cross cut and how it shapes a strategic environment so I think it's the same when it comes to energy security and to climate change and how those factors shape the environment and then there are going to be very tangible results from that so for example if a country such as Iran is developing the means to control or or hurt access we need to understand that capability and we need to have a material ability to deal with it or we need to find partners who do we need to incorporate that into our training and our exercises when we do war games we can't just fairy dust that out is what I think Admiral Locklear is the term that the technical term he uses is a fairy dust we can't we often do that by the way when we do scenarios we assume the logistics and we assume that there will be okay can't do that anymore we need to test those assumptions so that's part of understanding is to to do the analysis on what the world looks like and what we think it's gonna look like and then to bring the threats and the challenges and the opportunities in a more honest way into how we're planning and how we're looking at the world and then carry that through into how we organize training equipment and I think too one of the first war games I walked into the it actually was a was a scenario that happened later on they closed down the pakistan lines of communications well my fourth month in the job they have to Thanksgiving 2011 I woke up looked at the paper at 630 said pack G locks fly route shut down I thought it was some joke somebody was playing on see if you're awake during the day they never they never do that after get the exercise right they we had we had actually kind of we we'd go through that so many times so and fortunately we were able to deal that we had enough mitigation factors in place because it wasn't completely a surprise but it was you know it took three to four months of planning ahead of time to do that and so that's why I think what you're saying makes absolute great sense that's that's a planer's approach to everything is assume it's going to happen and then plan for it before if directions a little bit to the to the cultural change piece looking is this primarily going to be a top down or bottom up sort of initiative and and what should the balance be what's going to be the most most influential for long term success particularly in in places in offices in the military where turnovers high and you get new commanders every few years and trying to institute that change at a sort of organic level it bob has talked about it because because I I think as you know as an office of the secretary of defense office my role is policy guidance in oversight and I can influence culture and culture change but I don't own it the military departments own their culture and a couple things that that I would say about that is that it has to be top down and bottom up course can't do it without leadership and you can't do it without convincing the people that have to execute it that it's worth it for them and that it's worth it for war fighting right it's not just eat your broccoli it's that this is going to be better for the mission and for the capability I mean I think that's the heart of culture change and I don't personally love the culture change term because I think a lot of times the what you want to see happen is already within the culture and the burdens on us to find where it makes sense so for example if you talk to someone who flies f-a-teens and you say you don't know anything about fuel management well yes they do okay they manage fuel very aggressively they dump it too so you know it's not perfect but they but they management of fuel is already very much part of their culture so it's not a question of telling them you're bad wrong stupid and you need to change it's finding where what they do make sense and then moving into the next step but you get to be the owner of culture change so I had a very painful couple years in the Marine Corps doing that tried to change we had a lot of lessons after after the way of one of the army and the Marine Corps there we basically whenever you're trying to support a 550 mile maneuver effort trying to do in that in a lightning's breakneck speed pace with organic forces it can be very tough and so we the kind of lessons we learned is that besides being large large old and tradition based not one to change and like in the systems you have ultimately what happens one of the one of the parameters is we finally got smart and said okay we need to bring the comment on the Marine Corps and do a video get it out to people saying I support logistic modernization which means new IT new training new way of thinking and he did and life got a lot easier after that happened rule number one is is always that I think the the leader and in particularly in the service culture has to has to get up and say he supports it and then dedicate it now he's he's got a he's got to make sure we have to convince him if we are going to change that like I said those in my opening statement we can't compromise a operational effectiveness whatsoever so it has to be a good initiative has to be proven and most of many of them are I wouldn't say most of them but I think if it if it reduces your tether to energy it's going to reduce the operational risk of the maneuver commander and it's going to keep his folks on the battlefield longer therefore they can accomplish their mission whatever it is whether it's humanitarian assistance disaster relief stability ops peacekeeping ops or at the high end of combat operations he has a better chance of accomplishing that so I think that's what it's all about on this thing and I think while you were in the seat at Suncom I think general Allen actually put out a fragmentary order on this and one of the things that was clear and it was that he wanted the forces under his command to understand that that the operational energy piece was a capability issue and that using less meant someone didn't have to bring them fuel over a battlefield and put their lives at risk so he put that very much out there and also I don't know if you've heard this yet because you luckily this happened after you left sent com but there's a base in Afghanistan that's had one of its big turbines go down and that means that they've got power shortages on the base and all of a sudden they've had to think in terms of critical missions what absolutely has to be supported and they put out you know message to the whole base saying we need you to use less for this reason and people did and they found there were a lot of places where there were buildings that they could disconnect the water heaters and the HVAC and could actually save energy and they found they were able to manage their their shortfall just by people making a change so when you give people a reason and you tell them why it matters and then you give them the tools to make a change they change the just some of my folks have been told me the last couple of weeks that not surprisingly knowing General Allen when he got to theater beginning of his tour he was frustrated with so much logistics on the battlefield and really what he meant was in the in the different types of bases large to small it's incredible and he didn't really know how to control the demand signal so he didn't and so I wish he could have seen because he kind of started the whole focus on on retrograde and put starting to push things out of theater as our forces drew down and reduce the fuel consumption requirement incidentally one of the things that concerned me is one of our as we started withdrawn forces in the beginning of retrograding forces redeploying them I should say the next demand signal I got for fuel went up I could not believe it can you believe something like that happened so I questioned it and we have two sources we have a NATO source for fuel and we have defense logistics agency and so those kind of things will happen but the court but over the over time I think what happened was once as we were talking about change and culture change earlier it's the commander that's got to get out there and say we're going to change and the commander there has said that we're going to change we're going to reduce contractors in theater we're going to reduce the fuel requirement we don't need to hold 60 days of supply of fuel we can reduce that we can reduce food we can eat less hot meals in the mess hall we can go to two from four a day and all that all that took the commander to say that because a lot of that stuff hit the social media right away that was interesting but I'm only getting two hot meals instead of four but bottom line is again it's the culture thing and it and it leadership starts at the top it ends from financially for operational energy how has fiscal austerity affected your office and the initiatives that you're undertaking and and and what is the outlook? we don't entirely know yet because we're still really still sorting through the impacts of sequestration on the fiscal year 13 and 14 potentially budgets so but the best we can tell there's two answers to that question one is of course it affects these energy initiatives because it affects everything and because of the nature of the sequester the timing and which accounts you can target there are only certain places you can go and you know my my boss Frank Kendall the undersecretary has said this quite a bit has been making it clear publicly that disproportionately means that you target procurement modernization accounts well a lot of our energy improvements are going to be in those accounts so there's no question that this the sequester in particular because of the handcuffs it puts on the department are going to affect our investments in these initiatives however at the end of the day we're still going to be a what 450 billion dollar based budget organization that's still defending the country we're still going to be buying equipment we're still going to be deploying people we're still going to be in bases around the world and so the question is not is that initiative still going to be funded but what we do buy are we going to consider energy performance and energy flexibility and then and energy security and threats in how we actually buy and operate so that's that's what a lot of the institutional change that the J4 the joint staff and my office have been really been pushing is so that it's not about what you're going to have to take off the table to comply with sequestration it's about what you how you do what you are doing and is it taking energy into account and that's you know and yes it will early in the conversation there was discussions about how there's a good portion of the logistics force is in the National Guard in the reserve and it takes a while to spin up so sort of part of that we saw in Iraq was that there was a took a while to do some of the post-conflict reconstruction things like specifically rebuild power plants water facilities and that potentially had an impact on the insurgency in Iraq and sort of getting restoring a sense of normalcy within the country what are any any initiatives within the operational energy space that look to sort of improve our ability to do that sort of that sort of work in those spaces and then any sort of civil military cooperation that might be involved in that engineering work that's a good one very good question the uh... we uh... we have a pretty uh... we still have construction to do even after two thousand fourteen as you will mentioned in Afghanistan and uh... I think uh... a lot of that is uh... is probably under the Department of State portfolio and of course it has to do with I guess you would say the uh... energy grid power grid the uh... water distribution particularly irrigation projects with dams and some of the important resources that Afghanistan has it's a good question because I quite frankly because that doesn't come through Department of Defense we just watch it to make sure it's funded I can't really tell you we can take that one on but I can't really tell you what is being done regarding energy efficiency with that fortunately or unfortunately we don't actually keep a record so you don't have to submit that one for the record that's good, you can tell I used to be in front of you but I do think uh... one of the ways that we can deal with that is I mean the department said a grand reckoning moment right? we're rethinking our strategy, we're rethinking our plans we're rethinking our equipping so you've got to incorporate those kinds of dynamics into your strategy and your plans and your equipping including a whole of government efforts in that you know the military is not the right tool for every situation but we need to make sure that the tools that we need are there and that's been a big part of the story of the last twelve years so that's got to be part of the answer too that if we need something if we determine that in our strategy and our plans then that needs to be a broader discussion across government can I pull the thread on that a little bit because you you talked about the link between energy and security and how it goes both ways and that was that has been one of the biggest challenges we've faced in both Iraq and Afghanistan are there structural things that need to change? are we optimized to deal with that challenge because it's a it's a perpetual friction point what could we do and and how broadly are we able to think about that? I I think it is something we need to think about and when you say are we structured to do it I think we can I think we have planning processes and strategy development processes that allow us the flexibility to bring in outside influences I mean we the department's been talking about how all these other influences affect defense interests for some time and now it's just a question of actually getting it into our planning process in a material way so for example you know my office is supporting a study to look at North Korea and to look at you know should there be a contingency there whether it's a humanitarian question governance change or actual combat what are the energy needs going to be there in some kind of post you know phase four phase five world whatever the reason is what are the energy needs going to be particularly if you are in a humanitarian disaster situation where there's immediate needs to help the population what's already there what's the requirement going to be and how are we incorporating that how are the South Koreans incorporating that into their preparedness and their readiness so those are the kinds of questions I think we do need to be asking and and that can be on the table at this point I think too that there's there's certainly room for it I think you have to be careful in some of these countries were where the State Department is taking lead on things that we've got to make sure that we're not building something that can only be maintained by the you know by the you know by the only certain people in this world so I think we have to that's one of the challenges we had in Afghanistan matter of fact is for every military construction project or USAID construction project we had you had to build a force to maintain that and so I that's been a big focus of doing that and that's why it's such a good question because if you're throwing a microgrid in there I may not have anybody repair it and you and the whole idea is to encounter a surgery is to help out that nation and get their people to work and get the economy going and be self-sufficient again it's thinking about in advance and understanding what the needs are and also when you need to bring in another agency and so you can look even in the United States relief efforts from Hurricane Sandy defense personnel moved something like 10 million gallons of fuel and helped restore power to 50,000 people we can do that because we can do just about anything but that's not necessarily the way that this country is going to want to use its military so but that requires building resilience in your civilian community and making certain kinds of investments in your first responders and that requires us to understand the challenges better so I mean I think that's part and parcel of what's going on now doesn't happen very often but we you've beaten them into submission apparently let me thank you both so much for taking the time to come over we really appreciate it


Okay, should we start? Yes, okay. So welcome to my presentation about a project which I did with a few friends of mine. So this project is called NFC gate. So it's all about NFC security analysis with smartphones. And I did this presentation, for this presentation only Max and me was involved. So what we are gonna talk about, first some basics which we need later in the talk. Then some motivation, so why did we do this project? Why is it interesting? Then we look into how NFC is implemented in Android. And we also needed some patches for the Android system to do the stuff we wanted to do. And then in the end some use cases. So what can you do with our app? What is possible? What are the drawbacks and so on. So and to spice things up, we have a few demos mixed in between. So NFC in a nutshell. NFC stands for near field communication. And it basically enables communication between two devices. So it's not like wifi or something where multiple clients can connect to one access point. No, it's basically just peer to peer. And it should only work in a range between five and 10 centimeters. So sorry, no one mile point. And folks say that we got nearly two billion devices which our NFC enabled in the year 2018. So this is pretty cool stuff if you want to mess with NFC. Oh, so how does the NFC devices look like in the wild? So on the upper left corner, these are the pretty standard tags which are used for various kinds of stuff. Also right here, this is just a credit card basically which many of them are also NFC enabled right now. There are also plans to enable NFC for debit cards in this year. So you might see debit cards which are NFC enabled in the near future.  Then there are also many hotels which use NFC basically as an access system to get into your hotel room. And then also if you have a newer passport, this logo will tell you that it is also NFC enabled. I have a demo which might work later on in the talk. And then we have some payment systems which you can see here. They are used at universities for paying stuff on your Mensa and so on. And NFC devices are also, or in general NFC is also used for basically bootstrapping. So these Bluetooth speakers use NFC to shorten up the connection setup and you just hold your phone to the speaker and your smartphone is paired with the Bluetooth system. So this is pretty neat. So let's go to our first demo. This is basically, I don't know if I should come in front or not. The video angel will hate me but I will do it anyway. So this might as well be a access system for which you can also find in a hotel room or something. So this is, for those of you who can't really see it, it's basically on door which you can use an NFC card in front of it and it opens.  Simple as that. But with our app, we can, maybe we can't. It's just a light phone, it should be. So basically the door is checking certain values on this card and if the values are equal with what is stored in memory, the door opens. So let's see what happens if we, meh. Is this the right, oh no, that's the wrong phone, wrong phone, wrong, this one. So we can maybe, yes, read some values and then the door also opens. So what just happened? So every NFC tag, basically, the first thing it checks is an, or basically the first thing which is checked in a communication between a reader and a card is this UID and this UID should be a unique ID. So, but as you have seen, if we are possible to clone this UID somehow, we can basically break all these systems which just rely on this UID. So it's in general a bad idea just to rely on a basic UID. So more about these NFC tags. In general, there are passive, so you don't need any battery or something. There are, so we talk about this later, they use the frequency in 13.56 megahertz and you can also store data on them apart from the UID. If we compare this with RFID, RFID is mostly read only so you basically have just an identifier, you do just identify stuff. There's no real protocol which is spoken between the reader and the tag and but it works on higher ranges. So how does this communication between a tag and the reader, so this is our tag, this in our example is our reader, how does it look like? Really simple, the reader initiates an RF field. If you read standards, the reader is also called initiator. It initiates an RF field which also contains basically the first data it wants to send to the card. The card gets powered by the RF field and can use this RF field to basically send its answer back to the reader. So pretty simple, right? So one might think if this is really this easy, this, no.  So you have basically there are and the first thing there are standards which are vendor specific and there are standard standards and you also have standards depending on the layer which you are on. So for the physical characteristics, you have your own layer, standard and then it goes on and on and on. Yep, so it's basically a total mess. So why would we need, what we want to do that? Why work with all these horrible standards and do this stuff? So what I just showed you is basically the communication between the standard communication between the card and the reader. But we don't really know what's going on there, right? We can't look into this. What we want is something like this. We want to look at the communication that happens between the card and our reader. We want to look if standards are implemented correctly, if a protocol is in there, if some encryption there and so on. So you might say, so why not just use a second reader, right? So we just use one reader to establish the RF field and to the basic communication and use a second reader for sniffing. You can also do similar stuff on Wi-Fi, right? You can just put your notebook and monitor mode and sniff everything that is on the air. No, it's not that easy on NFC. The problem here is the anti-collision loop. It is part of, in most of the cases of the firmware, and it's really hard to modify this. So what is this anti-collision loop? So if you are at your Mensa, for example, and want to buy stuff at the university for lunch or something, and you want to pay on the cashier, and you don't want to put your card every time out of your bag and lay it on the device for read-it, so you just put your whole pocket out there and lay this on the reader. So what happens is the first card says, oh, yeah, there's an RF field I answered this. The second card also says, yeah, there's an RF field I answered this, and there's more and more and more. And basically your whole pocket wants to talk with the reader. This is what the anti-collision loop tries to solve. The anti-collision loop wants to establish one connection at the time and ditch everything else. So this means for our setup which we got here, if the first connection between this reader and this card would be established and we put a second reader in there, the first connection would be simply just dropped and we can't read anything. So what you can do, what can we do? You can buy cool hardware. For example, this Proxmox 3. It supports RFID tags, NFC tags, it has all kinds of fancy hardware, and but the problem is it costs around $300, but it's really cool stuff. But we thought about, can't we do it cheaper? Can't we use something which we already have? Yes, we already saw that we can use smartphones. So this was our basic idea. Android got this cool mode where you can't, not only are you able to read in text, no, you can also emulate text. So our plan was to basically have both two smartphones which one emulates a tag and one emulates the reader. And so basically when the reader wants to talk with the card, it first talks with our first smartphone, the first smartphone talks with the second smartphone, the second smartphone talks with the card and all the way back. This enables us to read the data which is exchanged between the reader and the card because we are in control of what is sent between the two smartphones. So in theory everything is nice and dandy, but this is not really the way Android intends to use NFC for you. So we need to patch a few things. So how does NFC look like in Android? So from the top to the bottom, on the top you have your NFC hardware which is from NXP or Broadcom in most of the cases. Directly under this is your NFC driver which also depends on the hardware you have and then you have some Java libraries which are provided by Google and in the end there's your app. So we need to patch these two layers. The reasons behind this I explain the next slides but for patching we use the exposed framework and the dynamic binary instrumentation toolkit. So the first patch we needed to do is for the AID routing. So the problem is that if you want to use your smartphone to emulate an card, you have to register this AID to the Android system and we don't really want that. We want all the data which comes through and which basically comes through the NFC chip. So we need to make sure that we get everything basically. The second patch concerns the UID. So if we emulate the card, we want to do it as good as possible. So we also want to emulate the UID of the other card which we basically have on the other smartphone, right? So the problem there is if you emulate a tag with Android, the default case is that it uses a random UID. So you can't change that but we found some ways via the driver to make this possible but this also require patching, as I said. So how does the system look like which we came up with? It basically looked like this. We have a server in between our two smartphones. They are connected, for example via wifi to the server. One smartphone is connected to the NFC reader. The other smartphone is connected to the tag and we are basically able to read everything which is exchanged between two smartphones. We can do this either on, we can read the data on each smartphone or on the server itself, it doesn't matter. But we also implemented this, some kind of main and the middle feature. So if you are already in charge of all the traffic which goes between the two smartphones, why not modify it, see what happens. So now the demo. What I brought with me is basically my passport and a standard NFC reader. So this is the kind of NFC reader which you can acquire from certain public agencies. You can use them to identify yourself with an NFC enabled identity card or something but what we want to do is to read out the public available data on this passport. So without having any, so it is possible to read some basic data on your passport without having any special key or something. The only thing you need is this machine readable zone data. This is kind of used as a simple password to authenticate yourself. So what I basically do is I've already have set up the server and now I need to connect, now I need to connect our app. And I hope it works, you will see. Yes. Also our server is able to support multiple sessions. This is why I need to enter a session ID. Turns out this is really annoying if you do lots of testing. So I enter the super secret token now and it works. Okay, then what is interesting for you to see I guess is the server and I also need to start somewhere, this one. So I put the smartphone on the passport and the second smartphone on the reader and it already exchanges data. So now basically instead of using NFC which is just be capable of using five to 10 centimeters we can basically extend this range arbitrarily because we just use WiFi to communicate with the smartphones. And now would be good if we could disable the stream basically because we are about to see my personal data of my passport. If it finishes in time. So the problem is that it also loads a picture of myself from this passport and this just takes ages. Yes, so this is an ugly photo of mine but it's just should show that you can basically extend the range of your NFC enabled systems with our app and you're also capable of looking into the traffic. Nice, okay, yeah. So what can we, for what purpose can we use our app? As I already said, we can look into the exchange traffic. We can try to understand the protocols which are used. So is there proper authentication available? And we also can look at if messages are authenticated or something and we also can modify traffic. So there are also some drawbacks for now. Right now our patches only work for Broadcom NFC chips. We might have an idea to change that in the future. We need some time to implement this, I guess. We also need a rooted smartphone because we use exposed which requires a rooted smartphone and for now and also relaying data between two smartphones obviously adds latency to the exchange messages and some NFC devices measure basically how much time it takes for the response to come in and if it's too high then it just drops the connection. So what we could do here is to build into a mode which you can use to communicate directly device to device without the server in the middle. So that's basically it. You can get our source code on GitHub, use this short pass NFC WTF. You can also write us an email if you're interested or talk to me right here in the next few days. And I also want to thank Max for his research on this NFC door lock. So that's it from my side. Thank you. And I guess we have some additional time for questions. Yeah, sure. Here's an update set every time we were on set up. Okay. Ah, yeah, no it's on. We had this bit that is saying is it an emulated device or is it not, it's set in the UID and that was quite near to the hardware. So we were not able to circumvent that by software. So Qualcomm doesn't do that. We can really emulate the full UID and everything. Okay, which devices use Qualcomm chipsets? For example? No, it's the question. So I know that the Nexus 4 uses Qualcomm, Nexus 5 uses Qualcomm, Nexus 6 uses NXP, Nexus 6 P uses NXP. Yeah, so all I got was the smartphones basically use NXP and Broadcom, but this would be interesting if you find some devices which use Qualcomm, no? Sure. Okay. Another question. Yes, so did you encounter any devices that you have strict requirements for the latency and which maybe use the latency for security purposes? So when I would build a product, then I could, well, I would know how along my device takes to generate a response and when I have very strict requirements about when I accept a response, I could use that as a security method to make relay attacks at least over a certain distance impossible. Yeah, you can, as an vendor, you can just do some distance bounding basically and this prevents everything we did here except for the UID cloning, but yeah. So are you aware of any device that is out there in the real world that uses something like distance bounding by timing? There is our local Mensa system, which depending on the firmware on the NFC reader uses distance bounding. Right, thanks. You had a side note regarding the UID on the slide from the emulated mobile phone, but I missed it to read it and you skipped the slide. Okay, so you want me to go back the slides? Yeah, thank you. I don't know which one you want to see, but just say stop. Okay, oh, we need... This one? No? Yes, this one. Are you able to set a specific UID or is some bit masked inside this UID? No, we can set an arbitrary UID. Okay, and all your tested devices use an Broadcom chip set? Yes, because the function which we found to set this UID wasn't a Broadcom driver. Was it required to patch the firmware of this Broadcom device? No, just a driver. Very interesting, thank you. Okay, another question here, yeah? Hi, I have a question also regarding the latency fact. In the first demo, you showed us a stored communication between the NFC tag and the mobile phone and then you replay the stored communication to the door lock. So is the limiter in this anti-collision loop for stored communication or for live traffic? The first demo was different, so I just, I didn't record anything. I just basically listened to the tag. What UID did you got? Oh, okay, this one, then I set this by myself and then this system is really basic. It just uses the UID and looks if this matches or not. Okay, then the problems to store sessions is something in the protocol of anti-collision. No, no, so what you mean, basically your question is if I can do a replay attack by replaying the whole conversation and then replay it later. This would speed up the communication and you don't have the issue with the latency. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good idea, good idea. For example, our Mensa system had a counter measure against this, so unfortunately, we couldn't do this. But in general, this is a good idea. It really depends on the NFC system which you look into. So you first have to look, is there some counter or something which gets incremented over time or something like that. Okay, if there are no more questions, I have an additional bonus demo. So one could say that for this UID cloning, this is just a research problem. You have your custom made whatever door. No, no, no, no, no. It's not just a problem which we basically invented by ourselves. So here, this is a padlock which you can buy on Amazon. It uses NFC tags for unlocking. So if you use the right tag, you can basically unlock it. And it has basically the same vulnerability as the store system. You can just clone the UID of the tag. I can also save the UID from the tag and just emulate it later, no problem. So I read the tag, and then I can also use my smartphone to unlock it. The detection rate is really shitty on this thing. Yeah, but it worked once. Just the battery empties. Yeah, and it's open. I don't know, I would be interested if skimming is possible. So if anyone knows how to do this, come to me, we will look and do this. Okay, thank you again.


Previous reports indicate that enocetyldeglucosamine oligomers, chitinoligosaccharide, knockos, and deglucosamine oligomers, chitosanoligosaccharide, COS, have various biological activities, especially against cancer and inflammation. In this review, we have summarized the findings of previous investigations that have focused on anti-cancer or anti-inflammatory properties of knockos and COS. Moreover, we have introduced recent evaluation of knockos and COS as functional foods against cancer and inflammatory disease. This article was authored by Kazuo Izuma, Tomohiro Osaki, Saburo Minami, and others.


In the ABCs of health consequences of obesity, it looks like we're up to G, and G is for gallstones. The number one digestive reason people are hospitalized is because of a gallbladder attack. Every year, more than a million Americans are diagnosed with gallstones. About 700,000 have to get their gallbladder surgically removed. It's a relatively safe procedure. Gallstones rates tend to be under 5%, and the mortality rate is only about 1 in 1,000. But 1 in 10 may develop a post-colosusctomy syndrome of persistent gastrointestinal symptoms long after their gallbladder is removed. What are gallstones made of? In 80% to 90% of cases, the gallstones are mostly just crystallized cholesterol, forming like rock candy in your gallbladder when cholesterol gets too concentrated. This was used to explain why some small early studies found non-vegetarians at a higher incidence of gallstones, but their results from more recent larger studies are more equivocal with one study, suggesting protection from gallbladder disease, but another, showing higher rates among vegetarians independent of weight. The biggest purported cause-and-effect risk factor though may be obesity, increasing risk as much as 7-fold with a doubling of risk, even at the heavier side of normal. Ironically, rapid weight loss may also be a trigger. A half-pound a day has been deemed to be like the upper limit for medically safe weight loss based on gallstone formation. Ultrasound studies found that above that, the chance of new gallstones can go from less than 1 in 200 a week to closer to 1 in 40. To help prevent a gallstone attack, you can increase your fiber intake. But not only is dietary fiber intake associated with less gallbladder disease in the first place, those placed on high fiber foods during a weight loss regimen suffered significantly less gallbladder sludging than those losing the same weight without the extra fiber. G is also for GERD, gastroesophageal reflux disease. Fiber-rich food consumption also decreases the risk of acid reflux. Previously, I explored how chronically straining at stool may push part of the stomach up into the chest cavity. Well, the excess abdominal pressure due to obesity may have the same effect pushing acid up into the throat, causing heartburn and inflammation. The increased pressure on the abdominal organs associated with obesity may also explain why overweight women suffer from more vaginal prolapse, where organs such as the rectum push out into the vaginal cavity. The deadliest letter in the alphabet of obesity consequences, however, is H. H is for heart disease. Of the 4 million deaths attributed to excess body weight every year around the world, nearly 70% of the deaths are due to cardiovascular disease. Is it just because they're eating poorly? Mendelian randomization studies suggest that people randomize from conception to be heavier just based on genetics to indeed have high rates of heart disease and stroke regardless of what they eat. The question is, if you lose weight, does your risk drop? Enter the SOS trial, the first long-term control trial to compare the outcomes of thousands of bariatric surgery patients to match control subjects you started out at the same weight but went the non-surgical route. The control group maintained their weight, whereas the surgical group maintained about a 20% weight loss over the next 10 to 20 years. Over that time, the weight loss group not only developed 80% less diabetes, but suffered significantly fewer heart attacks and strokes. So not surprisingly significantly reduced their total mortality overall. You can see how 10 years out, the weight loss group appeared to cut their risk of fatal heart attacks and strokes in half.