So we've made a full 48 hours with only one slide presentation, so I'll take the second one behind Peter Singer. So very informed audience here. I won't drum on about the history of the Joint Special Operations Command or the community, sort of the evolution starting in the 80s, but the theme of transition that we went through is a subset of everything that's been talked about here over the last two days. So if you consider the way the model was created inside of JSOC over its 20 year history pre-911, we basically entered the battlefield and Yanni and I served in similar units during those windows structured like this. You could argue that it was doing something different, and we certainly thought that as we entered the fight because we were able to move so much faster than traditional systems could in the 80s and 90s, but what we found was in reality when we faced a distributed network in Al Qaeda, the chinks in the armor became very clear quite quickly. And part of that is our thesis around what happens as organizations evolve. As long as you're structured like this, you're prone to create stovepikes between different verticals. That's what allows you to control a large organization. So our problem was as you pit these two models against each other, a traditional bureaucratic system and a distributed network, if it's symmetric warfare and you're facing a similar model, you're both essentially playing the same game, albeit your end states are radically different. So in retrospect, now look at what was happening inside of our bureaucracy was and the reason they're so appealing for large organizations is they're highly reliable, which is ultimately the goal of a big system. They're process driven, processes can be refined more and more over time. They're very measurable, so it's a linear sort of assembly line mindset. All those processes inside it can be optimized, and the ultimate goal of this sort of model is to create as efficient of a system as you can. And you can tell narratives in any of our previous conflicts around this model, how efficiently can I get A to B, create the max amount of X with a minimum amount of Y, however you want to look at it. Meanwhile, the sole focus of a network system is adaptability. And ultimately what we found was adaptability will trump efficiency every time. And the distributed networks of al-Qaeda and what we're now seeing in ISIS, that's in their very nature. They don't do it because they're strategic thinkers necessary along these lines. It's just the nature of a network system. And so our finding was the harder a traditional bureaucratic system pushes on that network, the faster it will adapt through the seams that are inherent in the bureaucracy. And so ultimately what we had to become was some sort of hybrid system where the strengths of the bureaucratic system could sit in the background. This is how you train soldiers, deploy forces, fix helicopters, etc., etc. Same thing in industry and government. There's a lot of strength to the power of a grown and healthy bureaucracy. But over top of that we had to overlay a network system that allowed individuals or nodes to cross traditional boundaries with information, decision rights, moving into other folks' battle space, etc. Which required a decentralization of trust much deeper down into the organization than we'd ever seen before. And the end state was this constantly morphing picture of subnetworks that night over night for years over years were allowed to actually drive what was happening inside the organization. Meanwhile, the overarching strategic stability came from the bureaucratic model that sat in the background. So I'll pause there.  And also I guess the U.S. military is by definition a very hierarchical organization and if you're talking about pushing decision making further down the kind of, further down in the ranks and somebody makes a mistake in this kind of model, are they treated in the same way that they would be treated in a traditional sort of military bureaucracy? Because you're going to have mistakes at a lower level with this kind of model, right? Yeah, absolutely.  I mean, a lot of the other speakers have talked about, you know, dealing with Salafis versus Sufis. We talked about dealing with the hearts and minds of the engagement with the local population and all those things. But in order to get that space to do that, you needed an enterprise that was focused, narrowly focused, on kill capture of the most radical elements of that network. So there are other inputs that need to be put in place in order to defeat a network. But the way that we approached, you know, the problem set was to create an organization to defeat another specific organization at a time and place, you know, at that time. If you look at this, and Al Qaeda in Iraq or the Taliban or whatever, you need to take another step back and say, okay, that was then. This is now. How do we tackle ISIS? How do we tackle different elements of ISIS? The ISIS, as Doug pointed out earlier, that's closest to Baghdad or Mosul is not the same ISIS that's at Raqqa. You know, the enterprise that goes after this network needs to be created specific for this. Yeah, and I'd offer, to your point, there is risk in this model, but there's risk in moving too slow in a traditional model. Sure. The part and parcel of running an organization like this comes with pushing down enough information so that if you consider these smallest sort of, albeit just an abstract model, these yellow dots that are out there on the fringe outside of the normal boundaries of the organization, the ultimate goal and where we were able to get to was that the model sort of flips on its head. So the traditional bureaucratic system, even the military of, you know, receiving guidance, indexing that against the intelligence as you see it on the ground, going up and asking for permission and given that permission and executing, we had refined that down to as fast and efficiently of a model as you could create, but it still was several hours behind the decision curve of the Al Qaeda network. And so the only way you could get ahead of it was allowing those dots to move before they have permission. And so to do that, you have to push constant strategic understanding into their realm, which means you have access to things that traditionally you wouldn't at that lower level and you can reach across boundaries into other agencies, into other forces and say, I need to know exactly what you're seeing right now because I need to move in the next 20 to 30 minutes. I can't seek approvals. The opportunity will be lost by then. So you have to assume some, but you counter it by ensuring the right strategic information is down at that level. And you also brought other people than the military into the network. I mean, who did you bring in as the fight against AQI developed? I mean, first of all, there was more to just AQI. There are other elements that you're combating out there. I mean, it's not just specific to Iraq. It's more of a global enterprise. So you're actually involving the experts in certain counter-network activities within the U.S. government, outside of the U.S. government, within the U.S. and kind of in the international partners. I think that that's something that SOCOM has done bigger than just... But specifically like Treasury, FBI. Absolutely. I mean, you've got to go after the money. You've got to go after the rat lines of people coming in there. You need to go after the individual leadership. After Zarkawi is gone, AQI is a different organization. And similarly, bringing it... Because this isn't necessarily about yesterday. This isn't the network against networks of yesterday. It's about today. And to go after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, there is no caliphate if there is no caliph. So you're going to have to target the individuals, the kill-capture mission, and you're going to have to target different aspects of the organization to include the money, the rat lines, and everything else. And in order to do that, the military is not necessarily the element that's going to do it. And all of it is based on intelligence, so you obviously need a very heavy, you know, reliance on that. And some of it is, you know, U.S. born. Some of it is local. Since this is a policy question, I won't address it to Chris because he's still in the reserves. I'll address it to you, Yanni, which is... So this model that we see up here, this sort of networked, distributed model, how does that fit with what we're actually doing right now against ISIS? Well, I mean, the natural answer is it doesn't. And the fact is that, you know, we heard earlier General Odierno mentioning, you know, that we are training brigades to take over Mosul. Is that a good idea? No. I mean, we have to train brigades. You have to train the Iraqi army to react in certain ways. But that's not, you know, the strength of what we're talking about here. The strength that we're talking about is small units.  You don't deploy a division headquarters. You don't deploy, you know, the airborne strikes as an Air Force officer, you know. I could tell you, or former Air Force officer, I could tell you that, you know, I've grown up as a strategist thinking that air campaigns are part of a greater air campaign. They're not something of themselves. So the idea of the way that we've approached it is quite frankly just poor.  If I could circle back, avoiding the policy debate, the... But you bring up a good point, Peter, about who else is involved, and here's what didn't happen in the evolution of this model. There was no 400-page playbook. There wasn't a ran study that said, here's what it's going to look like in four years, start building it. There was a mentality that said, this bureaucratic system is too slow, it's not working. So let's start to push the envelope and see what unfolds. So the whiteboard was sort of wiped clean, and we were allowed to start from scratch. And then what that allowed you to do, and this is why it took time, was every time you encountered a situation where we moved too slow on that, we didn't have the right axis on that, we didn't have the right information, you could then go back into the bureaucratic model and say, okay, what's the blocker there? Why can't I talk to that battle-space owner? Why can't I reach back into DC and ask this question? And then somewhere in that structure, there's an answer. Well, there's this regulation around this relationship. Here's the memo that says, I can't tell you until this happens. And then you can piece those things apart, either solve for them or pull them into the network and say, okay, I'm comfortable with you going point-to-point with this group and solving for that in real time. There's a big difference between accepting your critiques. I mean, when you did what you did with Jay Salk in Iraq, A, we were losing, and losing is a very powerful kind of corrective to previous kinds of forms of whatever you were doing before wasn't working. Two, you had an exceptional leader, Stan McChrystal, an exceptional, you know, Admiral McRaven as well. Three, we had 150,000 American soldiers in the country, and we really understood what was going on, partly because every night there were 12 raids that you guys were doing. And so, I mean, it's very different right now, right? So, looking to the future, we're obviously not going to sort of replicate anything that we were doing in 2005, 2006, but if you were king for a day, you would advise what? Well, I mean, look, you can't replicate exact things, but I think, you know, a lot smarter folks earlier in the day have talked about maybe perhaps repeating themes, not necessarily specifics. So, the idea of creating a theme of what we're talking about, I would recommend that the president, you know, introduces a counterterrorism task force that's focused on targeting ISIL, both obviously in Iraq and Syria. It may be different in the way that we tackle it even within Iraq, not just Iraq and Syria, but I would absolutely form that. And I would also form a counterpart to that of soft elements, you know, that focus on the training and advising of the Iraqi security forces and or other forces that go the other way. The notion of deploying, again, division headquarters, brigades, or even the talk about a large footprint force of U.S. forces going in there is to me intellectually numbing. Okay, so I mean, this is something that needs to be absolutely, you know, countering violent extremism is one thing. That's one conference that was had. You know, another conference that needs to be had is how do we tackle this this way? And it doesn't, it won't take long to really come up with the starting blocks. You know, the decision needs to be taken. You know, history may not repeat itself, but it sometimes it rhymes. Yeah, exactly. So what is rhyming right now, Chris, for you when you look at AQI and which is the parent organization of ISIS? How are they similar and how are they different? Well, I think the obvious one that jumps out and showed everyone the room is similar individuals.  And in some ways, you know, you can look at it as a disease where, you know, that the part of the disease that survives the antibiotic regimen is going to come back stronger. It's learned. It knows some of this. It knows, you know, better operate, it knows how to engage with the population better than AQI did. It's demonstrating that. So there's a lot of lessons there at the individual level, which is now going to make it that much more impressive. And I think it's also learned how to communicate with the world much more effectively, which equals its rapid growth compared to AQI. So you seem to imply that if we killed Baghdadi, that would be the end of it? No, it's not just the end of it, but it's a good start.  But when we killed Zakhawi, the violence in Iraq actually started going up? I mean, we can even use the statistics of earlier speakers.  So the fact of the matter is that we, it was not enough, and that's my point, it just kills our caliphate. You have to actually dismantle the network. And the same way that, you know, ISIS has economic aspects to it. They have social aspects to it. They have, you know, they're providing services.  There are other aspects of the movement, you know, that are attractive enough to bring them in there. Both of you spent many years away from your families fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. You basically, they looked like they were totally defeated in 2010, right? So were you surprised? What's your reaction to their comeback? Was it even a comeback? They're bigger and better? No, I wasn't really surprised. It's disappointing, of course. But, you know, given, it's an ideology, as we all know, and there are remnants of it. You can't completely destroy it. Enough pressure was removed that they were able to, again, find the cracks in the traditional system. In this place, it was a land area that they could start to control and grow inside of. I mean, it makes total sense. You know, as we were talking about earlier, in some ways, I love the analogy. It's like an endless Rubik's Cube that you're never really going to find a solution in there, but you don't want to put it down. You have to keep playing with it, looking for the end state. Otherwise, it's going to get away from you really, really fast. I'll tell you, first of all, I mean, this is, you know, the $64,000 question, because the truth of the matter is that, you know, we may want to leave on arbitrary timelines, but the enterprise is not necessarily over because of the timeline that we're putting in there. Same can be said in Afghanistan. You know, 2016, we're going to be out by whatever.  And similarly, you know, earlier Emma mentioned, you know, one of the real reasons why there's such a mess in Iraq is because we went there in the first place.  And I think the fact that we're stepping away from some of these things is perhaps the more, the bigger tragedy that we've gone in there in the first place.  We don't think of ourselves as an empire, but these projects, by their nature, are not one or two year deals, right? Right. I mean, philosophical questions go to him. No, you're right. I mean, that's exactly the point.  The sun of ISIS is perhaps more dangerous than ISIS. The sun of AQI is perhaps more dangerous, you know, than AQI itself. The fact that on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, we list ISIL, parentheses, remnants of AQI is, you know, it's a bit telling in itself. You know, we don't know how to treat ISIL. It's graduated far beyond AQI, but it still has certain AQI characteristics. So, yeah, I mean, this is a long-term event. The force, you can't close down a base, like Baghdad or Balad or whatever, lock up the stuff and say, okay, we don't need to, you know, use that anymore. Shift a pivot to Asia immediately after we get out of Iraq. I mean, we're, you know, I'll take wrong decision for a thousand, Alex. I mean, so... Well, on that, audience members, if we wait for Mike, we'll take Heather Halbert right there in the back and then Harlem, all the Hs. Thanks. I'm Heather Halbert from New America and I've got two questions for you both about the network over bureaucratic overlay. You can imagine, as Peter, your question alluded to, this would be a fabulous model potentially for cyber command. You can even imagine it as a fabulous model for humanitarian response on the civilian side of the house. Given how challenging it was for you even within JSOC, can you even imagine doing this in other parts of government and what are the things that would make it possible or impossible? Second question, one of the big reasons JSOC was able to do this is the tremendous amount of trust and legitimacy that it has on the Hill and with the American people. Given that our oversight structures, I think it might be generous to call them an efficient bureaucracy, what kind of oversight do you create for a network overlay like this so that it continues to enjoy the level of trust and legitimacy that you benefited from? Sure. I'll take the first question. Yes, absolutely. I think it can happen in any system. It's not easy, but I've seen it branch out into other parts of government and other parts of the military and have done work in other spaces. We're seeing large organizations to try to pick up some of these characteristics and it's very doable. There's a process to how you do this. This isn't Facebook. This isn't just Twittering back and forth. It's a legitimate process on how do you structure an overarching strategic intent. You have to have the right type of leadership that's bought into delivering that and being rather than at the top of the org chart as Ann Marie said earlier, pulling themselves down into the middle and creating the network around them and they become the communication flow, the hub, rather than the approval point for decisions. It's a different model, but it's very doable if you have that clear understanding and you're willing to put the systems in place to execute those communications. I mean, that's a great answer. Tom Ricks. Hi, Tom Ricks. Just as a follow-up on that for Chris, what did you do with people who simply were unable to adjust to the new system and what percent of overall JSOC personnel would you say that was? And JSOC leaders especially. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I would say the vast majority were able to adopt this way of thinking but it's a certain selected type of folk. But I've seen it adapted to other systems that don't have triple quadruple selection processes to get there so I think it's very, folks can assume this model. Well Chris, specifically where have you seen it successfully adapted? I don't want to give you my pitch. We do this in industries. Yeah, but like give us an example because it's interesting. So we've done it with companies in technology, in banking, consumer goods. I mean, everyone's wrestling with some version of this model, this problem set which is things move exceptionally more fast on the outside than the model that I built in the 80s and 90s was designed to pass information and make decisions against. So how do I handle this? So, but to your questions, the majority of folks adopted it in any system that the hardest part is going to be at that mid-level because we've all come up through bureaucracies at some level probably in our lives. Here you're executing against the known.  Here you're setting the strategy. Here your incentive, your existence is all about managing the control levers that allow information to flow up and down. So when you start to offer a center out leadership model, the people that are incentivized to control that information flow, they're the hardest ones to convince. Hey, this works for everyone, but I need you to, most importantly, that you break your mentality around being the gate of information flow. So that's usually the hardest part.  And I would tell you that from my experiences, Tom, that that enterprise was very much bottom up in terms of actually listening to people and actually listening to innovation coming from the ranks. But at the same time, it was very much a well-led organization that embraced this sort of culture. So in a way, resistance is futile as the end, you know, the conclusion. But it wasn't because it was forced. It was because it was well-led so people bought into it. But at the same time, it was the type of people that you're dealing with that were actually not just embracing that they were accelerating it. You know, if I can put it that way. Harlan Ullman, over here. We should have a special Harlan Ullman mic. I'm Harlan Ullman. I'd like to ask you, can you really elevate a tactical solution to a strategic one in this context? Yes. Let me finish the question. I thought I'd get away with it quickly. And you have to help me here. I don't understand how the United States and the coalition are organized to take on the Islamic State. Who in the White House has been assigned various authorities and responsibilities? Among the coalition of 62 and 20, aside from working groups, how is that being organized with authorities and responsibilities? On the U.S. side, you've got at least four combatant commands engaged. Fifth, if you include the CIA. You've got General Terry who's in charge of the ground game and John Allen who's got some kind of role in here. So when you see this whole structure, how would you apply your construct to dealing with the Islamic State in a really rational way that's going to work? If I... I mean, it actually is an exactly the same answer to Tom Rick's point. You know, the only way that this can work is if you have a well-led enterprise that is adaptive that is supported by groups of individuals that are actually embracing this sort of tactic, you know, approach, and then you have to move forward with it. If you don't have that, you know, any one of those variables, then, you know, this is a theoretical discussion.  This is kill, capture, brutal attack of a network in its totality. Okay? This is actually telling them that you're not going to meet the 72 virgins. You're going to meet the 72 Virginians. You know, this is not going after them in a way that, you know, the tweets that are going to come out after this are not going to be nice tweets. They're going to be, you know, maybe over time, maybe you don't want to take your family to Raga because they have kind of a nice system. You know? That thing. But I'll tell you the alternative of what's going on now is not that nice either. You know, we say that the coalition has driven ISIS out of Kobani. You know, click, vice news, you know, or CNN or anything like that, and you see Kobani and it looks like Dresden. You know, is this a solution?  But what is left on the ground, I mean, how are we going to rebuild that? Is that the birthing place of the next ISIS kind of fight? I mean, this is a really, you know, vast, you know, sort of thing to grasp in the context and the grand nature of this, but this is very specific.  Any questions? I would offer. There was a distinct clarity around mission in Iraq where there's a broad strategic intent to create a stable state. The subset of that that gets pushed down to the joint special operations command is defeat al Qaeda. Because if you don't do that, I know I can't do all these other things. So then around that, we can build all these subsets. If we hadn't had that clarity of intent, we certainly could have created as much chaos in the battlefield that we were solving for. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy up in Boston. And I think what you talk about, the U.S. government did a lot of successful things specifically with the task force and reaching back in the government and bringing those capabilities forward of CIA, FBI, and others. How do you connect foreign elements to the network? How do you bring the network back down to the ground level? And how would you propose doing it with the Sunni communities in Iraq and Syria? Because I think if you build this network with ISF, you're not going to really have the results you need. Thank you. Well, I mean, I'll give you the at the center of the strategy was actually, you know, the rule of law and actually doing things with almost an evidentiary kind of level where you can actually take things. And eventually the idea is to have some sort of prosecutions after, you know, out of these, the people that you're picking up. This isn't, when you're capturing them, it's to lead to more captures. So there's an intelligence value to it. But there is also an element of they are, they have done something very poorly, you know, or illegal. So you're putting them in jail. So there is an element of that, that the FBI was an absolute critical element of it. So the, I mean, look, at the end of the day, you are dealing with our rule of law versus their rule of law. Okay, so we have to have the rule of law as a critical entity in the countering this, this, this scourge. So it has to be a critical part of it. Any other questions over here? Good afternoon gentlemen. Ben Hernandez, Naval History and Heritage Command. ISIS has evolved from AQI. Now they hold territory, they control millions of people and they have to provide services for those people. They have to do things like be concerned about holding main supply routes from Syria into their capital city. How can we exploit that? That smells like they're becoming more bureaucracy. No, it certainly could become their new reality. I mean, in many ways that's a good thing. If they have a population that's now dependent on them and they expect potholes to be filled and schools to be open, then they will get mired down in the same problem that everyone else faces. They've made some moves toward that, but my two cents is that's just to ingratiate the population at this point. I don't think they've taken it on as a serious part of their overarching strategy or see it as a real requirement yet. But they may at some point. That said, that could be a, that's a timeline on their terms. So it's not necessarily the most aggressive way to focus the problem. But I think they have also a capacity issue.  So the point is there's a lot to, you know, so there's a lot to deliver if that's the goal.  But I would take it out for a second and just say, okay, Hezbollah, Hamas.  I really care, almost cursed, I really care about the fact that their behavior is such that is absolutely unacceptable. Their tactics are unacceptable. If they embrace different tactics, then they fit in different categories. It's kind of like picture tombstone, you know, the movie. Okay? At one point, if they let go of that sash, I don't care where they go. Okay?  There's no two ways about it, at least in this model. You know? So that's my take. Sorry. Thank you. Both Chris and Yanio are two of the most exceptional officers of that generation, and it's been really a pleasure to have them on the stage. It's an honor. Thank you.


So here we are then, the grand final, the conclusion of a terrific week of Speedway. We've got Team GB going off the gates one and three, Robert Lambert in blue off the inside, alongside him is Max Wickey in white. Gate number two, gate number three in red is Dan Bulyan. Gotta say Jack Holder has done a fine job for Australia tonight. We'll go from the outside with the yellow helmet color.  There's the lineup for you. Dan Bulyan in red, Robert Lambert in blue, Max Wickey in white and Jack Holder in yellow. Fantastic week of Speedway and I must say that this is a fitting conclusion. Big teams missing our Poland of the shock. They've had a poor night and it hasn't been their year. They're gonna have to dust themselves down and come back next year when we go back to the World Cup, which will be staged next season in Brotswab, could be a different story there. They'll be hoping so because the Speedway of Nations just hasn't worked out for them. But Great Britain, the world champions, can they retain their title now? You can't call it Kelvin. It's impossible to call this one. The only certainty is that these boys are gonna be throwing their bikes at each other for four solid laps. And will indeed it's gonna be action-packed. Robert Lambert's done a great job. Dan Buly also has got stronger and stronger the longer the night's gone on. Jack Holder has been terrific coming into replace Jason Doyle. And as a consequence, Jason Doyle hasn't had a ride tonight because Jack Holder has just been rock solid throughout the evening. So coming forward for the final time this week, the grand final. Here we go, moments away. Green lights on now. He's made a superstar. Jack Holder's there alongside him. Holder from the outside makes a superb start. Matt Frick's there, looks for his partner. Here comes Robert Lambert on the inside. Dan Buly coming round the outside. Jack Holder looking for his partner, Frick. But out in front, Australia looking good, really looking good and set to be grand world champions. Oh, here comes Buly. He's got a lot of speed right around the fence. He's put in a big brave move. He has indeed. But out in front, they're maintaining their position. Buly trying everything he knows, Robert Lambert at the back. Frick holding the inside. Jack Holder round the outside. They're looking strong, looking full out in front. Tell you what, Dan Buly, he's got the speed, but I just can't see he's going to be able to do anything about Robert Lambert at the back. If he can just squeeze past Jack Holder, he could try to slow the race down, but it's just too late now. Into the last corner for the last time this week. Fantastic action here. And Australia over to be grand world champions in 2022. What's the full performance from Jack Holder and Matt Frick? They are the champions then. Great Britain just missing out there. Got a feel for them, silver medal for them. They've done a really good job when they have been reduced just the two riders. But many congratulations to Team Australia with Jack Holder and Max Frick and Mark Lemon and Jason Doyle. I'm sure playing his part in the pitch. Brilliant stuff from them. Jason Doyle will be celebrating just as much as those two. He's been every bit of part of this team. He said he was nervous watching, and I could see it in his face before that, but fully deserved victory for the boys in green and gold. Fantastic stuff for them. Yeah, wonderful performance. Gates 2 and 4 really working well. Got to say that Team GB clearly delighted with the silver medal they've ridden so well. Just missing out in the final, but for Australia, the brilliant performance from them. Got to say Max Frick made a terrific start there in the final. Didn't show any nerves whatsoever. Of course, he's a Grand Prix winner this year. But Kike, did they turn up in the grand final here tonight? Marvelous scenes there. Clearly overjoyed, and rightly so. Australia, Invoyance of the Speedway of Nations, world champions. Brilliant stuff. When it counted, they soaked up the pressure. We can see the sportsmanship there. Sweden in there congratulating, but they're going to be popular winners. Team Great Britain, you can see Dan Buly there. Disappointment in his face, where they worked so hard all night long. Silver medalist, they can be proud of that. But tonight, it's all about Australia. It is indeed. Silver medal, far from a disgrace. They've done a great job just to get there. And, but it's all about Australia. They pick up seven points, and they are crowd world champions here Invoyance this evening. Great Britain pick up the silver medal. That's your boy. Plenty of sportmanship there. Jack Holder, I tell you what, that's probably the best performance of his career so far, Jack Holder. Terrific stuff. Yeah, big, big part of the team tonight. And they soaked up the pressure. They both made excellent starts. Jack Holder come in particular, coming from gate four. Roadwell together, Robert Lambert threw absolutely everything up the inside there of Max Brick, but Max Rock solid just kept it on the inside. If it had drifted off, of course, I'm sure Robert Lambert would have got through, but totally different lines for those two riders. But in the end, it was the same result, seven points and Speedway of Nations champions. Yeah, great moment. Mark Lemon overcome with emotion. Terrific effort there. Look at the delight on Jason Dolls face, and he hasn't ridden tonight, but clearly he will indeed. He's played his role, I'm sure. Jack Holder clearly overjoyed. Has ridden out of his skin tonight. Max Frick, so impressive in the final with that start away from gate number two. And Jack Holder also made a superb effort from the outside. That was the difference. And Australia there coming out on top, Great Britain in second place, Sweden pick up the bronze medal, Denmark, Czech Republic, Poland, and Finland just missing out. We've had a terrific week of Speedway. It's been a great advert for the Speedway of Nations. No question about that. It's been super duper, right from the first semi-final on Wednesday night. It's been a real privilege to be here, to be able to commentate on the four nights of Speedway. So we're going to get some reaction now with the winning team with Scotty Nichols. He's with the winning team now. Yeah, joining me now is your Speedway Nations champions, 2022, Jack Holder. It's been a long night. It's been a tough night, a lot of stress, but you finally pulled out of the bag in that last seat. Speechless, mate, you know. I hope not, I've got to do an interview. I've got the biggest stitch, man. I was that last whole lap, I was yelling, I'll leave me a helmet. Yeah, we've been waiting so long for this one, and, you know, my first season or year in it, and awesome. Get in, man! That was for you, babe. Yeah! Matt, it's come to you. It was a real tough semi-final there with Sweden. It was a controversial, quite a tough call, I want to say, controversial. How did you see that one going? You know, it's tough. We're both racing for one piece of track, and, you know, it is what it is a result, but we're stoked we're able to make it in the final, make a good start.  He puts a lot of work in behind the scenes, and yeah, he deserves this one. Yeah, Devin, Jason, you didn't get any time on track, but you certainly played a part in the pit, so it must be a special moment for you two. Yeah, mate, I think I'm the cleanest world champion at the moment, so, yeah. He was on the back of the bike that whole time he was with us. I can't believe all the boys done an amazing job, but also LEMO for 20 years, he's been pushing for this world title, and it's finally happened, so he's got some tears of joy, and it's amazing to see. I mean, yeah, we've got to have a word with you, LEMO. If you want to slide across, mate, so we can get hold of you. Mate, it's a huge moment. I know it's been a long time coming, 20 years. I mean, a lot of these lads are still in nappies at that point, so, yeah, emotional night for you.  I mean, for me, it's an honour to be part of it, so it's just amazing that they finally lifted it. We've been so close for so many years, and we just kept persevering, but there's guys before them, there'll be guys after them, but I'm never proud of them, these boys, and this one's for my dad. Yeah, mate, and you're not on the track, but you're living every moment with them on the track. I can't imagine how you must have been feeling for those four last solid laps there.  I asked Tony Rickardson how he would feel in this moment, and I won't repeat what he said, but I was feeling exactly the same. Yeah, we won't ask him what he said about the ref school either. Well, it doesn't matter, I mean, it's been a fantastic event.  Doily's just been magic captain, like, I'm just, you know, I can't wait to see him with that trophy he deserves it. These guys have just been sensational. Jack's had his chance and he's proved it.  So this is one for all you guys back at home, cheering up and getting up at early morning hours and supporting us. Thank you very much. Well, on that note, mate, I'll eat, go enjoy the celebrations. Well done, Team Australia. Yeah, many congratulations to Australia. That is an outstanding result. Two decades they've had to wait, so I'm fully deserved. And Jason Dahl there, quite clearly delighted as well, and that's superb to see.


A record-breaking winter in California, whether you're talking about the snow or rain, all that precipitation resulted in flood-impacted neighborhoods in the north and the south. We're doing everything we can to support the effort to shore up that emergency spillway. But what got much of the attention, and deservedly so, was the drama unfolding in Oroville at the nation's tallest dam. On February 7th, the Department of Water Resources crews discovered a hole in the dam's controlled spillway, and it was massive, 250 feet long, 170 feet wide, and as much as 50 feet deep. The anomaly quickly channeled the flow over the spillway's edge. That diversion immediately gouged a gorge in the land alongside the spillway, taking rock and trees that stood for decades there along with it. And on February 12th, releases over the top of the emergency spillway began undermining its integrity. We're talking tens of thousands of people in the area now being told, not asked, told to get out to evacuate. Airing on the side of caution, Butte County Sheriff Cory Honi ordered the city of Oroville and communities downstream to evacuate. Now, unfortunately, many people have been stuck in traffic for hours. Agencies, local and state, now had to do what they do best. The CHP kept order on roads and highways during and after the evacuation. Rain ravaged many of the area's roads, as did the constant travel by heavy trucks hauling rock and boulders the size of small cars. Caltrans left into action, constantly filling potholes and repairing heavily damaged highways, keeping routes to and from the dam open and passable. They faced the same challenges on highways around the state, like Highway 50 heading to Lake Tahoe, where massive mudslides made travel impossible. Elsewhere, teams from the California Conservation Corps worked to save property and quite possibly lives sandbagging boils along levees in Mantica. It was just one of their mini missions. All the while, work to fortify the emergency spillway came by air and ground, gravel filled gaps and canyons, and concrete filled voids and added reinforcement. Below the dam, contractors built barges destined to move heavy equipment below the spillway. March 1st, flows at the controlled spillway are brought to zero. That gives engineers an opportunity to inspect the damage and plan repairs. It also gives barges and excavators the ability to dig at the toe of the controlled spillway, removing tons of debris deposited by the erosion. Critical aerial support for incident commanders came by way of Cal Guard, and Governor Edmond G. Brown got his own tour of the damage in Oroville, receiving detailed reports from DWR and Cal OES. Now the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has joined Cal OES at Mather to help coordinate all recovery efforts moving forward. With our combined forces, we will determine priorities and meet them head on over the next weeks and months. Reporting for OES News, I'm Shawn Boyd, in Oroville.


Welcome back to Dell Technology World 2021. Dell Tech World, the virtual edition. My name is Dave Vellante. We're going to talk about the edge. Very excited to invite Pere Luca Ciedelli, who's the vice president of product management for the Edge portfolio at Dell. And Gil Shnorenson, who is the senior vice president, Edge portfolio, also with Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, great to see you. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Great to see you. Yeah, great to see you guys too. Wish we were face to face, but maybe maybe in 22. Gil, let's start with you. The Edge is very exciting. It's not really defined. It's very fragmented, but it's there. It's kind of, you know it when you see it. What do you get excited about when you think about the Edge? I think, well, there's two elements. The first one is that we all live at the Edge. In other words, the areas we deal with are around us every day. We show up when we consume, when we drive, so it's a very physical type of activity. We know it's there. What's really exciting for me is that, and you started with talking about fragmentation right off the bat, it is a great opportunity for Dell Technologies to add value. Because it's so fragmented, because it's so new, because it has developed and evolved the way it is, we see an amazing opportunity for us to add much more value than we do today, and solve problems that have yet to be solved in the industry. And it's an exciting, it's almost like an infinite playground for a technologist, right? I mean, yeah. Dave, I think that's exactly what we find out. The Edge is very exciting, there is a lot of motion, especially due to the pandemic and other things, big factor that accelerate the innovation at the Edge. But this is an inorganic acceleration, and what it kills for most of our customer is also confusion, right? They need to apply multiple solution, but not very organized. So you try to solve the outcome, like having the right production on your line, because demand is surging, but you don't have an organic things to do that and solve the problem. So you see a lot of silos coming in for each one of the solution, and that's what Gil was referring, that's a great opportunity for us as Dell with the breadth of the portfolio we have and what our team, that is a new team, is focusing doing is to bring that idea to be able to consolidate multiple things at the Edge and process things at the Edge. We did an event, a Cube, had an event called the Cube on Cloud in Cube One, and we had John Rose on, and the title of the segment was something like Gaining the Technology Edge, and we were kind of geeking out on the tech at the Edge. And my takeaway there was trying to be like, what is the Edge? It's like, well, it's the place where it makes most sense to process the data. And so that brings up a lot of challenges. There are technical challenges and there are business challenges. I wonder if we could sort of dig into those a little bit. How do you guys look at that? Maybe Gil, you want to start, maybe on the business side and then we could dig into it. Sure. The way things evolved, if you think about it at the Edge, you're a very vertical lesson. Because of that, they're very use case driven. And so in every industry possible, you start with some business person taking a decision, whether they have a need or they want to grow their business. And so for example, they would buy an appliance to do fraud protection in retail or detection retail, or they would buy an application to manage robotics in the factory. And it would come with its own gateway and plan compute and a cloud portal. And then you do it again and again and again. Every time you have a business opportunity, all of a sudden you have this proliferation of IT type equipment at the Edge or it's the worst place to have it really because you don't have the right IT resources and you are in the need to protect it in a much more in a different way than you do in a data center. And so all of that brings us to a point that we see an opportunity to simplify. And so not only simplification, and as simplification or simplicity is the most important driver for any IT purchase. Things that are simple are the easiest and the most economical to operate. The next demand that we see from a customer is security. Because things are at the Edge, they have a much more extended attack surface. They need to be connected to networks. They need to be connected without IT staff. So if you can simplify and secure, you can really unlock amazing value by processing data closely to where it's created. Without it, we're seeing this opportunity as businesses but we can really get to it because there are so those two hurdles in front of us. So Praluka, thank you for that, Gil. When you hear a lot about AI inferencing at the Edge and if you think about AI today, much of the work is modeling, it's done in the cloud but you're not going to be doing AI inferencing in real time in the cloud. Take the autonomous vehicle example. So that brings some technical challenges. There's obviously data challenges. I'm curious as to how you think about that. I mean, we always talk about how much data is going to be persisted. I think Tesla persists like five minutes of data. But some of it is going to go back, that's true. But a lot of it is going to be processed real time and that's just really different than the way we typically think about IT. Yeah, absolutely. So at the Edge, especially in manufacturing, we see right now, or in other use case, it's very important to get the outcome very quickly. Now, you don't use that a deep learning model for that. You need to just understand, for example, in a computer vision use case where you take the image of your production line. You actually, to your point, Dave, you not keep those image, you keep the image where you have the defect. But you need to process that AI ML needs to be intelligent enough to understand that you have a defect and send that image then to the cloud. So the search of the data at the Edge is a very important factor. And why you need to process data at the Edge? Because at your point, you can't wait to send to the cloud and I'm waiting, right? Tesla is a clear example of that, all the autonomous car where you need to react instantly to a change. But in manufacturing, for example, that is our focus for now, is for example, the robots that if you need to optimize the robot, you need to have an immediate understanding of where the pieces are and when they need to put in the tolerance need to be act immediately. Otherwise, you come out with a thousand of pieces that they're not in the right tolerance. So at the end of the day, what we see is not only the surge of the need of processing AI ML to the Edge, but also the need of a new type of compute at the Edge. So in the past was just gateway and you'd get the gateway and you send the data to the cloud. Now it's a form of a new compute that has also GPU capability and other things to process the data. So very important. And I think Dell, especially, we are very focused on that because it's really where the customer need to extract the value. Thank you. Agil, I want to get to the unique value proposition of Dell and what makes you distinct. And I infer from your comments your strategy you said is to simplify. And so I see two vectors there. One is to simplify at the Edge. The other is to where needed connect that Edge, whether it's on-prem, a public cloud, cross-cloud, that kind of simplification layer that abstracts the underlying complexity. Maybe you could talk about your strategy and what makes you guys different. Sure. We've been talking to our, well, we always talk to our customers and we've been doing business at the Edge for many, many years. Let's call it coincidental. We're a very large company. We have reached reserve our customers. So when they decide to buy something for their Edge environments, they come to us as well as other vendors and we win the percentage of the time based on our market share. But when we decided to take another look at how can we be even more relevant, we started talking to a lot of them in great depth. And what we discovered was the problem I talked about before, the problem of complexity, the problem of security and the problem of choice. And so our focus is to do what we do best. We, at the end of the day, were an IT company. And our customers for the most part are IT people and we see them dragged more and more into Edge projects because customers need to connect Edge to their network and they need to security. And that's how it starts. And so those worlds of IT and OT are coming together and they're coming together or applying IT best practices, which is exactly what we know how to do. And so because of that, we think that they need to think about architecture versus unique, silent solutions. Architecture can support multiple use cases that can grow with time, consolidate more and more use cases as they grow, simplify what they do by applying tried and true or tried and true IT best practices in a secure manner. So the dealer approach would be doing that, taking a more architectural approach to the Edge versus a use case. And then just like you predicted, meet the customers where they are from an application standpoint. And so we know that a lot of applications are growing and be developing on a hyperscaler or public clouds. We would like to connect to those. We would like to allow them to keep working as they have, except when they run it at the edge. Think about environments that could consolidate multiple workloads and not solve it for each one at the same time. And so that will be our overall approach. That's what we're working on. Yeah, so okay. So that horizontal layer, if you will, to serve many, many use cases, not just you're not going to go a mile deep into one and be the expert at some narrow use case. You want to be that horizontal platform. But at the same time, Perluca, I wonder does that call for more programmability as we over time of the products to really allow people to kind of design in that flexibility, if you will, build my own? Is that something that we can expect? Yeah, absolutely. So we spoke a little bit about this before the interview and the things that is very important is a composability starting from a very small from factor to the cluster and then expand to the cloud is the fundamental things and the trend that we see. The fact that you can compose the infrastructure starting from a small gateway that is changing in this market, right? Up to the cloud and be able to use the same layer that allow you to run the same application is a fundamental things. And we are working on that. We are working on this vision and our strategy is really to be able to be transparent but provide the right building block to do all the use case that they are required where the data are. So we, again, not only meeting the customer but meeting where the data are produced what the customer wants out of those data. So that's a fundamental things. And we have project Apex. So obviously we are plugging in the project Apex from an edge point of view will allow the customer to have this unique experience to go in Apex and also deploy the edge infrastructure that is needed. So that's, we're starting right now with that. So we will touch later but that's the first building block of that journey. Actually, let's touch now, right? You got some news around Apex and talk what are you announcing? So we are very exciting because as I said our team it's pretty new and it's a very important investment that Dell makes not only in us as a team but as a motion. So we are announcing a reference architecture with PTC. PTC is one of the biggest company for actually based here in Boston for manufacturing and reference architecture will be run on based on Apex private cloud. So the customer can go to the portal or the order Apex private cloud and deploy PTC on top of that. So very important things is the first step in this journey but it's an important very, very important step. So we want to thank you also PTC to allow us to work with them. We have other stuff as well that we are announcing. I don't know if you are familiar but we have a very unique streaming data platform, streaming data platform that can stream multiple data collected from gateway and from every place and it's a need. Obviously when you need to process data in real time very important to have a streaming. What we're doing with the new streaming data platform approach is the ability to deploy the single node so it can be very appealing for the edge and up to three nodes. Awesome, that's great. So a couple of comments on that. So it's funny, we did the live work show on theCUBE a couple of years ago, PTC's big event and it was like, it was the edge and I remember looking around saying, where's all the IT vendors? And so that's great to see you guys leaning in like that. Perluka, the streaming platform, tell me more about that. What's the tech behind it? So the streaming data platform is a project that we start a couple of years ago is actually start from open source, Pravega. It's a very interesting technology where you can stream multiple data. It's not a traditional storage. Use a technology that can really collect 1000 of different streams. And that's very important when you need to mine the data, bring the data in the structure of data in a fashion that you can process them at the real time, it's very important. So there are very cool use case of that. But now that we look at the edge, this is make more and more tangible sense because we have a lot of partner that they're working with us especially to extend when you have all this sensor, you bring the data to the gateways and from the gateways, then you can use data streaming platform to collect all these streams and then you can easily process them. So it's a very fundamental technology. We are very proud of that. As I said, our enterprise version is getting more and more. And now we can land these on different architecture. So it can be backed up by an Isilon. It can be also on different storage type now. And as I said, we're looking now to bring from a, what was a data center kind of structure down to the edge because now we can put a single node up to three nodes. It makes a lot of sense. Is this like a Kafka based thing or open source or is it something you guys built or a combination? So it's a combination. We actually project, the project is an open source project, but we did that. We start this many years ago and it works with Kafka, but he's not Kafka. So it's, he has plugin that can work with Kafka and all the other things. And it's very easy to deploy. So it's a very, very, very important. And the other things is the scalability of this platform. That sounds like the kind of thing you had in the labs and you said, okay, this is going to be important. And then boom, all of a sudden the market comes to you. What is it about manufacturing? Why did you start there? I can take this. We looked at where the opportunity was from two perspective. One is where the opportunity is to sell. They even the other one obviously comes with it because there's a good opportunity to help. And manufacturing today at the edge is about 30% of the opportunity in sales according to IDC, but more so it's been around for the longer time. And so it's very, it's maturing. It's the most demanding. And you know, it's got very long horizons of investment. And what we did was we figured that if we can solve problem for industry, we can then extend that and solve it for everybody else because this would be the toughest one to solve. And we like challenge. And then so we decided to focus and go deep. And you said it before, well, our approach is definitely horizontal approach. We cannot take an horizontal approach without verticalizing and understanding specific needs. So nobody can avoid doing both at the same time. You need to understand but you also want to solve it in a way that doesn't proliferate the silos. And so that's our role. We will understand, but we will make it more generic so other people can never do it later on. And Dave, if I can add, I think the manufacturing is also very exciting for us as a technologist, right? And Dell technology as in the name, the technology. So it's very exciting because if I look at manufacturing, we are really in the middle of industrial transformation. I mean, it's a new era. If you think about nobody care in the past to connect their machinery that they have PLC to the network. All of this is changing because the life that where we live right now with the pandemic, with the remote working with the fact that you need to have a much more control and be able to have predictive maintenance. So you're not stopping your manufacturing is pushing the entire manufacturing industry to connect this machine. And with the connectivity of this machinery, you get a lot of data. You get also a lot of challenge. For example, security. So now that's the place where connectivity brings the IT aspect in and the OT guys now they starting to speak with the guys because now it's a more complex things, right? It's not anymore computerized, computerized only to one machinery specifically is the entire floor. So it's a very interesting dynamics. Is the connection between that programmable logic controller and the Dell solution is, you mentioned to secure it, better security. And I presume it's also to connect back to whatever the core or the cloud, et cetera. Is it also to do something locally? Does it improve? Is there value add that you can provide locally? And what is that value add? Absolutely. So the value add, as I said, if you think right in the past, right? You have a machine that probably stain the manufacturer for 20, 25 years, then you have an hardware attached to that machine that is the PLC about 11 year. The guy that he knows better about that machine is actually not the softer component on, but is the guy that is being working on that machine for 15 years. Now, how you translate that knowledge to a learning algorithm that actually can do that 4,000 of machine. And that's really the key, right? You need to centralize information, process those information, but not in the cloud, not in the central data center, but on the manufacturing floor. And you need to have a way to represent these things in a very simple way. So the plant manager can take action or the guy that is responsible for the entire line can take action immediately. And that's where the change is. It's not anymore to, it's trying to extend the knowledge to multiple machine, multiple floor and try to get this change immediately. So that's really important. So the PLC doesn't become a general purpose computer or even necessarily an Uber computer, it connects to that capability because that enables data sharing across clouds and the like. That's enabled the entire things. You know, you can't do a model just with one source. You need to have multiple sources. And also think about the manufacturing is changing not only for the machinery, but people that they build new manufacturing, right? They need to be smart building. They need to have a technology for being more green, solar, energy consumption. So the manufacturing itself is mean five or six different things that you need to solve. It's not just the machine. So this idea of the silos environment is starting to collapse in one. And that's why it's important for us to start from a vertical, but also in the manufacturing, you already see this will expand to multiple things also like smart building and other thing because they need it. Yeah, the right guilt to your point. Manufacturing is like the big Apple. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere and you've got adjacencies that you can, you know, you can take the learnings from manufacturing and apply them to those adjacent industries. Gil, give us the last word. Look, usually when we talk at Bell Technologies World, we talk to an IT audience. And we were thinking this year that the way to talk about Edge, at least with the people who traditionally buy from us is exposed to the fact that they are more and more going to be responsible for Edge projects. And so our advice would be our hope that they would partner with us to think ahead, just like they do with data center with our cloud strategy, think ahead as they think about their Edge and try to set up some architectural guidelines. So when they do get the request, they're ready for it. And think about what they know, think about the IT best practices that they applied. All of that is coming to them. They need to be prepared as well. And so we would like to partner with all of our customers to make them ready and obviously help them simplify, secure, consolidate it as they grow. Well guys, thank you. I learned a lot today. You've made a lot of progress. You know, this is the hallmark of Dell, right? It's a very high, let me make sure I get this right, very high due to say ratio, right? You guys talked about doing this a couple years ago and you've made a lot of progress. And I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE to explain the strategy. It makes a lot of sense. So congratulations and good luck in the future. Thank you. All right, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's ongoing coverage of Dell Tech World 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there, right back.