Thank you, Captain. It's really a delight for me to host this very last panel and let me congratulate Captain Trilock and the other organizers of the conference. It's been a terrific conference, and I have no doubt that this last panel will, I don't know if we saved the best for last, but I think we'll be impressed. Undoubtedly, the Commandant and my friend Dr. Economy has set us up for a very important discussion about the Indo-Pacific region and the other major issues such as cyber in the strategic environment. We are all aware that the signs of rivalry across the Pacific area are extant. Many of us, including myself and many others here at the college, are following the setup of new bases, the massive unprecedented really reclamation efforts by China and the South China Sea, of course. But don't forget about the dangerous intercepts that have occurred just over the last couple of months. It's not a new pattern, but it's very troubling. And I believe just within the last week, we had Chinese Navy ships for the first time complimented, it seems, by Russian Navy ships in and around the contested islets, the Sengkaku Diao Yu islets in the East China Sea. So the signs of growing rivalry are there. I would just say, though, for my part, though, it's also important to keep in mind on the other side of the ledger that we don't want to forget that as we look out across the Asia Pacific that we're now coming up now on almost four decades in which there has not really been a major interstate war in that region. And that's really quite remarkable. And also, I think, worth reflecting on another positive sign, if I always like to bring some good news. If you go on the website of the State Department, you'll see a report out of the Eighth Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Perhaps Tom's going to talk about this some more, but it's really pretty amazing how much cooperation there is ongoing between Beijing and Washington as well. So in areas you wouldn't necessarily imagine, for instance, the Arctic and the Antarctic. So anyway, we want to take a balanced view. But coming back to one of my several mentors here that spoke yesterday, my professor Andy Krupp and I, which there is, who brought up the issue of scissors and paper. I won't touch on that, but he implored us to focus on Westpac, Westpac, Westpac. He mentioned the size of China's economy and possibly the lack of strategic depth. He asked the provocative question of what is it about this pivot? What is the reason for it? And we have to make sure we understand it better. So I think all of our panelists are extremely well positioned to discuss these issues and many others. And I'm looking forward to all these great presentations. Let's start with Dr. Michael Green. He's the Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. Thank you. Now I'm on. Thank you. Very much, Lyle. And I'm very, very happy to come back to the War College every chance I get. I thought that I would try to capture the dynamics of international relations in the Indo-Pacific in a very Chinese way, even though I'm trained as a Japan scholar. The Japanese often have these four character phrases, rich nation, strong army, revere the emperor, expel the barbarian. Chinas are longer and more convoluted. But I thought it would be a good way to try to slice and dice the contradictory security dynamics we see. So let me spend the next few minutes describing for you the three contradictions and the three will nots of the Indo-Pacific's emerging regional order. The first contradiction. Chinese leaders believe that the so-called peaceful rise of China, what Hu Jintao downgraded to the peaceful development of China, but Xi Jinping has cranked up again to what he calls a concept of an order of Asians for Asians. This idea that the natural default position of the Asia region is sinocentric and that it's good for everyone. This is a pretty powerful narrative and assumption for many Chinese leaders in Zhenanghai. The corollary is that only the United States is in a position to block or hinder that natural return to a sinocentric system. And the contradiction is that the more China tries through counter-intervention strategies within the first silent chain, coercion strategies against smaller maritime states in the region, the more it does that the more these states then align with the United States and align with each other and ultimately provide precisely the kind of obstacle to a sinocentric system that is supposed to be so natural. And this network is quite obvious. The U.S.-Japan alliance now with the defense guidelines review and Mr. Abe's new security legislation is essentially an alliance that's in the process of becoming more joint and combined, having not been so for almost its entire history. The U.S.-Japan and India, Japan and India are doing more together. Myanmar's opening was largely about Chinese pressure. The enhanced defense cooperation agreement with the Philippines, which I think even with the new Philippine president, Mr. Duterte, sometimes called the Donald Trump of Manila, is going to continue and strengthen. I think Duterte's team is actually quite good. And Korea, which has been very, very, very careful about China, angered at China's unwillingness or perhaps inability to control North Korea, has agreed to discuss introducing theater high-altitude area defense THAAD, which the Chinese explicitly made in a condition of Korea-China relations. The second contradiction is that in spite of all of this counterbalancing and alignment, China has not been deterred from its course in the South China Sea. And the United States is not really in a position to formulate some kind of collective security arrangement in the region as China rises. Because for every example of a state in the region aligning more closely with the U.S. or with India or Australia or Japan, the Chinese side can point to another example of a defection from this alignment. The Koreans in 2005 were asked by the Department of Defense to agree to strategic flexibility, allowing the U.S. to have more use of our forces on the peninsula for contingencies in Asia, which obviously included Taiwan and possible confrontations with China. The Koreans at the time, the government said no, they leaked it. And from a Chinese perspective, I was running the Asia part of the National Security Council at the time. From the Chinese perspective, it was a defection. It was a clear case of China's influence and the weakness of American alliances. We asked for too much. Abe's proposal in 2007 for a U.S.-Japan-Australia-India Quad, quite a powerful symbol of the major maritime democracies coming together, was essentially rejected by the other three countries. Another example for China, Vietnam, which is hyperrealpolitik and the President just had a good trip to Vietnam and strengthened defense cooperation. But Vietnam is constantly recalibrating to ensure that it's restoring good relations with the fellow socialist state and party to party size after it has restored some balance of power. And even Britain, our special partner, our special ally, has surprised the United States with various moves, including a decision to join China's Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank that surprised Washington. The third contradiction is that even as U.S.-China competition becomes more intense and frankly more dangerous within East Asia and in the Western Pacific, U.S.-China cooperation on global issues is generally moving in a good direction. As Liz economy mentioned, cooperation on Iran, on Ebola, the financial crisis on climate change, these big global issues we seem to be finding ways bit by bit to cooperate better with China. The administration is or initially was wrong to assume that cooperation on these global issues would be the remedy for the tension and regional issues. This was a clear statement in the national security strategy in the early documents and thinking of the administration. It doesn't work quite like that. But China is doing what rising powers do, including the United States. Rising powers, the U.S. in the 19th century, Bismarck's Germany, Japan in the first part of the 20th century, generally free ride on the global power, Britain or the United States, we proudly did that, while engaging in revisionist behavior in their own hemisphere in their own region, which of course we did, Bismarck did and the Japanese did. So there is this contradiction and it will continue. The interesting question is whether there's a tipping point at which the competition in Asia gets in the way of cooperation on global issues. I don't think we're near that. We could create that. We could start cutting deals. It'd be a big mistake. But I don't think we're near that. And I think China's ability to manage that particular contradiction is captured in the six-character phrase Xi Jinping has been advancing, the Xinzhen-Dagwa-Wanxi, the new model of great power relations, which essentially is an agreement to cooperate with the U.S. and avoid conflict. As it's been to explain to me in Beijing, not challenging the U.S. globally, but expecting the United States to recognize that China is a Dagwa, a great power in Asia, the only great power in Asia. So a bipolar arrangement in Asia where we exceed certain spheres of influence, but the U.S. remains the leading power. All right, the three will nots. China will not write the rules. In this competition for influence and leadership in Asia, it is often said China is going to write the rules. President Obama, in order to sell the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, has found that this resonates with Congress. If we don't pass TPP, China's going to write the rules. The president of China, Xi Jinping, as you heard from Liz, has stated China's going to start writing the rules. I went to college with Watterson, the cartoonist who does Calvin and Hobbes. He had this great cartoon where Calvin is about seven years old and he goes and tells his dad, I've decided to grow his beard. His dad keeps reading the newspaper and says, all right, that's fine. Calvin is very surprised. China's not ready to write the rules. The Asia infrastructure investment bank has problems, no doubt about it. But the governor of that bank is cooperating with the Asia development bank, with the World Bank, to try to find best practices in part because China is discovering what's called the moral hazard. You don't want to be the last lender of resort and be the only holder of debt for all these massive projects and unstable parts of the world. The One Belt, One Road, I learned yesterday from an expert who spoke at our institution, it's now called OBOR, Belt and Road, One Belt and Road. Tom will tell us what it should be called. I've looked into this. Tommy should comment on this, but as far as I can tell, there's a lot of money talked about. There's a lot of promises. There's no governing structure. No one can tell me or anyone I know how bids will be made, how accountability will be handled. RCEP, the alternate free trade discussion that the United States is not in, the Regional Cooperative Economic Partnership, which supposedly will dominate the region if we don't do TPP. Well, not so fast. Yes, China's the biggest economy in it, but Australia's in it, Japan's in it, New Zealand's in it. These are not countries that are going to roll over and agree to a trading system in Asia that's protectionist. And more importantly, with all respect to our friends in India, India's in it. And if you want to be sure that a multilateral trade agreement goes nowhere fast, invite India. So on the institutional side, I do not think China's going to write the rules anytime soon, anytime soon. And in terms of norms or the so-called Beijing consensus, after Tom and I escaped from the Bush administration, there was this wonderful survey done by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on soft power. And one of the questions was done in Asia. And one of the questions is what country's soft power increased the most over the last decade? And this is in 2008. And the answer in every country was, and they expected China, but the answer in every country was, and remember, this is the Bush administration, you can see why Tom and I liked it. The answer in every country was the US soft power increased the most over the last 10 years, except in the US, where Americans said, oh, no, no, China's soft power increased the most in the 10 years. We've done surveys at CSIS of elites where we ask what should the norms be that drive the new model, excuse me, the integration of Asia, so-called East Asia community, if Asia moves in the direction of greater integration like Europe or North America. Economic cooperation is number one, avoiding conflicts number two. And then the list starts getting populated with things like free and fair elections, good governance, law and order, excuse me, rule of law, women's empowerment, the outliers China, not the United States. So, China is in a very strong position to contest these norms and institutions to hedge, to develop their own, but I don't think to write the rules. Second, will not. We are in a dangerous dynamic in the South China Sea and in the Western Pacific, as Lyle described. But I think we will not reach an equilibrium until the United States demonstrates more willpower than we have. That China has much more successfully demonstrated to the region its risk tolerance. And what we've generally signaled is an intolerance for risk. And that affects this gray zone, as we Asianists like to say, little blue men, contest of will, of coercion, and of whether or not you can change the status quo. So I think we are in a situation where all the counterbalancing and all of the concern about China that's been expressed is clearly not enough to arrest what we're seeing in terms, of course, of activity and it's going to take, and we should be ready for, a bit more risk in our policy, in my view. And the third and last will not. The United States needs a strategy as one of the questioners asked earlier, a national strategy or a grand strategy, if you will. But the United States will not develop a national strategy or a grand strategy for this problem set unless we have a naval strategy. And I'm not just saying that because I'm at the Naval College and I want free stuff from the booth out front. I'll pay for the free stuff. I'm saying it because I just finished a book. It's coming out soon and I wanted to plug it. Don't buy that book. That's $7 on Amazon. Wait a few months by the new book. It'll be $49. It will have maps and pictures. But in this seven year study I did of the evolution of American grand strategy thinking in Asia since 1782 when it first came up with Thomas Jefferson. Got it. What was very clear was that our grand strategies usually started with the U.S. Navy. Occasionally the Army, but almost always with the U.S. Navy. And Mahan, of course, is a great example of that. I mean, Mahan is fascinating not only because of the decisive battle and his strategic concepts for employment of the Navy. He was a big thinker. He talked about trade. He talked about values. He talked about the geopolitics of Asia, the problem of Asia. Perry, after opening Japan, did it before him and Porter of the Essex did it in 1815 and 16. The Navy hasn't always done that well. War Plan Orange is an example of sophisticated development of a naval strategy, but poor grand strategy. The planners were told in 1908 by the Navy Board, don't talk about balance of power. Don't talk about alliances. Don't talk about trade. Solve the military problem. The first president briefed on War Plan Orange was Theodore Roosevelt. No president was briefed until Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And in the 20s and 30s, the military and the naval strategy diverted from the Treasury Department strategy, the State Department strategy. Better example, Tom Hayward and the Maritime Strategy, which did not have a national strategy to support it when he started doing it in the late 70s to deal with the Soviet problem of counter of a horizontal escalation. But it became the kernel of a grand strategy developed by the Reagan White House in the 80s. So I think there's a lot of value in thinking about these problems big in a place like the War College. Thanks. Excuse me. Now we'll hear from Dr. Emily Oldman. She is director of U.S. Cyber Command, National Security Agency Combined Action Group. And her book, Power in Uncertain Time, Strategy in the Fog of Peace, was published by Stanford in 2011. The floor is yours, Dr. Thank you. It's really a pleasure to be back here at the War College I spent, let's see, 91-92 here teaching and it really is a tremendous institution. I want to be clear that I'm here in my official capacity, but my remarks are my opinions only and they don't reflect the official position of U.S. Cyber Command, the Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government agency. Can you square that circle? Well, it's an academic, a little more flexibility in an academic environment. Okay, so I want to start off by, you know, just reiterating, I think this is a terrific topic for this forum strategy in uncertain times. In my book, I talked a lot about what complexity is. And I think it really can be boiled down to the number of threats, the diversity of threats and interdependence. And I want to focus on the notion of interdependence because what I would argue today is that the cyberspace domain has dramatically increased interdependence and connectivity and thus complexity. It's introduced a lot of complexity into the battlefield. And what you have is countries around the world, states and non-state actors, playing with it, experimenting with it, trying to integrate it into their broader military and national strategies. And they're doing it in different ways and therefore it becomes very different to get an assessment on what their capabilities are. But I think it's very important because it touches everything that we do. And I would argue that no one today can exert or maintain national power without an acute sensitivity to the digital networks that underlay our communications, our prosperity, and our security. Let's start first by talking about what our adversaries are doing. It's pretty clear that US adversaries are investing heavily in cyber. They're investing in this as an asymmetric means to counter traditional US strengths. They're preparing the cyber battlefield now by stealing intellectual property, conducting industrial espionage. They're exploiting government networks, financial system networks, communication industry networks. Through intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, they are establishing, they're gaining penetration into our systems and they're establishing persistent access. And our senior intelligence agency officials have spoken about this in open testimony before Congress. We also know that they're increasingly intent on targeting US industrial control or SCADA systems. So what I would argue they're doing is that they're positioning themselves now in a pre-conflict period. They're integrating cyber in a holistic manner into their strategies far more effectively than the United States is doing. People talk about Russia's hybrid warfare strategy, China's informationalized warfare, salami slicing tactics. They're thinking about this in a very different way than the US is. And what they're doing I would argue is using cyberspace operations in peacetime to violate our sovereignty. Putting malware in our critical infrastructure, attacking our industry, but keeping the activity just below the level that might trigger violence. I think it's senior defense officials have said that this is probably the one place where the US does have peer competitors. Yet we're self constrained from responding. And so I want to ask why? Why do we have that condition in the US today? Because I think it really goes fundamentally to our concepts for thinking about strategy in this space. Several challenges that the US faces. The first one is that we adhere to an intellectual binary construct that we're either at peace or we're at war. Peace is the norm, war is an aberration. And what this does is this constrains us intellectually for thinking about how to counter adversary activity and what we call phase zero. So I would argue that we're in an era of persistent confrontation just short of violence. Our adversaries understand this. They are operating in phase zero in the cyberspace domain. They're positioning themselves. They're conducting military operations. And we are not responding. Because our leaders will say, well, did this cross the threshold hold of war? Was this an attack? Well, if not, then it often becomes sort of a law enforcement or a criminal issue. So what I would argue first of all is we need to think about what it means to win in phase zero. Because that's where the fight is going on now. We may not be involved in a kinetic flight fight, but I would argue in cyberspace we are at war. We're maneuvering with adversaries every day on the borders of our networks. So that's the first challenge we face. The second one is that our strategy is based on geography. And we also think about strategy differently in foreign space and in domestic space. And what that means is that we are not bureaucratically organized to respond to malicious cyberspace activity because our responses are typically defined by what the source of intrusion is intended is defined to be. So is it a military problem? Is it a criminal problem? Is it a homeland security problem? But cyberspace cuts across those bureaucratic jurisdictions. It doesn't recognize geography. It doesn't recognize foreign and domestic space. It engages multiple authorities of our intelligence community, of our state and local governments, of our federal government. And the bottom line is because all these authorities are engaged and we're not streamlined to deal with this. We're not fast, we're not agile, and we have a difficult time innovating. So in some cases, we have a hard time thinking about that we need to be able to maneuver our cyberspace forces globally because when someone says, well, look, you can do cyber operations in an area of hostility like Iraq because we're at war. But the question is, well, what does that mean? Because our adversaries are operating off of our infrastructure. They're operating off of allied infrastructure. They're not confined to a geographic space. So when you step back and look at it, what you see at the War College talking about warfare, it's now possible to do one of the things that warfare was always one of the goals of warfare, to plunder. You can plunder another nation without ever stepping on their territory. So what does that mean when we think about are we at war or are we not? A third challenge that we face is that we treat cyberspace operations as something special and something unique. We don't treat it yet as a traditional military activity. So we distinguish cyberspace operations from information warfare. I think there's two reasons why we treat it as special. The first one is because cyber is so deeply entwined with signals intelligence in the United States. Cyberspace is the primary platform for conducting signals intelligence operations. And there is a whole culture and set of processes and procedures that get carried along with that. And what that means in the clearest sense is that often when you're evaluating whether you're going to do a cyberspace operation, the intelligence community's concern for intelligence gain and loss will outweigh the military's concern for operational effectiveness. So you constantly have this challenge to deal with. So first of all in the US this tight this closeness with SIGINT makes it difficult, you know, cyber becomes different. The second thing that's happened is that we've, you know, cyber has been sort of associated with the nuclear era. We will talk about, you know, cyber is if it's something special and distinct. I mean, we talk about deterrence, talk about escalation. We've already adopted much of the intellectual arsenal that emerged in the nuclear era. And so for all these reasons we treat cyber as something special and unique. Our adversaries treat cyber as just another way to go about achieving their security interests, achieving their goals, achieving their objectives. So what are the consequences of this? I'll briefly tick off the consequences and then some of the things I think we can do to address them. Or what I should say what you all need to do to address them once you leave here and go to your next stations. First of all, I'd argue that we've self-limited our self in this domain. We separate cyber from other aspects of national power. We don't integrate it well into broader military operations. I'd argue that while our adversaries have mainstreamed cyber, we've often ghetto-ized cyber. We have an unwieldy approval process in order to execute our operations. This is not anything unique. I mean, we're very familiar with engaging in an interagency process, particularly in the global war on terror, before we execute operations. But you would be amazed at the number of decisions that have to go all the way up to the Secretary of Defense or to the President. And this makes it very, very difficult to be agile when the infrastructure and the tactics and techniques and procedures of your adversary are adapting so quickly. So the approval process is way too long. Our adversaries, on the other hand, are relatively uninhibited about how they use cyber. They use criminal elements. They use private patriotic hackers. They use cyber militia. So they're far more unconstrained than we are. And if you look at my China example, since I am planted right here in the middle of the China panel, your little cyber detour here, cyber is deeply integrated into China's larger economic and national policy. Their economy has been driven a large degree by IP theft. And it's not just from the US. It's from many other countries as well. And that's really a symptom of their larger economic and national strategy. It's not unique to cyber, but it's been very effectively integrated. So what do we need to do? Some ideas to think about in terms of addressing these issues. First of all, institutions. Okay, I think first of all, we need a way to coordinate short of war policies, strategies and operations. Okay, so short of war. They're too big for DoD. They involve the authorities of other US government entities and the private sector. So we need to figure out a way to coordinate that. We need to nest cyber operations in our broader strategy. And we need to develop the collaborative partnerships at the operational level so we can work with our interagency partners, our coalition partners and the private sector because we need to be exercising and working with them now because as my boss often says, discovery learning is very, very painful in a crisis. You want to know who you're operating with. So those partnerships are critical. Secondly, policy. I would argue that the US government has not yet reached a consensus on what the role of the military should be in cyberspace. Okay, military should defend Department of Defense information networks. So you're protecting your own networks, right? In an attack of significant strategic consequence, the US military is supposed to help defend the nation. But there's a lot of things that kind of fall in between that. And there really is not a consensus about what role the military should play. Finally, strategy. So it's a good place to end up. I would argue that with the proliferation of cyber and other capabilities across the globe that there's a diminishing marginal utility in investing in technology over strategy. Okay, everyone's got the stuff. We have to figure out how we're going to use it, how we're going to leverage it within our political system in a way that protects the privacy and civil liberties of US persons. But nonetheless, we have to decide what we want to achieve in this era of great power conflict. Do we want to win? Or do we just want to survive? I would argue that there's an ideological conflict underway because we want to guarantee an open and a free internet. And our adversaries, China, Iran, you know, other authoritarian states, they do not want that. So we need to figure out what we want, what we're willing to do to secure it. And I would argue that that's going to require a level of consensus and a level of interagency cooperation that probably comes to the level of what we had to achieve during the Cold War. So on that lesson, optimistic note, I will stop. Thank you so much. Finally, from Dr. Ross Babbage, he's a chief executive officer of Strategic Forum Limited, a not-for-profit organization committed to fostering high-level discussions and debates on the primary security challenges confronting Australia and its close allies. And he's recently written a case for a new Australian grand strategy as well. So, sir. Let me say it is an enormous privilege and pleasure to be here. And what I'm going to do actually now, attempt to do in about 10 or 15 minutes, is something which is really rather different to my panelists, although it builds pretty directly on and asked very clearly a major but I think really important question. How should the close allies of the United States in the Western Pacific, how should they operate? What should their strategy be? Given the changing strategic circumstances we're now facing. What really should we be doing and what should be the guidance? So let me just go forward if I can. I'll just try that. So two very particular questions. What is the best security strategy for a close ally? And what practical steps should such allies, such as Australia, consider doing? And I'm going to give you a very, you know, take Australia if you like as a case study and I'm going to rip through a whole lot of slides and just give you a bit of the flavor of some of the things that have been on our minds as we're looking at these issues in the last couple of years in particular. Firstly, just a very quick reminder, Australia is a very big place. In fact, the continental landmass of Australia is about the same size as the continental landmass of the United States. In fact, if you go out into the Indian Ocean from the Cocos Islands through to the Great Barrier Reef, it's over 5,000 kilometers, that's further than the distance across the North Atlantic. We have serious security problems. But we have a population about the same size as Texas. How many Texans have we got here? We've got a few. Well, I'm going to encourage everyone here to think as though they're a Texan for a minute. But you're a Texan on a continent the size of continental US and that's all. There's only about 24 million of you. And that's it. With the economy we have about the same as Texas in terms of GDP, with a living standard about the same and with a very strong resource base. We are in Indonesia are the two largest coal exporters in the world. In two years' time we will be, Australia will be the largest LNG exporter. We are by far the largest iron ore exporter. We have 40% of the world's uranium, proven uranium supplies and a whole raft of other things. We also have some very advanced industries, very high tech in a range of areas. So we are in a very unusual situation. And what's more we're in a rather strange part of the world.  What should your strategy be? Especially what should your strategy be when the security situation is changing pretty fundamentally in a range of ways. Let me just quickly run through 12 of the key drivers that we've been focusing on. There are others. And I'm not going to go through all this in detail. We all know the changing power relatives is a consequence of the rapid growth in China's economy. China is actually Australia's largest trading partner. But it's almost all in commodities. And there's not a lot of involvement in other ways. In fact, in terms of investment, there are only number six in Australia. In fact, some have said and I think it's a fair point that the economic relationship is really an arms length economic relationship. There's not a lot of trust to be frank as there is for instance in stark contrast with our close allies and with countries like Japan. We're worried and we can think a lot about the nature of the regime in China and its behavior. And like the United States does and what that means not only for what we see now, but what might be be seeing in 10 to 20 years time. And as we all know in this room, the timeframe for national security investment is long. And we have to be thinking forward. China's surging military power. I could go into this in great detail. There's about 10 major elements of that that we've focused intensely on because they're the ones that worry us most. But I'm not going to go through that today in great detail. What I'm simply going to say is on the top of it, if you like, in conflict, our assessment is in a period of conflict, these are some of the capabilities they've got and they've acquired, which is significantly different to what we've seen in the Western Pacific before. The capacity to blind allied surveillance and reconnaissance systems and disrupt command and control. Heavy preemptive strikes are possible through their tailored missile capabilities in particular and multiple strikes on naval vessels that see are possible, et cetera, and attacks on more distant following up supporting infrastructure. And we expect some surprises. And when you think about the situation in the Western Pacific that the allies have faced, including obviously the United States, since the Second World War, this is a significantly different operating environment that we're now going into from what we've faced. We haven't in the past had a situation, but we now do, where we can't say the allies will necessarily enjoy operational sanctuary in space. We can't say the United States operational bases will be secure. Allied surface vessel security is not assured in the Western Pacific in an in a range of crisis in the future. In our view, Western Pacific airspace will be contested. Allies C4ISR systems will not be inviolable. And in for us, in a crisis, the assumptions we have to make about a resupply, particularly from the United States, will be questionable because obviously in a range of contingencies, the United States itself will be under considerable pressure. Then there's a geostrategic switch, as we call it. This is the concept that during the Cold War that most of us sort of got our under stripes. In the Cold War, the center of global competition was in Central Europe. Well, now it's on our doorstep. That changes a lot. We, of course, have got a lot of other things going on the region. India, a good friend of ours, of course, is developing a lot of other capabilities as are others. And I just point out that Russia is, of course, a major Pacific. Remind you, it's a major Pacific power as well. And it's boosting some of its capabilities not only in Europe, but in this theater as well.  This is the logic that if you think about where Australia sits, we are between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific and a big sort of, if you like, staging facility. So for forces coming from one theater to the other, we see that as a very interesting sort of strategic opportunity, especially given that we have very advanced industrial support capabilities and other things of relevance for a major and intensive operations. Of course, we're seeing also the potential for miscalculation and escalation. And this, in our view, these calculations have changed significantly in the last 25 years. And the possibility of aggressive behavior simply getting out of hand, partly by mistake. But also, there are elements of strategic instability simply because of the very strong offensive capability that the Chinese have acquired and the way they deploy it. There is, of course, some upsides. Some of them, this is one of them, an important one. There is potential for greatly enhanced regional partnerships. And we're working on that as I'll show in a minute. We are, though, seeing also different United States. And for us, we have to think about that. And here are some of the things that are changing. You can see that there are a lot of distractions for the United States. We see less comfort in American public and less strategic leadership, arguably. I'd argue also a conservative military system which takes time to move a lot of time sometimes. And given the changes we're seeing, that's an issue. And there are some legacy base in infrastructure and logistics systems which, in the going into the future era, may not be optimal. And we can probably do a lot better together, I think. There's a lot of other issues there. We can de-extended deterrence. The nuclear forces in the globe, of course, have changed fundamentally in the last 20 years. And the perception of these, of the assurance that the United States is given to its close allies, that if a close ally is attacked in a substantial way, then the United States would regard it as an equivalent to an attack on its own territory. How credible is that? How credible is that going forward given these changes we have seen and we are seeing an ongoing way in the theater? Of course, also seeing a global diffusion of technologies and systems and, in fact, really smart operational concepts in everything from organized criminal groups to terrorist groups and so on. And that's a complication. And arguably we are, effectively, seeing the emergence of a new global order. And one of the big questions we've been facing is how much can we shape this new global order together as Western allies in ways that really suit our interests in the long term? So our draft conclusion so far is this. We face China ruled by a powerful authoritarian regime using assertive revisionist strategy and that poses some pretty serious challenges. We're now close to Australia, it's now close to the center of the strage. The rise of other powers and non-state actors is bringing increased complexity. There's more scope for misperceptions and escalation. There's more... We have a less confident the United States. There is a serious weakening of extended deterrence. Regional countries are reviewing their relationships and there's a new global order. A lot of change, I think you'll agree. So what should we do? And what should countries like us do in the Western Pacific? I'm not going to talk about these, but some of the concepts we have talked about at home and I'm happy to elaborate if anyone's interested in the Q&A period or afterwards. Deterrence, a defense of Australia this is really pulling in if you like focusing just on our own defense. A more independent posture has been discussed by some. There's a hedging strategy that's been discussed by some. Partnership and leverage, which is actually more like the sort of thing that many of us are thinking about. I want to finally finish by racing through and just literally just mentioning. I'm not going to... I'm just really listing. 12 practical steps that we've been thinking about and debating amongst ourselves of things we could do in the next five to 10 years. Firstly, we could do a lot more. We have extremely good relations into Southeast Asia and the South Pacific in particular, but also further feel we could do more and build those relationships to build greater, stronger resilience in the region. We could... There, of course, are these programs already on building greater transparency, particularly in the South China Sea. We could actually contribute a lot more to that and make, for instance, moves that people make in the South China Sea almost instantaneously public if we wanted to. Do we want to do that? That's an interesting question. We have competitive advantages because we have large areas. We have highly instrumented, advanced exercise and range facilities. We could network these and make them available in new ways to the close allies. One of the problems the United States has got in the rebalance is it's all very well to put more forces forward, but it's not much point if you can't maintain readiness with quality exercising and other facilities being available. We have the capacity to contribute more of that if it's needed. Frankly, I think it's fair to say Australia and the United States have operated in almost every significant conflict where you've been at war since the First World War. It's hard to imagine almost any situation where we're not going to be operating together. Why is it that we haven't yet put a joint strategic planning group together? I think we should. I think we ought to also mesh much more closely in campaign strategies. This means thinking through a range of possibilities which we haven't really done in a thorough way before. And there are some very interesting possibilities which could be very powerful, very powerful in the region of the future. We could establish a Western Pacific Intelligence Hub. We already have a lot of advanced facilities and we're getting a lot more capability. We could become the Western Pacific if you like Allied Space and C4 support hub, if you like. There's again a lot more that can be done. And this is a pretty topical one. We already have the Marines in Darwin, but we could actually provide much greater facilities for naval and air assets into Australia if that's required. Two minutes, that's fine. You'll have me in one. We can strengthen cyber and special operations capabilities. We actually have been involved with the BMD program for many years and we have some very advanced technologies, not least in hypersonic glide and other things. We can do more on that. We have some very advanced industry, some of which is very relevant to defense and we could do more of that. And we can strengthen our own capabilities, our own military capabilities, which are already pretty advanced, but they're not huge to focus more sharply on the things that are gonna make a difference in the crises that we might face in the next 20 years. So we can do more to do that. Here are my draft conclusions. We need to sharpen our focus on the strategic challenges. We need a revised strategy. We need to sustain this current government and its budget in May has boosted defense substantially and I believe it's gonna maintain that. And I think it's pretty well bipartisan both sides of government. And we need to strengthen deterrence and partly by inviting close allies, particularly the United States to do more using what we can offer in the theater. And we need to greatly strengthen regional security partnerships and to enhance their resilience. And frankly, overall, together, I guess the bottom line is together we've all got to lift our game. Okay, wonderful job to the panel. I think we've set the table with plenty of interesting and important ideas. I'll ask people asking questions to please keep their questions brief so we can get and maybe to the experts here also to keep the responses brief so we can have plenty of questions. I would say also comments are welcome as in addition to questions, but let's keep it, let's move along. So yes, sir, please. Hello, sir, I'm John Hanley and I'd like to ask Mr. Babbage, what are the prospects for Australia conducting freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea? I noticed that one or maybe two of the previous speakers said that it's a good idea to actually do more freedom of navigation operations but not make a big fuss of them. And I think Tom made that point. Let me say something which is actually public but you wouldn't have seen much in the press. We've been doing it, but we've actually been, we've actually for 45 years at least, we've been running P3, under a program we call Gateway, operations through the South China Sea, we have not changed that and we've been doing it regularly. These are not like once every two or three months. Frequently these are several times a week and we don't have them be making a big fuss of it and the Chinese have certainly noticed it. And in terms of ship movements, we've done a bit of that but we're gonna be I think doing more but let me just, we're in the last three weeks of an election campaign at home and the government doesn't want to distract from the central messages which are largely economic so it doesn't wanna do the full sweep, not yet. But I think you'll see more in the next few months. Yes, sir. Philip Bildon with the Naval War College Foundation. I also happen to chair the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies Task Force here at the War College. Lyle, I'm gonna violate one of your rules here and compliment you all and take some time to do that because this has been I think the panel that synthesize our most strategic challenges that we face and that the last two days has been trying to address in overlaying the United States strategic challenges in Asia Pacific along with the cyber security challenge in the fifth domain. So my compliments for assembling the subject matter experts that you have here. Dr. Goldman has been a great source of assistance to us at the Naval War College for our cyber security round table forums that have addressed the issues of military doctrine and some of the points that Dr. Goldman outlined in terms of the challenges that we have faced our US government coming up with not only a military doctrine but how to bring the cyber security framework into our legal and legislative and regulatory frameworks let alone that of our allies. I would ask the question since we just had Dr. Babbage talk about one of our allied nations and the strategic framework in Asia. I would ask actually Dr. Goldman to help us think through what your personal and unofficial commentary but as someone who is very senior at NSA and Cyber Command what is taking place now among our allied nations to preempt the challenges of cyber war. As you know, we are on the threshold of that depending on how we define it but it is a 24 seven conflict around the globe and how are we going to with our allies in Asia Pacific Australia, Japan, Singapore, Korea as well as NATO who only recently this week defined cyber as a fifth distinct domain of battle. How are we going to coordinate these efforts before things go kinetic if they do go kinetic? So I think what I would first say is that we are especially with our five eyes partners we have very strong relationships. We also have very strong robust relationships on the intelligence side as well. So sometimes people can say things in public but I think we should all feel confident that our partners are very closely involved with trying to coordinate and develop. I think we need to figure out a way to think of cyber as really coalition based because there's no way that we can do it alone. I mean it's really a team effort and certainly we need and we've seen this in recent operations we need to be able to work with not only our interagency partners and the private sector too but our coalition partners that have visibility that have accesses that have understanding in the regions of the world that we don't have. So that would be one part is we're continuing to work on them but we're still kind of flying the plane as we build it so to speak in terms of the partnerships as well as the teams and the capabilities. I think that the other thing I would say is the defense. I mean we're all incredibly vulnerable and part of that is a function of the way the internet grew up and we rely on these systems so we need to, I think on the one hand, look at how we become more resilient but also which I think was raised in one of the previous speakers actually was raised by the Commodant, we have to be able to operate in a degraded environment. We have to be able to say how are we gonna do this if we don't have access to the networks and the systems that we're used to that actually officers who grew up during the Cold War did not have that but we have a whole generation of younger officers who take this for granted so we need to train and exercise, expect to operate in a degraded environment and everybody has to also understand that essentially your network, your system is like a weapon system and that the same way that we have very clear guidelines about when you can discharge your weapon, every one of us has to be very careful that we don't click on something. Spear fishing is still, it's a very low cost way that allows adversaries into the networks and it's incredibly costly to get them out so this notion of the cost curve that it's very cheap for our adversaries to do this so all of us have to really adopt that culture and I think that goes with our allies and partners as well because we're sharing those networks. I don't know Ross if you have any additional thoughts on that from. Oh I just reinforce Emily's comment, we're working very closely in these ways, we are on these bases. One of the biggest issues that we've had and we've had to work hard and I know you have too is that we've had very serious problems which are often not admitted of cyber attacks and penetrations of some of our major corporations and some of them have got a hell of a fright. The good news is that enormous progress has been made in the last three to five years in building and defence and capacities and we've just put in a whole lot of new facilities in Canberra to coordinate this and do a really good job and also do the links across to not just in the national security spaces, we've been talking about it but in encountering crime and organised criminal networks and making sure that the legal frameworks allow us to transfer information which we might have gathered in the international security sense which in the past would have been difficult to provide for it to arrest people domestically and now we can do that in the way that we've been able to structure that. Lyle, if you'll allow me to be the skunk at the party. Japan also in the defence guidelines that were issued last year, sort of like the guidance of the force and requirements so forth for the Alliance. Last year included cyber which is a good thing but in March 2011 after the huge tsunami when Pak Fleet led Operation Tomodachi which was an impressive operational accomplishment that Japanese taxi drivers still thank me for, the reality was that all the comma was done on cell phones and open lines. The Chinese cyber capability, if you define it even narrowly, involves tens of thousands. The Japanese security officials and so forth who do cyber probably wouldn't fill this room. So the good news is we've identified the problem with our allies. One of the consequences of becoming more joint and aligning more closely is that we rely on each other more and these vulnerabilities become even more important so I think we have a heck of a lot of work to do with Japan and with Korea where the problem is more about national infrastructure which of course we rely on for energy, for water. It's quite a massive undertaking ahead of us. Yes sir, in the front row again. We've heard a lot about the possible intentions of China and diplomatic relations and political aspects of the South China Sea and what have you, but a couple of questions come up to somebody who was once in heavy in the steel bending business for the Navy which is capabilities. We haven't talked about the Chinese capabilities versus the Western capabilities as I see it. By the way, as an aside yesterday or the day before when ASEAN broke up there was great confusion about whether to even bring up the subject of the South China Sea and as I understand it before directly involved nations did not bring it up as a trade relations and fear of retaliation and what have you. I don't see that old group out there as being very solid against the Chinese aggression and in fact I think most of them seem to be co-opted through trade and fear and what have you and they'll hold our coats if the United States will stand strong out there, the rest of the countries will cooperate more strongly with us but at the moment I'm even fearful that if China moved into Taiwan just as the Soviets, the Russians might move into the Baltic so I don't see tremendous ability to capabilities or intentions or desire on the part of the Western world to sacrifice many of their young men and women to protect them if the direct allies don't seem to have much courage themselves. It's true in Europe and which is pretty much a NATO has been pretty much defanged and I don't see the Western Asian countries after what I saw in ASEAN yesterday, the day before being very strong and the other issue is there's been no mention here of Chinese capabilities, no one should talk about intentions to the military people, they should talk about. I think we're growing kind of low on time so maybe let's get a response. Let me just mention one thing, Chinese are very far advanced on hypersonic weapons and also in missile capabilities especially the DF-21 which they have fully developed but the RF-28 and what have you, I think we have a lot to fear. Tom, you wanna lead off? I just saying. So the PLA and most open literature says for about 15 years at least in a blue on red the US is gonna win and so they're gonna avoid that and that's also I think generally the assessment you hear among our allies, the numbers, people have different ranges but I think that's probably about right. I think we need to focus more on this question of Chinese capabilities in the phase zero arena and I think Emily's description of the Chinese strategy and effect in phase zero on cyber would apply almost word for word to the first island chain to what the Chinese call the near sea. Constant, short of violence and degrading our capabilities and by the latter I mean the following. These three artificial islands that Chinese have built are basically three Miesawa Air Force bases and I am quite certain that we will see a fourth on Scarborough Shoals which we'll give basically they already have it, we'll give, we have this on our website at CSIS but it will give if you just draw the range of the J-10 or the SC-27 overlapping air coverage for the whole South China Sea. Now in phase two, three, that's not a problem for us but in phase zero it's a problem. It's a problem, by the way that's in addition to the new 10,000 ton Coast Guard cutters that the Chinese are deploying they're already out in sea trials and the many frigates and destroyers that have been painted white and had the missiles removed but kept the deck guns that are now Coast Guard. So it's not just Arm Fishermen, it's PLA Navy with different colors. Now, again, and this is a problem for us in phase zero and phase one, why? Our allies are gonna beginning to say we're gonna have to fire away our way back into the South China Sea in any scenario with Taiwan or the Senkakus. In 1995 and 96 during the Taiwan Strait Crisis our strategy was to horizontally escalate in the South China Sea because Hainan was vulnerable. Now it's the other way around. So that stretches us. Number two, if you're the Philippines or if you're Vietnam, this is not just a phase zero problem. This is a phase anytime problem, this kind of capability. The Filipinos don't have fighter aircraft. They have two wonderful, my father-in-law served in one, Hamilton class cutters are great boats but they're not gonna beat the PLA Navy. So this is a serious problem for our allies. And then the third problem is that the degrading that I worry about is the, it's a cliche in China but the kill the chicken to scare the monkey. If without firing a shot the Chinese can coerce and change the status quo vis-a-vis the Philippines or Vietnam. What do we do? Vietnam's not a treaty ally. The US-Philippine treaty is a little more ambiguous about our responsibilities compared to Japan. I mean, you start punching out American credibility up the island chain and we have a very real problem with the core of our forward presence, Japan. So I think Emily's, your description is actually exactly the same for this maritime area. And those are capabilities where, shoring up the Philippines to some extent, doing phonops, working with Australia where we can start to counter it but those are the capabilities in a way that are most dangerous over the next five years or so. All right, I'll sign up for that. Let me, for my part, I'm a little less relaxed about the military balance. I think it's very, very troubling actually. You might take a look at the RAND report. I believe it's called Scorecard. It's about 600 pages so it'll take you a bit but it's worth the time. I think it's probably the best unclassified study of the military balance in the Western Pacific. But I'm gonna exercise chairman's prerogative here and pitch the last question if you don't mind but it seems to me we have probably the nation's premier Japan specialist and China specialist on this panel. So I have to ask about this all important China-Japan US Triangle here and we've had quite a few weeks here between the president's visit to Hiroshima and what's been going on in Okinawa. I wondered if both of you might just give you our assessment of where we're at in this triangle and these latest tribulations. Well, I'm gonna violate the most basic conference rule and talk about the Donald but as Donald Trump says every time Japan and China fight a war, Japan always wins. The economic interdependence between Japan and China is enormous and both sides know it. There's more Japanese FDI than the European or American in aggregate and enormous interdependence. It is complicated by nationalism in both countries, the patriotic education campaign in China is viscerally anti-Japanese, post-Tanaman and it's intensifying. You can't watch TV in China without eventually coming to a channel where there's an anti-Japanese history drama. Japan's nationalism is rising, it's 82% of Japanese say they don't trust the Chinese. So there's that dimension. But and Abe, I mean Abe's a bit further to the right than most of the politicians in the diet on some issues, history and so forth but the idea of strengthening the alliance with the US, becoming more joint interoperable, doing more with India, doing more with Australia, that has pretty broad support in Japan and I think we'll continue to see that. I think that the Japanese had difficulty with the Obama administration at first. The Obama administration embraced the Chinese proposal for a new model of great power relations where China's a great power in Asia and Japan and India and Australia are not. It was a very bad idea. I think they've walked away from it. Abe had his own issues that upset the administration with the Yaskini Shrine. Both sides have figured out we got no place to go and as China's become more and more, I can't say expansionist anymore, possessive of their stuff. I'm streperous and obnoxious. I think the trajectory is gonna be a lot closer US-Japan cooperation. Tom, you have the. Okay. Move.


Alright guys, welcome back. This is K.O. here and we're going to be doing another pattern tutorial. Okay, right? So, first off, we're in 4-4 as usual. So, this one's got a little bit of different things going on with it, right? First off, we've got B, we've got the kick drum, IS, inward snare, and T, hi-hat. If you don't know any of these moves, go back and watch them in my tutorials, guys, alright? We're going to go through this pattern three times, right? That's why I write down the 1, 2, 3 here and then on the fourth time through, we're going to do this pattern here, right? So, it's going to be like this and that's what we're going to learn today, guys, alright? So, we're going to bring out the metronome and we're going to start off at 60. As usual, I'm going to go through the pattern once with you before you take over and you do the pattern back. So, sit, two, three, and okay, so now you guys are going to get this time. Yeah, great job, guys. We're going to move up to 80, 6, 7, and awesome. Remember, guys, one of these three sounds becomes less clear, then you want to go back down to your past one. Similar to what we were talking about at the gym, right? You're not able to get five reps, go back down and wait a little bit, right? Make sure the form is good. Same way, make sure the technique is good. Make sure the speed is there before you move on to the next increase in speed, right? So, we're going to go on to 100 now. So, now it's your guys turn, okay? 6, 7, and done. Great job, guys. If you feel like playing with it, play with it, guys. You know what I mean? Maybe make this a T, you know? You know, add a little bit more swing into it, something like that, you know? This is a very dancing groove as you can tell, right? But yeah, guys, best around with it, all you want. You know, that's where a lot of the fun takes place. Remember, guys, keep your techniques clean before moving up. And if you ever have any questions, message me on Instagram, and I'll see you guys in the next video, all right?


Hey girls and guys, welcome back to theCUBE. We are live at Stanford University, covering the eighth annual Women in Data Science Conference. One of my favorite events, Lisa Martin here. Got a couple of guests from Total Energies. We're going to be talking all things data science and I think you're going to find this pretty interesting and inspirational. Please welcome Alexander Le Pen, tech advisor of data science at Total Energies. Great to have you. And Miriam Faiades here as well, product and value manager at Total Energies. Great to have you guys on theCUBE today. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your sleepiness. Give the audience, Alexander, we'll start with you, a little bit about Total Energies, so they understand the industry and what it is that you guys are doing. Yeah, sure, sure. So Total Energies, the former Total, so we changed name two years ago. So we are a multi-energy company now, working over 130 countries in the world and more than 100,000 employees. So we're quite a big company and we, if you look at our new logo, you will see there are like seven colors. That's the seven energies that we, basically that are business. So you will see the red for the oil, the blue for the gas, because we still have a lot of oil and gas, but you will see other color like blue for hydrogen, green for gas, for biogas, and a lot of other solar and wind. So we're definitely a multi-energy company now. Excellent, and you're both from Paris. I'm jealous I was supposed to go. I'm not going to be there next month. Miriam, talk a little bit about yourself. I'd love to know a little bit about your role. You're also a WID's ambassador this year, which is outstanding. Give us a little bit of your background. Yeah, so today I'm a product manager at the Total Energy Digital Factory. And at the Digital Factory, our role is to develop digital solutions for all of the businesses of Total Energy. And as a background, I did an engineering school. So, and before that, I would say I wasn't really aware of, I had never asked myself if being a woman could stop me from doing what I want to do in the professional career. But when I started my engineering school, I started seeing that women are becoming, I would say, increasingly rare in the environment that where I was evolving. So that's why I started to think about such initiatives. And then when I started working in the tech field, that conferred me that women are really rare in the tech field and the data science field. So, and at Total Energy, I met ambassadors of the WID's initiatives. And that's how I decided to be a WID's ambassador too. So our role is to organize events locally in the countries where we work, to raise awareness about the importance of having women in the tech and data fields. And also to talk about the WID's initiative more globally. One of my favorite things about WID's is, it's this global movement. It started back in 2015. theCUBE has been covering it since then. I think I've been covering it for theCUBE since 2017. It's always a great day full of really positive messages. One of the things that we talk a lot about when we're focusing on theCUBE on women in tech or women in technical roles is, you can't be what you can't see. We need to be able to see these role models. But also, we're not just talking about women. We're talking about underrepresented minorities. We're talking about men like you, Alexander. Talk to us a little bit about what your thoughts are about being at a women in data science conference and your sponsorship, I'm sure, of many women in Total and other industries that appreciate having you as a guide. Yeah, yeah, sure. First, I'm very happy because I'm back to Stanford. So I did my postdocs with Margot back in 2010, so like last decade. I'm a field mechanics person, so I didn't start as a data scientist. But yeah, which is always a discrete event as you describe it, to see, I mean, it's growing every year. I mean, it's fantastic. And it's very, I mean, it's always also good as a man to be in the situation of most of the women in data science conferences. And when Margot, she asked at the beginning of the conference, okay, how many men do we have? Okay, can you stand up? Yes, I saw that. It was very tasty because we were like 10 or maximum. Yeah.  Absolutely, yes. It sounds like you experienced it. I experienced the same thing, but one of the things that fascinates me about data science is all of the different real world problems it's helping to solve. Like I keep saying this, we're in California, I'm a native Californian, and we've been at an extreme drought for years. Well, we're getting a ton of rain and snow this year. Climate change. We're not used to driving in the rain. We're not very good at it either. But just thinking about data science as a facilitator of us understanding climate change better to be able to make better decisions, predictions, drive better outcomes or things like police violence or healthcare inequities. I think the power of data science to help unlock a lot of the unknown is so great. And we need that thought diversity, Maryam, you're talking about being an engineering. Talk to me a little bit about what projects interest you with respect to data science and how you are involved in really creating more diversity in thought. In fact, at Total Energies, in addition to being an energy company, we're also a data company in the sense that we produce a lot of data in our activities. For example, with the sensors on the fuel, on the platforms or on wind turbines, solar panels and even data related to our clients. So what is really exciting about being working in the data science field at Total Energies is that we really feel the impact of the project that we're working on and we really work with the business to understand their problems or their issues and try to translate it to a technical problem and to solve it with the data that we have. So that's really exciting to feel the impact of the projects we're working on. So to take an example maybe, we know that one of the challenges of the energy transition is the storage of energy coming from renewable power. So I'm working currently on a project to improve the process of creating larger batteries that will help store this energy by collecting the data and helping the business to improve the process of creating these batteries to make it more reliable and with a better quality. So this is a really interesting project. It's an amazing project and it's fun, I think, to think of all of the different people, communities, countries that are impacted by what you're doing. Everyone knows about data. Sometimes we think about it as we're always paying for a lot of data on our phone or data rates may apply but we may not be thinking about all of the real world impact that data science is making in our lives. We have this expectation in our personal lives that we're connected 24 seven. I can get whatever I want from my phone, wherever I am in the world and that's all data driven. And we expect that if I'm dealing with total energies or a retailer or a car dealer that they're going to have the data to have a personal conversation with me. We have this expectation. I don't think a lot of people that aren't in data science or technology realize the impact of data all around their lives. Alexander, talk about some of the interesting data science projects that you're working on. There's one that I'm working right now. So as tech advisor, I'm not the one directly working on it but we have, you know, we're from the digital factory where we make digital products. And we have different squads. I mean, it's a group of different people with different skills. And one of the squads, they're working on a project that is about safety. We have a lot of sites, work sites over the world where we deploy solar panels on the parking, on buildings, everywhere. And there is, I mean, a huge, I mean, but I mean, we have a lot of workers and in terms of safety we want to make sure that they work safely and we want to prevent accidents. So what we do is we develop some computer vision approach to help them at improving, you know, the way they work. I mean, the basic things is detecting some equipment like the vest and so on. But we're working to really extend that to more concrete recommendation. And that's one very exciting project because it's very concrete. And also I'm coming from the R&D of the company and that's one of these projects that started in R&D and now into the digital factory and it will become a real product that we deploy over the world on our assets. So that's really great. The influence and the impact that data can have on every business always is something that we could talk about that for a very long time. But one of the things I want to address is they're, I'm not sure if you're familiar with AnitaB.org, the Grace Hopper Institute. It's here in the States. And they do this great event every year. It's very pro women in technology and technical roles. They do a lot of studies. So they have data demonstrating, where are we with respect to women in technical roles? And we've been talking about it for years. It's been for a while hovering around 25% of technical roles are held by women. I noticed in the AnitaB.org research findings from 2022, it's up to 27.6%, I believe. So we're seeing those numbers slowly go up. But one of the things that's a challenge is attrition of women getting in the roles and then leaving. Maryam, as a woman in technology, what inspires you to continue doing what you're doing and to elevate your career in data science? What motivates me that data science, we really have to look at it as a mean to solve a problem and not to find a goal in itself. So the fact that we can apply data science to so many fields and so many different projects. So here, for example, we took examples of more industrial maybe applications. But for example, recently I worked on a study, on a data science study, to understand what, to analyze Google reviews of our clients on the service stations and to see what are the topics that are really important to them. So we really have a large range of topics and a diversity of topics that are really interesting. And that's so important, the diversity of topics alone. There's, I think we're just scratching the surface. We're just at the very beginning of what data science can empower for our daily lives, for businesses, small businesses, large businesses. I'd love to get your perspective as our only male on the show today. Alexander, you have that elite title. The theme of International Women's Day this year, which is today, March 8th, is embrace equity. What is that? When you hear that theme as a male in technology, as a male in a role where you can actually elevate women and really bring in that thought diversity, what is embracing equity? What does it look like to you? To me, it's really, I mean, because we always talk about how we can improve, but actually we are fixing a problem and issue. I mean, it sets the reality. I mean, and the reality and for us in the company, and that's I think in total energy, we still have things, I mean, we haven't reached our objective, but we're working hard and especially at the digital factory to improve on that. And for example, we have 40% of our women in tech. 40% of our tech people that are women. Wow, that's fantastic. You're way ahead of the global average. It's outstanding. We're quite proud of that. But we still know that we have at least 10% because it's not 50, the target, is to 50 or more. And but I want to insist on the fact that we are correcting an issue, we are fixing an issue. We're not trying to improve something. I mean, that's important to have that in mind. It is absolutely. Miriam, I'd love to get your advice to your younger self.  What advice would you give to young Miriam now, looking back at what you've accomplished and being one of our female, visible females in a technical role? What would you say to your younger self? Maybe I would say to continue as I started. So as I was saying at the beginning of the interview, when I was at high school, I've never felt like being a woman could stop me from doing anything. So maybe to continue thinking this way and to stay, to continue this way. That's excellent. I think you have the confidence. And that's something that a lot of people, I struggled with when I was younger, have the confidence, can I do this? Should I do this? And you kind of went, why not? Yes. Which is, that is such a great message to get out to our audience and to everybody else. It's just, I'm interested in this, I find it fascinating. Why not me? Yeah. Right? And by bringing out I think role models as we do here at the conference, it's a way to help young girls to be inspired and, yeah. We need to have women in leadership positions that we can see. Because it's a saying here that we say a lot in the States, which is, you can't be what you can't see. And so we need more women and men supporting women and underrepresented minorities. And the great thing about WIDS is it does just that. So we thank you so much for your involvement in WIDS. Ambassador, our only male on the program today, Alexander, we thank you. I'm very proud of it. Awesome to hear that TotalEnergies has about 40% of females in technical roles. And you're on that path to 50% or more. We look forward to watching that journey and we thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Thank you. Thank you. All right. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from Stanford University. This is our coverage of the eighth annual Women in Data Science Conference. We'll be back after a short break, so stick around.