This is the Marley Call for Monday, April 24th, 2023. We are trying to co-author a book or books, and I don't know if Pete's going to make it, but we shall see. And we were just marveling at Jean's home lettuce indoor farm, aquaponics and other sort of things. When you know what you're doing, you can make a lot of food with very little area. I bought a book once about raised bed gardens. It was called something like the square foot gardening or something like that. And it was really impressive, the yield of a well managed raised bed. Knowing that some some things you plant 12 inches apart and some things are six inches apart and some things are three inches apart, and all of that fits into 12 square inches really well. And some things are complimentary and some things are not. Once you figure that out. It's a Fukuoka is the guy Maserabu Fukuoka. I didn't read his whole book, but the one straw revolution, I think. The Maserabu Fukuoka, the one star revolution 1975. And he was the guy who he was basically really observant. And he paid a lot of attention to what worked and what didn't work and he experimented a lot and he was he was growing food in the middle of winter under a snow bank he had some things growing. There's a whole bunch of crazy really interesting things with agriculture, and he was one of the people who basically said tilling the soil kills everything that's interesting under it. We need to stop doing that, etc, etc. So there's a bunch of cool stuff there. Anybody want to check in on what's up here Jean thanks for joining this set of calls will catch you up. But I'm just wondering if anybody has any thoughts they're coming into the call with. Yeah, what are you up to. Yeah, send a note to duck. But he didn't respond. So he's in Montenegro at the time. So I don't know what way he's at. Yeah, yeah. I hope he's having a great time. And then April just came back from her law school reunion and showed me part of the program and like this second item. Is that where I saw this. The second item was basically about law in the food system. And how important that is. And it was really quite interesting I'll see if I can find some something online but you had just posted about Yale studying the food system, I think. And I was like that, you know, it seems to be a hot topic and lots of places and maybe we can do something about that. Finally, emerging. I mean, I'm just stunned how long it took. I participated last week or two weeks ago now at Al Gore's reality workshop. And he did a phenomenal job really to consolidate all these words to it from around the world, you know, the young sea river, running try in Pakistan and African also.  It wasn't a single word about food. I mean, then, then, you know, when he talked to the members about what can you do. It's exclusively focused on energy systems. Get writing, you know, communicating with several of their leaders about you know what I think that what amistice is now how can you even process that you would make an impact here on this you also address a sector of the economy that maybe it's one third of global emissions right I mean what what is this. So it seems, I mean it seems like finally this thing is starting to spark, which to me is just astounding. But I'm too close to it I guess I've done the vision. Yeah, that's good. That's good I appreciate it. Stacy anything to check in with. I really like that article actually reposted it as well. And there were a couple of things about it. One is, I like that it explored different ways to impact you know it was not just the individuals but it was the supply chain it was a soil. I talked about different things but the one thing that struck me is it talked about the need to reduce intake of beef by 25%, which is very different from I either hear cut at all me. You know it's usually like the swinging of the pendulum, and I've always had this conversation with people just reduce what you do like stop with this all or nothing thinking. So that was the one thing that really hit me. And I was just reading about. I think it was, I was trying to figure out when Catholic people started having fish on Fridays and it came from a need to support the fish industry. So I, yeah, so I was like, why don't we just have a, you know, one day are we going without me to just, you know, helping out the planet, you know, something like a religious sub a religious subsidy for the fisherman. Yeah, and actually now that I'm saying this I also want to add, you know I always look at politics and I think about the anger and what gets tapped into on the Republican side. And this need to feel like, in my opinion, what they're tapping into is this powerlessness that makes people feel powerful by becoming angry at something. And if we could kind of do that in a different way, but kind of feel powerful about belonging to something and making a small change, we could incorporate that method in a more positive way. And so that kind of sort of hacks here and I think the food theme is really interesting because one of our tasks I think for today is to start looking around for what topic would we like to make our quick first book around. So let me jump into a bit of what we're up to. And Jean, kind of to catch you up, Pete put out a challenge to GM which you probably saw that said hey everybody why don't we buy the book like an edited volume of something. Different chapters are contributed by different people but the whole thing looks like a book. And then I was like, yes, in fact on my list of things to do this year something sort of like that and then I kind of wrapped around it some ideas I have that I'm currently calling sort of a Neo book which is books, books are kind of roll ups of chapters and chapters are roll ups of nuggets that are insights that fit together. And if we do this properly we could create a book that has chapters that are reusable in other books that have a different theme, or in some cases maybe even an opposite thesis I can easily see two or three books that have different opinions about what's happening with generative AI, but they share a couple chapters explaining how generative AI works and where it came from. For example, and but then they go in completely different, different directions as a thesis or a theme so that's kind of, that's a piece of what we're working on. And I'll just screen share a bit because we set up a bit of a to do list and I'm in obsidian and this has been this is basically being pushed to the ogm wiki so these pages are findable on the ogm wiki, although I haven't pushed this one recently and I will put a link to the ogm wiki in the chat in a moment, but I've been crossing off some of the different things and I realized that I hadn't written. This thing I had do by the 20th which was four days ago so I actually went this morning and wrote this and just pushed it to the server now. And then this page aren't books dead, you know books are awesome things but they're inert. What if we thought of them as souvenirs and then leveled up media by doing Neo books. This page is over here kind of exists elsewhere on the same on the same wiki. And the thing we have in front of us right now is, hey, what is the simplest thing we could do to put out a book. And it might be a two chapter book or a three chapter book I don't know we can pick kind of any title we want. And this is the quick and dirty task list that we had set up to get busy doing that. So if we can, if we can start doing that then we kind of recruit other people who might want to be part of it and and help us do it. So, the QFB is the quick first book. As an edited volume built from markdown files on GitHub repose which is the structure that I kind of just described. So we have a topic and title, you'd figure out who wants to play. We think we want to flesh out this is not really important for the first quick book, but this would be a byproduct of the quick first book is we would start figuring out what a design Bible looks like meaning. We don't have anything on that page this is kind of a naked page, but the design Bible is very much like, if you look at our road runner cartoon there's a design Bible that the road runner never speaks he only says meet meet. Physics are kind of off the coyote always responds to sort of a set of rules that that cartoon lives by always. And lots of things out there have designed Bibles. And here we're talking more of an artifact that's kind of like a book, but also we're interested and this is a big part of it in the book being a gateway into the online interactions and discussions that that are behind the different ideas in the book so that you could go from the book through into well, you know Alan savory says we should have more cattle on the land and that's good for the land, but other people are like no no no let's just get rid of cows because their farts and their burps are basically screwing up the world. What what's the deal here and then help helping sort of sense make together behind it and maybe updating the contents of books over time. And then we as we learn more and as we do more that that's kind of the, the general idea, and then also as part of doing a quick first book we would create a Marley publishing infrastructure, and the Marley workflow, and the publishing infrastructure is kind of this whatever software we use to roll up a markdown files and output a book with some front matter and matter and a cover that smells like an e pub or a Kindle file format book. So what we do is, how do teams get together to co author what what editorial things do we expect them to do. What are the levels of editorial because I have a funny feeling when Pete and I were talking about this a week ago. It seems like there's like an overall Marley editorial team, whoever wants to be on it. That's busy trying to figure out what are the books and how do they fit. And what do we want to go after and what, what works what doesn't work that kind of thing. And there's a that each book project would have one or more people as an editorial team who are making decisions about that particular book. And I've just run on for a while but that's, I just wanted to spill a lot of things onto the table and see if we're all on the same page roughly about that. I think I think I'm having a meltdown. Oh good seeing Jerry Mikulski in in obsidian. What, I've been using obsidian for a while. I wish that the notes field in the brain was actually obsidian and that the two were kind of joined at the hip a little bit so that I could, so that I wouldn't have to push an obsidian file wait for the website to rebuild go find the URL to the page I just pushed and add that manually to my brain. That's Mike that's the current yucky process. It's just a lot of footwork and I miss a lot of things because I don't, I don't always do it every single time and that's too bad but I, but I'm all in on how this stuff all fits together and happy to do that and then Jean we should mind meld a bit more about obsidian and then what else to do with it and so forth. So, and happy to melt your mind. That's that I was that's always entertaining. Oh good good. Any other thoughts about neobooks and quick first book and everything else I just sort of described did it.  What, what you thinking. Well, I guess, somewhere along the lines I'd like to understand the rationale for obsidian and GitHub and, you know, why, why those were chosen. I'm happy to do that now. Okay. So briefly, Pete Kaminsky has been sort of our pied piper of Hamelin on this, and he basically showed us obsidian as an early editor for markdown files. He now thinks maybe Adam is better maybe something else is better but but Pete is always like sniffing and finding the next better tool and I'm like, I am very grooved on obsidian I sort of figured out how to set it up. It's awkward in a couple ways but hey, it's a pretty powerful editor, and it has this beautiful ecosystem of plugins and people working on it and I love that that's really particularly special. I'm kind of, I'm kind of steady on obsidian Pete I think is like well, well, there's better editors. So that's it that's its own conversation. GitHub is there because GitHub gives us an audience and a flow and some tools for doing the versioning a couple things, the versioning that wikis have, because what Pete is trying to do with his massive wiki project is emulate a wiki but using as open a set of parts as possible.   That's more of a website than a wiki at this point because there's no easy in place editing. And when one of our projects out on the horizon is to fix that by creating some editable way to do massive wikis and that's in the future. GitHub also buys us so GitHub buys us version controls and versioning it also buys us fork and pull method for contributions from a community of people. And it also buys us a large audience of people who know where GitHub is who know that when things are on GitHub they're generally open sourced and are usable and remixable. So there's a bunch of nice things there. I looked at and didn't decide to go yet with distributed databases there's a bunch of different options we could go with there's IPFS there's there's a whole series of projects I know of that are built on top of IPFS that might give us sort of distributed data and so forth. And we've held off on that just because GitHub is sort of good enough. And certainly me I'm kind of like hey, I understand why and what for GitHub and how it fits with obsidian and what we're doing there. Any, any, any, you know, moving too far a field of that I'm not sure I can figure it all out and go along easily.   And instead of trying to migrate move and do a bunch of different tools. So I have the like this in like a body of work there that that I understand and it feels like a whole corpus of some sorts. Are those reasonable reasons. So why not just use a wiki. Like, like which one. Media wiki. The one that Wikipedia use that's media wiki it's really awkward and kind of it's a kind of overdone and it's not that easy and it doesn't. It doesn't give us the Commons that we get I mean we could. It doesn't solve a lot of problems for doesn't doesn't give what it doesn't create the Commons like when we put markdown files on GitHub they are in the Commons they are they will be searched. They are findable. Other people can bump into them in an easy way. If we go create our own instance of wiki wiki media, which is the platform someplace then we've got to somehow broadcast it out into Google and hope it searches. And we've got to do other kinds of things. I don't know that that's that my logic is really strong but but we could have used and there's also a multitude of wiki engines. One of which Pete is responsible for having built in the past. He's one of the co founders of social text, which was selling their own wiki to corporations back in the day. But got bought so that IP is now somebody else's. It's possible it's possible but I don't I don't find a great attraction for going and using wiki media for example. We're also trying to do more experiments than just make it a wiki we're trying to make it sort of sing and dance and a couple other ways. Okay, the things that you've described to this point. It all seemed to be doable within knows I had my own wiki for five or six years. And it accommodated all of the things that you mentioned, in terms of, it was Google indexed all of it and there were multiple people that edited it and I agree and then I realized just recently that I spent a lot of time creating wiki pages on social text and also on my friend Kenneth Tyler seed wiki. And he Kenneth actually worked with me a lot to experiment on stuff that was that is on, you know, on the table for us to do now. For instance he he turned his seed wiki into a PowerPoint like thing by letting me do a playlist of pages and then hitting a play button blah blah blah he did that on seed wiki 15 years ago I think maybe more. So my problem is I built a whole series of pages on both those wikis. All those pages are gone. I'm not I'm not not even sure they're in the internet archive, because the social text ones were private inside of a company's private wiki. And I don't think seed wiki was being crawled. So, so for me there's a whole bucket of work I put in just excitedly building wiki pages that is just vanished. And maybe that was just my bad judgment to be using those wikis but So all of the pieces that you put on GitHub are crawled. I don't know that for a fact but I think that to be true and we can figure it out. We're also putting regular website we're building regular websites with it that that I think are on the call as well. We should do some double checking about what is being crawled and what is not. Because I agree with you that if it's not called. It doesn't exist, which is weird to say but true. It exists for you or the people that interact with the rest of the world it doesn't exist. Yeah, it's not findable. It's part of the problem with your public brains. Yes, don't exist. Hey, same. Same problem with with Rome research and obsidian and log seek and, you know, for private repos entirely, but the moment you start sort of pushing to GitHub I think you overcome that in an interesting way and GitHub is now owned by Microsoft that's controversial. I mean there's a whole bunch of funny angles here that we've talked about for a long, long time. And so so I think at this point the platform, and we haven't yet talked about okay how do we get from Markdown files to an e pub. And you know there's documentation generators like Pelican and a couple others is a sort of a bunch of different things that will we will need to pull in and modify to make this work in the way we'd like it to work. And we're really interested in finding other groups that have already, you know, turned the soil, so that we can reuse their work and benefit from their experience etc etc etc were like, as soon as we decide topic, who's around, what's up, we get into that set of issues immediately. Other thoughts. I'm good so far. Stacy. Did everything make sense so far. Yeah, I mean this is, you know, all the technical preparation for it. My thoughts are so so we had a couple ideas on the table, one was to use dark spoke garden world, you know, as, as maybe an entry point here for one chapter. Meaning and gene that's not just as an explanation. Doug, Michael wrote this book a garden world, which is sort of a description of what a post collapse world would look like. And so my suggestion was to maintain good security and basic civil order and function. And so my suggestion was make garden world a destination it is a destination, you know, and then we can have a secondary work work effort to say so how do you get from here to there. You know, defining a destination point. And then you can think about, you know, what would it take to reach that. And when, when you just find a destination point and figure out how to reach it. Also spend time figuring out how to get out of it. How do you mean, because you get locked into these things and then you can't get out of them later. Do you mean technology or ideas like book structures. No, no, well, the way that you use technology to surface what it is that you're interested in, right, you get locked into this technology. And you can't get out of it. In other words, you know, it just gets stuck. Part of our reason for GitHub and markdown is that that gives us as much mobility as we can sort of imagine now because markdown files are like a lingua franca of simple text with some formatting. So that's part of the reason why we've gone down that route is that if we hated obsidian or if it suddenly became evil we could switch to some other editor or some other structure, and the markdown files lying in repositories would be there for us to use. That's part of our logic. Right. Yeah, I asked the people at the brain how to import my room research library into the brain and they said, we don't do that. So, yeah, and if Rome published format for and structure for doing so that that might actually work or an API. And I don't know if they do. So I was looking at something. And I don't remember where they tell me they put it but you might take a look at this. You're looking at a bookshelf over to your left. It's very kind of cool. I'm looking at a monitor near you but but it does because of the bookcases and your fake. It looks like you're looking over at some books on the left. I have this 49 inch monitor that's actually. Yeah. There's a link. You could put lunch on there. Yes, or a dozen windows. So the Kumu people just moved their documentation to this environment. And, and they, oh using get book. Oh, is that it. Look at the lower left powered by get book. Oh, okay. So get book is one of the alternatives for turning GitHub files into books. It's one of the older ones and I haven't used it but it's absolutely one of the possibilities for us. Okay. Because they, this was a tremendous improvement over what they had had previously, and I hadn't been there in several months and when I pulled it up. I sent him a note and said kudos because it looks nice it looks pretty. Yeah, that's a good. It's a good job. So one of the questions of using Doug's and Doug's book Garden World Politics is that it's a big long book, it's a full on book. And it's more content than we want. So what we were maybe looking at is pulling out a chapter. But that would require somebody saying hey here's the candidate chapter and then figuring out what that chapter plays what role it plays in other things that we're trying to create or what you know how other people would want to do with it. And I know that Doug has a very strong particular thesis about where things are headed and what you know what to do about it, which is what we want to have kind of the the idea of the Neo book is to help curate a variety of strong points of view around some shared content. So Doug's Garden World eventually would be like one of multiple Neo books that are that are that are sharing a couple nuggets. I think the question is, which piece of Garden World Politics as it exists is shareable reusable repurposeable that we want to pull into the quick first book does that make sense. Yes. And so and I don't know that answer because I haven't read his book all the way through. And my reading stack is too big but I should give that a go. And, and Klaus, I don't know if you've had a chance to read Garden World or any of the earlier drafts that Doug shared with us, but I'd be if you had I'd be curious to see if you see segments of the book that would be reusable for the I would like to write because it feels to me like it feels to me like an easy candidate for writing something a quick first book is in the food food service food soil food soil water nexus any part of that. Basically like a simple wake up book that says hey people. We need to do this thing over here and here's why because it has all these massive payoffs. And it's you know it's a culprit of a lot of our carbon creation and so on and so forth. It feels it feels like like your topics are kind of very nice targets for a first book for the Marley project. And it's just, I've been waiting for, you know, for duck to to express an opinion or not sort of put a frame in once you have a brain staked out now it's pretty easy to fill in. And so, you know, I mean, I was hoping for more interest now in the in the project as well. So it seems like we're sort of fizzling out here. But yeah, no, I mean, I'm, you know, I can go in into different directions depending on where, you know, be a main obviously spent a great deal of time thinking about it and writing this book. Right. I really wanted to listen to him first where he's how he sees this position, but then actually start writing something shouldn't be shouldn't be very time consuming. I'm just realizing that Pete had sent me a note that said he's getting a crown replaced this morning so that's why he's not here. And then also it's part of our plan to get a few more of our ducks in a row here the way we're doing right now, and then to go broadcast this more broadly in the GM community and figure out. I think that once we get a little bit more done and a little more structure on what we're doing and how we're doing it, I think we will attract a few more people who are like oh that sounds like fun I'd like to do that with you. Yeah, I mean I really liked the idea in the last meeting that participated in he suggested that we should make do something more in PowerPoint format. And then I was spinning this a little bit further to say maybe like a storybook and illustrated version, you know, similar to the way you will have re translated his book into a storybook. And this would really lend itself to images and we have some folks interested in AI and to look at AI graphic generators to create some artwork. I mean this could really be a fun project. And if we found. So I really like what what you're saying and what what came up on that call. And the way the way I think about it is if we can find a logical through line that's relatively simple, that's what we want to say. Then we can do all these things kind of as a as a bill we can do the simplest possible book which would be prose in three chapters and a front matter and then matter and out the door as an E pub done. Then we could render the same thing as a presentation. And then we could sort of render the same thing as a children's book and simplify it and these things could live in parallel right next to each other and be almost sort of exchangeable in some sense I think that would be beautiful. I would love to do that. And so the reason why I'm saying is we need a frame is, I mean, for example, you want to start with, you know, this is going to get really bad. I mean, here's where we are heading. You know, and this is where we need to be to catch it. So how do we connect the entire story. And then not this frame that we're talking about. Why is there a destination but we know so what what's the what's the introduction to to the destination. How detailed and how horrible, you know, not do you want to make this. And so, yeah, so we just need to have I think this is could be a very technical discussion on how to be framed this. And if that frame is set to fill it in. No, that's quite, that's quite practical work then. And then for someone who is interested in illustrating it. And in the way that this these graphic AI things work is just so much fun. Right, because now you can play with the text and insert and see what comes back out of it. We could also just go to Renaissance painters painting depictions of the, of the book of revelations. So, and I think I don't know if you're on the call, but I have a particular bias. And this is, this is only me and my interest areas. I want to have a couple sentences up at the top of this, if the book is about these sort of themes, I want to have a couple sentences say hey, things are looking really grim, if you'd like to learn more about how grim they're going to be and why this matters. Go over there and read that book. But we're going to focus on what you might do about it. Which was so so so I'm, I've read way too many descriptions of the coming devastation how the oceans are dying. All the, the keystone species are dead. We like like, man, it's really awful and depressing and there's a lot of good writing out in the world about it which we could also create a bibliography of, hey, you know, there's documentaries that are awesome, etc. But I would like that to be a side resource. As an example, the book I haven't published yet that is on my list of what I want to sort of eventually publish as a new book is what if we trusted you, which is the reasons why I think trust is the way to solve for our problems going forward.  But even though I think that is all true. I still think trust is our way forward. So there's this like yin yang dark light balancey kind of act that I that I'm trying that this is just me personally that I'm trying to pull back because I feel that going too deep into the darkness early as the as the setup for a book is just going to turn a whole bunch of people off.  And I'm thinking that I'm a guide to what to do if you're an optimist and you think humans can get together and do this stuff is maybe the piece that we can sort out quickly in the middle. And that's again that's just my own perspective on on how to go about doing this, because there's just this is a really large number of humans who are already deeply convinced that this is the problem. And the other people might be more convinced not if they saw more evidence of how wicked it's going to be but if they saw viable pads pads forward that might be actually more convincing to them than tales of woe. I think everything I just said doesn't isn't intended to discourage anybody from writing a chapter or multiple chapters about the desert the coming disaster and why it's going to be so bad. Because that means, when I say, read that book, that is a book or a thing and a set of ideas that are living right right next door. Just being chicken little is not helpful. Yeah. People need to see things that can be done that they can actually contribute to, as opposed to continually thinking about things that other people do change. Yep. So I posted a link to cool to a PDF file. It's from Capra, the interconnectedness of world problems.  Capra read the first part of, of Lester Brown's plan B 3.0. And he sat down and penciled this relationships. Interesting. Thank you. I'm adding it to my brain right now. I would be surprised if you didn't. Thank you. So, let me go back here. Let me go back to screen sure for sec. So my comment would be, right anything you want and I'll build a model for that sounds awesome because because whatever it is that you're writing is just a discussion about a set of relationships and or implications. Yep. And interacting forces and their possible outcomes, which smells like model. So we're kind of on what what is our quick first books topic and title or working title or something like that I think we're sort of in there someplace. One of the things that also came up, I think last week was, there are different kinds of formats and Pete, Pete talked last week I think about the chat and chat GPT exercise he did asking chat GPT to look at thinking frameworks, and then to create a pattern language like thing around the different thinking frameworks and then to put those together into a possible ebook. And that book would be what he described we agreed isn't really a pattern language because it's not a set of interacting patterns it's really more of a manual or a design guide or something like that. And, or a reference work, rather, but we could it's easy to envision reference works field manuals. Children's books. Full on fiction papers that are more academic etc etc like any of those formats is easy to envision it's just a matter of who wants to engage in which one of those. And how do they connect and then collaborating enough and being aware enough of what each of us is doing and writing that we build the links between the different pieces of media on those topics, which is why I think that having that that are reusable is a really nice way to sort of circle around and focus down on that. So I'd be given given the caveat that I gave a moment ago about not wanting to be too humorous about what the contents of the quick first book are, but rather being more optimistic about it. I'd be very happy to have the topic be something in the realm of what we're talking about here which is about either the food system and or the water system and or soil. So it's a really fun way that makes a lot of sense and it would be fun to find a crisp short sort of compelling argument to make, which we could then find a compelling title for etc etc but class I don't know if you want to take a take a swing at what that might feel like. So I'm going to be giving Ducks introduction to the book here. Yeah, so that takes the few that there's three major problems will be food shelter and morale. Right. So, we can talk about foods. We can talk about shelter in, in the sense of, for example, inclusive intentional communities. You know how people build communities to, to partner and protect each other and to share their resources and hold their resources. Right. And then we can. So it's what is it food shelter and educate morale. It's super important because it's attitude. It's mindset. So, so if we just take that scene food shelter morale and spin that out. And so how do we raise food in ways that is sustainable it's regenerative. It heals the soil it heals water.  Right. In the, the, when these were the Jewish people came back came to Israel and found a desert basically, you know, incapable of really feeding a large population and turned that, you know, into an amazing garden world in the Middle East really right. Except the morale didn't quite work out this man. But. But they are, you know, so, so in this sense, now we can discuss options. What could something like this look like. Thank you. Casey thoughts comments. Well, I really like that idea. I've been focused a lot on the mental health movement and I've been, you know, there is an association. They found between working with the soil and depression. You know, I think I've mentioned to, well, I think I've maybe I haven't mentioned, but I have one son who, you know, I call is an angry child. And in going through all pictures I found a picture where he came home where his teacher had been having him work in the greenhouse. And the picture has him with all of the vegetables he brought home and how that and I know how that made him feel inside. And that that was a really important thing. And I also think about the economy and I think about like slavery and the reasons that we have these horrible systems and that, you know, the need for cheap labor and things like that and I'm always trying to take all those systems and put them together. And I think that if we restructured the way we do food, it could impact so many different systems. So I love this idea. Thank you. The food part. I got, I don't see how you get from food to shelter. Yes, in other words, I don't I don't see the close connection to it. So, I'm in for the food part. So you're kind of you're kind of going a little bit toward what I was going to say, which was, I, I lived in New York from 92 to 98 I became part of a co housing community that spent a whole bunch of time trying to find a place to buy and change into a co housing community. We never succeeded on any part of it. I've been a huge fan of intentional communities eco villages etc etc. And I did a bicycle tour of some of those in Portland years ago, which was interesting. But that is a long, slow slog, and I just did a Google search right now on have kibbutz kibbutz and failed or what because I mentioned kibbutz to a couple of people and they're like oh yeah that failed. And so, and so I actually need to sort of figure out how those things are because, because there's a couple different issues layered in here that are complications that we may or may not want to address and the quickest, the quick first book. And I'm sort of, I'm elaborating on them because to me they're complications that we may not want to get into right now. So if I want to say that everything is deeply inter twingled, then I can easily see how shifting how you live and where you live on the land allows you to grow things that you couldn't grow before share them in different ways have different responsibilities so so the shelter and the community and the community are very inter twingled if you want them to be and in particular, if you're if you're trying to act as a community to make food together to live, you know, to live together that that makes a lot of sense. But I think part of what I'm saying is that mixing shelter in brings a whole series of complexities in really early that we may want to just stay away from for a second. When you got on the call class, Jean was showing us the lettuce that's growing hydroponically behind him on the countertop that anybody can do in their present circumstances. So so that's the food system at work in somebody's home with here you can you can MacGyver. It's extremely inexpensive very nutritious blah blah blah and that works and then simple ways of repairing soil in the empty lot next to your house. That's something anybody can do, or even appropriating the lot and turning it into a community garden is something most any community can do. And these are kind of like feeder feeder activities to redesigning where you live for shelter and rethinking how shelter works but the moment you're into rethinking how shelter works. There's a lot going on against the construction industry the real estate industry land use and land ownership which are miserable thickets of thorns and brambles and porcupines. And, and I think, I think, I think maybe beyond the scope of a quick and dirty early work at this point, but definitely in scope for a derivative work that then bounces off and says hey, we did some good work on food over here. So food shelter nexus is really interesting and complicated let's open that up and see if we can find some solutions for it. So my, my, my, my take on this is, I would also vote for not going into shelter on a first pass just doing something about maybe food and water, because cause I think one of the things you discovered was that talking to farmers it was easier to talk about water than it was about their food system and all the sort of economic aspects of it or climate change or anything like that that they were up for talking about, hey there's a drought on and we're out of water how do we fix that they were totally up for that. So so I'm very interested in some simple argument like that, that then gives us a whole bunch of benefits that we can point to and say hey, when you fix this and this then all of a sudden, these other issues start to go away these other issues, these issues show up that little bit of logic in the middle if we can, if we can keep it from metastasizing and growing into too big an issue, I think makes for a simple interesting compelling book. So, does that make sense. So doesn't the food industry have all of the ugly dimensions that you mentioned regarding the shelter industry. Yes, and Klaus is way familiar with the food system the food industry, and it's sort of different kind of uglinesses and, and, and frankly, I would love to help tilt at that windmill in some very productive ways. Also, I just think that that is, that is a smaller audience of people who might be interested, and it's like it's like a graduate division course that's a little bit further than our first pass at something. And I've added another link to a picture that I've always really liked. Yeah. And there's something called edible landscapes, which I did a video short about recently and there's there's just. So I so it could be one. I'm proposing a chapter for the quick book. A chapter that has a description of six interesting food related initiatives from anywhere around the world. And it's something like you just pointed to food scaping or edible landscapes or hydroponics in your home or growing earthworms in your backyard to improve the soil I'm making that one up. But, but if we had a collection of six quick stories with some details and some links out to. Hey, if you wanted to do this there's a an instructable about how to build the hydroponic gear that you could put in your window over here click. That would be really interesting and simple. And for me, there's, there's like, that's a what do you do about it module that follows a systems description module that is before the hey and here's or or after. Here's all the possible benefits of paying attention to these issues. The incredible edible Todd more than that and that's my that's my the talk I love. Exactly. Pam, Pam Warhurst is just unbelievable. She's great. That was a really, it's a good talk. That talk really got me excited about a whole series of solutions for like what ails us in and how we live and where we live. So, so I hope I'm being clear here that I'm not trying to be pesky but I'm trying to I'm trying to cut away things that will affect our lives a lot. And I'm trying to focus on benefits not dangers and damages. All the time without saying that those complexities aren't interesting or useful because they are I want to get there, or that the dangers aren't like looming and actually dangerous because we should write that as well. But I'm trying to figure out how do we carve a little path for a quick first book that smells optimistic and useful. And when you think about food, it's not just coin food. It's also preserving it and and because when you are living in northern climates, you know, like bent as a very short coin season. But traditionally, culturally, we have been able to survive winters right quite comfortably so not by salting curing pickling canning and what have you. So that and that that art and craft really is is actually right now really fashionable again. People are really into I mean you have all the surplus food. So what do you do with it now bacteria are in. That's right and I couldn't be happier about that. bacteria are hot. Oh, okay. In fact, literally sometimes. It's, it's an entire, you know, culture around it. Do we really need strawberries imported from California in the middle of the winter, and so on. Absolutely, we can absolutely study sport and make these turn this into lifestyle choices. Because the problem isn't need this problem is created by wanting an ability to pay for it. In other words, I want strawberries in the middle of winter, and I'm willing to pay $4 a container for them. And because I'm willing to pay somebody will figure out how to deliver them from Australia, if need be. Yeah, yeah, but now we're looking at garden world, which is a future that we are California is just out of water and has destroyed its soil and can't grow strawberries anymore in dirt now fed with chemicals. Not a water anymore is it. It's underwater. Right now, in fact, now in fact they are there's a lake that was dry for 40 years. We emerging right now it's just stunning I mean you have holes that are four feet underwater. But but so so I mean garden world is a future in which nothing quite works anymore the way it has been for the last couple of decades. So we have to we have to regroup and we have to harmonize ourselves with nature and grow food in ways that's conducive now to nature. And then, and then go back to now modernized ways of preserving food so that we make it through the winter. And then during the off seasons. So there's a there's an interesting conversation you're pointing to I think class which is, and I'm going to dramatize a little bit just to make the distinction sort of post apocalyptic and adaptive visions of what to do. But post apocalyptic world we don't have refrigeration anymore. The transportation system is broken down so those strawberries don't make it from Australia anymore. None of that can happen because something broke very badly. And in a post apocalyptic world we are also much more highly motivated to rearrange how we live where we live how we group. Because, and I think maybe only because the old ways and structures got destroyed or disrupted enough that we must adapt that we're forced out of them into some new set of arrangements it's like, it's like the postman you know the, the, the Kevin Costner apocalyptic tale.  Anyway, so, so I'm tending toward stuff that's pre apocalyptic that is adaptive but in a deep adaptive reconnecting kind of way to build morale through community, but not to assume. So when we start assuming that people will heavily restructure what their house is and how they live and where they, you know what they own and all that we are we are assuming I think apocalyptic pressures to change like, or like the entire failure of the real of the American real estate market which hasn't happened yet. Yeah, so the one of the key terms in food planning is problem footprint of your food. And when your food gets delivered, you know, over thousands of miles. And so dealing with, you know, with, with carbon events here that that are really long term, not sustainable and they're also, then there's also the sort of carbon footprint is one issue the other one is equity, you know food equity. You know, you have food prices in ways that it's reachable to the average person and not just process now chemical food but to have really fresh food accessible at reasonable cost. And those things have never been impossible. In the Middle Ages, you know, people were able to get cabbage in form either of sauerkraut or kimchi or whatever but they were able to eat, you know, healthy food during the winter that kept them that kept them together and in most parts of the world that is still the case. It's just our food has become sterilized in the way that we are processing it and growing it and all that. So there is this, this equity sense that's important. And that requires different approaches to to the way we dedicate land I mean, when you go to California and you see thousands of acres of strawberries I mean do we really need strawberries or do we need vegetables. So, it's it's that kind of approach and and then the the other concern I mean the other driving factor here is to recognize and respect bio regions. Because each, each bio region, these dealing with unique types of soil and climate access to water availability of water, and then also the socio economic realities of a bio region that that play a role here.  And the other one are the, the political realities in bio regions know what what are people willing to do in the way they organize the economy. So it's this kind of decentralization of the food system to build redundancy into the food system. You know if one region gets washed out with adverse weather events is there enough food someplace else that can be shipped and so we don't have major disruptions like what we now experienced are traumatic disruptions in the food supply that are not visible yet, but they will become visible this year already when you have so many productive standards that have been knocked off the production schedule. So I think if you do sort of a list so what are the keys, what are the key things that a healthy future food system would need to look like right it should respect bio regions. It should be. It should have social justice built into it into its base right. So we go enough food that is not necessarily profitable, but it is. It's the right stuff to to to at the right cost, you know, for all segments of society, particularly low income groups and so so if we I think so those are the core core issue see that I that I see. That's part of the benefit of community gardens and home aquaponics or whatever else is it's non economic activity and it costs you some money for supplies but once you're growing your own food. You have detached from the food system in however many ways you can grow that that's really interesting and I think it's it in its community it helps finances that there's a whole bunch of other side benefits there. I think what clouds just said should be our book. I think that should be the first book I really do. Do you want to write an outline in the chat. Or collaboratively or whatever I'm happy to note take but. What is what is that. I think that would go on. Together, together we can together we can. I think it's something that maybe should be done together though. Um. So close would. Would it make sense to do it as scenarios. In other words, sort of. Food is the foundation of our future survival. And there are numerous things that are possible. Events in the future that that. We should be ready for. And if, if the book talked about some of the ones that are. Potential. Then you can look at them and say, all right, and here is the way that you respond to them in terms of being able to feed yourself. Yeah. I mean, for example, when we say on, on a bio regional boundaries and differences, what does it maybe can be can break that down. And so there is cultural right. There is the physical realities of soil, water and climate. And I call it maybe socially economics. So from within that, so when you go to Europe, for example, which is a great, you know, parallel here because it's about the same size, similar population volumes and all of that. And you look at these bio regions, you look at Germany, France, Italy, Greece, right. You look at France, they're bio regions, right as the balance, they stay the coast, large cultures and so on and they have even even further specialized, they are food production and, and, and types into what's most conducive to their particular cuisine in Germany, you know, Southern cuisine versus Northern cuisine and so it's quite different because the climate is different and access to water is different and the soil is different. And so, and then, and then the culture is almost secondary, you know, because with that comes an adaptation in, in what kinds of how you process this food and how you deal with it for different events. Mm hmm. Yeah, so, so that that can be spun out into let's be, let's be local. Now, let's let's cherish our, our differences, our uniqueness now. Mm hmm. I'm just sort of typing in some of the things that I heard cost you say and other others of us say in, in this realm. And trying to sort them out and then I kind of thought I put that as a title at the bottom I put food revolt as a tongue in cheek title partly because the food system wants us to sort of stay clients of the food system and just keep doing that. And a lot of the things we're talking about are about kind of taking back your sovereignty or your independence from it and figuring out how that sort of works so it feels like a revolt and I'm also looking for, and this is just in the spirit of brainstorming but I'm looking for titles that somebody might want to actually purchase so that as we, you know, put this out somebody be like oh yeah yeah I bought that thing and it was full of some useful info. So if you want to if you are want to name some other things that we were talking about. You know the bio regional boundaries and differences so you have social cultural social economic and then physical, you know, physically in a sense of soil water climate. Is it likely that we can put anything in this book that you can't go find on the internet someplace. It's unlikely that anything new can be generated under the sun period, but a particular organization of thoughts in the particular sequence with useful links would be a novel project. I mean, there's a whole bunch of very good work in this, in this area, like, like clouds could probably point to, you know, 2020 worthwhile books and documentaries without blinking. Part of what we're trying to do is is use some editorial judgment to pick our way through these things and assemble a series of ideas that are more that are compelling. And ordered. Yes. So you don't have to go search for them there. It's a collection around this topic. And even better, the Neo book idea says that when I when I offer you a link to something that link actually is to a community and a set of resources and a bunch of other things that that that you could then go crazy like learning from contributing to becoming a member of and applying to your own situation that's that's kind of the goal is that is that the artifact. So the book is the shiny object that is the artifact that gets people to go Oh, that that makes sense. There was a nice argument made and here's some things I could go do, and then boom, you're you follow the links into the resources and you're often running the stepping stone. I use the term gateway drug but Pete wasn't very happy with it so I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I'm trying to go back to shiny object instead of gateway drug but I kind of like the metaphor. Like people, you know local self reliance around food and stuff like that is is like an addictive thing it's in 1975 Stafford beers platform for change was a gateway drug for me. Yeah. And I hadn't thought about that way before but it was. But I'm trying to I'm trying to wean myself of that vocabulary. That's one of the things that should be here. So one thing that makes such a big difference also in in in food is that you have the farmer but then you got the processing community right bakers butchers confectionaries. That's, that's really turning food into these wonderful products right that we associate with ethnic cuisines and no specific specific regions. So how do you, how do you bring this in so that there is a community of of people who process this food into into these great products that we that we then actually have on the table. And so we have to, I wrote who is our audience here because we have to figure out, are we writing this for civilians who want to do something in their communities are we writing this for the food services industry. Are we writing this for small and medium sized farms and farmers are we writing this for policymakers, those are all slightly different books and we're looking at the shortest possible book we can write we're looking at something really good. I think it's for individuals. Yes. So you would say it's for it's for, or for citizens. Yes, who I also lovingly call muggles. I bake bread, I bake bread every other day, you know, use I use the beautiful local flower here. And, and people can make jams and do their vegetables that they surplus vegetables and put them into cans. So that's also a skill set that they teach here at the Community College. So how do we, how do we frame that so for people who do wonderful stuff with with their with their foods now to to preserve that. And I'm thinking how do how do we include that in the book as useful stuff you could do tomorrow and keep this from being a hey you should can more food at home kind of book. I was, I was on TV and Ben doing COVID, explaining why you should bake your own bread because you can do an artisan loaf of bread and I have a super easy recipe that's flour, yeast, water and salt. That's it. And you put it in overnight and have a video on on YouTube on my YouTube channel that has really been hit up quite well. And so the idea is bake yourself a fresh loaf of bread, and then go to the farmers market and get a tomato. Now you put a tomato on it put some fresh basil on it we have a wonderful meal right so you can reduce your food cost if you know how to how to work it you can reduce your food costs and still have wonderful meals. There are so many ways that helps your budget and makes food more accessible. That really resonated well because a lot of people had like no money during the first weeks of COVID remember, it's just like out of cash so that was the whole idea is just bake yourself a loaf of bread with something on it whatever you got you know and you have a meal. Because it's a note in the in the prayer give us this day our daily bread. That's right now so. So it's this. I mean if we can convey that that they are, if you know how to cook if you know how to interact with food you can have some some great healthy meals for a very reasonable budget. Love that. They see what do you think I need the references section down at the bottom. Okay, but I like your comments about. They're not references for things to go read their references for groups and people that connect with, as opposed to more things to go read and get lost in and. Yep. Okay. Love that. That makes sense to me. Under who is our audience we decided on who our audience was. I really love it too I hope it doesn't insult people. Where did models come from. Harry Potter. They're basically wizards and muggles the the wizards or all the Harry Potter's and people but then there's a series of like half bloods are basically one parent is a muggle one parent is a is a wizard etc etc. Of course you get like a cat system out of it. But hey, I'm just saying who who were not addressing in this particular title. And there's a piece here that I would love to include about soil health and fertility. And there's a piece here that is I think is important is also about water retention and these like if you're doing aquaponics or hydroponics inside your house then you're not going to be doing much water retention outdoors or much soil you don't you You're not even using soil. However, a whole bunch of people live near soil that is dead. And if they applied a little bit of energy to it it could actually sort of come alive so I think there's, I'm really interested to me that the food to soil to water nexus is very strong.  And we don't do that anymore. We now go to the to the recycling center that has all of the free mulch you ever want. And I sifted so that I have mulch and I have soil, which is extremely fine ground up wood. And dirt and sand and that's the things that we use now. Both of which are free. It's interesting in reading about permaculture and some of the sustainable regenerative farms, the amount of just natural fertilizer and mulch that they put on the land shocks regular farmers they'll put like multiple inches worth on the land and it just blends in and turns into healthy soil. But normal farmers like, wait, what are you doing? That's crazy. Nobody does that.  Multiple inches of what? Of compost, mostly. Oh, okay. And some people just put mulch. Yep. Inches and wood chips, you know. But compost is actually more live because it's kind of cooked down and, you know, I think mulch is mulch and wood chips are a component that help feed it. And again, I am no farmer or gardener, not a good one anyway. So, so a piece of this is trying to figure out whom to involve who actually sort of knows the answers like class like like, what else, what else do we put in here so that we're not writing something we actually know nothing about. That's a danger here too. Well, I'm, I'm sure that we can invite people to talk to us about stuff that they know a lot about. Right. Right. So, so after who is our audience before positivity, should there be a section that talks about, why should you care? Sounds good. Yeah.  But that's what I meant by positive outcomes is like, hey, hey, when you when you engage in this kind of activity it has this positive effect and then this one and then this one and then this one is like a trifecta. So there's some of that there. You know, you will, will be able to get people's attention this year because food prices are just going straight through the roof. And there's no end inside now because of looming shortages. So, how do you, how do you stay, you know, responsive to this? How do you because so, so many people are so divorced from the food system. And just, just, just don't know what, what they want to do is just more extremely more expensive. Instead of really working in ways where people, I mean, we've had thousands of years of experience with food shortages and surviving hard times and still thriving in the middle of it. Right. And the ones who didn't solve that puzzle are no longer with us. That's right. I mean, I was so impressed with the Chinese when I was working on Hong Kong Disneyland. I mean, basically the Chinese probably will eat anything that turns its back to the sun. Just about everything. I went to food markets where they were dissecting rats and made a stir fry out of it, which looked beautiful. But anyway, I think, but, but it's that, it's that idea, you know, that to give people the encouragement to look at food from a different perspective and look at food in ways that you need, you don't need expensive ingredients, you know, you can work with little things and, and, and live quite well. Yep. No, it's cause it's cost effective and it's healthy. Yes. Yes. Cool. This looks good. I think what I'm going to do is I've forgotten how this works. There's a way to highlight a bunch of stuff, extract current selection, and then somehow to create a new page. I think if I do that. Here's one of the magics that Pete taught me for obsidian. I just copied that and basically created a new page that contains all of that. And now if we go back, it's a working link to a new page and I will push this to the to the server now. Is that are you linking this to Molly. This is this is in this is in the OGM wiki and this is a here's the Marley projects first goal is to co author a book and as an edited volume. So this is all under the Marley project which is over here. Here is the this is the page that that we that we put in the plex in Pete's plex. And here is the text for the quick first book which goes back here. So yes this this is all kind of wired together a bit. So, where are these pieces out on the network. Let me send you a link. Hold on let me. Let me first push this file so potential quick first book outline so that is going to push a couple files out to GitHub which will now rebuild the website. Let me find my brain and go to the OGM wiki. Oh I think I have a browser tab open on it. I have way too many browser tabs open I appear to have lost control of browser tabs just a couple months ago. They are now. They've gone feral. My browser has gone feral. OGM wiki in my brain I think I'm not to that way because I'm not seeing the tab here. So this is I'm going to put this in the chat. Here's the OGM wiki. And now if you do a search for quick for Marley for example go to search. Let me just screen share. Let me explain the process by doing a screen share. So I was in obsidian and I use the funny little command to basically use the git plugin for obsidian to push the whatever files I had just changed in the current vault, which is obsidian's name for a little set of files. So many changes I made in my current vault got pushed over to github into a repo repository on github. Then, Pete has an automatic script that triggers when it senses new files dropped into a place where you any repo where you've added his script will then rebuild a website. And the wiki.openglobalmind.com is the website for the OGM wiki repo in github which I have a vault for in obsidian it traces it away kind of backwards and forwards like that. So I just made changes to this thing which should have repopulated so if I go search in the wiki and I search for Marley and hit search that should give us all the pages that say Marley in them. So here is the page we were just on here is the quick first book and look, here's the potential quick first book outline that's already shown up. All right. All right, now, now the problem is this isn't really a wiki this is really just a web page because there's no way to edit this page from what we're looking at right here, which is a future goal to have. So in order to make any changes to this I'd have to go back over here and find you know the this page make changes and push it again through to the repo and then the script rebuild the entire little website every time. And that's how that's how it works presently. So is wiki.openglobalmind.com crawled by Google. I don't know and we should find out and if it's not we should figure out how. And that is a good question. And Stacy and I just watching and all. Well, it is. Well, I found it when I did a Google search. Oh, really? Yeah. Wait, what did you search for Marley or would you search for a search for open global mind wiki. Oh good. And you got to that page. That's at least good evidence. By the way, that's Marley. Thank you. Oh, nice. Thank you. If you send us a photo that you like of him we can add it to the website. Yeah, you know it's funny because I was I actually have one from when I joined school of the possible I had put in Marley my lab assistant, but I didn't know if you were going to say anything in the Plex so I didn't want to. And then I was sorry I was like oh I should have sent this picture to Pete. We can we can still do that. That'd be great. That'd be great. I might have to scoot. Is there another meeting before Thursday? There's fellowship of the link on Wednesday, if you want to join that that's sort of like it's sort of that's closer to free Jerry's brain than anything. And it has its own channel also in the matter most and the call information the time in the zoom or at the top of the channel. So what's it called fellowship of the link. I'll look for it. So if you go into the matter most and search for fellowship link and join that you will find all the deeds. Okay. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Bye. Good progress.


to your questions. First, I am aware of the press reporting, stating that the U.S. is considering providing Abrams tanks to Ukraine. I have no announcements to make at this time, and when and if we do, we'll be sure to let you know. As always, we continue to remain in close contact with the Ukrainians and our international allies and partners on Ukraine's most pressing security assistance requirements to include their near, medium, and long-term needs. Separately, the U.S. and Israel began the Juniper Oak exercise yesterday, which is a bilateral live-fire exercise in Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. It's the largest and most significant exercise we have engaged in together and is intended to demonstrate that the U.S. commitment to Israel's security is iron-clad and enduring. Throughout the week-long engagement, more than 140 aircraft, 12 naval vessels, high-mobility artillery rocket systems, and multiple launch rocket systems will be used during this combined joint all-domain exercise, increasing our ability to interoperate on land in the air at sea in space and in cyberspace, which ultimately enhances our ability to respond to contingencies and underscores the U.S. commitment to the Middle East region. In other exercise news, Exercise Obangami Express 2023, the largest multinational maritime exercise in Western and Central Africa, also began yesterday in Lagos, Nigeria, with 29 participating nations. Conducted by U.S. Naval Forces Africa and sponsored by U.S. Africa Command, OE-23 is the exercise's 12th iteration and designed to improve regional cooperation, information sharing practices, and tactical interdiction expertise to support a more secure, safe, and economically prosperous maritime environment. The exercise will run through February 3. Also yesterday, Secretary Austin and Secretary of the Air Force Kendall spoke at a ceremony at Howard University, during which the Air Force announced that it has selected Howard as the first historically black college or university to lead a Department of Defense-sponsored University-affiliated Research Center. The center will focus on tactical autonomy for military systems, and Howard will receive $12 million per year for five years to fund research. DOD currently has 14 university-affiliated research centers with Howard now being the 15th. Such centers are responsible for providing dedicated facilities and sharing space with department officials and industrial participants to conduct basic applied and technology demonstration research. Finally, the Senate confirmed Mr. Brendan Owens yesterday as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy Installations and Environment, and this role Assistant Secretary Owens is the principal advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment for all matters pertaining to environment and energy resilience, construction, housing, and local defense community cooperation. He also provides budgetary policy and management oversight of the Department of Defense's real property portfolio, which encompasses millions of acres and over 500,000 buildings and structures at more than 500 installations. From that, I will take your questions. We'll start with AP. Tara? Hi, Pat. Thanks for doing this. Now, multiple news organizations have been able to match the Journal's reporting that the administration will be approving Abrams v. Crane, and it seems like this has been in the works for a while. What was the Pentagon's thinking behind the last week's worth of saying that Abrams won't work? They're not the right tool for the battle. They're too costly to maintain. Is this not going to be a useful tool for Ukraine? Again, I have nothing to announce today in terms of the M1s. I think, as we've said all along, we continue to have a very robust dialogue with Ukraine and our international allies and partners to focus on what their immediate battlefield needs are now in the near term. But we also have discussions about what they may need in the medium to long term, and we'll continue to have those discussions. And again, as I said at the top, when and if we have something to announce, we will. And as a follow-up to that, where could this training take place if it does take place? Would this be something that happens in Germany? Is this something that happens in Poland? Presumably, like with the Bradley's and the other systems, some extensive training would be needed. Sure. Again, I don't have any announcements, so I don't want to speculate or talk about hypotheticals. But when and if we have more information that we're able to provide, we certainly will. Thank you. Idris? Taking aside whether Ukraine will or will not get the Abrams, you and others have spoken publicly about the logistics issues, right? Again, aside, take aside whether they're getting them or not. How do you overcome giving tanks to a country when they don't have the logistics train, when they don't have the fuel with it? Yeah, again, without trying to preview an announcement, again, which I'm not sure if I was clear, but I don't have an announcement to make today. The M1 is a complex weapon system that is challenging to maintain, as we've talked about. That was true yesterday. It's true today. It'll be true in the future. Again, without getting into hypotheticals, anytime that we've provided Ukraine with any type of system, we've provided the training and sustainment capabilities with that. So, again, when and if we have something to announce about any new weapon system, we'll be sure to do that. Once again, putting aside Ukraine, is it beneficial to give a country weapons that it cannot maintain? Again, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals or speculate at this point in time. Our focus has been as, you know, at the Ukraine Contact Group this last week, has been focused on what is it that Ukraine needs right now to have immediate effect on the battlefield given the situation there. But again, we've also been very clear, more broadly speaking, from a strategic and operational standpoint, that we continue to have discussions with the Ukrainians and our allies and partners about what are the medium and long-term defense requirements for Ukraine. And we'll continue to have those conversations. Jeannie? Thank you, Senator. I have two questions, one in North Korea, one in Taiwan. First question, North Korea is preparing for the large-scale military parade, as you know that. At the same time, what kind of readiness does the United States have in preparation for contingence in which North Korea conducts missile and seventh nuclear tests? Well, you know, you've heard us say before that we do remain concerned that North Korea is prepared to conduct a seventh nuclear test. It would certainly be a destabilizing action in the region. And so it's something that we continue to keep a close eye on. And we will work closely with our partners and our allies in the region to be prepared in that eventuality. Yes, and another one. If China invades Taiwan, U.S. forces in Korea will move to Taiwan and the United States will intervene. Does the U.S. expect South Korea to be involved in these military actions at that time? Yeah, thanks for the question. I'm not going to get into hypotheticals regarding a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. As you know, we maintain a variety of capabilities throughout the Indo-Pacific region, a variety of forces, not the least of which are approximately 30,000 U.S. forces stationed in South Korea, which are there to work alongside our ROK allies to protect and defend South Korea. So we'll continue to work closely with South Korea and Japan and other allies and partners in the region to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific. Thank you. Laura? I'm sure. Dr. Kahl last week spent a good amount of time talking about how tank now is not the right time to send Abrams and Abrams is not the right tool for the battlefield in the immediate future. So is that still DOD's position? So as we talked about and as Dr. Kahl has talked about, our focus has been on providing Ukraine with capabilities that it can employ right now in the battlefield. I think we're all following along very closely the current situation there is Ukraine tries to recruit, refit, and prepare for continued offensive operations along the lines. So that that has not changed as evidenced by the recent PDA announcements that we've made and as evidenced by the capabilities that you saw coming out of the contact group announced by many of our partners. And so, again, as we look at our security assistance relationship with Ukraine, we're going to continue to talk not only about their near-term needs, but also about their medium and long-term needs. And that has always been the case and will continue to be the case. Do we have Abrams tanks in an exportable version that would be readily available right now? I don't have anything to provide on that. Thank you. Thank you, General. So Dr. Spiegel is reporting that Germany will allow Poland and other nations to re-export Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Has the general leadership communicated its decision with the department and did the department play any role in convincing Germany to make this shift? And on the technical, not technical, as part of your discussion with Ukraine, do you have an understanding how many tanks the Ukrainians think they need for this maybe offensive coming after the winter season? Yeah, I won't speak for the Ukrainians. They've certainly voiced to the Department of Defense and other international leaders in terms of the security assistance requirements that they have in order to support their armed forces. As I mentioned, we continue to have those conversations. In terms of Germany, Secretary Austin did have very productive conversations with his German counterpart. When he was in Germany, we issued a readout of that, which I would refer you to. But in terms of decision making on the side of Germany as to whether or not they will provide tanks or allow third-party countries to provide those tanks, I'd refer you to them. Well, you understand this point, but my question is, has the German leadership, defense leadership communicated any decision to the department on the Leopard? Again, I'd refer you to the Germans. I don't have anything to provide today. Again, we've had productive conversations. We value Germany very much as an ally. You heard Secretary Austin talk about this in his press conference. Germany has committed a large amount of resources to Ukraine to assist in their fight, and we continue to value their relationship that we have with Germany. And we'll continue to communicate with them very regularly as one of our staunchest and strongest allies. Joseph? Just to go back on the joint exercise with the Israeli military, I understand there's a dynamic force employment there. So what message is this sending to allies in the region that the U.S. is going to get in? It has troops to be able to get in and get out, so that's still committed not only to Israel, but it's other allies in the region. And also, is there any message that's being sent to Iran in these exercises? Yeah, so to answer your last question upfront, no, this is not meant to be oriented around any single adversary or threat. As you know, the United States maintains many relationships in the Middle East region with many countries. Israel is one of our closest partners in the region, and as I mentioned, this gives us the opportunity to work together, to increase interoperability, to be able to respond to a variety of contingencies and threats, so that should we need to operate together, we can do so seamlessly. In terms of messages to other allies in the region? Well, again, just broadly speaking, it demonstrates the fact that the United States is a reliable partner that we're going to continue to work together to ensure the security and the stability of the region. As you know, we also conduct bilateral exercises with many other countries in the region, and so this one in particular is obviously the largest of its kind, and we look forward to working with Israel as we further increase our security relationship and our interoperability. Sir? Sir, if I could just follow up on that. On Juniper Oak, the exercise is to include mid-air refueling, and I believe a live fire drill encompassing, quote, the full target engagement cycle, including the suppression of enemy air defenses, strategic air interdiction, and electronic attacks, according to senior defense official. Is this indicative of a shift to a deterrent posture by the U.S. with regards to Iran's nuclear program? Again, this exercise is focused on interoperability and strengthening our security relationship in terms of working together. And as evidenced by, you know, most recently the counter-ISIS campaign, the ability to pull air forces together seamlessly and operate in a way that is going to be effective is vital. And so this is one aspect of that, although the exercise is obviously more than just about air power. And so, again, it's not intended to be focused on any one single adversary or threat. It's all about working together. Thank you. Let me go to Orin. I just had a, I was wondering if I could follow up and get an update on the combined arms training, because that was, I think, planned for about a month for each group of 500. Is the first group nearing the completion of that training, is there planning for a second tranche of Ukrainian troops just to begin that? Yeah, so the training has begun. It started mid-January, as we talked about. And so, again, estimate that the training will last about six weeks. So once that training is complete, obviously those forces will go back into Ukraine. We do maintain the capability to continue that program, so it's not a one and done type of program. And so that'll be Ukraine's decision in terms of providing additional forces to go through that cycle. We certainly expect them to do that, but at the end of the day, that's their decision given the situation on the ground. Okay. Let me go to the phone here real quick. Howard Altman. Thanks, Pat. I've got two questions. One, return to the tanks, and one on the Ukrainian Air Force. On the tanks, this is not a hypothetical question. As you discussed providing Abrams to Ukraine, how much did the issue of the optics of seeing these things blown up in the battlefield play into any of the decision-making that the Pentagon has gone through? That's my question on the tanks. Question on the Air Force. The Air Force spokesman for Ukraine said this morning that the type of aircraft that the U.S. will provide to Ukraine has been determined. Can you talk about that? Has that been determined? Yeah, thanks, Howard. So on your first question, again, I know it's not a hypothetical, but I don't have anything to announce in terms of M1s. The capabilities that we have provided to Ukraine and the capabilities that we will provide to Ukraine in the future are not about optics. They're about combat capability and enabling them to have the best chance possible to be successful on the battlefield, whether it's defending territory or taking back sovereign territory. And then in terms of the press reporting on the U.S. providing aircraft, again, I don't have anything to announce on that front. I'm not aware of any Ukrainian pilots currently training in the United States, to my knowledge, despite what those foreign press reports were saying, nor, again, do I have anything to announce when it comes to aircraft. As we've said all along, we're going to continue to have a robust discussion with the Ukrainians on what their defense needs. That includes the near term, the medium term, and the long term. Thank you. All right. Let me go to Patrick Tucker, Defense One. Howard, do you want to finish real quick? Yeah, just one thanks, Pat. Can you say whether the Ukrainian Air Force spokesman was wrong about that? I'd refer you to the Ukrainian spokesperson. I'm not going to speak on his behalf. Thank you, Patrick. Thanks, Pat. So the question of maintenance has come up a lot in discussions about what the United States will send or won't send. And maintenance obviously goes better when you have contracted maintainers from actual manufacturers. So right now in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense is using Starlink for satellite communications and space that has actual contractors on the ground. We know that they're using data visualization tools from Palantir. We know that Palantir has contractors on the ground, to my knowledge. A lot of the great big defense contractors that are providing kinetic or tactical things don't have contractors on the ground. So understanding that every company makes their own decision on this, does DOD have a policy to encourage or discourage companies from sending just contracted employees for the purposes of maintaining equipment?  Yeah, thanks, Pat. So I'm not aware of any DOD policy per se in terms of private companies and making decisions on whether or not to send contractors into Ukraine. I'd refer you to the State Department because certainly anytime U.S. citizens are going to travel into a foreign country, particularly one that's an active combat zone, I have no doubt that they would reach out to state to get any type of guidance. As you know, our focus has been on providing the remote consultations in terms of maintenance considerations with the Ukrainians doing the actual maintenance themselves. Do you think it would help to have some of these companies, if they could figure out how to do it, send maintenance contractors in to help some of these issues like that aid the discussions about what to send or how to even maintain this stuff? I'm sorry, Pat, you kind of broke up there at the beginning. Can you re-ask that? Yeah, do you think it would help if some of these contractors, these defense companies could figure out a way to send maintenance personnel or other technical experts into the country? Do you think it would help the overall effort? Well, that's really a decision for individual companies to make in terms of the systems that Ukraine has purchased and how they maintain them. Again, from a Department of Defense standpoint, our focus is on assisting with providing the equipment and then again providing remote tele-support or support outside of the country where it makes sense. Let me go ahead and go to Liz and go to Travis. Thank you. So we've spent a lot of time talking about the maintenance that the Abrams tanks would need. So I want to ask you about what would they add to the battlefield, what's good about them, why would the Ukrainians want them, why would the U.S. send them? Again, without getting into hypotheticals, the M1 is a very capable battlefield platform. It's also a very complex capability and so like anything that we're providing to Ukraine, we want to ensure that they have the ability to maintain it, sustain it, to train on it and again, I'm not making any announcements on any M1s or any other new capabilities today. Just one follow-up on that. After the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Secretary Austin said that the U.S., if the U.S. sends tanks, that's not related to if Germany chooses to send tanks. Does that still remain true? Well, I think you heard the German Defense Minister, I want to say it was Thursday night in an interview, said that there is no linkage between Leopard tanks and M1 tanks. They're certainly not from a U.S. or a DOD standpoint. Germany's decision whether or not to send Leopards is a sovereign decision and we respect that. Thank you. Travis? Thanks, Pat. Two questions. First one's relatively simple. How many M1 Abrams tanks are in the U.S. inventory? And the second question is, is there any update on the Patriot training at Fort Sill? I think the original estimate was it would take three or four months to complete that, but I think there was a desire to compress that training and to do it more quickly, especially since Russia may be planning an offensive in Ukraine. Is there any update on whether it could be accomplished more quickly? Yeah, so on your latter question first, we've said that it will take several months, which is an expedited training program, right? So given the fact that these are air defenders already with real-world experience, given the fact that they're not going into the U.S. Army per se, so there's certain aspects that can be tailored since they're not going into our formations, so that already is an expedited approach. Again, we're not going to talk about the specifics on when that Patriot system will appear in Ukraine, other than to say, again, several months. And that's about as specific as I can be. And then I'm sorry, your first question? First question was, how many M1s are in the U.S. military? So I'd have to refer you to the Army. On that, I don't have any numbers right in front of me. Thank you. Tony? I have a couple of questions that are not tank-related. When you're talking about discussions with the Ukrainians about the capabilities they can use right now, about two months ago, and as part of the Ukraine security initiative, security package, you mentioned satellite committee, SADCOM terminals. A week later, there's been no contract. Where does that stand since that's a capability they can use right now? Sure. Well, and to be clear, they have satellite communication capability right now, right? So that was announced as a USAI package, which traditionally is going to have a longer lead term in terms of announcing the intent to purchase this capability or this contract, this service, and then going through the normal acquisition process in terms of making an announcement. So to my knowledge, we have not announced the awarding of a contract yet. What we do, as you know, we'll post that to defense.gov. Another different region of the world, Afghanistan. Nobody thinks about it now. But the GOP members in the House have pretty much signaled they're going to have hearings on the withdrawal. That after-action report that you guys classified and you want released to the public. Is there any steps now to declassify that in anticipation that you're going to get requested, subpoenaed, or pushed by the GOP to give them the document? Yeah. So I don't, I have any updates on the report. As you highlight, it was a classified report produced for internal purposes. But when, and if we have any updates on that, we'll be sure to let you know. Well, if you get a request from the Hill, certainly we'll work closely with Congress to meet any legitimate requests for information that they provide. Sir. Thank you, General. General, President Zelensky has fired some several top Ukraine officials because of fire corruptions. And that's come, as they are facing this corruption scandal, that appears to be linked to Ukraine government's military supplies throughout the war. So how much that will impact on the military assistance in the middle of the war to Ukraine? Yeah, thanks for the question. So, you know, when it comes to the internal personnel management of the Ukrainian government, I'd refer you to Ukraine, I would say, from a Department of Defense standpoint. We're not aware of any type of widespread issues regarding corruption that would negatively impact the fight. And I would also highlight, as evidenced by the situation on the ground and the progress that they made, Ukrainians continue to be very, very focused on deterring Russia, defending their territory, and taking back territory where they can. Yes, you can. Thank you, sir. President Zelensky said in a statement that Russia leadership preparing for revenge and amassing forces. What do you think this headed next? Where do I think the conflict has headed next? Well, I mean, Russia has been very clear that they're still committed to the strategic objectives that they set out for themselves at the beginning of their invasion, which is to completely conquer and eliminate Ukraine as a country. So the United States, our allies and our international partners are focused on providing Ukraine with the security assistance they need to prevent that from happening. And so far, Russia has failed in accomplishing its strategic objectives. And so we're going to continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Thank you very much. Joe. Could you confirm if the Pentagon has used its stockpile of ammunitions in Israel to keep the flow of weapons for the Ukrainians? Yeah, thanks, Joe. So for operation security reasons, we're not going to talk about where particular equipment or material comes from that we use to replenish our own stockpiles. Thank you. All right. Let me go to the phone here. Jeff Schogel, task and purpose. Thank you. I realize you referred my colleague's question about whether Germany has informed the United States that sending leopard tanks to the German government. But we live at the tyranny of time and distance, and it's 7.30 p.m. there, and trying to get a hold of a German government official after hours is difficult. So I would like to re-ask the question, does the Defense Department have any sort of notification from the German government that it intends to give Ukraine leopard two tanks? Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Jeff. Despite the time difference, my response will remain the same, that I'm not going to speak for the German government. We do, of course, maintain ongoing and robust dialogue with one another as allies. But I don't have anything to announce from the podium here. Thank you. Let me go to Alex Washington Post. Hey, Pat, thanks. You've said a few times now that you're focused on immediate battlefield needs, but you've had some foot-stopping moment saying medium and long-term things to bolster their defense. So are you suggesting that the M1's figure into a longer-term USAI kind of couple years out-type of strategy? And then I have a question about M1 capability. Yeah, thanks, Alex. So again, when it comes to the M1, I don't have anything to announce. You've heard us talk in the past about the capability that the M1 brings to the U.S. forces. You've also heard us talk about the maintenance and training associated with it, the complex maintenance associated with it. But you've heard us also talk about other capabilities that when it comes to the medium and long-term defense of Ukraine, that we're going to keep all options on the table. So nothing to announce today, and when and if we do, we'll be sure to let you know. Okay. And you had one more. I'm sorry. Yeah. You know, Colin, Colin, I've talked about the fuel burden specifically because it takes JPA. So the system is a multi-fuel system. So I'm kind of curious if you can clarify if this is a type of fuel problem or that is just a fuel burning in general issue? Again, I'm not going to get into specifics on a system that we haven't said that we're providing to Ukraine or hypotheticals, but we just take a step back here and look at the situation on the ground right now in Ukraine and our focus, you know, as we talked about coming out of the contact group on the kinds of capabilities that Ukraine needs in the immediate term to be successful on the battlefield going into spring, particularly as Russia continues to recruit, refit, and reenergize their efforts to conduct an offensive. So that will still remain a very important focus. But we also have said that we're going to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. And so we're going to continue to have those discussions with Ukraine, our allies, and our partners on how best to support them for the near medium and long term. All right, let me go to Kasim. Yes, the General CSA has reports that the current stockpiles of the United States would not be sufficient for a wartime environment, specifically mentioning as such as a war with China in Taiwan Strait, the U.S. use of ammunition would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense. Do you have any comment on the report? And can you say that the U.S. military is still ready to fight two major wars in two different geographies and sustain the wars? Yeah, no comment to provide on the report. You know, the Department of Defense is a planning organization. If you look at the national defense strategy, it makes it very clear in there that China will continue to be the pacing challenge by which we develop our budgets, by which we design our doctrine and conduct our training. And so, yes, I am confident that regardless of what the situation is worldwide, as we've done for a very long time, the United States military will be able to be prepared to support whatever requirements we're asked to support. And also, of course, you have been saying that you are in a robust discussion with Ukraine and with other partners to meet the needs of Ukrainians. And Ukrainians are saying that they need tanks right away, right now, for the war. We have seen that you were pushing back against tanks, mentioning maintenance, mentioning sustainment. But at the same time, we see that this pushback has softened a little bit. Or has anything changed in the war? Or was it more of a political discussion and political decision was need to be made, actually? Again, as evidenced by the $26 billion that the United States has provided to Ukraine and security assistance, significant security assistance that has helped them to make progress in the battlefield, that is the result of discussions that we continue to have with their leadership, discussions that we continue to have with our allies and partners in terms of what can we provide to Ukraine to enable them to quickly succeed on the battlefield. And I think the results speak for themselves. If you go back to the beginning of the campaign, when Russia was on the outskirts of Kiev, and you look at how far back Russia has been pushed and the fact that Ukraine is still standing in this fight and that they're poised to continue to be successful. And so, again, we'll continue to have those conversations. We just came back from the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein with nearly 50 nations represented. It was the largest tally of support so far, which I think demonstrates that the international community is still unified and resolved to support Ukraine in their fight. Thank you. Take a couple more, Matt, and then real. Without getting into any possible announcements regarding tanks for Ukraine, can you talk at all about the process by which the department requests new Abrams tanks from industry and how long that takes? How long does it take for the department to get a new Abrams? How long would it take to get, I don't know, 30 to 50? Matt, I appreciate the question. At this point, that's a hypothetical, and I've got no announcements to make today regarding M1. So, thank you. Appreciate it. Last question, Ro. And then I'll go. I'm sorry. Last question would be Joe. Thank you. The Secretary will travel to the Philippines in the coming weeks. So, could you tell us about the strategic importance of the Philippines from the Pentagon's perspective to respond to Taiwan's threat contingency in the future? Yeah, thanks, Ro. So, in terms of potential Taiwan contingency, again, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals. I will say when it comes to the Philippines, they're one of our oldest and strongest allies in the region. We have a, as you know, a very proud history of joint and allied training with our Philippine allies and exercises. And so, this alliance plays an indispensable role in upholding a rules-based international order and promoting the common values of American and Filipino people. So, the Secretary is looking very forward to his upcoming visit. We'll have more information to provide on that in the very near future. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, ladies. Oh, Joe. Last one. Sorry. Just a follow-up on Qasim's question about the CSIS report and some of the questions that it raises. Given the sheer numbers of munitions that are being expended in Ukraine, has the Pentagon, has it changed its assumptions at all about the way the numbers of munitions that it needs and have those assumptions affected any operations plans? Is the Pentagon revising operations plans based on what's happening in Ukraine and the numbers of munitions being expended? Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. So, let me just kind of start a big picture here. So, when it comes to operations plans, for operation security reasons, classification reasons, I'm not going to discuss those kinds of specifics. Other than to say, and you've heard me talk about this before, we're not going to do anything that's going to affect our readiness or our ability to meet our national security requirements. And so, when it comes to being able to ensure that we can support Ukraine but also meet our own readiness needs, there are ongoing and active discussions as part of this process to ensure that we have what we need and that we can continue to replenish our stocks. And so, if you go back in time a year ago before this invasion, certainly, I mean, President Putin himself said that they were not going to invade Ukraine. And then he did. And so, you saw very quickly the U.S. and the international community come together to be able to meet Ukraine's needs. And so, that then by default requires a reevaluation of certain assumptions about capacity, production, etc., which is why you've seen the DOD, Dr. LaPlante, for example, helping to lead the National Armaments Directors meetings to look at exactly those types of questions. What are the things that we need to do? What are the assumptions that we made? What are the things that we need to do to work very closely with industry but also with one another to ensure that we can replenish our stock, produce, to make sure that we can continue to support Ukraine but also replenish our stocks and meet our readiness needs? So, the Ukraine contact group, again, not to belabor the point, but this has been an absolutely essential forum by which to do these kinds of things. Instead of bilateral relationships between individual countries and Ukraine, and Ukraine having to figure it all out, the contact group has proven to be an incredibly successful mechanism by which to bring these countries together to look at Ukraine's needs, to identify how we can best support, and then as quickly as possible get them the security assistance they need concurrently with looking at what our material and resource requirements are and how we can best leverage the international networks and global industrial base to meet those. And so, again, Secretary Austin is very confident that we're doing the right things to ensure that we can sustain readiness both now and into the long term while at the same time supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. Thank you. All right. Thanks very much, everybody. Appreciate it.