council. >> today marks the passing of general, one of america's great soldiers and spaceman. help guide the u.s. military in the 1991 persian gulf war joint chiefs of staff.

as a holder of the distinguished leadership award achieved in 2005, and honorary atlantic household and advisor. one jamaican immigrants, he really was an american success story. first back chairman of the joint chiefs selected by president george w. bush and lake 2000 secretary of state making the first black person to leave the state department. i asked him during one of our conversations whether he prefer i call him general or secretary, i refused to call him -- i told him about harm our relationship.

he said i prefer you call me general rather than secretary and i said why? he said i earned that so i always loved that statement. that's a good segue really to our event today. we are joined by two generals with impressive extensive backgrounds in u.s. security and defense. general james also executive chair, two-time chairman of the atlantic council of major general arnold so thank you for joining us and i'm sure you and everyone else jointly my salute general powell here we are committed to saving the global future together with our allies and partners with the dedicated focus on producing actionable recommendations with real-world facts. there are two others running us today who have done that throughout their careers,

significantly impacting trust department defense plans and priority so i'll get into this is the conversation they haven't impacted the plans and priorities as much as they would like to have. working to develop sustainable nonpartisan oddities to address the most important security challenges facing united states and allies and partners. seeking to honor another general, he passed away last year in august seeks to honor his legacy service embodies nonpartisan commitment and security support for u.s. leadership in cooperation with allies and partners dedication mentorship for the next generation of leaders. consistent with that mission, forward defense practice

designed to shake the debate around the greatest military challenges facing united states and it creates forward-looking assessments of the technologies and concepts we believe will define the future of warfare. looking forward u.s. competitiveness will only continue to develop more advanced technologies and innovative operational concepts that will alter. as china and russia average speed of the acquisition of emerging capabilities all the way to the deployment, united states maintains with organizational and cultural barriers standing in the way of innovation. what worked yesterday will not be sufficient to date tomorrow. as the global security landscape changes, the u.s. department of defense must adapt to a new set of priorities and constraints

and that brings us to today's events. general recently released the book title ever shrinking fighting force which recognizes that despite recompense spending, the u.s. department of defense is getting less return on investment than in the past. the pentagon must transform process down by bureaucracy or trail behind especially -- especially competitors like china translates economic successes into military power, we just saw a test from a hypersonic missile from china yesterday that surprise a lot of people the community. this change is especially important for decision-makers map up the next allergy and determine how to reform rate of

performance and greater affordability. u.s. seeks to maintain competitive ads in the decades to come defenses on the advantage national defense strategy continuing to release analyses to help chart the way forward for the department efforts and that is the concept of today. i'm delighted to introduce the worst speakers and moderator. our speakers happen to be part of our atlantic family. general james jones is executive chairman, founder of the jones group international known as a leading authority on energy foreign affairs and national security. under the obama administration, he served as national security advisor president overseeing national security council cybersecurity oklahoma security and foresight. he served as commander of u.s.

european command and alec manor and 32nd u.s. supreme court most senior position in the court. no person ever has held all the position i just named. major general served on the council's advisory board, also chief executive officer chair of the board of the national defense industry -- industrial association. the countries largest defense association. he is a marine and defense previously named temp one of the 100 most influential the rest. fighting force serves as a catalyst to this conversation and offers relevant insights into the future of defense. it's great to see you both look forward to your perspectives.

monitoring this conversation is missy ryan who serves as staff writer and pentagon correspondent washington post for several years supporting our national security from over ten countries with latin america and the middle east. an impressive list of places that she has visited in her career including and reported from libya, lebanon, yemen, afghanistan, pakistan, mexico, argentina and italy so nothing so perilous as washington d.c. so with that, i'm going to encourage our audience on zoom to ask any questions. perilous we will find at the bottom of your sleep, identify yourself and your affiliation and your questions. we will collect them throughout the event and then will post toward the end. we engage our online audience to join the conversation on twitter

by following up ac and using the # -- with that, i'll pass it to you. >> i think were going to watch a trailer and then get back to this. >> oh, sorry about that. ♪♪ >> i am general, a retired marine corps major general, the author of a book entitled the ever shrinking fighting force. we face in this country the most x essential rights we've seen in our lifetime particularly from china. this book is written only for the citizens of the united states of america to understand if we preserve our way of life and our freedoms, we got to have a strong military, we've got to get more bang for the buck for the dollars we are spending so we can the chinese who now purchasing power is greater than the united states of america, their military has grown

powerful. we are spending more than we've ever spent get the capability where getting the dollars is decreasing. >> hi again, if everyone can hear me now, i am honored to be here today general jones, it is a privilege to be sitting with these two professionals in national security and military affairs. what we are going to do is have a q and day the three of us about 40 minutes, 35 or 40 minutes and then will open up to the audience so as you can see in the q&a, submit your questions there in bed will get

to them at the end of the conversation. want to start by talking about book fighting force general, you lay out a striking case regarding some of the problems affecting -- the efficiency of military spending or lack thereof. before we dive into pacific's, you talk about america's getting the same bank for the biggest two. can you talk about why it's an important topic for americans to be thinking about right now given everything going on in the world covid, economic problems here at home, why is this something that's an urgent topic. >> thank you for moderating the panel in your tremendous expertise.

when things were raking in afghanistan the washington post, really terrific insight of information, pleased to join my colleague general jones and i would say i want to associate myself about power, first met him in the late 70s when i was in the armed services committee and handle this confirmation to be chairman and staff director. one thing i'd like to say is he had a missed perspective for congress and national security. focuses on congress and the fact that congress is not letting the pentagon in some cases get the bang for the buck they like to get so it's not only internal problem at the pentagon bureaucratic processes defined congress basically not willing to bite the bullet in some of these areas but why is it important like you mentioned,

there's a lot going on in the world, the world is more dangerous and unstable in my judgment than the peak of the quote for our number one competitor marks militarily go into a lot of statistics that although it's going to have, they have more diplomatic around the world. but what really scary to me is they have a huge technological on us in key areas and frankly when you look at the role of our industry the role of our military and how our military has been successful and when it hasn't, look at what colin powell did at the beginning of desert storm and the technology that basically one that worked in the first three or four days. it's a technology we give more fighters so they are never in a fair fight. we don't want another country

like china to have better technology in our military has and we are not on the right path there right now so we're out of afghanistan, removing resources from the middle east, we are at an inflection even though we have these problems at home, if we want to keep our democratic freedom and not have authoritarian states like china and russia basically starts to dominate even more than they are right now and we've got to make sure we have a powerful deterrent with our military and be able to fight and win the nation's future wars and that will take a lot of changes in the pentagon, a strategy, that's not the machine. it's not working. we're going to build up the forces 50% smaller so that's why we can afford it and we've got to work on the challenges here at home but if we ignore what china is doing in russia or iran north korea, we are going to

wake up at five or six years -- one boxed thing. there's a book about the japanese surprise attack at pearl harbor, at dawn, we split. it talks about the warning signs that we should have seen. we don't need that book now. china is very outspoken, we know exactly what they're up to. they not only tell us, they do it. we need to basically wake up deal with this threat realistically get more bang for the buck in the department of defense. >> you lay out a number of striking or alarming facts in your work on this and one that i found be compelling was the fact that you say when combining the cost of active duty military, guard and reserve, civilians and contractors, dod sets 70% of its budget on personnel over 77 base

personnel in fy 16 and i think that doesn't tail with a lot of the problem i hope we can get into a little bit later that dod has had and turning out technologies and making sure the development of new technologies don't take years and years and a huge amount of money. my question for you -- [inaudible] excuse me. having served in the leadership of the white house and the pentagon, why do you think this phenomenon is better understood? there is strong bipartisan support for a big defense budget. i think people talk about maybe trimming around the margin but why do you think it isn't better understood there are efficiency

problems or at least that there needs to be prompt action to address them? >> well, thank you. let me join in condolences to the family of general powell was a basement and soldier, very, very few equals in history. we will miss him greatly. one of the bigger problems are countries facing today is being asked around the world and that's part of the united states and the department of defense or the united states is in a systed

and they were able to pay for what they want to achieve economically but they fall for two reasons one is external conquest and the other is internal collapse and that is one of the things people watching united states closely fear might be happening in our country so the fact that general is out there, it's a reminder that within the construct of our entire fabric of our society, the defense department faces an important role in this day and age isn't the only role so one of the things that concerns me is our inability not only to make our case sounding the alarm

to our public and members of congress and leadership but to actually formulate a strategic vision where we want to be in the future. it's an argument that the united states is to be the world leader forever. that status comes about as a result of hard work, sacrifice and realization that we live in a very competitive world so we've been at war for some time, this was passed to sound the alarm within the department of defense the amount of money spent is not providing basic needs of the nation in terms of being able to meet the competition. i think we have to be very clear about what's needed. what's needed is not only department of defense and several other agencies as well including the state department

but until we realize as general pointed out, the chinese in russia are clearly engaged with us in asymmetric ways, we might not have connecticut contest although it's possible we might but we are in a contest and all other aspects of culture and society and we are showing ourselves to be slow in making decisions and slow in understanding that the national but part of our difficulties. the last budget -- the last budget during the clinton administration and ever since then, we've been going in the wrong direction in terms of how we spend our dollars and what we get for.

i think the book is very timely, useful restaurants understanding the magnitude of the problem. 1997, we did write a plan for the pentagon reform entire acquisition system organization. we've had no secretary that's been able to take this on as a primary, one of the primary missions because every because there's so much else going on capturing their attention but the problem has only gotten worse and it's incumbent upon our public and think tanks and members of congress to understand exactly what the direction is so they can apply some of the remedies we need.

>> i want to build on a few things you said and put this question to both of you. we talk about the need for more efficient defense spending and it strikes me that while there has been ongoing conversations for many years and we were just talking in the clean room decades long efforts to make reforms in different than our dollars are managed even though you hear members of congress talk about this in pentagon leaders talk about this, they need to increase efficiencies and all that, it hasn't happened in the way anybody would have liked and i'm wondering if either of you think, is there a way to force greater efficiency or bring about greater efficiency in the way we curate

and spend these dollars while continuing to give the pentagon are pretty big-budget, certainly larger than any other country in the world? there seems to me potentially that there is a lack of incentive and while we could argue whether it should be 700 or 730750, eight it still a lot of money so i'm wondering how you spread that circle between the defense department and a lower budget. >> i'll let arnold answer that first. >> as we say in the marine corps, if this right in the bull's-eye. i would think he is chair of the finance committee, general jones and i and seven together, he had a famous saying don't solve a

problem for people before they know they have once one of the problems right now is people do not in congress and the pentagon and american public, even the media don't realize the ticking time bombs getting ready to explode in the pentagon and we need to educate and inform people, that's really what my book is about. let me give you a couple of examples and i think if we were able to get this through, once you mentioned what i call the cost of the volunteer force and personnel, if you added 1.3 million active duty, 880,000 early members of the card reserve, 750,000 different, 750,000 defense contractors, not the ones building the weapons were the ones who worked every day according -- in the pentagon and been you look at the fact that we have 2.4 million literary retirees, 1 billion more retirees serving on active duty, he look at the healthcare

budget from 17 going to $52 billion a year 10 million beneficiaries 5.69 retirees so 60% of the dod's healthcare budget supports people no longer serving and the cost we now pay people for 60 years to serve for 20 years. that's just saying that is realistic, we have $1 trillion military retirement system. you are spending $400 million a year in the acquisition of goods and services supplies and equipment and about the only charitable think you could say is take longer, get less. china built 30 naval combatants. china thinks we used to be able to build fighter aircraft contract to the first article in about five years and it takes three years. we had 14 companies to build fighter aircraft and ronald reagan was president and the

dod's overhead, quick look at the amount of money in the defense and from 7% of the budget, they say 20% if you add in the part buried in the air force budget, it's more like 30%. it's probably more rapidly than the actual budget military departments where the war fighters are. we have a massive overhead, huge cost for the major weapons. he was correct 20 years ago and said the cost of these weapons were to be such that we can only afford one of each and that's where we are now when you look at some of the costs of these rooms, same thing with sustainability. the time magazine complaining about runaway costs of these major weapons and now we are paying the price so all of these problems people need to understand congress needs to understand people are going to have to bite the bullet because

these are so at first, we don't have a lot of time to turn it around. it's educating and informing and frankly, the people who come to work in the pentagon every day, the civilians, military, card reserve and contractors, they come to work everyday trying to do the best job i can, our taxpayers and war fighters. former secretary of defense still want that. we have this proliferation of bad bureaucratic processes in the pentagon and same thing in the congress. the congress now is the broken branch, they don't fit the work on time or do oversight anymore, they been wearing crs for 25 years. got to fundamentally change the government in both congress and the pentagon we are going to remain competitive with china and russia, that is the problem. >> another way to add to that to be very helpful thank you, is to say that i've been around long

enough have gone through the days of legislation. another way of saying that i've been in the force and all volunteer force. the all volunteer force was a great creation but i think it's time for us to think about -- unattended consequences that's been identified now. we are on a ticking time bomb. we've seen nuclear modernization which will double to about seven 100% budget in the next few years. our conventional force will contract on the current course

and whether you grow reagan cold war to obama global war on terrorism, today we are spending more than the reagan buildup at its peak for a smaller military. i do believe the contest with our primary competitors is much more multifaceted but it's not only her kinetic fight, there may be smaller skirmishes, tests in china and the like but the real fight is primarily with china and is much more than just the pentagon. we have to make decisions more quickly and understand holistically the threats and we have to understand this is a

real contest against this, as well organized, well-funded, they have the advantage strategic planning and thinking. so those are realities we have to deal with. i think the pentagon is a great place to start. out of whack and most of the services, national debt and services don't contain any offsets, food out of $22 trillion between 2020 -- 2025 to the national but so do people start talking about that and

really understanding what it means for our future, we are on a slippery slope toward the client rather than the opposite which is what i think most americans want. >> i want to underscore one faith because a lot of times i hear from people say you're always exaggerating. the chinese really aren't that great but general johnson i made us in vietnam i was there from ours enough margin to invite little marine platoon from our mission was the trail in the mountains where the chinese brought supplies in it our mission was people doing that so i've actually had personal experience fighting against chinese military, these are not people to put you over so the

notion that some people say they never have been in the fight, talk to the marines who brought the chinese. we should not underestimate in the problem i have is the technology that's always been our military tremendous advantage, they got ahead of us in some areas and catch up in other areas in these technologies are not just afforded to the pentagon, their fundamental to our economy being competitive in the world in the future for a strong economy. so we need to wake up and take these challenges very seriously. >> i think that's absolutely right and to add to one of the advantages you were saying china has, another one is espionage to acquire technologies the united states developed at great cost. i'm going to circle back to you

general jones with another question but before i do, another related question going back to a comment you made earlier about congress, i'd love to hear from you having served in the military and extensively on capitol hill, it seems like a lot of the reforms both of you are talking about going to require significant congressional action, how do we do that, how do we make that happen given the dysfunction of congress and advantages divvied up in the districts that have made it in making reforms? >> let me say again with senator and others 24 here's on the armed services committee for 14 years, the defense committee, the armed services committee, house and senate defense appropriations committees are still a bipartisan oasis of

wanting to do the right thing for the country. those committees work together, they work on a bipartisan basis and pastor legislation. the appropriations bills because of the larger congressional dysfunction, they don't get them out on time but not within their control. individually if you look at the leadership of these committees, they want to do the right thing and do reforms so i think we've got the opportunity, you got a lot of new people on the senate and house armed services committee on both sides of the aisle serving in the modern war in iraq and afghanistan to the system. general jones is correct, we need to go for the management increment in the pentagon and fix the operational chain of command but i think if they could get the committees to agree with the problem and the pressing nature and get the pentagon, the problem you have

is, the pentagon is not cooperative on these things because these are a lot of lightbulbs and jobs tied into them in the pentagon so you've got to get the pentagon like we talked in the green room to adopt, willing to take this on. the pentagon, if they basically signal to the congress which i think is already declined in that direction on the bipartisan defense committees, they want to get more bang for the buck and you could work those things in a more cooperative way but it took us three or four years to pass over the objection of the pentagon and that was because you had really strong leaders. and you've got to have the cooperation of the pentagon on these, they are exceedingly complex.

do more business with the department of defense than public companies about how large the organizations are so i think the will is there, it will just take the pentagon and congress, it will take us from the outside, the news media focusing people on the nature of the problem in getting people to be willing to show courage and backbone and bite the bullet. >> -- thank you. i think one of the things we should be careful about is not to overstate china's capabilities and brushless capabilities. russia is the size of new york state. vladimir putin is more of a nuisance than a threat of nuclear weapons so that makes him a bigger threat. it boggles my mind we have the respect that years later -- he

really is a dictator whose goal is to mess up everything we do as much as possible and europe. we will see in regard to this in europe as well when it gets cold. the other thing is china, i think we have to be careful not to overstate what china is, china has internal threats coming to roost here. we are -- there one child policy years ago is making china the oldest country in the world and that will impact their workforce and other things so there's a lot of things that will preclude china from achieving their goals but one i want to emphasize, this is where the pentagon grows is cybersecurity arena.

recently the washington post, they highlighted resignation for the defense official who said war on cybersecurity work china has already lost. i spent a fair amount of my time on cybersecurity issue. constantly it is not lost. if we apply ourselves and organize ourselves, the better way which to take on this fight, the u.s. can be the global leader on cybersecurity issues and render ourselves relatively impenetrable and completely secure in a relatively short period of time and provide that capability to our friends and allies so this is a near-term

fight, the defense department can play a huge role in hardisty these technologies we know are out there. but until we organize ourselves, the manhattan mike project like we did in the 20th century but this project for cybersecurity, partisan technologies out there a way that catapults the u.s. in unquestioned leaders on cybersecurity issues and we are going to be changing china rather than leaving and since we have the capacity to lead, i think most americans would rather have that situation. >> thank you. so you answered one of the questions i was going to ask you about china, overhyping the problem so i'm going to build on what you were talking about, see

comments about cybersecurity. i'm interested if you think it's something we could overcome in the idea gives is interesting but what makes you think the united states can overcome the problem it's had today, we've seen problems of vulnerability with u.s. government network and i would like you to address if possible the cyber vulnerabilities and defense industry and supply chain which seems to be as big a problem because of the technologies they have on the systems and the fact that they happen a major target attack. >> for more years than i care to admit, we have been vulnerable to penetration by our competitors. china in particular.

it's no accident the ladies chinese fighter looks like the f35 and it's no accident that china has made tremendous strides but china to me is not country that innovates, it's a country that captures the capabilities and technology countries like ours develop. so it is come upon us to organize ourselves, is the public and private sector to prevent these things from happening. in my work, in the cybersecurity world, i know there is technology out there that properly harnessed and brought together in a way that uses the agency together so you don't have the defense department working on one thing and the state department on another and other agencies doing their own thing.

we've got to stop penetration. we've got to make companies and our defense companies more secure. those technologies i believe are out there, i know they are out there but in any administration, we have not -- this penetration or the last administration come together to form a central and how mike project in the springs, the best of the private sector and public sector together to protect ourselves. until we do that, and organize ourselves, we are going to be chasing in the contest here, where to lead and once we get our house in order, who want to make sure our friends and allies have that same capability as

well. >> i think we have time for one more question before open up to q and a. i just want to ask, you lay out in the book and we have talked here today about a lot of the challenges the pentagon and the overall system around defense spending and technology development, what would you want people to know about what is going right, with the pentagon is doing right, maybe that people don't know about? >> i would say when writing the points that someone has been privileged to be in uniform 35 -- 40 years working in government and working in the defense industry serving side by side, the people in the pentagon come to work every day, a career civil service, active duty member, art reserve, contractor, federally funded -- we are

trying to do the very best job they can for our taxpayers and firefighters. if you look at acquisition, and i complained about that in one of the challenges right now is we don't have it under secretary for acquisition or a deputy and we don't have assistant secretary in that area where we spent $490 a year. that said, under frank kendall in the last administration, they've made a lot of progress in terms of improving acquisition products not how far we've come, it how far we still have to go. if you look at the new undersecretary for research and engineering, she is a firm from a she's going to basically move out smartly in the technology area. cyber, there's a lot going on, we are not organized for combat like general jones is suggesting we need to be much too much is just putting out saying how much money we are spending our week

beginning on target there? you look at our military, what they do each and every day, today we have 30,000 numbers of the card reserve on active duty working, helping, and hurricanes and fires. at 11 until now, over 1 million members of the card reserve have been mobilized to serve overseas in here at home and there are bargains for the taxpayers who didn't have to build any schools or hospitals or equipment shops are family housing because they are part-time but they served on active duty so there is a lot of good and i think we do have military in the world because we recruit and retain the very best people, that will be even more challenging, 17 to 24 -year-olds we've targeted a lot are not medically qualified anymore. we have realistic constant training, that is always a challenge. the big thing is, we give them

the best technology and that comes from industry. government does not innovate anymore. innovation comes from the private sector. we've got to get more industry in nontraditional suppliers empress pentagon and the pentagon before us has tried to do that. i would say in terms of cyber for the industrials association, 1600 members including general jones mentioned, we are fanatics about meeting government's requirements. we all agreed 1000% we've got to protect our networks. we've got to protect the technology and classified information. the department needs to basically be in the regulatory framework for things that will actually work rather than disseminating moses the ten commitments and working with them on that so there is progress being made their but you are correct, you can't do unless.

i've spoken to every head of the cyber command all the way back to alexander and they basically say offense can only always around the defense that we can never rest when it comes to protecting our networks and industries protecting the technology that will be essential if we have to go to war in the future. >> let me quickly follow-up before we moved to parsons on something you said, people cultivate a lot about consolidation and defense industry and the dominance of smaller number of large companies, is they need for greater more effective cybersecurity and argument for consolidate the defense industry where there is a small number of players for a larger ecosystem of smaller companies giving resources required in order to defend technology from attacks? >> i'm one who believes there'sn

my judgment particularly if we consolidate and basically reduce novation, that would not be a good thing so what i think is some of the ceos have had recent things in the think tank and have spoken how to change the format going forward and everybody for cleaning. we got to innovate not just in the defense industrial base, we need innovations of 5g or quantum, biotechnology. we need to basically secure our supply chain 40% of our pharmaceutical come from china or china doesn't have all the minerals we need in our technology so there's a lot that has to happen here but greater consolidation in things that

would reduce competitive pressure in the department reduce innovation in small businesses would not be a good outcome. >> okay, i went to read some questions from the audience take the liberty of combining related questions, we only have 11 minutes left. this is from miles at brown university and scott -- sorry if i am pronouncing this from. do you believe a chinese taiwanese war is imminent if the u.s. is prepared in technology for that situation? the second part, do you have suggestions how to communicate the urgency of this issue many the problems you are describing your book to parts of congress not involved in defense before there is a wake-up call situation such as centralization of taiwan? so sort of a current offense

question combined with the question more central to the book. >> combatant commanders should go first on that. >> that is a hard one but the taiwan issue is hard to answer but i would say what's going on right now on the global playing field with principal competitors is a testing game trying to size up the will of our leadership. they are trying to figure out where vulnerabilities and weaknesses are what we have the results to stand behind our values and what we have stood for for a long time. as i said earlier, there is an open question about whether the u.s. is in decline as they would like us to be.

i don't believe that has to be the case. i do think there are some things we have to fix and quite a few things, it would be great if members of congress would unite on the subject of national security from both parties so one party says one thing and the other party doesn't say another because they are not republicans or democrats so i think in the 20th century before the end of the cold war, the congressional national security purposes will really bipartisan and we need to return to that era of bipartisan concern for the good of the nation in the leadership we want to provide for the rest of the world so i don't think my personal view, i don't think there is an invasion of taiwan is eminent but i do think

there's a lot of testing going on data demolition based on what the chinese are doing in the airspace and so on and so forth. i think we have to be clear and unambiguous, we say something, we mean it and we have the capabilities to make it happen. >> i support what general jones said there. basically, we need to send a signal to that part of the world particularly the chinese that we honor our commitment to the taiwan. i was in the senate and president jimmy carter to fly to china and with them and we also went to taiwan and meant them. they fought during the war was with us, the taiwan relations act, we should honor our commitment for people to see when we have a treaty or say we are going to defend from north

korea if we have to, are we going to help japan which is talking about increasing the budget beyond provisional 1% that we will make good on our commitment in that region taiwan people in that part of the world particularly the chinese understand we mean it when we say it's one of the worries a lot of us have coming out of afghanistan we left the people who supported us behind. general jones and i grew up in the military, you never your men wounded on the battlefield. we need to basically reassure that part of the world the time we need, we are going to be there if they need us and they need to understand that. >> to build on back quickly, how do you get going back to scott's question, how do you get greater buy-in from the scope of congress to have greater focus on china or make deficiencies

when there's a lot of pushback in recent decisions but i think for the first time are showing the rubber starts to meet the road in terms of u.s. ship toward china especially withdrawal from afghanistan or recent deal with australia, these are destructive decisions but they could be part of this larger shift and a lot of criticism from both parties to elements of the decisions from wandering, how do you do that? >> the good news right now when it comes to china, there's strong bipartisan support both in the house and senate that we need to basically deal with the issues associated with china is a lot of questions in the work, who got the military bills that affect initiative building on that permit the pentagon getting it so that's one of the real pluses right now people are not

fighting the problem in terms of understanding the nature of what we have to deal with when it comes to china. when you get into specifics because there's a lot of business, there's a lot of goods being sold to china, aerospace companies have businesses over there so when you get into that, that's when it gets tough but on the other hand, i think there is a general awareness that is something we got to pay attention to it it's on my bipartisan basis so i am encouraged there. we have to have the pentagon from are not specifically pointing fingers at this one but coming to congress with specifics, there are some things we need to do in the administration support. this legislation we need in this area. it's not just the pentagon, where to depend on the chinese supply chain, it was troubling to somebody like me when covid

hit the head of the new england patriots decided he wanted to basically get masks and ventilators, he didn't go to illinois to get it, he went to china because it's the supply. we can have that. we got to shore up our supply chain and a lot of areas i think congress would be receptive but the executive branch has to lead in this area and come up with specific proposals in congress need to deal with them. >> i think have three minutes, one must question and to get to you, general jones, there's an interesting question from colonel tim kuhn -- i may be pronouncing that long run the air force, could you further describe what to point out what entail particularly a regional combat in command with this being the only global

integrated? i think it's an interesting question. >> you can't do that in two minutes but i would say one of the shortfalls of unintended consequences was to remove the service chiefs from the acquisition process so service chiefs were relegated deciding what is their service needs but want the need was communicated, they were forbidden to act in the acquisition process and what happens and still happens today the service, an accident reports are killed in training or something like that using new equipment, who gets to answer for that?

that's the servitude so those are some of the things that needed to be corrected. i also think we could make some improvements in the relationship between the service from a joint chiefs of staff and combatant commanders in the sense that combat commanders in this day and age go around the joint